Man, Past and Present Part 6

THE AFRICAN NEGRO: I. SUDANESE

Conspectus--The Negro-Caucasic "Great Divide"--The Negro Domain-- Negro Origins--Persistence of the Negro Type--Two Main Sections: Sudanese and Bantus--Contrasts and a.n.a.logies--Sudanese and Bantu Linguistic Areas--The "Drum Language"--West Sudanese Groups--_The Wolofs_: Primitive Speech and Pottery; Religious Notions--_The Mandingans_: Culture and Industries; History; the Guine and Mali Empires--_The Felups_: Contrasts between the Inland and Coast Peoples; Felup Type and Mental Characters--_Timni_--African Freemasonry--_The Sierra Leonese_--Social Relations--_The Liberians_--_The Krumen_--_The Upper Guinea Peoples_--Table of the Gold Coast and Slave Coast Tribes--Ashanti Folklore--Fetishism; its true inwardness--Ancestry Worship and the "Customs"--The Benin Bronzes--_The Mossi_--African Agnostics--Central Sudanese--General Ethnical and Social Relations--_The Songhai_--Domain--Origins-- Egyptian Theories--Songhai Records--_The Hausas_--Dominant Social Position--Speech and Mental Qualities--Origins--_Kanembu_; _Kanuri_; _Baghirmi_; _Mosgu_--Ethnical and Political Relations in the Chad Basin--The Aborigines--Islam and Heathendom--Slave-Hunting--Arboreal Strongholds--Mosgu Types and Contrasts--The Cultured Peoples of Central Sudan--Kanem-Bornu Records--Eastern Sudanese--Range of the Negro in Eastern Sudan--_The Mabas_--Ethnical Relations in Wadai-- _The Nubas_--The Nubian Problem--Nubian Origins and Affinities-- The Negro Peoples of the Nile-Congo Watersheds--Political Relations--Two Physical Types--_The d.i.n.ka_--Linguistic Groups-- Mental Qualities--Cannibalism--The African Cannibal Zone--Arts and Industries--High Appreciation of Pictorial Art--Sense of Humour.

CONSPECTUS OF SUDANESE NEGROES.

#Present Range.# _Africa south of the Sahara, less Abyssinia, Galla, Somali and Masai lands; Tripolitana, Mauritania and Egypt sporadically; several of the southern United States; West Indies; Guiana; parts of Brazil and Peru._

#Hair#, _always black, rather short, and crisp, frizzly or woolly, flat in transverse section_; #skin-colour#, _very dark brown or chocolate and blackish, never quite black_; #skull#, _generally dolichocephalous_ (_index 72_); #jaws#, _prognathous_; #cheek-bone#, _rather small, moderately retreating, rarely prominent_; #nose#, _very broad at base, flat, small, platyrrhine_; #eyes#, _large, round, prominent, black with yellowish cornea_; #stature#, _usually tall, 1.78 m. (5 ft. 10 in.)_; #lips#, _often tumid and everted_; #arms#, _disproportionately long_; #legs#, _slender with small calves_; #feet#, _broad, flat, with low instep and larkspur heel_.

#Temperament#, _sensuous, indolent, improvident_; _fitful, pa.s.sionate and cruel, though often affectionate and faithful_; _little sense of dignity, and slight self-consciousness, hence easy acceptance of yoke of slavery_; _musical_.

#Speech#, _almost everywhere in the agglutinating state, generally with suffixes_.

#Religion#, _anthropomorphic_; _spirits endowed with human attributes, mostly evil and more powerful than man_; _ancestry-worship, fetishism, and witchcraft very prevalent_; _human sacrifices to the dead a common feature_.

#Culture#, _low_; _cannibalism formerly rife, perhaps universal, still general in some regions_; _no science or letters_; _arts and industries confined mainly to agriculture, pottery, wood-carving, weaving, and metallurgy_; _no perceptible progress anywhere except under the influence of higher races_.

Main[129] Divisions.

