THE NILOTIC NEGROES 



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On the extreme top of the hut is a straw platform, which can be used as a look-out post over 

 the stockade by which the clusters of huts are surrounded. 



The Bongo are agriculturists, and grow sorghum or dhurra, maize, and tobacco; they 

 also eat the fleshy leaves of various shrubs, roots, and many varieties of fungi, which grow wild 

 in the rainy season. They hunt by beating and driving into snares and trenches; but the 

 supply of game is limited, and the elephants have been exterminated. In the winter they 

 capture fish in nets and fish-pots. As a substitute for salt they collect an alkali from the 

 ashes of Grewia wood. 



Their domestic animals are poultry, goats, and dogs. 



The most skilful accomplishment of the Bongo is their iron-working. They smelt iron 

 in charcoal furnaces blown by bellows. The iron is worked by a stone hammer on a stone 

 anvil, and is held during the process by a pair of green wood tongs. They prepare spear- 

 and arrow-heads, iron rings, belts and other ornaments, knives and razors, pincers for extracting 

 the eyelashes, and flat iron disks which had an extensive circulation as money. The Bongo 

 are also adepts at wood-carving. 



Polygamy is allowed, but the number of wives is limited to three. Marriage is by 

 purchase, and any wife who proves barren may be divorced, and part of her purchase-money 

 may be reclaimed by the husband. 



The burial rites are interesting. The corpse is placed in a sack in a sitting posture in 

 a grave of about 4 feet deep. Women are buried facing the south, and men looking toward 

 the north. The site is marked by a heap of stones surrounded by posts, many of which are 

 carved into human figures, while others have horn-like points. A similar system holds in 

 Madagascar. On the stone pile is the drinking-vessel of the deceased. This fact and the 

 intense fear of spirits and witches suggest a belief in immortality, which Schweinfurth, however, 

 denies. He further explains the wooden human images as memorial figures and not as fetishes; 

 but the accuracy of this suggestion is also doubtful. 



THE LATUKA. 



On the eastern side of the Nile dwell several 

 Nilotic tribes, ranging south-eastward from the 

 Shilluk of the Lower Sobat and Fashoda to the 

 tribes of Karamoyo and Kamasia, on the western 

 wall of the East African Eift Valley. 



One of the best known of these tribes is that 

 of the Latuka, who inhabit the upper part of the 

 basin of the Sobat. They have been well described 

 by Sir Samuel Baker, who says that "the Latuka 

 are the finest savages I have ever seen." Their 

 average height, according to Baker's measurements, 

 is 6 feet all but half an inch; and their muscular 

 development is powerful. Baker considered them 

 different in appearance in the form of the head 

 from any other race of the Nile Valley, and it is 

 possible that they contain some intermixture of 

 Hamitic blood. For, according to Baker, " they have 

 high foreheads, large eyes, rather high cheek- 

 bones, mouths not very large, well shaped, and the 

 lips rather full. They all have a remarkably pleasing 

 cast of countenance, and are a great contrast to the 

 other tribes in civility of manner. Altogether their 

 appearance denotes a Galla origin." 



Photo by Richard Buchta. 



A SHILLUK MAN. 



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