NOTES ON T1II£ EAST COAST BANTU OF EIGHTY YEARS ACO. 85 



to have been actually the case, in the days before Tshaka, among 

 the Zulu as well as the Xosa tribes.* Yet, as Captain Owen 

 points out, the Vatwah " attacked our tents without notice and 

 most treacherously," excusing themselves by saying that they had 

 been persuaded by a son of King Kapell. 

 The report continues : — 

 "The huts of all the natives of Delagoa Bay are circular, well and neatly 

 constructed, small and with a palisade fence enclosing an area round two or more 

 of them." 



a description still answering to the Baronga, as described by 

 Junod. 



" Polygamy is universal. A man's wealth and consequence is known only by 

 the number of women ; they are slaves to the men and the only cultivators of the 

 ground. Yet the men are much disposed to be industrious . . . They are 

 keen traders covetous but honest. Death is the punishment awarded for theft 

 among themseives." 



To turn to the " Narrative " : — 

 " The chiefs of Mapoota and Tembe wear their heads shaved, except a large 

 tuft on the crown, on which is placed a small pad or roll into which the wool, 

 after being combed out straight, is tucked in with much neatness. The Zoolos or 

 Vatwahs, on the contrary, shave the crown and leave a ring of wool round the 

 head, but similarly dressed by being turned over a pad and Icept in its place by 

 wooden skewers." 



//. Zulu. 



This reference to the Zulu headring would in itself be suffi- 

 cient to identify this " very warlike and admirabl'e race of 

 Kaffers," called indifferently Olontotes, Orontotes, Hollontontes, 

 Vatwah, Zoolo and Zoolah, to which we shall now turn our 

 attention. 



The word Vatwah, notwithstanding its application as just 

 recorded, appears to have been originally bestowed upon any 

 marauding or warlike tribe of Bantu 'by one or more of the 

 Ama-Tonga tribes. The epithet " mountains of the Vatwah " 

 given by the coast tribes to the Lebomibo indicates that a tribe 

 called Vatwah originally came from the Transvaal or Swaziland 

 plateau. 



Captain Owen uses the name Vatwah as synonymous with 

 Zoolo, and in his Report by the use of brackets hints that it is 

 equivalent to " Batua " or " Butua," a term by which the Portu- 

 guese of the sixteenth century designated a tribe or district 

 occupied by a tribe which Mr. R. N.- Hall locates in the Shangani 

 and Guai basins just north of Bulawayo. 



In the sixteenth century, however, Butua was subject to 

 Monomotapa, and was probably inhabited by Ma-Kalanga, or 

 some closely connected tribe, and also, it is possible, by Bush- 

 men. If we accept the nomenclature of the Zulus themselves, 

 " Butua " may be translated as " Bushmanland,'* for Aba-Twa 

 is the Zulu word for Bushmen. Not only so, we find " Batua," 

 '■ Batwa," the term applied in many Bantu dialects to the pyg- 

 mies of Central Africa, replaced in some cases by the allied 

 forms, " Ba-Koa," "A-Koa," " Ba-Roa.^^ 



* For Sir Theophilus Shepstone, see Bird's " Annals of Natal," vol. i, p. 156 ; 

 for Louis Alberti, " Description physique et historique des Cafres," p. 190. 



