Pygmy people

“ When the sun was too hot, he often sat himself down, and let his shadow fall over the kingdom, from one frontier to the other; and as for matters in general, he was wise enough to let them alone, and leave the Pygmies to manage their own affairs—which, after all, is about the best thing that great people can do for little ones.
In short, as I said before, Antaeus loved the Pygmies, and the Pygmies loved Antaeus. The Giant's life being as long as his body was large, while the lifetime of a Pygmy was but a span, this friendly intercourse had been going on for innumerable generations and ages. ”

“ At first sight it seems to many people quite simple to account for "pygmies"; they will tell you that the poor creatures are half-starved and so unable to grow to full size. That explanation does not, however, meet the case, for the African and Asiatic pygmy races are just as well nourished as most of their neighbours. Also if we look a little further we find that the women of every race are smaller than the men, and often much smaller. ”

“ But whatever may be considered as the true cause of the pygmy level of culture, there is an underlying factor which must count most strongly in its determination, namely, that these people are the people who in the process of migration have been pushed out to the last strongholds of man. ”

“ Had his eye seen? Had his nose smelt? At least he had a visible allurement—a half inch of the Pygmy's tail. The Pygmy curled it promptly, but, even as it moved, the mole was thundering at the bark. The Pygmy squeezed himself {317} a half inch further, and this half inch meant life. The mole had bored his snout into the breach, and by a forward wriggle brought his teeth to bear.
The Mole Plunged into the Air
The outworks broke and crumbled like a biscuit. ”

“ The Mafulu Mountain People of British New Guinea, 1912.
[365] Nova Guinea, VII. 1913, 1915.
[366] A. C. Haddon, "The Pygmy Question," Appendix B to A. F. R. Wollaston's Pygmies and Papuans, 1912, pp. 314-9.
[367] It is not certain however that this method is known to the Semang, and it occurs among peoples who are not Negrito, such as the Kayan of Sarawak, and in other places where a Negrito element has not yet been recorded.
[368] The term pygmy is usually applied to a people whose stature does not exceed 1.5 m. (4 ft. 11 in.) . ”

“ Pygmies, he adds, "inhabited the whole of the country north of Lakes Stephanie and Rudolf long before any of the tribes now to be found in the neighbourhood; but they have been gradually killed off in war, and have lost their characteristics by inter-marriage with people of large stature, so that only this one little remnant, the Dume, remains to prove the existence of a pygmy race. Formerly they lived principally by hunting, and they still kill a great many elephants with their poisoned arrows" (pp. 274-5) .
The Wandorobbo Hunters. ”

“ If this View be correct, it seems probable that the members of the pygmy races are the existing human beings which most closely resemble primitive man. On the other hand, there are those who regard the pygmies as a retrograde and degenerative type of the negro race and therefore of comparatively recent growth. ”

“ Tall Pygmies and mighty little men! You and all of us have seen what a public calamity has been brought to pass, and what an insult has here been offered to the majesty of our nation. Yonder lies Antæus, our great friend and brother, slain, within our territory, by a miscreant who took him at disadvantage, and fought him (if fighting it can be called) in a way that neither man, nor Giant, nor Pygmy ever dreamed of fighting until this hour. ”

“ He is not half so bright as we are, to be sure; and, for that reason, he needs us to look after his comfort and happiness. Let us be kind to the old fellow. Why, if Mother Earth had not been very kind to ourselves, we might all have been Giants too."
On all their holidays, the Pygmies had excellent sport with Antæus. He often stretched himself out at full length on the ground, where he looked like the long ridge of a hill; and it was a good hour's walk, no doubt, for a short-legged Pygmy to journey from head to foot of the Giant. ”

“ It is clear that the soul-bird belief and the tree-naming custom are different phases of one conception of social life, a conception definitely excluding recognition of blood kinship, and derived from the conscious adoption of an experience which has not reached the stage of blood kinship, but which includes a close association with natural objects. All this makes it advisable to take fuller count of pygmy culture than has hitherto been given to it. The pygmies have in truth always been a problem in man's history. ”

“ If I were not Antæus, I should like to be a Pygmy, just for the joke's sake.'
The Pygmies had but one thing to trouble them in the world. They were constantly at war with the cranes, and they had always been so, ever since the long-lived Giant could remember. From time to time, very terrible battles had been fought, in which sometimes the little men won the victory, and sometimes the cranes. According to some historians, the Pygmies used to go to the battle, mounted on the backs of goats and rams; but such animals as these must have been far too big for Pygmies to ride upon ”

“ The intellect seemed to become clouded, animation giving place to a sort of lethargy, briskness yielding to indolence." This is very probably the case with the Pygmies, who similarly reach a mental limit beyond which they cannot advance; but this limit is set in the adult period. In other words, the adult Pygmy is on the mental level of the negro child. If the African Pygmy is as short lived as his Eastern congener, he does not survive, as a rule, many years beyond the age of adolescence, and continues in a stage of childhood, mentally considered, until death. ”

“ This is the place where the Pygmies are; this is no fable, saith Aristotle, as 'tis that they are a Dwarfish Race of Men; that they speak the Indian Language; that they are excellent Archers; that they are very Just; and abundance of other Things that are fabulously reported of them; and because he thought them Fables, he does not take the least notice of them, but only saith, This is no Fable, but a Truth, that about the Lakes of Nile such Animals, as are called Pygmies, do live. ”

“ But when one finds within one area, as in the East Indian region, distinct peoples of medium, short and pygmy stature, living under conditions which appear to be very similar, one is inclined to suspect a racial difference between them, and the suspicion becomes confirmed if we find other characters associated with pygmy stature. ”

