NILOTIC NEGROES 



■(;:) 



liantu Xegro stock, l)ut Avliicli speaks in a sliglitly coriupted form a dialect 

 oloselj allied to the lanouage of the Silk, tlu^ Silk again l;eing negroes 

 near akin to the Masai, with a little less Haniitic blood in their veins. 



The unwritten history of the present distril)ution of these trihes and 

 forms of speech, and of tlie race moxements whicli brouglit about the 

 existing mixture of jieoples, may be something like this: Imagine Xegro 

 Xileland to have been peopled at one time by the Pygmv-Prognath.ous 

 gi'ou[) in the territories now comprised in tlie Uganda Protectorate, and 

 perhaps by a kindred race of stunted stature — 

 the ancestors of the Hottentots and Bushmen — 

 away to the east in what is now Ihitish Iiast 

 Africa.* Into these regions came pouring some 

 three thousand years ago a horde of West African 

 Negroes speaking the mother-tongue of the Pantu 

 languages. The Bantu possibly came from the 

 north-west, from the region along the water-parting 

 between the Congo and the Nile systems. The 

 rush of the Bantu carried them not only all over 

 the basin of the Upper Nile and A'ictoria Nyanza, 

 but they streamed away south-south-east towards 

 the coast of the Indian Ocean. From the north- 

 east, Hamitic people, of Caucasian stock tinged 

 with the Neorro, trickled down slowlv into the 

 northern territories of the Uganda Protectorate. 

 At one time, no doubt, these Hamites had only a 

 scattered population of Bantu (the Bantu having 

 previously absorbed the antecedent Congo PygmiesJ 

 to deal with. They were received with reverence 

 by these then savage West African Negroes (the 

 Bantu), and mingled with them so much at first 

 as to create practically a new breed of Negro 

 sucli as we now style the Bantu. These Bantu 

 made their first great expansion in tlie countries between the Victoria 

 and Albert Nyanzas. Strengthened and im}iroved in mind and body by 

 this iuHltration of Caucasian l)lood. they swept down over the soutliern 

 half of Africa, licking up and absorbing and exterminating the feebler 

 Pygmy races which had preceded them, and implanting their language 

 on other tribes of }iure Negroes. This fir>t outburst of Bantu energy 

 having spent its force to hOTue extent, there came other people of allied 

 stock from the west (the ]Madi, for example), speaking languages whicli 



* The dividing- line l)etwceu tlie two lieiiig drawn tliri)Ugli th? iniddle of Mount 

 Elaxm down to the sonth-cast corner of the Victoria Xvanza. 



