536 



PYGMIES AND FOREST NEGROES 



special language, and 

 that the Momfu and 

 Bambuba, in invading 

 Dwarf-land, may at one 

 time have been under 

 Dwarf thraldom, and have 

 acquired their speech, 

 just as a tribe of Bantu 

 people — the Berg Dama- 

 ras, in South -West 

 Africa — were conquered 

 by Hottentots, and have 

 spoken a Hottentot dia- 

 lect ever since. But 

 I cannot support this 

 argument for several 

 reasons, one being that 

 the Dwarfs speak the 

 Mbuba language so im- 

 perfectly that it is as 

 impossible to suppose it 

 to be their original 

 tongue, from which 

 Mbuba and Momfu de- 

 veloped a much more 

 comprehensive idiom, as 

 it would be for a 

 Congo Dwarf to argue 

 that because he found 

 " mean " whites in 

 America dwelling in a 

 prosperous Negro colony, 

 the English they spoke 

 had been by them de- 

 veloped from the " nigger " dialect of "Uncle Remus." 



It is, of course, on the other hand, a hard thing to believe that prior to 

 the invasion of the great West Central African forest by the big black 

 agricultural Negroes the Pygmy autochthones possessed no language but 

 inarticulate cries and gestures!* Nevertheless, it would seem to be 



* I was much struck, and so were my European companions, at the expressive 

 gestures used by the Pygmies in eking out their conversation. One often conversed 

 with them in gestures. 



AN MBUTE PTGMY 



