Bongo

“ The Bongo women on the other hand, and especially those who reside on the highlands, obstinately refuse to wear any covering whatever either of skin or stuff, but merely replenish their wardrobe every morning by a visit to the woods; they are, therefore, in respect of modesty, less particular than the women of the Dinka ”

“ The male is deep chestnut, marked on the body with narrow white stripes, on the chest with a white crescent, and on the face by two white spots below the eye. In the East African bongo (B. e. Isaaei) the body hue is stronger and richer. ”

“ The bongo, especially when the river is high, is a very slow means of locomotion. And owing to the very limited space of the toldo, even in the largest canoes, traveling in a bongo is, at best, very confining and uncomfortable. A journey any distance in one of these long, narrow, crank dug-outs—more unstable than a shell—is a trying experience, and one that all travelers in equatorial America avoid whenever possible. The treacherous craft is liable to capsize when one least expects it. ”

“ Among the Bongo and the neighbouring nations there is a custom, manifestly originating in a national morality, that forbids all children that are not at the breast to sleep in the same hut with their parents; the Bongo in this respect putting to shame many of those who would boast of their civilization. The elder children have a hut appropriated to themselves, but take their meals with the rest of the family. ”

“ A brook, which in July and August becomes swollen to a considerable stream, flowed past our quarters for the night, and joined the Tondy at the distance of a few leagues. To this rivulet, which has its source in the Madi country, in lat. 5° 10 ́ N., the Bongo give the name of the Doggoroo, whilst it is known as the Lehssy in the districts which divide the territories of the Bongo from the Niam-niam. ”

“ The Bongo formerly lived in countless little independent and peaceful communities, and under the Sudan government they again manage their own affairs. Their huts are well built, and sometimes 24 ft. high. The Bongo are a race of medium height, inclined to be thick-set, with a red-brown complexion—“like the soil upon which they reside”—and black hair. Schweinfurth declares their heads to be nearly round, no other African race, to his knowledge, possessing a higher cephalic index. ”

“ The Bongo deserters, who had caused the failure of the Niam-niam expedition, had in consequence of a campaign against the Dinka tribes, on whose territory they had taken up their quarters, not only themselves returned to their former abode, but had induced three times as many Bongo as there were before to come and settle upon Ghattas’s property. These people, who were now present in such superfluous numbers, had ten years ago all taken themselves off at the first appearance of strangers settling in their land. ”

“ Amongst the many particulars in which the Mittoo are inferior to the Bongo, it may be noticed that their huts are not only smaller, but that they are very indifferently built. Many of them could be covered by a crinoline of lavish proportions. In their musical instruments, however, and in their capabilities for instrumental performances, they are far superior to any of their neighbours. Instead of the great “manyinyee,” or wooden trumpet of the Bongo, they make use of long gourd flasks with holes in the side. ”

“ De Morin yesterday attempted a portrait of a Bongo, and he found it necessary to use the colour known under the name of Pompeian red.
The men, who are of medium height and very muscular, have short and curly hair, differing from the other tribes whose acquaintance we have made in this respect, as well as in the matter of clothing. Amongst the Bongos the men wear an apron of leather, or a strip of stuff fastened to the girdle, but the women are, as a rule, completely nude, a few only of them, after the fashion of our first parents, depending on leaves for their toilet. ”

“ Consequent upon the oppression to which the Bongo have now for years been subject, and the remorseless appropriation of all their energies by the intruders, very many of the primitive habits of the people were disappearing ”

“ It is this diabolical traffic in human beings that acts as the leading incentive to these indiscriminating Nubians, and has caused so much detriment, by the decimation of the Bongo, to their possessions. In one part, as amongst the Bongo, it has resulted in bringing about an insufficiency of labour, and in another, as amongst the Niam-niam, it has thrown a barricade of hostility across their further progress. ”