#West Sudanese#: _Wolof_; _Mandingan_; _Felup_; _Timni_; _Kru_; _Sierra Leonese_; _Liberian_; _Tshi, Ewe, and Yoruba_; _Ibo_; _Efik_; _Borgu_; _Mossi_.

#Central Sudanese#: _Songhai_; _Hausa_; _Mosgu_; _Kanembu_; _Kanuri_; _Baghirmi_; _Yedina_.

#East Sudanese#: _Maba_; _Fur_; _Nuba_; _Shilluk_; _d.i.n.ka_; _Bari_; _Abaka_; _Bongo_; _Mangbattu_; _Zandeh_; _Momfu_; _Base_; _Barea_.

From the anthropological standpoint Africa falls into two distinct sections, where the highest (Caucasic) and the lowest (Negro) divisions of mankind have been conterminous throughout all known time. Mutual encroachments and interpenetrations have probably been continuous, and indeed are still going on. Yet so marked is the difference between the two groups, and such is the tenacity with which each clings to its proper domain, that, despite any very distinct geographical frontiers, the ethnological parting line may still be detected. Obliterated at one or two points, and at others set back always in favour of the higher division, it may be followed from the Atlantic coast along the course of the Senegal river east by north to the great bend of the Niger at Timbuktu; then east by south to Lake Chad, beyond which it runs nearly due east to Khartum, at the confluence of the White and Blue Niles.

From this point the now isolated Negro groups (Base and Barea), on the northern slope of the Abyssinian plateau, show that the original boundary was at first continued still east to the Red Sea at or about Ma.s.sowa. But for many ages the line appears to have been deflected from Khartum along the White Nile south to the Sobat confluence, then continuously south-eastwards round by the Sobat Valley to the Albert Nyanza, up the Somerset Nile to the Victoria Nyanza, and thence with a considerable southern bend round Masailand eastwards to the Indian Ocean at the equator.

All the land north of this irregular line belongs to the Hamito-Semitic section of the Caucasic division, all south of it to the western (African) section of the Ulotrichous division. Throughout this region--which comprises the whole of Sudan from the Atlantic to the White Nile, and all south of Sudan except Abyssinia, Galla, Somali and Masai lands--the African Negro, clearly, distinguished from the other main groups by the above summarised physical[130] and mental qualities, largely predominates everywhere and in many places exclusively. The route by which he probably reached these intertropical lands, where he may be regarded as practically indigenous, has been indicated in _Ethnology_, Chs. X. and XI.

As regards the date of this occupation, nothing can be clearly proved.

"The history of Africa reaches back but a short distance, except, of course, as far as the lower Nile Valley and Roman Africa is concerned; elsewhere no records exist, save tribal traditions, and these only relate to very recent events. Even archaeology, which can often sketch the main outlines of a people's history, is here practically powerless, owing to the insufficiency of data. It is true that stone implements of palaeolithic and neolithic types are found sporadically in the Nile Valley[131], Somaliland, on the Zambesi, in Cape Colony and the northern portions of the Congo Free State, as well as in Algeria and Tunisia; but the localities are far too few and too widely separated to warrant the inference that they are to be in any way connected. Moreover, where stone implements are found they are, as a rule, very near, even actually on, the surface of the earth," and they are rarely, if ever, found in a.s.sociation with bones of extinct animals. "Nothing occurs resembling the regular stratification of Europe, and consequently no argument based on geological grounds is possible[132]." The exceptions are the lower Nile and Zambesi where true palaeoliths have been found not only on the surface (which in this case is not inconsistent with great antiquity) but also in stratified gravel. Implements of palaeolithic _type_ are doubtless common, and may be compared to Ch.e.l.lean, Mousterian and even Solutrian specimens[133], but primitive culture is not necessarily pleistocene. Ancient forms persisted in Egypt down to the historic period, and even patination is no sure test of age, so until further evidence is found the antiquity of man in Africa must remain undecided[134].

