CURIOUS COASTAL TRIBES 101 



tribes arc partly pastoral, but arc generally 

 wanderers and hunters. They wear few clothes, 

 often just a skin apron, with necklace of beads 

 and bangles on arm and ankle. They smear their 

 bodies with oil or butter, and most of their women 

 have an elaborately arranged head-dress. 



All these tribes seem to have some knowledge 

 of a beneficent deity as well as evil spirits. 



Amongst some of these people, when the older 

 folk are unable any longer to move with the tribes, 

 they are knocked on the head by their relatives, 

 and there is no burial, the body being left in the 

 desert. The Ba Coroca, another tribe in the 

 south, do have a funeral procession which carries 

 the corpse wrapped in cloth (or, if a Chief, in a 

 black ox-hide) to where it w r ill be left. As no man 

 may see a corpse on the ground, the mourners, 

 who are in single lile, hand the body from one to 

 the other, each running away after handing it 

 over, until the last has thrown the body to the 

 ground, to race back to the village after his fellows, 

 without looking back. 



There are few permanent villages in this desert 

 country ; where there are huts these are but 

 rough shelters of bush and grass, or even, as with 

 the Ba Cuisso, just a circle of stones to shelter 

 them from the wind. 



The morals of most of the tribes are as primitive 

 as their clothing or their ideas of cleanliness. 

 Adultery is encouraged in order to bring profit, 

 and a rich lover is permitted visits for the fines 

 he pays in cattle. 



The southern province of Angola is divided 

 ii 



