September 7, 1905] 



NA TURE 



473 



West of the Arangi plateau in German East Africa, 

 between the steppes occupied by the Wanyamwezi and the 

 Masai, live the Wasandawi, a settled hunting people who, 

 according to Baumann, are very different from the sur- 

 rounding Bantu peoples, and who are allied to the more 

 primitive, wandering, hunting Wanege, or Watindiga, of 

 the steppes near Usukuma. They use the bow and 

 poisoned arrow. Their language, radically distinct from 

 Bantu, is full of those strange click sounds which are 

 characteristic of Bushman speech ; but Sir Harry Johnston 

 says that he does not knovi' if any actual relationship has 

 been pointed out in the vocabulary, and he distinctly states 

 that the Sandawi are not particularly like the Bushmen 

 in their physique, but more resemble the Nandi ; and 

 Virchow declares there is no relationship between the 

 Wasandawi and the Hottentot in skull-form. Until further 

 evidence is collected, one can only say that there may have 

 been a Bushman people here who have become greatly 

 modified by intermi.xture with other races. Sir Harry 

 Johnston thinks that possibly traces of these people still 

 exist among the flat-faced, dwarfish Doko, who live to 

 the north of Lake Stephanie, and he is inclined to think 

 that traces of them occur also among the Andorobo and 

 Elgunono. 



If the foregoing evidence should prove to be trust- 

 worthy, it would seem that at a very early time the 

 Bushmen occupied the hunting grounds of tropical East 

 Africa, perhaps even to the confines of Abyssinia. They 

 gradually passed southwards, keeping along the more open 

 grass lands of the eastern mountainous zone, where they 

 could still preserve their hunting method of life, until, 

 at the dawn of history, they roamed over all the territory 

 south of the Zambesi, with the exception of the eastern 

 seaboard. 



Negrilloes. 



Material does not at present exist for an exhaustive 

 discussion of the exact relationship between the Bushmen 

 and the Negrilloes of the Equatorial forests. On the 

 whole I am inclined to agree with Sir Harry Johnston, 

 who says : "I can see no physical features other than 

 dwarfishness which are obviously peculiar to both Bush- 

 men and Congo Pygmies. On the contrary, in the large 

 and often protuberant eyes, the broad flat nose with its 

 exaggerated alse, the long upper lip and but slight degree 

 of eversion of the inner mucous surface of the lips, the 

 abundant hair on head and body, relative absence of 

 wrinkles, of steatopygy, and of high protruding cheek- 

 bones, the Congo dwarf differs markedly from the 

 Hottentot-Bushman type." Shrubsall had previously 

 stated : " For the present I can only say that the data 

 seem to me too insufficient to enable the affinities of the 

 various pygmy races to be clearly demonstrated, or to 

 allow of much significance being attached to any apparent 

 resemblance." Deniker also directs attention to the 

 physical characters that distinguish those two types, and 

 he concludes that "nothing justifies their unification." 



HoUenlois. 



The skin of the Hottentots, or Khoikhoi, as they style 

 themselves, is of a brownish-yellow, with a tinge of grey, 

 sometimes of red ; the hair is very similar to that of the 

 Bushmen; the average stature is 1-604 r"' (S f'- 3 '"•) ! 

 the head is small and distinctly dolichocephalic (74), the 

 jaws prognathic, cheekbones prominent, and chin small. 

 Shrubsall, who has investigated the osteological evidence, 

 says no hard-and-fast line can be drawn from craniological 

 evidence between Hottentots and Bushmen on the one hand 

 and Negroid races on the other, various transitional forms 

 being found ; but Bushman characteristics undoubtedly 

 predominate in the true Hottentots. 



The Hottentots were grouped in clans, each with its 

 hereditary chief, whose authority, however, was very 

 limited. Several clans were loosely united to form tribes. 

 Their principal property consisted of horned cattle and 

 sheep ; the former were very skilfully trained. The dwell- 

 ings were portable, mat-covered, dome-shaped huts. For 

 weapons they had a feeble bow with poisoned arrows, but 

 they also had assegais and knobkerries or clubbed sticks 

 used as missiles ; coarse pottery was made. They were 

 often described as mild and amiable. 



