CHAPTER XV 

 BANTU NUGBOES 



(1) The Bakonjo, Banyoro, Bahima, etc. 



THE Western Province of the Uganda Protectorate, which includes the 

 Districts of Uayoro, Toro, and Ankole, is inhabited in the main by 

 Bantu Negroes who are overlaid with an aristocracy of Hamitic descent in 

 varying degrees — that is to say, by a race akin to the modern Gala and 

 Somali. I write "in the main" because in the upper part of the Semliki 

 Valley, and perhaps round about the eastern shore of Lake Albert Edward, 

 there are a few Pygmy or prognathous people differing somewhat in type 

 from the average Bantu, and speaking languages not related to that 

 stock. It is perhaps advisable at this stage to again repeat that by 

 " Bantu " Negro the present writer means that average Negro type which 

 inhabits the whole southern third of Africa (excepting the Hottentots and 

 Bushmen). He would have hesitated to give a racial distinction to the 

 term "Bantu' (the fitness of which as a linguistic definition is beyond 

 question) were it not that the careful researches of Dr. Shrubsall into the 

 body and skull measurements of Africans tend towards the recognition of 

 a distinct Negro type or blend which differs slightly from the Negro of 

 the Nile or of West Africa. But in the Uganda Protectorate the physical 

 Bantu type is not confined solely to those tribes which speak Bantu 

 languages. It reappears among the Karamojo and among the southern 

 tribes of Nilotic Negroes, and again to the west of the Ujiper Nile and 

 along the Nile-Congo water-parting. 



The Bantu Negroes of Unyoro, Toro, and Ankole may be divided approxi- 

 mately into two stocks : the Bakonjo, who inhabit the southern flanks of 

 Euwenzori and the grass country on both sides of the Upper Semliki and to 

 the west of Lake Albert Edward ; and the mass of the Negro population in 

 Unyoro, Toro, and Ankole. This original Bantu Negro stock shows no 

 distinct traces of recent intermixture with the Hamite, with the Bahima 

 aristocracy. Of such a type are the Bairo, who constitute the bulk of the 

 population in Ankole, the Batoro (who may be sub-divided again into the 

 Batagwenda and Banyamwenge), and the Banyoro (who again are sub- 