“ The African pygmies marry at a very early age, often when only nine or ten years old. Marriage is simply a question of the purchase of the girl from her father; the purchase-price being from ten to fifteen arrows, occasionally supplemented, in the case of a desirable wife, by one or two spears or some tobacco. A man may have as many wives as he can afford to buy. A mother gives birth to her offsprin in the forest, severing the navel-cord with her teeth, and burying the placenta in the ground. ”

“ Whether there have been or are any such dwarfish race of mankind, as but of three spans, not considering them singly but nationally, or not, and hath brought the most probable arguments that well can be, to prove that there are not nor have been any such race of people called Pygmies, yet doth he moderately conclude in these words. ”

“ He left them, one and all, within their own territory, where, for aught I can tell, their descendants are alive to the present day, building their little houses, cultivating their little fields, spanking their little children, waging their little warfare with the cranes, doing their little business, whatever it may be, and reading their little histories of ancient times. In those histories, perhaps, it stands recorded, that, a great many centuries ago, the valiant Pygmies avenged the death of the Giant Antaeus by scaring away the mighty Hercules. ”

“ So saying, this valiant Pygmy drew out his weapon (which was terrible to behold, being as long as the blade of a penknife) , and sent the scabbard whirling over the heads of the multitude. His speech was followed by an uproar of applause, as its patriotism and self-devotion unquestionably deserved; and the shouts and clapping of hands would have been greatly prolonged had they not been rendered quite inaudible by a deep respiration, vulgarly called a snore, from the sleeping Hercules. ”

“ But these Indian Historians having related so many extravagant Romances of the Pygmies, as to render their whole History suspected, nay to be utterly denied, that there were ever any such Creatures as Pygmies in Nature, both by Strabo of old, and most of our learned men of late, I have endeavoured to assert the Truth of their being, from a Text in Aristotle; which being so positive in affirming their Existence, creates a difficulty, that can no ways be got over by such as are of the contrary Opinion. ”

“ The forests are so dark in many places that one could not see to read at noonday. Only a few white men have been in the land of the pygmies and seen them. They are shy, like children, and hide their faces when spoken to.
Some of the pygmies are black and some are red. They do not wear much clothing. They do not need much, for the weather is always very warm in the country in which they live. The men and boys wear only a strip of cloth around their loins.
Many of the pygmies have no houses. They wander from place to place, and sleep on the ground under a bush. ”

“ I am inclined to the supposition that the obvious outward signs, the round head, bombous forehead, furry skin, and diminutive size of the pygmies are the outcome of an inward physiological condition peculiar to them, which has enabled them to resist disease or to eat certain kinds of food, or possibly to develop great mental acuteness, and so has led to the establishment of these peculiar [Pg 179] small people as a race, without their smallness itself having anything to do with their selection and preservation. ”

“ I therefore excuse Strabo, for denying the Pygmies, since he could not but be convinced, they could not be such Men, as these Historians have described them. And the better to judge of the Reasons that some of the Moderns have given to prove the Being of Men Pygmies, I have laid down as Postulata's, that hereby we must not understand Dwarfs, nor yet a Nation of Men, tho' somewhat of a lesser size and stature than ordinary; but we must observe those two Characteristicks that Homer gives of them, that they are Cubitales and fight Cranes. ”

“ Their clothing is chiefly conspicuous by its absence. The African pygmies go about, for the most part, quite naked, except for the occasion presence of a small covering over the pudenda, the men wearing a small piece of deer-skin, and the women one or two bunches of -green leaves, which they renew daily. The resemblance to the traditional fig-leaf covering is obvious. The Andamanese wear practically no clothing. The Karons of New Guinea wear a few strips of bark dangling from a string round the loins. The Negrilloes seldom, if ever, tattoo their body. ”

“ However this might be, and whatever creatures the Pygmies rode upon, I do not doubt that they made a formidable appearance, armed with sword and spear, and bow and arrow, blowing their tiny trumpet, and shouting their little war-cry. They never failed to exhort one another to fight bravely, and recollect that the world had its eyes upon them; although, in simple truth, the only spectator was the Giant Antæus, with his one, great, stupid eye in the middle of his forehead. ”

“ It chanced to be the very identical Pygmy who had spoken from the top of the toadstool, and had offered himself as a champion to meet Hercules in single combat.
"What in the world, my little fellow," ejaculated Hercules, "may you be?"
"I am your enemy," answered the valiant Pygmy, in his mightiest squeak. "You have slain the enormous Antaeus, our brother by the mother's side, and for ages the faithful ally of our illustrious nation. We are determined to put you to death; and for my own part, I challenge you to instant battle, on equal ground." ”

“ There is no hereditary chief. In many cases a group of pygmies simply cluster round a skilful hunter. In the case of the Mambute pygmies, a chief is succeeded, not by his son, but by his best friend. There are no governmental laws. Murder in the Ituri forest is punished by the next-of-kin lying in wait for the culprit and killing him.
The Negrilloes are fond of music and have numerous folk-songs. ”

“ There is not a Giant on earth for whom I would take the trouble to get up."
But the Pygmy looked again, and now perceived that the stranger was coming directly towards the prostrate form of Antæus. With every step he looked less like a blue mountain, and more like an immensely large man. ”

“ Now if there cannot be found such Men as are Cubitales, that the Cranes might probably fight with, notwithstanding all the Romances of the Indian Historians, I cannot think these Pygmies to be Men, but they must be some other Animals, or the whole must be a Fiction. ”

“ The dead are buried in graves, the chief's wives being sometimes killed and buried along with him.
The African pygmies have little if any belief in life after death. They say death is the end of everything. ”