“ They are particularly skilled in the smelting and working of iron. Iron forms the currency of the country, and is extensively employed for all kinds of useful and ornamental purposes. Bongo spears, knives, rings, and other articles are frequently fashioned with great artistic elaboration. They have a variety of musical instruments—drums, stringed instruments, and horns—in the practice of which they take great delight; and they indulge in a vocal recitative which seems intended to imitate a succession of natural sounds. Schweinfurth says that Bongo music is like the raging of the elements. ”

“ In Central Africa every nation has a different designation for its neighbours than that by which they are known among themselves; and it is the same with the rivers, which have as many names as the nations through whose territory they flow. In this way the Nubians have adopted the Dinka appellations of Dyoor for Lwoh, Niam-niam for Zandey, and Dohr for Bongo. This last people always style themselves Bongo, and the Khartoomers, since they have made their headquarters in their territory, have discarded the Dinka name of Dohr, and now always use the native term Bongo. ”

“ There is nothing very remarkable about the arms of the Sehre; their lances resemble those of the Bongo, and are very rare and quaint-looking weapons. The bows and arrows are considerably smaller than those of the Bongo, the arrows in particular being of that short and stumpy make that I had noticed amongst the Bellanda.
The women’s attire consists of bunches of grass or leaves, fastened to their girdle before and behind, and very like what is worn by the Bongo; it is also generally adopted by the women of the Golo and Kredy. ”

“ Old folks, so the Bongo maintain, wander through the forest-glades at night, and have only to secure the proper roots, and then they may apparently be lying calmly in their huts, whilst in reality they are taking counsel with the spirits of mischief how they can best bring their neighbours to death and destruction. They dig for roots, it is continually said, that they may have the means of poisoning those around them. ”

“ The Bongo women delight in distinguishing themselves by an adornment which to our notions is nothing less than a hideous mutilation. As soon as a woman is married the operation commences of extending her lower lip. This, at first only slightly bored, is widened by inserting into the orifice plugs of wood gradually increasing in size, until at length the entire feature is enlarged to five or six times its original proportions. The plugs are cylindrical in form, not less than an inch thick, and are exactly like the pegs of bone or wood worn by the women of Musgoo. ”

“ The sandy bed was not more than 100 feet wide, a grassy depression beyond was about 400 paces across. On the borders of this we came upon some ruined huts projecting above the grass, evidently the remains of a forsaken Seriba of Bizelly’s, which, had likewise been called Damury, after the name of the Bongo community that had had their homes in the district. The Bongo had now withdrawn beyond the right bank of the river, and thus the Pongo had been left as the boundary between the populated country and the actual wilderness. ”

“ The Bongo: Area, boundaries, and population of Bongoland. Subjection of the Bongo to the Khartoomers. Decrease of population by slave-trading. Red tinge of the skin. Width of the skull. Small growth of hair. No aridity in climate. Wild tubers as food. Races of goats and dogs. Hunting-weapons. Villages and huts. Smelting furnaces. Money of the Bongo. Weapons for display. Wood-carving. Penates of the Bongo. Musical instruments. Character of Bongo music. Corpulence of the women. Hottentot Venus. Mutilation of the teeth. ”

“ Upon the erection of their dwellings there is no people in the Gazelle district who bestow so much pains as the Bongo. Although they invariably adopt the conical shape, they allow themselves considerable diversity in the forms they use. The general plan of their architecture has already been sketched. The materials they employ are upright tree-stems, plaited faggots, canes of the bamboo, clay from the mushroom-shaped white-ant hills, and tough grass and the bast of the Grewia. ”

“ The real distinctions, therefore, in the growth of the hair in the nations of Central Africa consist in the colour and length, which vary considerably in the different races; beards predominate with some, whilst with others they fail entirely. In common with most other people of the red soil, the Bongo have hair which is perfectly black, but in its length it is very different from that of the Niam-niam. On the Niam-niam frontiers the Bongo have often tried to imitate their neighbours by twisting and plaiting their hair, but their attempts have been always a failure. ”

