Bantu

“ But not so the crowd of spirits with which the universe is peopled, they take only too much interest, and the Bantu wishes they would not and is perpetually saying so in his prayers, a large percentage whereof amounts to, ‘Go away, we don't want you.’ ‘Come not into this house, this village, or its plantations.’ ” Almost all these subordinate spirits are malevolent.241 A similar but fuller account of the West African creed is given by a German writer, whose statements apply particularly to the Ewe-speaking negroes of the Slave Coast. ”

“ A far more important native race than either of these, and one which has taken a place in history as distinct as that of the Indian in America or the Maori in New Zealand, is the Bantu, with its many tribal sub-divisions. ”

“ The Native is not a savage. Even before the whites came to South Africa the Bantu lived in social order under a political system in which the principles of constitutionalism were clearly recognised. To-day the Bantu are simply a race of barbarians in various stages of transition from a crude civilisation to a highly developed civilisation, and we shall do well to remember that the process of transition which we are now witnessing is one in which individual mistakes and failures will be more conspicuous, though no more significant, than the general advance. ”

“ The proportions of the limbs of the Europeans seem, on the average, to be nearer to the supposed prototype of man than those of the Bantu. The specifically human development of the red lips is more pronounced in the African than in the European, [3] and if there is anything in what has been called the "god-like erectness of the human carriage" then it must be admitted that the Bantu women exhibit a straightness of form which may well be envied by the ladies of civilisation. ”

“ Thus in outline was seen the mission of The People—La Bantu as they called themselves. They migrated, they settled, they tore down, and they learned, and they in turn were often overthrown by succeeding tribes of their own folk. They rule with their tongue and their power all Africa south of the equator, save where the Europeans have entered. They have never been conquered, although the gold and diamond traders have sought to debauch them, and the ivory and rubber capitalists have cruelly wronged their weaker groups. ”

“ While I do not pretend to philological authority I do claim the ability to make a sound comparison between the main Bantu languages which I know and those European languages with which I happen to be familiar, and I have no hesitation in saying that though the Bantu types are not at present as fully developed in point of simplicity and preciseness as are the main languages of Europe they are, nevertheless, by reason of their peculiar genius, capable of being rapidly developed into as perfect a means for the expression of human thought as any of the European types of speech ”

“ Before it was split up into its present large number of tribes, the Bantu family believed in the existence of a powerful invisible God; and by no people has the conception been so well preserved as by the Marutse, inasmuch as they retain an idea, however indistinct, of an Omnipotent Being who observes every action and disposes of every individual at his own will. ”

“ The Bantu woman, tending her garden by day and preparing food in the evening, which she may not partake of herself until her husband and his friends have eaten, is regarded as an unhappy drudge by her European sister. In her own opinion her lot is far more enviable than that of the white woman, whom she regards as being always in a state of anxiety. ”

“ In fact, taken altogether, it is quite a question whether the higher sections of the Bantu peoples are not our equals. Of course, we have learned more things, and our best men are their betters. But, on the other hand, among them there is nothing so low as the inhabitants of our slums, nor have they any vices which can surpass our vices. Is an assegai so much more savage than a shell? Is there any great gulf fixed between a Chaka and a Napoleon? At least they are not hypocrites, and they are not vulgar; that is the privilege of civilised nations.
Well, with these folk Rachel was intimate. ”

“ On the contrary, though there is a certain physical resemblance among those tribes who speak clearly-marked Bantu dialects (the Babangi of the upper Congo, the people of the Great Lakes, the Ova-herero, the Ba-tonga, Zulu-Kaffirs, Awemba and some of the East Coast tribes) , there is nevertheless a great diversity in outward appearance, shape of head and other physical characteristics, among the negroes who inhabit Bantu Africa. Some tribes speaking Bantu languages are dwarfs or dwarfish, and belong to the group of Forest Pygmies. Others betray relationship to the Hottentots ”

“ There are countless tribes of Bantu, each tribe having its own language, yet there was originally a primeval Bantu mother-tongue, from which all the dialects of this immense region are undoubtedly derived. The idioms of this family are generally known as the alliteral class of languages. North of the Bantu are the Negroes proper, occupying the greater part of Africa between 5° and 15° north latitude. The negro tribes are multitudinous, and, though alike in their main physical features, are diverse in their speech. ”

“ The worship of ancestral spirits is apparently the main practical religion of all the Bantu tribes. Thus among these tribes, who all belong to the great Bantu family, the public worship which a whole tribe pays to the souls of its dead chiefs is probably nothing but an extension of the private worship which every family pays privately to the souls of its dead members. ”

“ Religion. Bantu: ancestor-worship mainly in the east, spirit-worship mainly in the west, intermingling in the centre, with witchcraft and gross superstitions everywhere; Negrillo: little known; Bush.-Hot.: animism, nature-worship, and [Pg 86] reverence for ancestors; among Hottentots belief in supreme powers of good and evil.
Culture. Bantu: much lower than the Negroid Sudanese, but higher than the true Negro; principally cattle rearers, practising simple agriculture; Negrillo and Bush.: lowest grade, hunters; Hot.: nomadic herdsmen. ”

“ On the other hand, deport the Wahuma into the woods, and supply them with the finest vegetables, and always with plenty of food, and the result is, that they get depressed, their fine brown-black colour changes into ashen gray, the proud haughty carriage is lost, they contract an aspect of misery, and die in despair and weariness. Yet these two opposites of humanity are called Bantu, or men, a term which is perfectly meaningless, and yet as old as the story of the Creation. ”