Yet since some remote if undated epoch the specialised Negro type, as depicted on the Egyptian monuments some thousands of years ago[135], has everywhere been maintained with striking uniformity. "Within this wide domain of the black Negro there is a remarkably general similarity of type.... If you took a Negro from the Gold Coast of West Africa and pa.s.sed him off amongst a number of Nyasa natives, and if he were not remarkably distinguished from them by dress or tribal marks, it would not be easy to pick him out[136]."

Nevertheless considerable differences are perceptible to the practised eye, and the contrasts are sufficiently marked to justify ethnologists in treating the _Sudanese_ and the _Bantu_ as two distinct subdivisions of the family. In both groups the relatively full-blood natives are everywhere very much alike, and the contrasts are presented chiefly amongst the mixed or Negroid populations. In Sudan the disturbing elements are both Hamitic (Berbers and Tuaregs) and Semitic (Arabs); while in Bantuland they are mainly Hamitic (Galla) in all the central and southern districts, and Arabs on the eastern seaboard from the equator to Sofala beyond the Zambesi. To the varying proportions of these several ingredients may perhaps be traced the often very marked differences observable on the one hand between such Sudanese peoples as the Wolof, Mandingans, Hausa, Nubians, Zandeh[137], and Mangbattu, and on the other between all these and the Swahili, Baganda, Zulu-Xosa, Be-Chuana, Ova-Herero and some other Negroid Bantu.

But the distinction is based on social, linguistic, and cultural, as well as on physical grounds, so that, as at present const.i.tuted, the Sudanese and Bantu really const.i.tute two tolerably well-defined branches of the Negro family. Thanks to Muhammadan influences, the former have attained a much higher level of culture. They cultivate not only the alimentary but also the economic plants, such as cotton and indigo; they build stone dwellings, walled towns, substantial mosques and minarets; they have founded powerful states, such as those of the Hausa and Songhai, of Ghana and Bornu, with written records going back a thousand years, although these historical peoples are all without exception half-breeds, often with more Semitic and Hamitic than Negro blood in their veins.

No such cultured peoples are anywhere to be found in Bantuland except on the east coast, where the "Moors" founded great cities and flourishing marts centuries before the appearance of the Portuguese in the eastern seas. Among the results of the gold trade with these coastal settlements may be cla.s.sed the Zimbabwe monuments and other ruins explored by Theodore Bent in the mining districts south of the Zambesi. But in all the Negro lands free from foreign influences no true culture has ever been developed, and here cannibalism, witchcraft, and sanguinary "customs" are often still rife, or have been but recently suppressed by the direct action of European administrations.

Numberless authorities have described the Negro as unprogressive, or, if left to himself, incapable of progress in his present physical environment. Sir H. H. Johnston, who knows him well, goes much further, and speaks of him as a fine animal, who, "in his wild state, exhibits a stunted mind and a dull content with his surroundings, which induces mental stagnation, cessation of all upward progress, and even retrogression towards the brute. In some respects I think the tendency of the Negro for several centuries past has been an actual retrograde one[138]."

There is one point in which the Bantu somewhat unaccountably compare favourably with the Sudanese. In all other regions the spread of culture has tended to bring about linguistic unity, as we see in the h.e.l.lenic world, where all the old idioms were gradually absorbed in the "common dialect" of the Byzantine empire, again in the Roman empire, where Latin became the universal speech of the West, and lastly in the Muhammadan countries, where most of the local tongues have nearly everywhere, except in Sudan, disappeared before the Arabic, Persian, and Turkish languages.

But in Negroland the case is reversed, and here the less cultured Bantu populations all, without any known exception, speak dialects of a single mother-tongue, while the greatest linguistic confusion prevails amongst the semi-civilised as well as the savage peoples of Sudan.

