Author(s): L. T. Moggridge
Source: The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 32 (Jul. - Dec., 1902), pp. 467-472
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Tribes.
MY work has hitherto lain almost entirely in the Shire Highlands and at the south end of Lake Nyassa, so that there are a good many of the Nyasaland tribes whom I have had no opportunity of observing in their homes. However, I will stick to what I really do know, and I hope some of it may be useful.
The Manganja (also called Anyanja or Anyassa) must at one time have been spread all over the southern shores of Lake Nyassa and the Shire Highlands; they are a very unwarlike tribe-they themselves say with perfect unconcern that "every Manganja has the heart of a chicken." For fifty years or so before the Administration pacified the country in 1891-92 they must have been perpetually harried, raided and enslaved by the neighbouring tribes, and particularly the Ajawa and Angoni. There are still considerable settlements of them on the southern shores of Nyassa, but the remnants of the tribe settled most thickly round Mlaiyi and Cholo Mountains, whose steep sides afforded them hiding-places from war parties. In their present security they are lazy and slovenly to a greater degree than the other tribes; yet they are not without intelligence, and some of them who have been taken in hand by missionaries and others have been educated into excellent interpreters and skilled labourers. Their language has become a sort of lingua franca all over southern Nyassaland, owing, no doubt, to their having been the slaves of every tribe.
That peculiarly ugly ornament the mpelele is almost universally worn by Manganja women. As young girls the upper lip is pierced and the hole is enlarged by the insertion of pieces of stick of increasing size till a small rnpelele-a saucer-shaped metal disc-can be inserted. As they grow older they insert larger and ever larger mpelele, and I have seen old hags with their upper lips distended and thrust forward by a disc as large as a five-shilling piece.
The Achikunda are perhaps more nearly related than any other tribe to the Manganja, their language and habits being very similar. The Achikunda are essentially a river people, being settled thickly along the Shire River below the Murchison Rapids,-and stretchinig downstream through Portuguese territory to the Zambesi, where they are known as Achishma (" people of Sehma '). On the Zambesi they are very skilful metal-workers and in other ways are more advanced than their relatives upstream. This is probably due to centuries of contact, and, to some extent, of interbreeding with the Portuguese. Near the Anglo- Portuguese boundary on the right bank of the Shire is a village which is regarded as sacred concerning which there are much more definite superstitions than I have come across in the Highlands, but as my knowledge of it is vague and second-hand I will not attempt to describe it at present.
The Ajawa-slovenly pronunciation has led to this tribe beilng commonly spoken and written of as Yaos-are physically the finest of the South Nyassa tribes. They are also renmarkable for a hig,her sense of persolnal decency, or modesty, and lower morals than those of other tribes. Tlle Ajawa and Amachinga (a subdivision of the same tribe) are widely spread over the Shire Highlands and, in Portuguese territory, downi the Ravuma nearly to the sea. They have a strong tendency fowards Mahommedaniisin which, especially about Fort Johnston in South Nyassa, has takeni a real hold among them. Its influence is certainly elevating; the Fort Johnston Ajawa are cleanly in their habits and self-respecting; the better class of them dress neatly in white Arab kanzas (a garment suggestive of a long loose nightshirt) and, frequently, Zanzibari jackets of a Mahommedan type. A slight strain of Arab blood is not unconmmon among them; many of them can talk, or even write Swahili; and all like to be thought to know it. On the other hand prostitution-unknown among other tribes in their natural state-seems to have come naturally to the Ajawa, and this tendency with its consequent evils is more obvious in Fort Johnston than elsewhere. The Ajawa were great slave-traders in the old days, and in most villages are one or two -men who have been as far as Zanzibar; they are distinctly the aristocrats of British Central Africa. In 1890-92 they made more of a fight against the British than any other tribe, and have since proved the best material for native troops under British officers.
Angoni.-Some fifty or sixty years ago, as far as can be judged, a party of Zulus--said to have been a defeated impi who dared not return home-trekked north and settled on the high plateau west of Lake Nyassa and the Shire River. It seems that they brought but few women with them, and this fact no doubt started them on the slave-raiding career which they carried on till the British occupation. They married slave women, and seem as a rule to have treated their male slaves after a time as members of the tribe, with the result that their Zult characteristics rapidly disappeared. The people now known as Angoni, who come down in large numbers to work as carriers, etc., in the Shire Highlands, are of mixed race, in which the Manganja element and characteristics predomninate. In Angoni-land proper, I am told that there are still some two hundred of pure Zulu blood; but the tribe, which is now very numerous, seems as a whole to have lost the warlike tendencies that imade it a terror to its neighbours in past years, when the Ajawa alone seem to have held their owln against them. With the exception of the Wa Ukonde of North Nyassa, the Angoni are the only cattle-rearing tribe in British Central Africa.
