222 SAVAGE SUDAN 



return to their mother, but he said, 'Woman, the white 

 child is my son and he shall rule over the black one, 

 and the black one shall be bought and sold by him.' 

 Then to enable the white man to gain the pre-eminence, 

 God gave him many useful weapons and inventions such 

 as are found in the house of the white man. The 

 Shilluks think that the white man has been able to 

 rule the black only because God favoured him and gave 

 these machines to him. They also think that God's 

 prejudice was unjust. 



"The utter inconsequence of all this, its half-held, 

 half-interrupted lines of thought illustrate the mentality 

 of the savage childish, often irrelevant, yet never wholly 

 illogical. To me there seems an ever lurking suggestion, 

 alike in their beliefs and in their personal bearing, of 

 latent possibilities of development gradual and pro- 

 tracted though such must necessarily be. Splendidly 

 equipped physically, the Shilluks and other Nilotic 

 aborigines are certainly not devoid of potential mental 

 cultivation. In these tribes we have, in short, a vast 

 human reserve of ' raw material ' capable of manufacture, 

 degree by degree and process by process, into a finished 

 article of value. 



" Fancy may picture singular little half-seen analogies 

 between these primitive Shilluk traditions and some of 

 our own scriptural records. Thus Man's deception of 

 the Creator in order to obtain the spear promised to 

 the buffalo recalls the incident of Jacob stealing Esau's 

 birthright by a similar trick. Then the impersonation of 

 the Deity in human form as Nikawng seems to shadow 

 a sort of inflection of the Incarnation. No sort of 

 parallel, however, is traceable in the vulture story. A 

 vulture, as we know it, has surely no personal qualifica- 

 tions to practise as a handle-maker? Except such 

 instances, and allowing for the fabulous (such as an 

 oribi giving birth to an elephant or a hippopotamus), the 

 Shilluk zoology follows the lines of observed Nature." 



