NEGRO 



5672 



NEGRO 



out, especially in S. Africa, by the 

 witch doctor ; the magician is in 

 some tribes magnified into a divine 

 king, who controls the course of 

 nature and is subject to many 

 ritual regulations on account of his 

 holiness. Secret societies have 

 usually a strong religious element, 

 Initiation societies, on the other 

 hand, are often concerned only 

 with circumcision and similar rites. 

 Some secret societies form a kind 

 of chief's council. 



As regards social organization, 

 large areas may be governed by 

 tribal chiefs ; in other cases the 

 chief's authority is limited to a 

 single town, or even a quarter of a 

 town. But on the Congo, the lower 

 and middle Niger, in Dahomey, 

 etc., powerful empires and king- 

 doms arose and nourished. African 

 societies are in the main democratic, 

 without well marked distinctions 

 of rank, except in so far as slavery 

 is practised. 



The negro is free to marry as 

 many wives as he can purchase ; in 

 some areas male births exceed 

 female by 50 p.c., and, although 

 the mortality among males is 

 heavier, plurality of wives means, 

 now that war and slavery have 

 ceased to keep down the male 

 population, that some 15 p.c. of 

 marriageable males have no wife. 

 Two kinds of marriage are found; 

 in one the woman remains free, 

 and her children are members of 

 her family, not of her husband's, 

 whom she is free to leave at will ; 

 in the other the woman is the pro- 

 perty of her husband, her children 

 are his heirs, and at his death she 

 is inherited along with the rest of 

 his property. When descent is 

 reckoned through the mother, her 

 brother has frequently the chief 

 authority, and his property goes to 

 his sister's children. When the 

 descent is in the male line, the sons 

 or brothers of the dead man are 

 his heirs. 



Means of Livelihood 



Land is, as a rule, common 

 property ; farm land is divided up 

 each year, and after one or two 

 crops have been taken, lies fallow 

 for eight or ten years. Though 

 the Herero are pastoral and others, 

 like the Wahuma and Fula, mainly 

 so, while some riverine tribes live 

 mainly on fish and on vegetable 

 products gained by barter with 

 agricultural tribes, in the normal 

 tribe every man is a farmer. The 

 crops vary with the tribe ; in 

 Uganda the banana is most im- 

 portant ; other Eastern tribes 

 live mainly on cereals, millet, and 

 maize ; on the Congo manioc and 

 yams are food of primary im- 

 portance ; the staple of the Sierra 

 Leone tribes is rice ; fish are an 



important food near the rivers, 

 but in S.E. Africa no use is made 

 of them. Meat is not . largely 

 eaten ; the domestic animals are 

 the goat, fowl, sheep, and in some 

 areas cattle and pigs, together with 

 the dog, a favourite dish. 



The hut of the negro may be of 

 beehive shape, or with a conical, 

 gabled, or flat roof ; pile dwellings 

 are also found. Towns vary in 

 size from cities like Ibadan with 

 200,000 inhabitants to the villages 

 characteristic of Sierra Leone with 

 only a few score huts. In war 

 the spear and bow were the usual 

 offensive weapons, with various 

 types of shield ; throwing-knives 

 were used in the Congo area ; in 

 some tribes a war chief took com- 

 mand of the soldiers. 



Musical Instruments 



The musical instruments of the 

 negro include the drum, also used 

 for sending messages, the flute, the 

 marimba or xylophone, the sansa, 

 made of wooden or metal strips 

 mounted on a block and twanged, 

 and stringed instruments from the 

 one-stringed bow upwards. In 

 some parts each tribe has a well- 

 defined type of melody. No 

 negro language has written charac- 

 ters ; syllabic writing was in- 

 vented by the Vai and later by 

 the Bamum, but their systems are 

 due to imitation of Europeans. 