The Atonga are a numerically weak tribe settled oln the east coast of Lake Nyasa. They will probably take a leading place among British Central African tribes in the new order of things, as they show an intelligence and enterprise, coupled with an appreciation of the value of wealth, which is very marked by contrast with the apathy of their neighbours. Five years ago large gangs of Atonga used to come to the Shire Highlands to work on the plantations for monley, but they have found out tllat nlore can be made by collecting rubber for sale to traders or slipping across the border and finding their way down to the high wages of South Africa, and they do not niow often appear as labourers in the Shire Highlands, though many of them work as store boys and skilled labourers. They are the most expert and daring thieves of British Central Africa. They make good soldiers and are largely used-though not in the same numbers as the Ajawa-in the composition of the two British Central African Battalions.
Anguru.-This large tribe have for many years followed their own devices in the no-man's-land known as Portuguese territory south-east of British Central Africa. Now that the Portuguese are establishing forts along our boundary, and thence sending out parties of uncontrolled Black Police who murder, rape and loot under the name of tax collection, large numbers of Anguru are crossing into British territory and settling there.
They are the most thoroughly uncivilized natives I have come across; I have seen gangs from the south-east of Mlaiyi Mount, in which both the men and women were entirely naked, though as a rule a small strip of bark cloth is worn. An idea of their intellectual capacity may be formed from the fact that in a gang who worked on my plantation some four years ago the best counter owed his superiority to the size of his mouth, in which he found room to stow the ends of all his fingers one by one, counting up to ten as he did so. At this point-his fingers being all disposed of and his toes not available-he broke down. He could get as far as ten but no further, and the moment he withdrew his fingers from his mouth his mind became a blank again. However, as no other member of the gang could get as far as ten, his erudition was thought remarkable.
The Anguru, whom we are now encouraging to settle, seem to be slightly more advanced than those with whom I had to deal in my planting days. They build their own huts anid settle down contentedly to work for the Ajawa in return for food until they can raise their own crops. They adapt themselves quickly to their new surroundings, and should soon be seeking work in large numbers and making themselves very useful as carriers.
Religious Tendencies.
Excluding newly introduced religions (Christianity and Mahommedanism), religion seems to have no part in the lives of British Central African natives. It is true that on Cholo Mount there is a sacred stone, and that sometimes, after a severe drought, parties of natives go up to the stone and leave old hoes there with an idea that rain may follow. Most natives, when asked, will say that there is a God (mlungu); and one, an Atonga, once told me that a great snake lived below, and ate bad men when they were dead; but I attribute this to ill-digested recollections of missionary teachings, which have been more or less disseminated through the country for twenty years or more; in any case the existence of a Deity, though admitted, is not a fact which impresses the native or dwells in his mind. I have come across no religious ceremonies of any sort.
The Ajawa make neat little graves for their dead, in graveyards near the villages, fence them in, and erect a shelter over them. They leave the huts of the dead to rot and fall to pieces of themselves. The burying of a person of any importance is an excuse for much drum-beating and beer-drinking.
The Manganja select a piece of forest and bury their dead there; they place the burnt-clay cooking-pots of the dead man near his grave, having first made holes in the bottom of them which render thein useless to the living. Whether this implies an idea of an after-life, and that the pots are supposed to be for the use of the dead, I have not been able to discover.
These cemeteries are never encroached on, so that a Manganja cemetery is always indicated by a clump-covering perhaps 1/4 acre-of fine well grown trees, a rare object in British Central Africa; as, owing to the wasteful methods of native cultivation, few bits of land are left uncultivated for more than thirty years or so, and bush-fires do not allow trees to attain a great size in that time.
Both Ajawa and Manganja have a horror of a body that has died a violent death. I have observed, after an expedition against an Ajawa village, the bodies of a couple of men, who were shot, left to rot where they fell, as their friends would not touch them. Again, I have killed a crocodile which on being cut up was found to have the brass bangles of an Achikundu woman in its belly; my Ajawa and Manganja carriers immediately left the beast and would not touch it again. Some Atonga, however, were not so particular, and dined off the crocodile.
The only tribal ceremony I know of is the nyago, an initiation-dance for girls on reaching a marriageable age. Sir Harry Johnston in his book describes this in dog-Latin, if I remember rightly; it cannot very well be written in English. The Ajawa also have a nyago for boys, of which circumcision is the principal feature.
Another Mahommedan custom which is universal among the Ajawa is the abstention from (1) the meat of an animial whose throat has not been cut sufficiently soon after death for blood to come, and (2) pig flesh. More than once, when, in a hungry camp, I have killed wart-hog, the Manganja and other natives have at once fallen to and had a great feed, while the Ajawa sat apart, looking unihappy, but resolutely refusing the meat. Meat of any sort is a great luxury to natives, and the behaviour of the Ajawa must have cost them a considerable effort.
