332 NATIVES OF EASTERN BRITISH EAST AFRICA part iii 



or "savages," which the Zanzibar! apply to any up-country natives. It 

 is consequently of no scientific value, and must be discontinued as a 

 tribal name. 



I could not learn from the people the name by which they call 

 themselves, and therefore suggest that they should be called the " Doko," 

 for they agree in habits, appearance, and position with the tribe thus 

 named by Harris and Avanchers. The Doko were said to occur on a high, 

 cold, misty plateau, in the neighbourhood of great bamboo forests ; their 

 home is about six weeks' march from Mombasa, and between a snow- 

 covered mountain called Obada and Lake El- Boo or Baro. The 

 mountain must be Kenya,^ and the lake Baringo. Hence it seems 

 safe to conclude that the Doko or Wa-berikimo of Harris, Avanchers, 

 Krapf, and Rigby are the elephant-hunting Negrillo on the plateau of 

 Laikipia and the district to the north. 



The use of the term Negrillo for these Doko raises the question 

 of its scientific value. The first striking point in connection with the 

 African pygmies is their occurrence in numerous small, scattered, 

 isolated colonies. This may be explained in two ways. "Discontinuous 

 distribution " such as this is usually regarded in biology as suggestive of 

 great age, and this has led to the view that the dwarfs are the survivors 

 of a race that once occupied the whole continent south of the Sahara. 

 On the other hand, it is possible that they may have arisen independ- 

 ently by degeneration from different negro tribes. The latter view is 

 supported by Sir William Flower- from a detailed description of some 

 Akka skeletons sent home by Emin, and he accepts for the dwarf tribes 

 Hamy's ^ name of Negrillo, regarding those of Africa and Polynesia as 

 "parallel ethnical elements." Dr. Schlichter,"* however, in a masterly 

 review of the literature of the whole subject, expresses his belief that 

 the skulls in the College of Surgeons Museum, with which those of 

 the Akka were compared, are possibly not those of pure Bushmen. 

 Stuhlmann's ^ admirable photographs of the dwarfs from the west of 

 Ruwenzori show that the " steatopygy " characteristic of the Bushmen 

 is well marked in some of the equatorial dwarfs, and this removes 

 another strong objection to the theory which regards them as the 

 African aborigines. This theory has also been recently supported by 



^ Kenya is not a native name for the mountain. Obada may possibly be based on 

 Ebor or Ebar, which is the IVIasai name of Kenya. The fact that L6on des Avanchers 

 inserts both El-Boo and Baharingo on his map suggests that the former should be 

 regarded as Basso Narok ; but his Baharingo is the Victoria Nyanza, and his El-Boo 

 cannot be Basso Narok, for he says it is surrounded by Wa-k\vafi, and Baringo is the 

 only lake of which this is true. 



^ W. H. Flower, "Description of two Skeletons of Akkas, a Pygmy Race from 

 Central Africa," lourn. Anthrop. Instit. vol. xviii. (1888), pp. 3-19, PI. i.-iii. 



■* Haniy, " Essai de coordination des mat6riaux recemment recueillis sur I'ethnologie 

 des n^grilles ou pygmies de I'Afrique equatoriale, " Bull. Soc. Anthrop., Paris, s^r. 3, t. 

 ii. (1879), p. 100. 



* H. Schlichter, "The Pygmy Tribes of Africa," Scott, Geog. I^lag. vol. viii. (1892), 

 pp. 289-301, 345-356. 



^ F. Stuhlmann, Mit Emin Pasha, PI. xvi. xvii. 



