Bugis people

“ I asked.
"The Cherokees have served their purpose," he said. "Your forecast was right, brother. They have drawn the fire of the Border, and been driven in a rabble far south to the Roanoke and the Carolina mountains. That is as the prophet planned. And now, while the white men hang up their muskets and rejoice heedlessly in their triumph, my nation prepares to strike. To-night the moon is full, and the prophet makes intercession with his God. To-morrow at dawn they march, and by twilight they will have swarmed across the Border."
"Have you no power over your own people?" ”

“ All the twenty villages of my tribe have been warned, and arms have been got from the fools at Bardur. Also, I have the Yarkand powder I was told of, to give the signals on the hills. The Nazri Pass road, which we alone know, has been widened. What more could man do?”
“That is well,” said the other. “It is well for you and your people that you have done this. Your service shall not be forgotten. Otherwise—”
“Otherwise?” said the Fazir Khan, his hand travelling to his belt at the sound of a threat. ”

“ The hideous nights, made unbearable by cold and vermin, seemed eternities of suffering. Yet the boys lived on—lived and learned. They learned the language of Ukundo; learned to speak in a dialect that all could understand; learned to understand that of their captors, the Bagalla.
Many other things they came to understand during the days of their captivity, not the least of which was a new conception of the Negro.
To Doc, whose experience with colored people had been limited to a few worthless specimens of the Northern States, it came as a revelation. ”

“ In the Roman period, under the name of Saldae, it was the principal town on the bay. Its present name (Ital. and Span. Bugia) is derived from the Berber tribe of the Bejaïa or Bujaïa, who settled in the vicinity in the 10th century. The town attained its brief prime in the middle ages, and was one of the most flourishing of the minor Moorish principalities when under the sway of the Hammadites (1090–1152) , fugitives from Kalàa des Beni-Hammad (p. 270) . The Pisans, the Genoese, and the Venetians had their factories here. ”

“ In some of the tribes, notably the Bechuana-Basuto, we find rudiments of popular government, where the chief has to take the advice of the assembled people, as in the Basuto pitso, or, in a few cases, of a council of the chief indunas. ”

“ Other villages accuse me of partiality to you, and you all know my affection for you." (Cries of "We are your servants; we are your subjects.") "Yet I fear that there are some among you who are not faithful,—some there are even at Asheetha who do as they please, follow what leader they please, and acknowledge no other authority than their own. Tell me, whose subjects are you? Are you under the control of Noorallah Beg of Hakkari, or of Mohammed Pasha of Mosul, or of Bedr Khan Beg of Jezeerah, or of Ziner Beg?" (Cries of "We are your slaves; walk over our necks: we will die for you.") ”

“ We spoke of hunting, and I heard long tales of exploits—away on the Limpopo, in Mashonaland, on the Sabi and in the Lebombo. Then we verged on politics, and I listened to violent denunciations of the new land tax. These were old residenters, I reflected, and I might learn perhaps something of value. So very carefully I repeated a tale I said I had heard at Durban of a great wizard somewhere in the Berg, and asked if any one knew of it. They shook their heads. The natives had given up witchcraft and big medicine, they said, and were more afraid of a parson or a policeman than any witch-doctor. ”

“ I have upon two occasions talked with men of the Bagego tribe that live upon the slopes of the Wiramwazi Mountains and in both instances I have been assured that a tribe of white men dwells somewhere in the depths of that great mountain range. Both of these men told me that their tribe has carried on trade with these people from time immemorial and each assured me that he had often seen members of The Lost Tribe both upon occasions of peaceful trading and during the warlike raids that the mountaineers occasionally launched upon the Bagego. ”

“ Our captives were terribly thin, and these outlying bands of raiders are evidently leading but a hand-to-mouth existence; and as the Baleka have cut their boats adrift by wiping out the whole country behind them (in their wanton madness they even cut down the banana palms) , I am afraid the people of Bugoie will eventually succumb, although hitherto they have held out. ”

“ Christianity, the seeds of which had been sown by the Dutch during their occupation of the islands, also began to spread among the inhabitants, and the native Amboynese teachers, who established themselves in some of the chief villages, were encouraged rather than molested by the Bughis and Chinese traders, these perceiving that their interests would be promoted by any advance the natives might make in civilization. The Bughis, unlike the Malayan and Ceramese Mohammedans, care little about making proselytes ”

“ They remain in a village they have built in inaccessible mountains, and when they need more provisions or slaves they come again to other villages of my people.
"And so they permit us to live and plant and harvest that they may continue to take toll of us."
"But why do you come to me?" demanded the ape-man. "I do not interfere among tribes beyond the boundaries of my own country, unless they commit some depredation against my own people."
"I come to you, Great Bwana," replied the black chief, "because you are a white man and these shiftas are led by a white man. ”

“ Colonel Bower himself had gone east from Kashgar, on the trail which the Pathan was believed to have taken. One day a man came to his camp and asked his nationality. Bower said he came from India, and his visitor expressed his astonishment, for he thought that the people of India were black. He added that in the neighbourhood there was another foreigner, and nobody knew where he came from—a tall man not unlike the Sahib. He lived in the jungle and earned money by wood-cutting. ”

“ Their friendliness and their loyalty cannot fail to touch the hearts of all who know them. They are now well housed, and well fed. Their children are being given in liberal measure the education which had previously been denied to them. The Bukidnons are to-day a prosperous, progressive people, happy and contented. ”

“ We can ask for no better dwellers upon a frontier. If the plateaux of our Central and East African possessions are to be permanently held by the white man, I believe it will be by this people who have never turned their back upon a country which seemed to promise good pasture-land. ”

