NATIVES OF BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 417 
the first two upper incisors before the lower teeth make their appearance, the 
child is usually strangled and thrown into a stagnant pool. Amongst the 
Mambwe, if a child is prematurely born it is cut into five pieces (two legs, 
two arms and trunk) and is then buried under the floor of the mother’s hut. 
Mr. Yule states that these customs also prevail amongst the nearly allied 
A-lungu. Amongst the Atonga, when the child’s navel string has been removed 
the mother is thoroughly smartened up and walks round the village to receive 
congratulations. Usually the husband and father of the child keeps carefully 
aloof from his wife for some days before and after child-birth. Amongst the 
A-nyanja the door of the house where the woman stays with her newly-born 
child is always kept a little ajar. The woman usually remains therein for three 
days after confinement, her woman friends or the old women of the village 
staying with her, one at a time. These women generally remain till the child 
is eight days old. 
The Wankonde have these birth customs: The mother is secluded for a 
lunar month after the birth of the child, and is regarded as unclean. Before 
being readmitted into society she must go alone into a running stream, wash in 
the water and anoint with oil. With this same people it is held that if the 
children in a family die one after another in succession the father must kill 
himself. “ I have known of a case,” writes Dr. Cross, “ where when three 
children died in succession this thing happened. I was told that the father in 
such a case would hang himself, or would put his gun into his mouth and pull 
the trigger with his toe.” “ The children of an adulterous intercourse are killed 
in the Wankonde tribe. The people also practise the adoption of children 
extensively, especially where couples are childless.” 
Children that are born deformed or defective are almost invariably killed. 
Respect for the life of very young children is not great though of course 
the mother from natural instincts is loth to lose her child. It was related 
to me once of the head wife of some man that, being extremely angry with 
one of the junior wives, and seemingly for good reason, she punished her 
by taking her young baby and throwing it on the fire where it burned to death. 
This fact was told to me to indicate that the woman in question was a person 
of determined character but it did not seem to strike my native informant 
that it was a particularly wicked or cruel thing to do. Yet children on the 
whole are kindly treated if they are reared at all. They grow up much like 
children do in all uncivilised countries—treated somewhat heedlessly but seldom 
harshly. The mother will place a charm round her baby’s neck, and in some 
cases ornaments. As a rule the child that can walk is allowed to run about 
naked and dirty so that it may not be bewitched ; but babies in arms are 
scrupulously washed and kept clean. 
In spite of their desire to honour their husbands with offspring it is not 
at all a rare thing for women to bring about abortion between the third 
and fifth month, either to spite their husbands with whom they may have 
quarrelled, or who have given them cause for jealousy, or because the child 
is the result of illicit intercourse. Abortion is procured by drinking a decoction 
of the bark of certain trees, or else by the insertion of a sharply pointed piece 
of bamboo. 
Amongst the A-nyanja and the Wa-yao, the child is usually named by one 
of the women who attend the mother; amongst the Atonga the father gives 
the name. If the child is a son he receives the name of either his father 
or grandfather, if it is a girl the name of the paternal or maternal grandmother. 
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