80 REPORT OF THE HARVARD AFRICAN EXPEDITION 
communication with civilizing influences. Numbers of these people apparently 
had not even seen white men before. Apparently no description of these tribes 
has been published or even written. 
In most parts of Liberia the work of the women seems to be rather well 
defined. In addition to the pounding of rice, weaving of baskets, etc., and doing 
the farm work, they carry farm products to market on their heads, but generally 
they never carry heavy loads on their backs, as for example the kinja or native 
hamper of rice. They do not act as porters. However, in the remote districts 
of eastern Liberia, the women in some of the villages even do all the work com- 
monly performed by porters. In some of the more northern of the eastern towns 
we found very few men, owing to the fact that the District Commissioner had re- 
cently visited the town, and the men had either been carried off to act as porters 
or had run away. This scarcity, however, was probably a more or less temporary 
matter. But in some of the towns farther south, there seemed to be more women 
than men in the population, and the women apparently had become the dominat- 
ing influence in the community. How temporary or permanent this dominance 
was, we were unable to determine. In the town of Granh, there were only three 
men and forty or fifty women, and very few children. As a rule the people in 
many of these eastern towns wore very little clothing, sometimes only a loin 
cloth made of bark fiber. Many of the women seemed anxious to work as porters 
and to earn a little silver which some of them had apparently never seen before. 
They carried their loads as well and quite as cheerfully as the men. Many of 
them insisted upon carrying their babies on their backs along with the load on 
their heads. A woman would carry her load several hours, then stop and eat a 
little mandioca root, nurse the baby, take up her load and go on (No. 57). 
The women carried their loads for five or six hours a day very well. Though 
they sometimes smeared their faces with white earth we did not observe any 
tattooing or cicatrization among them. In some of the towns there was evidence 
that, at least in the past, game had been hunted; for the shed under which we 
lived in one town was lined with clean white skulls of hippopotamuses, bush cows, 
and elephants. But we saw no skulls recently acquired, with remains of flesh or 
cartilage upon them. In the center of Zugi Town there was a group of eight 
skulls and lower Jaws of elephants, perhaps a monument of prowess (No. 60). 
A somewhat similar monument of bones surrounding a group of palms, was seen 
in Chekomma. A femur of an elephant was also found in this village. In 
Towya there was a circular plot surrounded by stakes with palm vegetation 
in the center, around which bones of smaller animals had been placed, and vessels 
containing food. It evidently was a fetish of the town. In another village there 
was a fetish pole in the center surrounded by a thatched covering, and containing 
one or more carved wooden figures about which were a number of vessels hold- 
ing rice and peppers and similar foodstuffs. Occasionally smaller bits of bone 
were found in the vessels. Carved wooden masks were occasionally seen in the 
houses. 
As we travelled southward among these tribes, the type of dwelling house 
gradually changed. In some of the villages, — Weea for example, — we found 