“ The Bhoga were one of the mightiest dynasties of ancient India, and the name was given to the family on account of their unbounded prosperity; being derived from bhug = enjoyment. The most celebrated king of the race bore a name which in our own day has become associated with prosperous rule, Bhoga Bismarka, or Bhismarka, is celebrated in ancient Sagas for his resistless might in the field, and was also accounted the type of a prudent and far-sighted sovereign. ”

“ He pictured the heroic age of his nation, when every man was a warrior and hunter, and rich kraals stood in the spots now desecrated by the white man, and cattle wandered on a thousand hills. Then he told tales of white infamy, lands snatched from their rightful possessors, unjust laws which forced the Ethiopian to the bondage of a despised caste, the finger of scorn everywhere, and the mocking word. ”

“ Before we leave Ouenat I must say something about Bukara, who is one of the most interesting people in the caravan and a romantic figure. He is tall, slim, and wiry, a typical Bedouin, always cheerful and with a song at his lips at those critical moments in the day, early in the morning or late at night, when the men are tired with the night march and need encouragement. ”

“ For my own part, I am ready to undertake any risk, but any natives who may accompany me might feel reassured with a small show of rifles. This is a type of mountain country where but a few armed men could put up a great fight—if not taken by surprise in the dark. But now there is the chief point: to obtain one native who knows where there is water to be found on the journey. The Chief of Baguezan declares none of his people know the north territory, though I doubt his statement, and strongly suspect it is prompted by the universal fear of entering an ill-reputed neighbourhood. ”

“ You would sacrifice your own folk to the heathen hordes. God forgive you, John Gib, for you are no Christian, and no Scot, and no man."
"Virginia is an idolatrous land," said he; but he could not look up at me.
"And are your Indians not idolaters? Are you no idolater, with your burnt offerings and heathen gibberish? You worship a Baal and a Moloch worse than any Midianite, for you adore the devils of your own rotten heart."
The big man, with all the madness out of him, put his towsy head in his hands, and a sob shook his great shoulders. ”

“ And the whole organisation is an example of what can be done by courage, energy, force of character and extreme cunning allied to ferocity and cruelty; for the redoubtable Buba Gida, the owner—body and soul—of tens of thousands of slaves, is no scion of a kingly race. Mothered by a slave of the Lakka tribe and fathered by a Scrub Fulani of sorts, everything he has and is he owes entirely to his own ability. ”

“ To the French officers and to many Hausa natives they are known as downright rascals, because they are cunning and deceitful in the most unprincipled way the moment they have [233] any dealings with strangers, and I imagine that among themselves they hold belief that anyone outside their own tribe is a legitimate enemy to be overcome, if possible, by cunning artifice, since strength of arms is no longer theirs.
For my own part I found the Tuaregs of Aïr difficult people to deal with, and impossible people to rely on. ”

“ Bougie, if it be correctly identified with the Saldae of the Romans, is a town of great antiquity, and probably owes its origin to the Carthaginians. Early in the 5th century Genseric the Vandal surrounded it with walls and for some time made it his capital. En-Nasr (1062–1088) , the most powerful of the Berber dynasty of Hammad, made Bougie the seat of his government, and it became the greatest commercial centre of the North African coast, attaining a high degree of civilization. ”

“ The man who consigns all native races to perdition in round terms, and declares that the only solution of the difficulty is to clear out the Kaffir, is as truly a votary of Exeter Hall as the gentle old [Pg 285] lady to whom the aborigine is a model of primeval innocence, whose only joy is the singing of missionary hymns.
Out of the confusion of interests and issues two main problems emerge which may form useful guides in our inquiry. One is economic. What part are the native races to play in the labour-supply and the production of South Africa? what is to be their tenure of land? ”

“ Buchanan displays in this passage more of the piety of the saint, than of the wisdom of the philosopher. In our opinion, the Lord has but little to do with the oppression and gradual extirpation of the Indian tribes. These are the natural results of that peculiar system of policy pursued by the white people towards the Aborigines of America. As the tide of white population rolls on and extends itself inwards, the native tribes must disappear before it by retiring into the inaccessible forests and waste territories of the transatlantic world. ”

“ The natives had never seen the Governor before till they beheld him in gold lace and a cocked hat on a muckle horse, speaking their own tongue and looking like a destroying angel. I tell you the Labonga's knees were loosed under them. They durstna speak a word until the Governor repeated the question in the same quiet, steely voice. "You seek something," he said, "else you had not come out to meet me in your numbers. The father waits to hear the children's desires."
"'Then Umgazi found his tongue and began an uneasy speech. ”

“ This process of disintegration has been going on for a century, and the result is a clearly marked division. We have the tribal natives, who are still more or less strictly under the rule of a chief, and subject to tribal laws sanctioned and enforced by the Governments. The native population of the Transkeian territories in Cape Colony, such as the Pondos, the Amaxosas, and the Tembus; Bechuanaland, with the people of Khama, Bathoen, Sebele, and Linchwe; Basutoland; Zululand; the northern and eastern parts of the Transvaal under such chiefs as Magata, ’Mpefu, and Siwasa; Swaziland ”

“ Here as elsewhere throughout West Africa the more civilised populations are those of the interior, who by continually advancing westwards have broken up the ethnical cohesion of the coast tribes. In the north the chief people thus encroached upon are the Bagas, from whom this region takes the name of Ba- gatai. ”

“ In Aïr in particular, and in some cases in Ahaggar, these permanent villages are occupied by Tuaregs who, having fallen on evil days and lost their [189] camels and means of getting about, have taken to semi-sedentary life with bitterness in their hearts. Those have their slave-people, who, besides doing all the manual work in camp, labour at cultivation, as in the oases, when water permits of cultivation. ”