The Muavi Poison Ordeal.
The poisonous bark of the muavi tree is the principal factor in a form of trial by ordeal which is firmly believed in by all the Nyassaland tribes with whom I have any acquaintance. The natives now recognize that, for some iilexplicable reason, the white man disapproves of muavi and is apt to show his disapproval in an unmnistakable way; and with their usual docility they are gradually dropping the use of it.
All natives (so far as my experience goes) profess, when questioned, absolute ignorance of what the tree is like or where it is to be found. Their invincible obstinacy on this point is probably due simply to fear of being thought to know anything about the forbidden traffic, and not at all to a desire to prevent the white man from destroying every muavi tree in the country, which would be a very simple cure for the whole trouble. The tree must certainly be uncommon, as natives have to travel long distances to procure the bark.
The old-fashioned trial by muavi under the auspices of a chief is getting rare now, as the chiefs in the more settled districts are afraid to try it. Their hold over their villagers is very slight now, and a muavi trial almost always results in a relative of the victim straightway reporting to the Boma (Collector's Court).
During the eight months that I was Acting Collector at Blantyre I only had one genuine case of the sort, though one or two trumped-up stories were brought in, with results unpleasant for the accuser. In this case (which is pretty typical) a petty Ajawa chief living near Blantyre had had a considerable quantity of calico stolen out of his hut, and decided to go into the case himself with the help of an elderly relative who enjoyed some reputation as a medicine man.
Lots were cast to discover the criminal; the preliminary casting indicated a village near Soche Mount, whither the detectives adjourned with a considerable following. They went through this village trying each hut, and finally the lot fell on a young man who, I should say, from such evidence as I could afterwards collect, was nowhere near the scene of the theft when the calico was stolen. In justice to the medicine man I should also say that I could find no evidence of any quarrel between him and the man against whom the lot fell.
The young man was bound and taken back to the village whence the calico was stolen, some three miles away, and was there compelled to drink mnavi-the bark, pounded and mixed with water. His brother Salimu followed and watched the proceedings, and the muavi having been drunk, was allowed to talke charge of him. Salimu remained with his brother under a tree near by for some three hours, and then he vomited and Salimu carried him back to his home- weak, but not permanently the worse. This vomiting, which saved his life, should according to native ideas have been a proof of innocence, but when confronted with the dilemma that the lot had apparently fallen on an innocent man they gave their opinion that he must have stolen the calico, whatever the muavi had to say about it, for the lot could not lie. Salimu having deposited his brother in his own hut, came to the Boma to report. Fortunately natives are not clever enough to be very far-seeing liars, and though all his villagers perjured themselves stoutly in defence of the chief, they broke down badly under cross- examination, and the truth was easily arrived at. The chief and medicine man were allotted three years' imprisonment apiece.
As to the method of casting lots, I have only the unsupported and possibly imaginary story of my interpreter to go on. The witnesses (fearing no doubt that an admission of knowledge would get them into trouble) one and all returned that most irritating answer kaya (" I don't know ") to all questions on the subject. There is no doubt that a horn of a sable antelope which was produced in court, stuffed with roots, odds and ends of calico and other dirty-looking charms to keep it in a state of magical efficiency while out of use, was the prinlcipal instrument in the lot casting. This horn I brought home with me.
My interpreter's account is that the horn is filled with white beans, with onie black one among them, and that these beans are shaken out, one for a village, or individual, as the case may be, till the. appearance of the black bean indicates the guilty persoli. This is very likely true, but my experience is that an intelligent rative, when asked for information by his master, will, in his anxiety to please, prefer inventing a story to giving none at all, so I accept information of this sort with caution.
Mwavi trials of this sort are, as I have said, getting less common; the use of muavi, which it is most difficult to stamp out, is one for which heavy punishmenlt seems absurd. Women are usually the offenders; after a quarrel with another woman or with her husband which has reached the pitch of accusations of adultery or witchcraft -mfiti, wizard or witch, implies thle possessiorn of something like evil eye; an mfiti is also supposed to add to his or her supernatural powers by corpse eating-it is not uncommon for a woman to drink muavi to prove her innocence of the charge. As a rule the taste of the muavi does away with her excitement and shakes her faith in the harmlessness of the poison to an innocent person; then if her village is near the Boma she rushes off and explains matters to the Collector, and a powerful emetic sets matters right again.
Where the woman obtains the muavi from on these occasions I have never been able to discover; probably there is a medicine man in most villages who keeps a supply, but the other natives will never give him away; being, I suppose, too frightened of him rather than too loyal. Some deaths have been reported to me following incidents of this sort, and no doubt a good many more take place and are kept quiet.
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