Max Joseph August Heinrich Markus Buchner

“ The cheerfulness of the negro temperament is never suppressed. If a person happens to come upon any of their religious exercises, and betrays an expression of amusement, the whole company of worshipers will break out into laughter, and be glad that their demeanor has been found so pleasing. Aside from the fear of wicked fetiches, which is a great source of trouble, and from the pleasure of trading, which occasionally carries him hither and thither, the life of the negro passes with a uniform freedom from care. ”

“ On the slightest occasion, the men, who have been watching, rush in in a threatening way, and demand a quantity of goods as a recompense for the affront that has been offered them. The trader has to satisfy them, for he has not force enough to resist them. Another trick is to leave manioc-roots or baskets of grain in the road, where the hungry travelers may be prompted to take them up, when a similar scene of surprise and extortion will be enacted.
The negro is above everything positivist, practical, and materialist, and is inaccessible to intangible considerations. ”

“ The negro in his native condition is not apparently of a lower grade of natural intelligence than the European of the common class. He probably excels the European in a kind of selfish cunning, while the restraint of moral scruples and of the finer feelings operates less strongly upon him. Yet he is not destitute of a sort of moral instinct, of a kind of taboo-conscience, that causes him to hesitate to do wrong. If he can not resist the temptation, he resorts to sophistics to give himself an apparent justification. ”

“ For this reason the negro is never an open thief, but will always seek or make an excuse, under the operation of which his robbery may be caused to appear in the light of a reparation made to him. Of such character are the numerous milongas which play so great a part in the life of the traveling trader, the name of which, a much-used word of unpleasant sound, combines in itself various equivocal ideas of criminal process, liability to penalties, oppression, and a great clamor. ”

“ More time and sharper acumen than many writers on the subject possess are needed for the formation of a valid idea of the religious conceptions of these people. A five-year-old girl playing with her doll is a better medium for studying primitive mythologies than the heaviest volumes of anthropologists and ethnographists.
I believe that much that is said about fetich-worship rests on no solid foundation; neither a kind of worship nor any serious service is addressed to the harmless toy we call a fetich, but only a mysterious good or evil spirit is fancied to dwell within it. ”

“ The often asked and variously answered question of the capacity of the negro for civilization applies in an equal degree to him and to all other savage people. It arises more frequently with respect to the negro, only because the attention of philanthropic men has been more prominently directed to him. It must be answered in his favor. The negro undoubtedly possesses all the capacity for education and civilization to at least as great an extent as our primitive ancestors had it. ”

“ In indifferent matters the negro will say the first thing that occurs to him, because that is the easiest; in matters that touch his interest, such as the value of anything he may have for sale, no reply will suit him better than a false one. To these two incentives to lying—indifference and cunning—is added a third, the sense of the comic which much questioning arouses within him. Some traders are able to enjoy the stories the blacks tell under such circumstances ”

“ We might, perhaps, say more correctly that the common human weaknesses which are among ordinary motives of religion—feelings of anxiety, longings, illusions, fancies, and the corresponding efforts to get light—are not wanting in the negro, but he lacks the deep reflective power to build up a symmetrical structure out of his theological raw material. ”

“ The negro's moods are cheerful and wanton, superficial and changeable. Passion and hysterical anger are not uncommon, but they pass away as suddenly as they come on. Lasting friendships are not known. ”

“ Melancholy tones can hardly be attributed to the negro spirit, and I would have averred that suicide was inconceivable among them, had I not learned from trustworthy sources that instances of it had occurred. These were, however, only among more nearly civilized individuals. The ruling passions of the race concern the gratification of pleasure and greed for property. The most serious troubles originate in these spheres. The theft of a goat will afford a chief a more ready provocation for war than a box on the ear. ”

“ Sometimes the graves contain nothing but the hair and nails of the persons to whom they are erected; for the man may have died on a journey, and have been buried among strangers. But, in order that a place may be provided near his home where his spirit may linger, and enjoy the food and drink that are regularly brought to it, one of his friends will cut off some of his hair and nails, and present them to the family to be formally buried as a symbol of the whole body, which it is not convenient to remove. ”

“ THE African negroes, like all primitive peoples, are great children. Too much should, therefore, not be made of their mental acts. That wonderful system of mystic conceptions which closet theologians believe they can discover among them can not stand the test of serious, unprejudiced examination. ”

“ In August, when the distant lightning announces the approach of the rainy season, the women start out to clear the fields for the crops; and, as soon as the ground has been wet by the first rains, they plant their ground-nuts. The moon in which this is done is the first. The divisions of the day are measured off according to the place of the sun in the sky. ”

“ The woods and fields, however, are supposed to be inhabited by numerous sprites which go out to trouble and vex the blacks, never doing them any good, but are at their best when they are satisfied to be harmless. The dead are regarded as in the same position as toward the living. A third, still more dangerous class of hostile powers, consists of the wicked enchanters among the black's own neighbors, with whom he is in daily intercourse. The magicians are also capable of doing harm to the whites, while the genii and spirits of the dead are not. ”

“ ALL of those parts of South Africa which are under the dominion of the Bantu race are ethnographically so homogeneous that the essential facts that may be stated of one tribe apply almost exactly to all, and the differences in dress, stature, color of the skin, utensils and weapons, ornaments, customs, and ideas, which are produced by external and different temporary, not local, changes only, are limited in every case by the same lines. ”

“ It is not, however, the pleasure of contemplating new forms that secures their preservation and the attention that is afterward given them. In the feeling of the need of some protection against evil the objects become associated with the events that happen to their owner, and endowed with a power to influence their course. ”