Although the Bantu language may, as some suppose[139], have originated in the north and spread southwards to the Congo, Zambesi, and Limpopo basins, it cannot now be even remotely affiliated to any one of the numerous distinct forms of speech current in the Sudanese domain. Hence to allow time for its diffusion over half the continent, the initial movement must be a.s.signed to an extremely remote epoch, and a corresponding period of great duration must be postulated for the profound linguistic disintegration that is everywhere witnessed in the region between the Atlantic and Abyssinia. Here agglutination, both with prefixed and postfixed particles, is the prevailing morphological order, as in the Mandingan, Fulah, Nubian, d.i.n.kan, and Mangbattu groups. But every shade of transition is also presented between true agglutination and inflection of the Hamito-Semitic types, as in Hausa, Kanuri, Kanem, Dasa or Southern and Teda or Northern Tibu[140].

Elsewhere, and especially in Upper Guinea, the originally agglutinating tongues have developed on lines a.n.a.logous to those followed by Tibetan, Burmese, Chinese, and Otomi in other continents, with corresponding results. Thus the Tshi, Ewe, and Yoruba, surviving members of a now extinct stock-language, formerly diffused over the whole region between Cape Palmas and the Niger Delta, have become so burdened with monosyllabic h.o.m.ophones (like-sounding monosyllables), that to indicate their different meanings several distinguishing tones have been evolved, exactly as in the Indo-Chinese group. In Ewe (Slave Coast) the root _do_, according as it is toned may mean to put, let go, tell, kick, be sad, join, change, grow big, sleep, p.r.i.c.k, or grind. So great are the ravages of phonetic decay, that new expedients have been developed to express quite simple ideas, as in Tshi (Gold Coast) _addanmu_, room (_addan_ house, _mu_ interior); _akwancherifo_, a guide (_akwan_ road, _cheri_ to show, _fo_ person); _ensahtsiabah_, finger (_ensah_ hand, _tsia_ small, _abbah_ child = hand's-little-child); but middle-finger = "hand's-little-chief" (_ensahtsiahin_, where _ehin_ chief takes the place of _abbah_ child[141]).

Common both to Sudanese and Bantus, especially about the western borderlands (Upper Guinea, Cameruns, etc.) is the "drum-language," which affords a striking ill.u.s.tration of the Negro's musical faculty. "Two or three drums are usually used together, each producing a different note, and they are played either with the fingers or with two sticks. The lookers-on generally beat time by clapping the hands. To a European, whose ear and mind are untrained for this special faculty, the rhythm of a drum expresses nothing beyond a repet.i.tion of the same note at different intervals of time; but to a native it expresses much more. To him the drum can and does speak, the sounds produced from it forming words, and the whole measure or rhythm a sentence. In this way, when company drums are being played at an _ehsadu_ [palaver], they are made to express and convey to the bystanders a variety of meanings. In one measure they abuse the men of another company, stigmatising them as fools and cowards; then the rhythm changes, and the gallant deeds of their own company are extolled. All this, and much more, is conveyed by the beating of drums, and the native ear and mind, trained to select and interpret each beat, is never at fault. The language of drums is as well understood as that which they use in their daily life. Each chief has his own call or motto, sounded by a particular beat of his drums. Those of Amankwa Tia, the Ashanti general who fought against us in the war of 1873-4, used to say _P[)i]r[)i]h[=u]h_, hasten. Similar mottoes are also expressed by means of horns, and an entire stranger in the locality can at once translate the rhythm into words[142]."

Similar contrasts and a.n.a.logies will receive due ill.u.s.tration in the detailed account here following of the several more representative Sudanese groups.

WEST SUDANESE.

_Wolofs._ Throughout its middle and lower course the Senegal river, which takes its name from the Zenaga Berbers, forms the ethnical "divide" between the Hamites and the Sudanese Negroes. The latter are here represented by the Wolofs, who with the kindred _Jolofs_ and _Serers_ occupy an extensive territory between the Senegal and the Gambia rivers. Whether the term "Wolof" means "Talkers," as if they alone were gifted with the faculty of speech, or "Blacks" in contrast to the neighbouring "Red" Fulahs, both interpretations are fully justified by these Senegambians, at once the very blackest and amongst the most garrulous tribes in the whole of Africa. The colour is called "ebony,"

and they are commonly spoken of as "Blacks of the Black." They are also very tall even for Negroes, and the Serers especially may claim to be "the Patagonians of the Old World," men six feet six inches high and proportionately muscular being far from rare in the coast districts about St Louis and Dakar.