N. W. Thomas 



THE NEGRO IN AMERICA. The 

 modern expansion of the negro race 

 is almost entirely due to its exploit- 

 ation for slave labour, the effects 

 of which are most important in 

 the New World. The distribution 

 of American negroes is mainly de- 

 termined by the cotton, sugar, and 

 rice plantations. The negro is 

 employed for heavy field work in 

 hot, moist climates. Elsewhere he 

 is chiefly found in the large cities 

 as an unskilled labourer or domes- 

 tic servant. Traces of African cus- 

 toms are few, though ancestral in- 

 fluences account for a widespread 

 belief hi witchcraft (Obeah), and 

 for the occasional practice of the 

 savage rites of Voodoo. 



The negro population of the New 

 World is between 20 and 30 mil- 

 lions, of which about 10,500,000 

 are in the U.S.A., where they form 

 about a tenth of the population. 

 In some districts they form 90 per 

 cent, or more of the population, 

 but only in two states, Mississippi 

 and S. Carolina, do they form a 

 majority, after which they are re- 

 latively most numerous in Georgia, 

 Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Vir- 

 ginia, N. Carolina, and Arkansas. 



The negro problem in the U.S.A. 

 became acute after the emancipa- 

 tion of the slaves. For a time the 

 negro vote controlled most of the 



south, and much corruption and 

 misgovernment followed. A Demo- 

 cratic reaction followed, and 

 special legislation educational 

 tests, poll-tax, etc. in some states 

 practically disfranchised the negro. 

 In the south the segregation of the 

 negro in public conveyances, 

 schools, places of amusement, and 

 churches is enforced, and inter- 

 marriage prohibited. In many dis- 

 tricts tension is acute, and results in 

 frequent outbreaks of rioting, 

 lynchings, etc. Hybrids are treated 

 as negroes, of whom they are said 

 to form about a fourth or fifth, and 

 supply most of the leaders. 



Statistics of crime show a per- 

 centage four times as great as that 

 of the whites. The negro's lack of 

 self-restraint, thrift, and perse- 

 verance, and his tendency to lar- 

 ceny and sexual laxity are part of 

 the heritage of slavery. The early 

 attempts to solve the problem by 

 repatriation having failed, effort is 

 now concentrated on education. 

 Illiteracy is being steadily re- 

 duced, and a majority of children 

 now attend school. Higher educa- 

 tion now aims at technical efficiency 

 and character-building. The num- 

 ber of negro farmers is growing, and 

 savings are accumulating. 



West Indies and South America 



With the exception of Cuba and 

 Porto Rico, the West Indies have 

 an overwhelming preponderance of 

 negro inhabitants. In Barbados 

 the negro is seen at his best, and is 

 progressing steadily. In Haiti the 

 results of emancipation from white 

 control are not encouraging. In 

 S. America, Brazil and Guiana 

 have the largest negro admixture, 

 followed by Venezuela and Colom- 

 bia. There is no acute colour ques- 

 tion, the negroes having crossed 

 extensively with the whites. The 

 negroes of Brazil are relatively 

 strongest in the provs. of Maran- 

 hao, Minas Geraes, and S. Paulo. 

 Unlike the negroes of N. America, 

 who are of Mandingo and allied 

 stocks, those of Brazil are to a great 

 extent Bantu, their ancestors 

 having been brought from Angola. 



A. B. Gougb 



Bibliography. The Tshi -speaking 

 Peoples of the Gold Coast, 1887 ; 

 The Ewe-speaking Peoples of the 

 Slave Coast, 1890 ; The Yoruba- 

 speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, 

 1894, A. B. Ellis ; Races of Man, J. 

 Deniker, 1900 ; At the Back of the 

 Black Man's Mind, R. E. Dennett, 

 1906 ; George Grenfell and the 

 Congo, H. H. Johnston, 1908; The 

 Baganda, J. Roscoe, 1911 ; The Life 

 of a S. African Tribe ; The Thonga, 

 H. A. Junad, 1912 ; A Short History 

 of the American Negro, B. G. 

 Brawley, 1913; Ethnography and 

 conditions in S. Africa before A.D. 

 1505, G. McC. Theal, 1919; Man 

 Past and Present, A. H. Keane, 1920. 



