1905.] on Native Races of the British East Africa Protectorate. 121 



speaking tribes, on the other hand, a different system of reUgious 

 ideas prevails, based upon ancestor worship, surviving in a very frag- 

 mentary form, but still distinctly traceable. As I have already 

 mentioned, these tribes respect and imitate the Masai, and therefore 

 we find that they often use the Masai name for the deity Eng-ai, but 

 the Bantu names, such as Muungu or Milungu, seem to really mean 

 ghosts who are deified or at least require to be propitiated. These 

 tril^es are also accustomed to throw corpses away in the jungle, 

 perhaps owing to Masai influence, but together with this survives the 

 practice of burying and making offerings on the grave. x\lso the 

 Bantu-speaking tribes are cursed with a belief in witchcraft from 

 which the Xilotic tribes are free. This superstition is more terrible 

 in its consequences than it sounds, for it means that every disaster, 

 such as a death in a family, is attributed to evil magic, and when such 

 disaster occurs it is customary to consult a witch-finder, who indicates 

 some unfortunate person, generally a woman, as the culprit, and 

 recommends that she be put to death. 



In conclusion, there is one consideration of practical interest and 

 importance connected with the facts which I have submitted to you. 

 It is generally admitted that the Negro inhabitants of x\frica stand on 

 a lower level than Europeans or Asiatics, and raise themselves above 

 that level with difficulty. The contrast takes an acute form in the 

 United States, where we have a large and increasing population of 

 Negroes, who show no tendency either to blend with the white race or 

 to rise to the same standard. But in East Africa the conditions are 

 entirely different. AVe have a mixed population which is continually 

 blending and forming hybrids, and it is noticeable that all the most 

 intelligent and progressive races are cross-breeds. The Swahili and 

 the people of Uganda and Kikuyu are all clearly hybrids, and it is 

 almost equally certain that the Xilotic tribes are so too. If we could 

 survey a thousand years of East African history, we should probably 

 see that it presents no such thing as a persistent and continuous 

 racial type. This appears to me to offer a hopeful prospect for the 

 future. The natives of East Africa stand on different levels, and in 

 some cases the level is low ; but there is every prospect that it may be 

 raised by fusion in the future, as it has so often been in the past. 

 A cross between Africans and Europeans is not to be desired, for, I 

 believe, it has nowhere proved successful, and we have no proof that a 

 cross between Indians and Africans is likely to be more successful ; 

 but there is every reason to hope that, in the future, peace and the 

 cessation of tribal wars will produce favourable specimens of mixed 

 population similar to the people of Kikuyu and the Swahilis. 



[C. E.] 