Their language, which is widespread throughout Senegambia, may be taken as a typical Sudanese form of speech, unlike any other in its peculiar agglutinative structure, and unaffected even in its vocabulary by the Hamitic which has been current for ages on the opposite bank of the Senegal. A remarkable feature is the so-called "article," always postfixed and subject to a two-fold series of modifications, first in accordance with the initial consonant of the noun, for which there are six possible consonantal changes (_w_, _m_, _b_, _d_, _s_, _g_), and then according as the object is present, near, not near, and distant, for which there are again four possible vowel changes (_i_, _u_, _o_, _a_), or twenty-four altogether, a tremendous redundancy of useless variants as compared with the single English form _the_. Thus this Protean particle begins with _b_, _d_ or _w_ to agree with _baye_, father, _digene_, woman, or _fos_, horse, and then becomes _bi_, _bu_, _bo_, _ba_; _di_, _du_ etc.; _wi_, _wu_ etc. to express the presence and the varying distances of these objects: _baye-bi_ = father-the-here; _baye-bu_ = father-the-there; _baye-bo_ = father-the-yonder; _baye-ba_ = father-the-away in the distance.

All this is curious enough; but the important point is that it probably gives us the clue to the enigmatic alliterative system of the Bantu languages as explained in _Ethnology_, p. 273, the position of course being reversed. Thus as in Zulu _in_- kose requires _en_- kulu, so in Wolof _baye_ requires _bi_, _di_gene _di_, and so on. There are other indications that the now perfected Bantu grew out of a.n.a.logous but less developed processes still prevalent in the Sudanese tongues.

Equally undeveloped is the Wolof process of making earthenware, as observed by M. F. Regnault amongst the natives brought to Paris for the Exhibition of 1895. He noticed how one of the women utilised a somewhat deep bowl resting on the ground in such a way as to be easily spun round by the hand, thus ill.u.s.trating the transition between hand-made and turned pottery. Kneading a lump of clay, and thrusting it into the bowl, after sprinkling the sides with some black dust to prevent sticking, she made a hollow in the ma.s.s, enlarging and pressing it against the bowl with the back of the fingers bent in, the hand being all the time kept in a vertical position. At the same time the bowl was spun round with the left palm, this movement combined with the pressure exerted by the right hand causing the sides of the vessel to rise and take shape. When high enough it was finished off by thickening the clay to make a rim. This was held in the right hand and made fast to the mouth of the vessel by the friction caused by again turning the bowl with the left hand. This transitional process is frequently met with in Africa[143].

Most of the Wolofs profess themselves Muhammadans, the rest Catholics, while all alike are heathen at heart; only the former have charms with texts from the Koran which they cannot read, and the latter medals and scapulars of the "Seven Dolours" or of the Trinity, which they cannot understand. Many old rites still flourish, the household G.o.ds are not forgotten, and for the lizard, most popular of tutelar deities, the customary milk-bowl is daily replenished. Glimpses are thus afforded of the totemic system which still survives in a modified form amongst the Be-Chuana, the Mandingans, and several other African peoples, but has elsewhere mostly died out in Negroland. The infantile ideas a.s.sociated with plant and animal totem tokens have been left far behind, when a people like the Serers have arrived at such a lofty conception as Takhar, G.o.d of justice, or even the more materialistic Tiurakh, G.o.d of wealth, although the latter may still be appealed to for success in nefarious projects which he himself might scarcely be expected to countenance. But the harmony between religious and ethical thought has scarcely yet been reached even amongst some of the higher races.

