THE AFRICAN PYGMIES 473 



in the upper Kasai are also called Batwa, which is the way Stanley 

 spelled the word for his little neighbors, although these regions are 

 six hundred miles apart. 



A study of all the writings of explorers reporting discoveries of 

 these people has revealed an average stature of about four feet eight 

 inches for all measured, though the measurements were made upon so 

 few that this average can not be relied upon as a final result. 



The plant which furnishes the leaf covering for the huts of the 

 pygmies is the same in the regions, widely apart though they are, ex- 

 plored alike by Stanley and Wissmann. The shape of the house — a 

 rough hemisphere — is also the same. In practically every case the 

 primitive culture of the pygmies is the same, wherever found. The 

 lack of any agriculture in their life is a common characteristic, as are 

 the use of the poisoned arrow and the lack of any centralized tribal 

 organization. 



Popular misconceptions about the pygmies are principally as to 

 their height. The general idea having gone abroad that they are 

 the smallest known race of man, there has been produced the impres- 

 sion that they are all veritable Tom Thumbs. Of course, anthropolo- 

 gists know better that this, but the layman can not get clear the differ- 

 ence between a dwarf and a pygmy. Then, too, some travelers have 

 rather unscientifically measured the smallest they could find, and left 

 this as the record of the height of the tribe. 



Dr. Mason, of the Smithsonian Institution, and Professor Starr, 

 of Chicago University, concur in making five feet as the limit for the 

 average of a pygmy race. Of course, there will be a few taller than 

 this, and many shorter. It will also be necessary to discriminate 

 against any result of the admixture of alien blood from larger tribes, 

 although there is comparatively little of this going on. 



The group at St. Louis came from the region in which the Batwa 

 were found by a number of explorers, though their particular settle- 

 ment was visited only by the writer and the Eeverend W. H. Sheppard, 

 E.B.G.S. These other explorers who found the Batwa in the upper 

 Kasai are the English missionary, Grenfell; the German explorers 

 (under the Congo government), Pogge and Wolff; and Major von 

 Wissmann, who ranks next to Stanley as the explorer of the Congo 

 Basin, and who was subsequently the governor-general of German East 

 Africa. The pygmies at St. Louis were from the forests near Wiss- 

 mann Falls, the cataracts at the head of the navigation of the Kasai 

 tributary of the Congo. This place is about a thousand miles in the 

 interior of the continent. There are a number of Batwa settlements 

 in the same general district. 