“ In the north-west of the Bantu field, in the region between Cameroon and the north-western basin of the Congo, the Cross river and the Benue, there is an area of great extent occupied by languages of a “semi-Bantu” character, such as Nki, Mbudikum, Akpa, Mbe, Bayoñ, Manyañ, Bafut and Banshō, and the Munshi, Jaráwa, Kororofa, Kamuku and Gbari of the central and western Benue basin. The resemblances to the Bantu in certain word-roots are of an obvious nature; and prefixes in a very simple form are generally used for singular and plural, but the rest of the concord is very doubtful. ”

“ It is very remarkable that among several Bantu tribes the cohabitation of husband and wife is enjoined as a religious or magical rite on a variety of solemn occasions, such as after the death of a son or daughter, the circumcision of a child, the first menstruation of a daughter, the occupation of a new house or of a new village, etc. ”

“ The Bantu, or as he calls them, Zenji, inhabited the country as far south as Sofala, where they bordered upon the Bushmen. These Bantus were under a ruler with the dynastic title of Waklimi. He was paramount over all the other tribes of the north and could put three hundred thousand men in the field. They used oxen as beasts of burden and the country produced gold in abundance, while panther skin was largely used for clothing. Ivory was sold to Asia and the Bantu used iron for personal adornment instead of gold or silver. ”

“ At the present day the population is, as a rule, of a black or chocolate-coloured Negro type, and belongs, linguistically, entirely and exclusively to the Bantu family. The languages spoken offer several very interesting forms of Bantu speech, notably in the districts between the north end of Lake Nyasa, the south end of Lake Tanganyika, and the river Luapula. ”

“ Some form of speech like Fula, Kiama (Tern) , or Kposo of northern Togoland, or one of the languages of the lower Niger or Benue, may have been taken up by ancient Libyan, Hamite or Nilotic conquerors and cast into the type which we now know as Bantu,—a division of sexless Negro speech, however, that shows no obvious traces of Hamitic (Caucasian) influence. We have no clue at present to the exact birth-place of the Bantu nor to the particular group of dialects or languages from which it sprang. ”

“ Even the Bantu people, who probably came later and were certainly more advanced, for they carried on some little cultivation of the soil, remained at a low level. Nature gave them, except in dry years, as much corn as they needed in return for very little labour. Clothing they did not need, and their isolation from the rest of the world left them ignorant of luxuries. When the European voyagers found them at the end of the fifteenth century, they were making little or no advance in the arts of life. ”

“ I have lived amongst the Bantu for nearly thirty years and I have studied them closely, and I have come to the conclusion that there is no Native mind distinct from the common human mind. The mind of the Native is the mind of all mankind; it is not separate or different from the mind of the European or the Asiatic any more than the mind of the English is different from that of the Scotch or Irish people. ”

“ Again, in the Bantu culture you will find the slaves living in villages apart: inside the true Negro they live with their owners; and there are other points which mark the domestic cultures of these people as being different from each other, which I need not detain you with now. ”

“ The Bantu compose the greater part of the native population. There are also in South Africa Malays and Indians and others, who during the last two hundred years have been introduced from Java, Ceylon, Madagascar, Mozambique and British India, and by intermarriage with each other and with the natives have produced a hybrid population generally classed together under the heading of the Mixed Races. ”

“ The Bantu race and languages cannot be an evolution from something inferior; they are a degradation from something superior. Coastwards there are traditions of change and movement on the part of the people; in the east and on the south marauding tribes and slave-hunters have devastated large tracts of country, but there is no sign of general movement on the part of the Bantus.
The traditions of countries along the coast where white men have long settled speak of much greater, more powerful kingdoms in the past ”

“ Any man among the southern Bantu tribes possessing to a remarkable degree such attributes as strength, valour in war, or skill in the hunting-field, or who distinguished himself by any especially notable deed, was liable to be waylaid by the myrmidons of his chief and expeditiously killed. His skull would then be taken to the principal of the Royal College of Witch-doctors, who would fill it with a potion and give the gruesome cup to be quaffed by the head of the tribe just before dawn next morning at the gate of the calf-pen. ”

“ The Bantu-speaking peoples of Africa, ... do not constitute a race apart from the other negroes or offer any homogeneity of physical type. But on the whole they represent so much the average negro type that 'Bantu' is still in favor as a physical definition among craniologists. ”

“ The names by which these people are called vary in each locality, but the most widely used term is Batwa. The name Bantu is the word meaning people in a large area of Central Africa. The singular of this is Muntu, meaning a man. These two terms apply to the large or normal people, not to the pygmies. But curiously enough, the name Batwa is the plural for people with the Batwa pygmies, and the singular of this is Mutwa. These last two terms seem to the writer to be diminutives of the words Bantu and Muntu, so that they mean little people and little man, respectively. ”

“ The racial feeling which we are considering is undoubtedly much stronger at present in the whites than in the Bantu, but there is reason to believe that the awakening desire for racial self-assertion which we call pride of race will grow and increase in the Bantu as it has done in the Negroes in the Southern States of America, and elsewhere. General education, so far from hindering the growth of nationalism and racialism seems in some sort to subserve and foster that growth ”

“ In the nearly total absence of any historical records, the only means of building up Bantu history lies in linguistic research, in the study of existing dialects, of their relative degree of purity, of their connexion one with the other and of the most widely-spread roots common to the majority of the Bantu languages. The present writer, relying on linguistic evidence, fixed the approximate date at which the Bantu negroes left their primal home in the very heart of Africa at not much more than 2000 years ago ”

“ Negro will adopt, as well as language; but there seem to be two points he does not readily adopt, or rather two points in his own culture to which he clings. One is the religious: in Bantu you find a great female god, who, for practical purposes, is more important than the great male god, in so far as she rules mundane affairs. In the true Negro the great gods are male. There are great female gods, but none of them occupy a position equal to that occupied by Nzambi, as you find the Bantu great female god called among the people who are undoubtedly true Bantu, the Fjort. ”