Toubou people

“ Where the script of the Tuareg is still known [174] and freely used, it is the women who are more versed in it than the men. It is they who teach the children. When families have slaves, the noble woman does as little work as she can: her occupation among the poorer people is confined to the household work or to herding goats and sheep. They make cheese and butter and sort dates, but they do not as a rule work in the gardens. They are never beasts of burden. They have never learnt to weave or spin, but they plait mats and make articles of leather. ”

“ Simultaneously with these occurrences, the people of the Brazils and of Cuba, Egbas, Torubas, and other Aku tribes who had obtained freedom, began to return. From all sources there are now scattered throughout the country, but chiefly at Lagos and Abbeokuta, over five thousand of these people, semi-civilized generally, but in some instances highly cultivated, being engaged as teachers, catechists, clergymen, and merchants. ”

“ Amongst a crowd of fifty or sixty people, not more than two or three have a cloth of native make, and rarely one of foreign manufacture is to be seen. Some women have stood before me in the very primitive costume of a bunch of leafy twigs.
But far worse clad than these are the Wataturu, a tribe living to the eastward, and the Watuta, living to the westward of this place, besides the Warori and others. ”

“ Hatibu and his companions had as many questions to ask about the fate of those they had left behind, and how the road was in front. The road, we heard, was good, and the people peaceful, the only trouble that had lately occurred being an attack made on a caravan by the Watuta (a predatory nomad tribe) , who had been beaten off with severe loss, and would not likely give trouble again for a long time. ”

“ The larger divisions of Tuareg have names by which they are known to themselves and to their neighbours: these names designate the historical or geographical groupings of tribes. In each group of tribes the existence of nobles and serfs is recognised; there are appropriate terms to describe these social distinctions. The nobles are called Imajeghan; [14] the servile people, Imghad. But no name other than Kel Tagilmus, [15] the “People of the Veil,” exists to describe the society of nobles and serfs alike, irrespective of group or caste. ”

“ For once, indeed, there was no doubt about the evil tidings, which were diametrically opposed to all that the politeness of the natives would have had us believe. The whole country, Toucouleurs, people of Say, of Kibtachi, and of Torodi, with the Sidibés, the Gaberos and others, had combined against us and were marching to attack us. ”

“ The slaves, who prepare the food, are assisted by the boys and send them out to do all the hundred and one little jobs that are required. So the boys grow up to be useful men before they are mature, and in the process learn the respect which is due to their elders, and their elders show them such devotion as these pleasant little people deserve. ”

“ Should inter-tribal hostilities break out they must leave their father and fight for their mother’s tribe, even against their own parent if need so be. Until this is understood the relationships of the Tuareg appear very puzzling to the traveller. When I first met Ahodu he informed me that he was of the Kel Tadek people, who are Kel Amenokal, but he had a half-brother and a paternal cousin who belonged to the Añastafidet. It appears that the fathers of Ahodu and Efale, the famous eastern guide, were brothers of a man in the noble Kel Fares of the Kel Owi confederation. ”

“ People of the better class, or more properly who can afford to procure slaves to work for them, are, on the contrary, very idle and lethargic; they do nothing but lounge or loll about, inquire what their neighbours have had for dinner, gossip [284] about slaves, dates, &c.; or boast of some cunning cheat which they have practised on a Tibboo, or Tuarick, who, though very knowing fellows, are, comparatively with the Fezzanners, fair in their dealings. ”

“ They brought with them six men and twelve women, natives of Tabouai and Otaheite. The first step after their arrival was to divide the whole island into nine equal portions, to the exclusion of those poor people whom they had seduced to accompany them, and some of whom are stated to have been carried off against their inclination. At first they were considered as the friends of the white men, but very soon became their slaves. ”

“ A little settlement had sprung up in the midst of the great plain, with two large bungalows, one for Royce and Challis, the other for the missionary and his wife, and a number of neat grass huts for the labourers and their families.
The country in their immediate neighbourhood was troubled no more by the Tubus. A brisk trade grew up between their settlement and the surrounding villages, and once a year the people for miles around go in procession to visit the white men, carrying presents for the strangers who saved them from the raiders and brought peace and prosperity to the countryside. ”

“ The people of Tongataboo told them the people of Fidgi were cannibals: Vouacecee strove to exculpate himself by answering that it was only the touas, or people of the lowest class, who eat human flesh. But the assurances of the natives of Tongataboo were fully confirmed in other quarters, and Labillardière who observes they devour their enemies to satiate their fury, is entirely satisfied the chiefs as well as touas are Anthrophagi. ”

“ The village headmen, [128] it is true, are sometimes themselves the leaders of the tribes in whose area the village is situated, but more often they are merely local men acting on the delegated authority of the tribal chief, who in Tegama is probably the head of an Imghad or servile tribe dependent in turn upon some noble tribe living in a different part of Air. But in time the population of a village may become known collectively as the people of such and such a place, and so reference to the old tribal allegiance of the inhabitants disappears. ”

“ In the Tokelau group, the common people till the lands of the nobles for a payment in kind. A labourer has the right to leave his employer and go into another man’s service101.
In the Abgarris, Marqueen and Tasman groups, the common people own no land; they serve the members of the upper classes and form their retinue; in reward they are provided with cocoanuts and other fruits and allowed to fish on the reef and in the lagoon102. ”

