CHAPTER X. 
THE NATIVES OF BRITISH CENTRAL 
AFRICA 
A GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE INDIGENOUS HUMAN RACES CONSIDERED 
ANTHROPOLOGICALLY AND ETHNOLOGICALLY 
A S already stated in my review of the History of British Central Africa, 
the Native Races of this part of Africa belong at the present day to the 
Bantu Negro stock—entirely so, linguistically, and mainly so physically, 
though in certain tribes there are traces of a former Bushman-Hottentot 
intermixture. 
Considered from the point of view of language-relationships, customs and 
traditions, the Bantu negroes of the Eastern half of British Central Africa fall 
naturally into ten groups, which, commencing in the north-west and proceeding 
southwards and eastwards, may be enumerated as follows :— 
I. The Awemba 1 stock,—to which apparently belong also the Awa-wisa or 
Aba-bisa, 2 Ba-bozwa, Ba-usi 3 and the Ba-lunga. The Awemba and kindred 
peoples inhabit the western portion of the Nyasa-Tanganyika plateau, the 
district lying between Tanganyika and Mweru, and the country round Bang- 
weolo, and to the east of the River Luapula, with the exception of an enclave 
round the south end of Lake Mweru and east of the Luapula, which is 
inhabited (at any rate as a dominant race) by the 
2. A-lunda. The Alunda are related to the A-rua, farther to the north, and 
belong to a very important and widespread branch of the Bantu people in the 
heart of South Central Africa. The Alunda or A-rua race once formed a huge 
kingdom in the southern part of the Congo Basin—a kingdom which extended 
from the vicinity of Angola on the west to Lakes Tanganyika and Mweru on 
the east, but which gradually split up into independent satrapies which became 
in time kingdoms by themselves. 
3. The A-lungu. 4 This group which like the A-lunda is specially notable 
for having reduced the plural prefix from aba- to a -, occupies the southern and 
south-eastern shores of Tanganyika, and a portion of the Nyasa-Tanganyika 
plateau. 
1 In Itawa these people call themselves Aba-emba, and are sometimes spoken of as the Ba-bemba. 
2 In these parts the b is already melting into w at the beginning of words. 
3 Or We-usi. 
4 Sometimes called the Arungu-Amambwe stock, which again are related to the A-fipa on German 
territory. 
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