578 



BANTU NEGROES 





A MUKONJO SMOKING TOBACCO FKOM A PIPE 

 MADE OF BANANA-LEAF STALK 



associating language too 

 closely with questions of 

 race, they represent very 

 nearly the Negro stock 

 which invaded these 

 countries west and north- 

 west of the Victoria 

 Nyafiza in succession to 

 the Pygmy-Prognathous 

 type. They betray little 

 or no sign of having 

 mingled at any time with 

 the subsequent Hamitic 

 invaders represented by 

 the modern Bahima. 



In matters of reli;/i<>n 

 they practise a vague 

 ancestor-worship such as 

 is universal among all 

 Bantu Negroes, but they 

 do not appear to have any actual religion or belief in gods as distinct 

 from ghosts and ancestral influences ; nor do they worry themselves much 

 about magic, though of course there are amongst them the usual black 

 and white witch doctors — that is to say, the sorcerers who use their 

 knowledge of poison, their unconscious mesmeric powers, and their charla- 

 tanry for bad purposes; and the real medicine men or women who apply 

 a knowledge of drugs and therapeutics to the healing of diseases. 

 Amongst these, as amongst nearly all Bantu Negroes, there is the 

 lingering suspicion that the sorcerer or the person desiring to become a 

 sorcerer is a corpse-eater, a ghoul who digs up the bodies of dead people 

 to eat them, either from a morbid taste or in the belief that this action 

 will invest him with magical powers. 



Marriage amongst the Bakonjo is little else than the purchase of a 

 likely young woman by the young man who, through his own exertions 

 or the generosity of his parents, is able to present a sufficient number of 

 goats, iron hoes, or other articles of barter to his future father-in-law. 

 But the Bakonjo seem ordinarily to be a moral race, and in their case it 

 was generally reported to me that intercourse between young unmarried 

 people was not a matter of common occurrence. 



The Bakonjo smelt and work iron, make potter//, weave mats, and 

 carry on most of the industries customary among Bantu Negroes. On the 

 upper part of the Semliki River they make and use small dug-out canoes. 