“ They lie in a southerly direction from where we were, only a few leagues distant from that Mundo which is so often mentioned by Petherick; a spot which on every map is notoriously always pushed either backwards or forwards for several degrees, and originally, by those who professed to have visited it, was said to be situated on the [Pg 241] Equator. The fact is, that Mundo is the name ordinarily given by the Bongo to a small tribe calling itself Babuckur, which has contrived to wedge in its position between the borders of the Bongo and the Niam-niam. ”

“ Their immodesty far surpassed anything that I had observed in the very lowest of the negro tribes, and contrasted most unfavourably with the sobriety of the Bongo women, who are submissive to their husbands and yet not servile. The very scantiness of the clothing of the Monbuttoo women has no excuse.
Carved benches are the ordinary seats of the men, but the women generally use stools that have but one foot. ”

“ After passing the last of the three brooks which I have just mentioned, we came to a cultivated district, and as it was near midday we made a short halt beside the hamlets. The Bongo had now free scope for their destructive propensities; they proceeded to cut down the standing maize to their hearts’ content; they not only plundered all within their reach, but laid waste the land in every direction. All the world over, war is ever war.
In ransacking the huts the plundering parties had had the luck to discover some of the missing ivory. ”

“ The Bongo, unlike other of the upper Nile Negroes, are not great cattle-breeders, but employ their time in agriculture. The crops mostly cultivated are sorghum, tobacco, sesame and durra. The Bongo eat the fruits, tubers and fungi in which the country is rich. They also eat almost every creature—bird, beast, insect and reptile, with the exception of the dog. They despise no flesh, fresh or putrid. ”

“ The nyala is a South African species and is not to be found in British East Africa. The situtunga is a swamp dweller and is found chiefly in Uganda and, to my knowledge, infrequently in the East African protectorate.
The bongo is to the white sportsman what the north pole has been to explorers for centuries. In all records of game shooting there has been, until recently, only one white man who has killed a bongo, although the Wanderobo dwellers of the deep forests have killed many. ”

“ Of smaller stature than the Denka, the Bongo are stronger and more thickset, the strong muscles of their thighs and calves presenting a marked contrast to the thin legs which give such a "stilted" appearance to the marsh tribes. The women have largely developed hips, and walk like animals, the tail they ornament themselves with, swinging about at each step, adding to the resemblance. ”

“ Like the Niam-niam, Mittoo, and Kredy, the Bongo rarely exceed a medium height. They differ, however, in several respects from the Dinka and other people of the lowland plains. Their prominent characteristics appeared to me to consist in a more compact form of limb, a sharper development of muscle, a wider formation of the skull, and generally a preponderating mass in the upper part of the body. Of 83 men that I measured I did not find one who had attained a height of 6 ft. ”

“ This form of interment is also prescribed in the law of Islam, which, in this and many other cases, has probably followed an African custom. The Bongo have a striking practice, for which, perhaps, some reason may be assigned, of burying men with the face turned to the north and women to the south. After the grave is filled in, a heap of stones is piled over the spot in a short cylindrical form, and this is supported by strong stakes, which are driven into the soil all round. ”

“ I often noticed arrows that had been thus shot still adhering to the sticks.
The Bongo have not the remotest conception of immortality. They have no more idea of the transmigration of souls, or any doctrine of the kind, than they have of the existence of an ocean. I have tried various ways and means of solving the problem of their inner life, but always without success. Although the belief in immortality may be indigenous [Pg 305] to Africa, I should question whether the ancient Egyptians did not in their religious development obey the promptings of the Asiatic East. ”

“ The women of the Madi correspond in their outward garb with the Mittoo in general; they make use of a short garment of mixed leaves and grass like the Bongo. The men adopt the same kind of skin covering for their loins as the Bongo, but they have one decoration which seems peculiar [Pg 409] to themselves; they wear in front something after the style of the “rahad” of the Soudan or the “isimene” of the Kaffirs—​a short appendage made of straps of leather, ornamented by rings and scraps of iron ”