66 REPORT OF THE HARVARD AFRICAN EXPEDITION 
struck as they float in a vessel containing water. In one of the Kpwesi’s villages 
we found an entertainer who amused the natives by making curious noises and 
in some instances imitated the cries of animals and birds. 
As is the case with all the interior tribes, dancing is one of their ced forms 
of amusement. The dances sometimes occur in the late afternoon, but fre- 
quently after sunset when they usually last throughout the night, in which case 
a large wood fire is kept burning in the bush clearing or compound before the 
Chief’s house. Great throngs of onlookers crowd round the quadrangle where 
the dancers perform. Every movement of the dancing is regulated by and in 
time with the beat of the drums. The drummers are in general exceedingly 
skillful and the very great variety of rhythm as well as of the tempo cannot fail 
to elicit intense interest and admiration. The dancers also usually display con- 
siderable ability and the most celebrated ones are evidently kept in splendid 
physical condition. The most striking dancing is done by individuals dancing 
alone. Other dances are performed in groups but not in couples. 
There is a large number of children in most villages. In some of the smaller 
villages at least there are many more women than men. In Lenga Town, in 
sixteen houses we found one chief and an assistant, all the remaining inmates 
were women or children, about thirty of them in all. 
Polygamy is practically universal, as it is with the other interior tribes. 
Some of the Kpwesi chiefs have from thirty to forty wives, and sometimes, 
though rarely, more than a hundred. The wives furnish a ready supply of labor 
with which to carry on the agricultural work, for the women do all the farm work 
after the land has been cleared of forest trees. After buying a wife, the Chief 
presents her with a farm. The produce which she must raise belongs to him. 
After the child is born the mother lives apart from her husband until it is weaned, 
a period of from eighteen months to two years. One village Chief brought his 
last new wife, a girl of apparently some fifteen years, for treatment of a tropical 
ulcer on her ankle; she promptly kicked over the bucket of bichloride solution 
with which her leg was being bathed (very much as a cow might kick over a 
pail when being milked), and ran away. 
Most of the tribes in Liberia regard twin children with suspicion, and it is 
said that among the Krus if one twin is a male child it is sometimes destroyed. 
Among the Kpwesis, however, twins are supposed to possess peculiar powers, 
and when they travel to different villages they are often presented with special 
but always-identical presents. 
The power of the chiefs seems to be great in their own villages, and almost 
absolute with their subjects, though the Liberian Government, by a series of 
regulations, has attempted to restrict greatly, this power. The Kpwesi tribe and 
the large number of tribes related to it carry on the training of the young un- 
married members of the tribe in their bush schools. They are exceedingly curi- 
ous people; everything that we did they watched with the closest attention. 
The tribes in the center of Liberia, however, did not seem to be nearly so super- 
stitious as some of the related ones who live in the eastern portions of the 
country and who will be more particularly referred to later. 