“ Of course, she never sat in chairs, anyhow, nor did Vai Etienne, but he had provided these for the whites.
The subject of the tapus of the South Seas was endless. The custom, tabu or kapu in Hawaiian, and tambu in Fijian, was ill expressed in our “taboo,” which means the pressure of public sentiment, or family or group feeling. Tapus here were the conventions of 258primitive people made awe-inspiring for enforcement because of the very willfulness of these primitives. The custom here and throughout society dated from the beginning of legend. ”

“ The system by which the Kel Owi have an administrative leader who seems to have practically no warlike or judicial functions has in no way modified the tribal or social organisation [147] of the confederation. As in the case of all the Tuareg tribes, other than those which have become entirely sedentary, the government of each unit, large and small, is patriarchal and similar to that of Bedawin tribes. The chief of a noble tribe is the leader in war and the dispenser of justice in peace. ”

“ Such development is only found in societies, whether Christian, Moslem or otherwise, which have for long been evolving under the guidance of a few men who have learnt much and taught much. Yet the feet of the Tuareg are not now kept in this way; their conduct is unconscious. They are no community of philosophers seeking by choice to live in primitive conditions for the betterment of their souls. They hold what they have as an inheritance of grace from bygone generations. ”

“ People come in from other villages to assist, and will dance all night.” [376] In the Mekeo district of British New Guinea, when a taboo has been put on the coco-nuts and areca-nuts to promote their growth, some fourteen or fifteen men act as watchmen to enforce the taboo. Every evening they go round the village armed with clubs and wearing masks or so covered with leaves that nobody would know them. ”

“ Their neighbours to the south are the negroid Kanuri, Hausa-speaking peoples, [17] and the Fulani; to the east are the Tebu, and in the west the Arab and Moorish tribes; finally, in the north the nomadic and sedentary Arabs and sedentary Libyans of Algeria, Tunisia and Tripolitania. The N.E. corner of Tuareg territory, the Fezzan, is ethnically of such mixed population as to admit of no summary classification; Arab, Libyan, Tebu and negroid peoples are all inextricably mingled together. ”

“ Neither to Islam nor to Christianity, however, can be attributed what is susceptible only of explanation as a survival of totemism. The Northern Tuareg [258] believe that “they must abstain from eating birds, fish and lizards, on the score that these animals are their mothers’ brothers. This reason at once suggests that these taboos are both totemic and matriarchal in their origin”; but while the facts have been alluded to by many authors, the possibility that the taboos may be of recent and therefore of Sudanese, origin has not been sufficiently taken into account. ”

“ Yet, it is not easy to talk history with a people who confound Miriam and Mary, or politics to those whose only idea of a king is a robber on a large scale, or religion to men who measure excellence by forbidden
Diagram illustrating Somali Geography meats, or geography to those who represent the earth in this guise. ”

“ Their ethical standards of right and wrong, while differing profoundly from our own, and in no way to be commended or condemned in our shallow European way, seem to come from some older philosophy, some source less obvious than their present religion. ”

“ They had been heritors and subjects of cruelty and outrage so long that nothing could have startled them but a kindness. Yes, here was a curious revelation, indeed, of the depth to which this people had been sunk in slavery. Their entire being was reduced to a monotonous dead level of patience, resignation, dumb uncomplaining acceptance of whatever might befall them in this life. Their very imagination was dead. When you can say that of a man, he has struck bottom, I reckon; there is no lower deep for him. ”

“ Thus the air became black with smoke and dust, and the light of day obscured in Northern London. And through that obscurity came those whizzing shells in an incessant hissing stream, each one, bursting in these narrow, thickly-populated streets, causing havoc indescribable, and a loss of life impossible to accurately calculate. Hundreds of people were blown to pieces in the open, but hundreds more were buried beneath the débris of their own cherished homes, now being so ruthlessly destroyed and demolished. ”

“ After the inevitable diffidence had worn off they talked and were free from awkwardness, but never familiar like the negro or negroid women. They are gay but not infantile. They never lose their dignity. ”

“ In the township, as well as everywhere else, the people is the only source of power; but in no stage of government does the body of citizens exercise a more immediate influence. ”

“ In the course of these trips he was kind and indulgent, and talked rather than preached. He never went far in search of his arguments and his examples. He quoted to the inhabitants of one district the example of a neighboring district. In the cantons where they were harsh to the poor, he said: “Look at the people of Briançon! They have conferred on the poor, on widows and orphans, the right to have their meadows mown three days in advance of every one else. They rebuild their houses for them gratuitously when they are ruined. Therefore it is a country which is blessed by God. ”

“ But no power upon earth is so worthy of honor for itself, or of reverential obedience to the rights which it represents, that I would consent to admit its uncontrolled and all-predominate authority. When I see that the right and the means of absolute command are conferred on a people or upon a king, upon an aristocracy or a democracy, a monarchy or a republic, I recognize the germ of tyranny, and I journey onward to a land of more hopeful institutions. ”

“ I asked them if they supposed a nation of people ever existed, who, with a free vote in every man’s hand, would elect that a single family and its descendants should reign over it forever, whether gifted or boobies, to the exclusion of all other families—including the voter’s; and would also elect that a certain hundred families should be raised to dizzy summits of rank, and clothed on with offensive transmissible glories and privileges to the exclusion of the rest of the nation’s families—including his own .
They all looked unhit, and said they didn’t know; ”

“ Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, if the priests could be kept quiet. This would undermine the Church. I mean would be a step toward that. Next, education—next, freedom—and then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction that any Established Church is an established crime, an established slave-pen, I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it. ”