_Mandingans._ In the whole of Sudan there is scarcely a more numerous or widespread people than the Mandingans, who--with their endless ramifications, _Ka.s.sonke_, _Jallonke_, _Soninke_, _Bambara_, _Vei_ and many others--occupy most of the region between the Atlantic and the Joliba (Upper Niger) basin, as far south as about 9 N. lat.i.tude. Within these limits it is often difficult to say who are, or who are not members of this great family, whose various branches present all the transitional shades of physical type and culture grades between the true pagan Negro and the Muhammadan Negroid Sudanese.

Even linguistic unity exists only to a limited extent, as the numerous dialects of the Mande stock-language have often diverged so greatly as to const.i.tute independent tongues quite unintelligible to the neighbouring tribes. The typical Mandingans, however--Faidherbe's Malinka-Soninke group--may be distinguished from the surrounding populations by their more softened features, broader forehead, larger nose, fuller beard, and lighter colour. They are also distinguished by their industrious habits and generally higher culture, being rivalled by few as skilled tillers of the soil, weavers, and workers in iron and copper. They thus hold much the same social position in the west that the Hausa do in the central region beyond the Niger, and the French authorities think that "they are destined to take a position of ever increasing importance in the pacified Sudan of the future[144]."

Thus history brings about its revenges, for the Mandingans proper of the Kong plateau may fairly claim, despite their late servitude to the Fulah conquerors and their present ready acceptance of French rule, to be a historical people with a not inglorious record of over 1000 years, as founders of the two great empires of Melle and Guine, and of the more recent states of Moasina, Bambara, Kaarta, Kong, and others about the water-parting between the head-streams of the Niger, and the rivers flowing south to the Gulf of Guinea. Here is the district of Manding, which is the original home of the _Manding'ke_, _i.e._ "People of Manding," as they are generally called, although _Mande_ appears to be the form used by themselves[145]. Here also was the famous city of Mali or Melle, from which the Upper Niger group take the name of _Mali'nke_, in contradistinction to the _Soni'nke_ of the Senegal river, the _Jalo'nke_ of Futa-Jallon, and the _Bamana_ of Bambara, these being the more important historical and cultured groups.

According to native tradition and the annals of Ahmed Baba, rescued from oblivion by Barth[146], the first Mandingan state of Guine (Ghana, Ghanata), a name still surviving in the vague geographical term "Guinea," goes back to pre-Muhammadan times. Wakayamangha, its legendary founder, is supposed to have flourished 300 years before the Hejira, at which date twenty-two kings had already reigned. Sixty years after that time the Moslem Arabs or Berbers are said to have already reached West Sudan, where they had twelve mosques in Ghana, first capital of the empire, and their chief stronghold till the foundation of Jinni on the Upper Niger (1043 A.D.).

Two centuries later (1235-60) the centre of the Mandingan rule was transferred to Mali, which under the great king Mansa-Musa (1311-31) became the most powerful Sudanese state of which there is any authentic record. For a time it included nearly the whole of West Sudan, and a great part of the western Sahara, beside the Songhai State with its capital Gogo, and Timbuktu. Mansa-Musa, who, in the language of the chronicler, "wielded a power without measure or limits," entered into friendly relations with the emperor of Morocco, and made a famous pilgrimage to Mecca, the splendours of which still linger in the memory of the Mussulman populations through whose lands the interminable procession wound its way. He headed 60,000 men of arms, says Ahmed Baba, and wherever he pa.s.sed he was preceded by 500 slaves, each bearing a gold stick weighing 500 mitkals (14 lbs.), the whole representing a money value of about 4,000,000 (?). The people of Cairo and Mecca were dazzled by his wealth and munificence; but during the journey a great part of his followers were seized by a painful malady called in their language _tuat_, and this word still lives in the Oasis of Tuat, where most of them perished.

Even after the capture of Timbuktu by the Tuaregs (1433), Mali long continued to be the chief state in West Nigritia, and carried on a flourishing trade, especially in slaves and gold. But this gold was still supposed to come from the earlier kingdom of Guine, which word consequently still remains a.s.sociated with the precious metal in the popular belief. About the year 1500 Mali was captured by the Songhai king, Omar Askia, after which the empire fell to pieces, and its memory now survives only in the ethnical term _Mali'nke_.