“ There is not much to be said about the scientific conceptions of the negroes. Most of our clews to their character are derived from their verbal expressions. Among the heavenly bodies they distinguish the sun and moon, the larger planets, and the fixed stars, the latter only in general, without taking consideration of individual stars or particular groups. The larger planets are called wives of the moon, whence it proceeds that chaste Luna is regarded as a man. ”

“ But, just as our ancestors could not at once and immediately emerge from barbarism into our present conditions of many-sided development and refinement, so we have no reason to expect that the African savages can, in one or two generations, reach the standard of modern Europeans. ”

“ All sickness, all loss in business, every misfortune, even strokes of lightning, are referred to one or another of these evil influences. The religious aspirations and ritual of the Bantu relate chiefly to provisions against these three negative principles. Among the defenses against evil are oracles, medicine-men, and prayer. ”

“ Besides his voice, the negro makes music with whatever will make a noise—two sticks, old fruit-cans, iron articles, or stones. He also has a number of musical instruments that are not to be despised, the best of which, the maximba, would not be unworthy to be called a clavier. ”

“ He has a kind of instinctive, unconscious idea that he may attain his wish by giving it constant utterance, and every other higher blossoming of religious wants is strange to him. Prayer is made with a sort of litany, in which the praying-master, swinging a kind of a rattle, utters some appropriate sentence, while the petitioner repeats it in unison with him. ”

“ A system for computing time can hardly be predicated of such a people; but they have a kind of superficial calendar of the months, which they make to help regulate their agricultural operations. The Angola negroes count the moons during the period of cultivation, and indicate them by numbers from one to ten. During the dry season, when agriculture is dormant, the calendar also is asleep. ”

“ Graves of the first two classes are generally sheltered by a hut or roof. Graves of the last kind, which are very often the graves of porters that have died on the road, are frequently found fresh and adorned with the staff, the belt, the provision-bag, the water-gourd, or the cooking-pot of the dead man. The best finished catafalques of earth are whitewashed and painted with pretty colored arabesques and flowers. Vessels in which food has been brought to the deceased at various times may be found scattered around the grave, together with burned clay figures of the most curious character. ”

“ The musical capacity of the negroes is higher than their aptitude for imitative art. The most complicated trumpet-signals can not be given more clearly and correctly than is done by the black soldiery of Angola. The melodies of these Africans are very touching and resonant. The antiphone of a large file of porters going out in the morning was a real treat to my otherwise little appreciative ears. ”

“ Bog-iron ore, which is abundant, is "the great stone." Among the metals, copper is known; and the word signifying copper is in some of the dialects applied to the moon. Their vocabulary is rich in names of animals and plants. Not one of the plants growing in the plains is without its name, but the flora of the ravines is less well provided for. ”

“ In the course of time great numbers of religious medicinal structures have been formed, all of them originating in some such way as we have outlined, representatives of which may be found everywhere, most curious figures, in the towns, in the fields, at the cross-roads, and in the most out-of-the way and lonesome places. ”

“ Feeble or sickly persons or beggars, who wish to accomplish an object with a higher personage, besmear their whole faces with it. A master, hunting his runaway slaves, paints with it a white ring around his right eye, in the belief that he will thereby be able to see more sharply.
Although the negroes possess no real writing, they seem to have the beginning of it in the shape of tally-sticks and proprietary marks. ”

“ The ideas of honor and manliness are almost wholly wanting, at least among the common men. Blows are unpleasant to them only in so far as they cause pain. They will bear the cuffs of their lord with resignation and as matters of course, as a part of the contract, while they will most likely toward strangers put themselves timidly and passively in an attitude of defense. ”

“ Particularly well-trained praying-masters deliver themselves of the prayer in a high falsetto, which appears to them to have a more insinuating, and therefore more effective, sound. There is no real priest class. There are negroes accustomed to daily religious exercises, like devotees among us ”

“ Notwithstanding this poverty of names, their conceptions of colors appear to be as diversified and distinct as those of other men. They have no words for sweet and sour, but whatever tastes to suit them is "piquant." ”

“ He is not, it is true, destitute of a sense of beauty, and has a word for the idea. But although, other conditions being the same, he will prefer a handsome woman to an ugly one, he is always moved by practical views in his choice. ”

“ Men's lives are frequently risked by these experiments; for the person who is accused in them has afterward to undergo the ordeal of poison. Another method is for the oracle-priest and the person consulting the oracle to take a position in the open air and both grasp with their right hands the handle of an axe which has been placed upright on the ground, the questioner's hand uppermost. ”

“ He has no regularly recurring festivals; but the revelries on the occasion of a death in the connection or in the circle of neighbors and friends are often protracted through many days or even weeks. How many years old he is he neither knows nor cares. ”

“ They are very ingenious in the invention of nicknames and descriptive terms, which have generally some direct reference to peculiarities in the appearance, history, or character of the persons to whom they are applied. ”

“ Creditors and debtors are accustomed to note the number of objects of value, pieces of cloth, etc., on sticks; and traveling merchants and porters perpetuate the number of their night-camps on their walking-canes, on which important events are also emphasized by larger or differently shaped marks. If a gourd of unusual size or beauty is growing anywhere, the owner of it cuts a peculiar mark on it, by the aid of the mysterious influence attached to which he is able to keep it as his own. Some of the best designed proprietary marks we observed are represented in Fig. ”

“ The fact that the psychical and intellectual, as well as the physical, differences between particular races of men are really insignificant, is destined to be made more plain the more the subject is impartially studied, and the efforts of certain men, learned in distinctions of types, to set up fixed marks of separation between them, will not succeed.—Translated for the Popular Science Monthly from "Das Ausland." ”