THE PYGMY OR NEGRILLO RACES 



271 



as the description goes, these people resemble 

 the Bushmen; but their mode of life is 

 different, for they have no weapons and 

 cannot hunt. They live in sheltered positions 

 along the coast, and creep down to the sea 

 to fish and collect anything edible thrown 

 upon the shore. The Bakabae and Bakise 

 are also dwarf tribes that live on the coast 

 of Southern Angola, and the Bakanaka are 

 a similar people who live farther inland on 

 the eastern slopes of the Sierra de Sheila, 

 in the basin of the Upper Cunene. 



Westward and northward from the 

 Cunene another tribe was found by Serpa 

 Pinto in the basin of the Kuando. Pogge 

 and Wissmann have described another tribe, 

 the Batwa, who are 4 feet 4 inches high, 

 also living south of the Congo. 



THE OBONGO. 



Still farther northward, beyond the 

 Congo, there are pygmy tribes in the forests 

 of the French Congo. They are best known 

 from the descriptions of Paul du Chaillu 

 and Oscar Lenz. The tribe discovered by 

 du Chaillu is known as the Obongo. Its 

 members live in small scattered communities 

 of from ten to twenty people, scattered 

 through the Ashango country in Loango, 

 about 200 miles from the Atlantic coast; 

 they live also in the valley of the Ogowe. 



In physical characters the Obongo present 

 many striking points of resemblance to the 

 Bushmen. The height of adult women was found by du Chaillu to vary from 4 feet 4|- inches to 

 5 feet; a young, but adult, man measured 4 feet 6 inches. Lenz gives the mean height at 4 feet 

 4 inches. " The colour of these people," says du Chaillu, " was a dirty yellow, much lighter than 

 the Ashangos who surround them, and their eyes had an untamable wild ness about them that 

 struck me as very remarkable. In their whole appearance, physique, and colour, and in their 

 habitations, they are totally unlike the Ashangos, amongsb whom they live. The Ashangos, 

 indeed, are very anxious to disown kinship with them. Their foreheads are exceedingly low 

 and narrow, and they have prominent cheek-bones; but I did not notice any peculiarity in 

 their hands or feet, or in the position of the toes, or in the relative length of their arms to 

 the rest of their bodies; but their legs appeared to be rather short in proportion to their 

 trunks; the palms of their hands seemed quite white. The hair of their heads grows in very 

 short curly tufts; this is the more remarkable as the Ashangos and neighbouring tribes have 

 rather long bushy hair on their heads, which enables them to dress it in various ways; with 

 the Obongos the dressing of the hair in masses or plaits, as is done by the other tribes, is 

 impossible." 



The dress of the Obongo is of the usual simplicity of the dwarf tribes. It consists only 

 of pieces of grass-cloth which they buy from their Negro neighbours, or strips of hammered 

 bark. Their huts are low, the highest part, which is near the entrance, rising only 4 feet 



Photo by Richard Buchta. 



AN AKKA GIRL. 