The Hottentot migration from the eastern mountainous 



NO. 1 87 1, VOL, 72] 



zone took place very much later than that of the Bushmen, 

 and it seems to have been due mainly to the pressure from 

 behind of the waxing Bantu peoples. These pastoral 

 nomads took a south-westerly course across the savanna 

 country, and if the tsetse fly had the same distribution 

 then as now they probably, more or less, followed the 

 right bank of the Zambesi, then struck across to the 

 Kunene north of the desert land, and worked their way 

 down the west coast and along the southern shore of the 

 continent. 



What is now Cape Colony was inhabited solely by 

 Bushmen and Hottentots at the time of the arrival of the 

 Europeans. As the latter expanded they drove the 

 aborigines before them, but in the meantime mongrel 

 peoples had arisen, mainly of Boer-Hottentot parentage, 

 who also were forced to migrate. Those of the Cape 

 Hottentots who were not exterminated or enslaved drifted 

 north and found in Bushman Land an asylum from their 

 pursuers. The north-east division of the Hottentots com- 

 prises the Koranna, or Goraqua ; they were an important 

 people, despite the fact that they had no permanent home. 

 They migrated along the Orange River — one section went 

 up the right bank of the Harts and the other went up 

 the Vaal until they were deflected by the Bechuana. 

 When the Boers in 185S were engaged with the Basuto, 

 the Koranna devastated the Orange Free State, but were 

 themselves ultimately destroyed. The original home of 

 the Griqua was in the neighbourhood of the Olifant River ; 

 in the middle of the eighteenth century the colonists settled 

 in the land, and as a result the Griqua-Bastards retreated 

 to the east under the leadership of the talented Adam 

 and Cornelius Kok. They adopted the name Griqua in 

 place of the earlier one of Bastard ; one split founded 

 Griqua Town in Griqualand West, but the other went 

 further east and eventually settled east of the Drakensberg, 

 between Natal and Basutoland, and occupied the country 

 devastated by Chaka's wars. Here rose the chief town, 

 Kokstadt, in Griqualand East, where a few Griqua still 

 live. The interesting little nation of the Bastards, de- 

 scendants of unions between Europeans, mostly Boers, and 

 Hottentot women, now mixes very little with other peoples. 

 They were forced in 1868 to leave their home in Great 

 Bushmanland owing to the ravages of Bushmen and 

 Koranna, and finally, after various wanderings and vicissi- 

 tudes, thev settled as four communities in Great Namaqua- 

 land, in German territory. Namaqualand is too in- 

 fertile to attract colonists, and thus it forms an asylum 

 for expatriated Hottentots as well as for the Namaqua 

 division of the Hottentots, the original inhabitants of the 

 country. 



True Negroes. 



One of the most primitive populations of Africa is that 

 of the true, or West Africa, Negroes. At present this 

 element is mainly confined to the Sudan and the Guinea 

 Coast. 



The main physical characteristics of the true Negro are : 

 " black " skin, woolly hair, tall stature, averaging about 

 1730 m. (5 ft. 8 in.), moderate dolichocephaly, with an 

 average cephalic index of 74-75. Flat, broad nose, thick 

 and often everted lips, frequent prognathism. 



West African culture contains some characteristic 

 features. The natives build gable-roofed huts ; their 

 weapons include spears with socketed heads, bows taper- 

 ing at each end with bowstrings of vegetable products, 

 swords and plaited shields, but no clubs or slings. Among 

 the musical instruments are wooden drums and a peculiar 

 form of guitar, in which each string has its own support. 

 Clothing is of bark-cloth and palm-fibre, and there is a 

 notable preponderance of vegetable ornaments. Circum- 

 cision is common and the knocking out of the upper 

 incisors. With regard to religion, there is a great develop- 

 ment of fetishism and incipient polytheistic systems. 

 Colonel Ellis has proved in a masterly manner the gradual 

 evolution of religion from west to east along the Guinea 

 Coast, and this is associated with an analogous progress 

 in the laws of descent and succession to property, and in 

 the rise of government. He further suggests that differ- 

 ences in the physical character of each country in question 

 have played a great part in this progressive evolution. 

 Here also are to be found secret societies, masks and re- 

 presentations of human figures. The ordeal by poison is 

 employed, chiefly for the discovery of witchcraft ; anthro- 



