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THE LIVING RACES OF MANKIND 



customs and similar physical structure; but they speak a different language, which is that of 

 the Ashira. The Ashango are described as a less peaceful and industrious tribe than the 

 Ishogo. Thus they always carry their swords, and usually also their spears and poisoned 

 arrows. They do not make any of their weapons, which they buy from tribes farther inland. 

 They make brass ornaments out of wire, but do not smelt iron. Their houses are larger than 

 those of the Ishogo, but the villages are less well arranged. They are less particular over 

 their hair and ornaments, but wear more clothes. They cultivate vast crops of ground-nuts, 

 and nearly every hut has one or more hives of bees. They keep flocks of poultry and herds, 

 of goats, but the women and girls are not allowed to eat the flesh of these animals. The 

 people make palm wine and smoke tobacco in pipes which are 3 feet long. Their fetish rites 

 have been studied by du Chaillu, who has described a festival he was allowed to attend in 

 the village of Niembouai: "The idol was a monstrous and indecent representation of a female 

 figure in wood, which was kept at the end of a long, narrow, and low hut, 40 or 50 feet 

 long and 10 feet broad, and was painted in red, white, and black colours. When I entered 

 the hut, it was full of Ashango people, ranged in order on each side, with lighted torches 

 stuck in the ground before them. Amongst them were conspicuous two mbuiti men, or, as 

 they might be called, priests, dressed in cloth of vegetable fibre, with their skins painted 



grotesquely iu various colours, one side of the 

 face red, the other white, and in the middle 

 of the breast a broad yellow stripe; the circuit 

 of the eyes was also daubed with paint. These 

 colours are made by boiling various kinds of 

 wood, and mixing the decoction with clay. 

 The rest of the Ashangoes were also streaked 

 and daubed with various colours, and by the 

 light of their torches they looked like a troop 

 of devils assembled in the lower regions to cele- 

 brate some diabolical rite; around their legs 

 were bound white leaves from the heart of the 

 palm-tree; some wore feathers, others had leaves 

 twisted in the shape of horns behind their 

 ears, and all had a bundle of palm leaves iu 

 their hands. Soon after I entered the rites 

 began. All the men squatted down on their 

 haunches, and set up a deafening kind of wild 

 song. There was an orchestra of instrumental 

 performers near the idol, consisting of three 

 drummers with two drumsticks each, one harper, 

 and a performer on the sounding-stick, which 

 latter did not touch the ground, but rested on 

 two other sticks, so that the noise was made 

 more resonant. The two mbuiti men, in the 

 meantime, were dancing in a fantastical manner 

 in the middle of the temple, putting their bodies 

 into all sorts of strange contortions. Every 

 time the mluiti men opened their mouths to 

 speak a dead silence ensued. As the ceremony 

 continued, the crowd rose and surrounded the 

 dancing men, redoubling at the same time the 

 volume of their songs, and after this went on 

 for some time returning to their former posi- 



Photo by Richard Buchla. L 



A NIAM-NIAM GIRL. tions. This was repeated several times. It 