_Felups._ From the semi-civilised Muhammadan negroid Mandingans to the utterly savage full-blood Negro Felups the transition is abrupt, but instructive. In other regions the heterogeneous ethnical groups crowded into upland valleys, as in the Caucasus, have been called the "sweepings of the plains." But in West Sudan there are no great ranges towering above the lowlands, and even the "Kong Mountains" of school geographies have now been wiped out by L. G. Binger[147]. Hence the rude aborigines of the inland plateau, retreating before the steady advance of Islam, found no place of refuge till they reached the indented fjord-like Atlantic seaboard, where many still hold their ground. This is the explanation of the striking contrasts now witnessed between the interior and so many parts of the West Coast; on the one hand powerful political organisations with numerous, more or less h.o.m.ogeneous, and semi-civilised negroid populations, on the other an infinite tangle of ethnical and linguistic groups, all alike weltering in the sheerest savagery, or in grades of barbarism even worse than the wild state.

Even the _Felups_, whose territory now stretches from the Gambia to the Cacheo, but formerly reached the Geba and the Bissagos Islands, do not form a single group. Originally the name of an obscure coast-tribe, the term Felup or Fulup has been extended by the Portuguese traders to all the surrounding peoples--_Ayamats_, _Jolas_, _Jigushes_, _Vacas_, _Joats_, _Karons_, _Banyuns_, _Banjars_, _Fuluns_, _Bayots_ and some others who amid much local diversity, presented a sufficiently general outward resemblance to be regarded as a single people by the first European settlers. The Felups proper display the physical and mental characters of the typical Negro even in an exaggerated form--black colour, flat nose, wide nostrils, very thick and everted lips, red on the inner surface, stout muscular frame, correlated with coa.r.s.e animal pa.s.sions, cra.s.s ignorance, no arts, industry, or even tribal organisation, so that every little family group is independent and mostly in a state of constant feud with its neighbours. All go naked, armed with bow and arrow, and live in log huts which, though strongly built, are indescribably filthy[148].

Mother-right frequently prevails, rank and property being transmitted in the female line. There is some notion of a superhuman being vaguely identified with the sky, the rain, wind or thunderstorm. But all live in extreme terror of the medicine-man, who is openly courted, but inwardly detested, so that whenever it can be safely done the tables are turned, the witch-doctor is seized and tortured to death.

_Timni, Kru, Sierra-Leonese, Liberians._ Somewhat similar conditions prevail all along the seaboard from Sierra Leone to, and beyond, Cape Palmas, disturbed or modified by the Liberian intruders from the North American plantations, and by the slaves rescued in the thirties and forties by the British cruisers and brought to Sierra Leone, where their descendants now live in settled communities under European influences.

These "coloured" citizens of Sierra Leone and Liberia, who are so often the b.u.t.t of cheap ridicule, and are themselves perhaps too apt to scorn the kindred "n.i.g.g.e.rs" of the bush, have to be carefully distinguished from these true aborigines who have never been wrenched from their natural environment.

In Sierra Leone the chief aboriginal groups on the coastlands are the _Timni_ of the Rokelle river, flanked north and south by two branches of the _Bulams_, and still further south the _Gallinas_, _Veys_ and _Golas_; in the interior the _Lokkos_, _Limbas_, _Konos_, and _Kussas_, with _Kurankos_, _Mendis_, _Hubus_, and other Mandingans and Fulahs everywhere in the Hinterland.

Of all these the most powerful during the British occupation have always been the Timni (Timani, Temne), who sold to the English the peninsula on which now stands Freetown, but afterwards crying off the bargain, repeatedly tried to drive the white and coloured intruders into the sea. They are a robust people of softened Negro type, and more industrious farmers than most of the other natives. Like the Wolofs they believe in the virtue both of Christian and Moslem amulets, but have hitherto lent a deaf ear to the preachers of both these religions.