578 



BANTU NEGROES 



322 



A IIUKONJO SMOKING TOBACCO FROM A PIPE 

 MADE OF BAXAXA-LEAF STALK 



associating language too 

 closely with questions of ' 

 race, they represent very 

 nearly the Negro stock 

 which invaded these 

 countries west and north- 

 west of the Victoria 

 Nyanza in succession to 

 the Pygmy-Prognathous 

 type. They betray little 

 or no sign of having 

 mingled at any time with 

 the subsequer.t Hamitic 

 invaders represented by 

 the modern Bahima. 



In matters of religion 

 they practise a vague 

 ancestor-worship such as 

 is universal among all 

 Bantu Negroes, but they 

 do not appear to have any actual religion or belief in gods as distinct 

 from gho-ts and ancestral influences ; nor do they worry themselves much 

 about mao-ic, though of course there are amongst them the usual black 

 and white witch doctors — that is to say, the sorcerers who use their 

 knowledge of poison, their unconscious mesmeric piowers, and their charla- 

 tanry for bad purposes ; and the real m.edicine men or women who apply 

 a knowledge of drugs and therapeutics to the healing of diseases. 

 Amongst these, as amongst nearly all Bantu Negroes, there is the 

 lingering suspicion that the sorcerer or the person desiring to , become a 

 s-orcerer is a corpse-eater, a ghoul who digs up the bodies of dead people 

 to eat them, either from a morbid taste or in the belief that this action 

 will invest him with magical powers. 



-Marriage amongst the Bakonjo is little else than the purchase of a 

 likely young Avoman by the young man who, through his own exertions 

 or the generosity of his pai-ents, is able to present a sufficient number of 

 goats, iron hoes, or other articles of barter to his future father-in-law. 

 But th-e 13akonjo seem ordinarily to be a rhoral race, and in their case it 

 was generally reported to me that intercourse between young unmarried 

 people was not a matter of common occurrence. 



-The Bakonjo sinslt and luork iron, make pottery, weave mats, and 

 carry on most of the industries customary among Bantu Negroes. On the 

 uppier part of the Semliki Kiver they make and use small dug-out canoes. 



