Chapter XII (2)

The variety of wooden vessels is as large as that of the earthenware, and their shapes quite as diversified. The dishes used for minced meats are good specimens of their kind, and exhibit some of the best carving of the Mabundas. As a general rule wooden pots are either conical or cylindrical in shape, rounded inside at the bottom, and are used for holding meal, beans, small fruits, and beer. As an intermediate production between the pots and the dishes, there are bowls with lips or spouts.

Wooden dishes are either oval or round, those to which I have just alluded are oval, and are hollowed into the form of a boat, and are repeatedly to be seen with a horizontal rim of fretwork; they are perfectly black, and without handles. Except in the houses of the upper classes they are rarely to be met with, and the most elaborately worked of any that I saw belonged to the king; but although all the oval dishes are large, I noticed a good many amongst the Matabele that were double or treble the size of any of Sepopo’s; all of them had handles at the end, and they were usually kept for serving heavy joints to a number of guests. Not unfrequently they are ornamented with a kind of arabesque carving, raised about half an inch above the surface, a mode of decorating their work in which I believe that the Mashonas carry off the palm.

Of round dishes there are a good many varieties; all of them appeared to have bosses projecting more or less, to serve as handles, and they were nearly always curved at the bottom, though in some rare cases they had a small flat surface at the bottom about the size of a crown-piece; the edges are generally notched. No household is ever without them, as they are especially serviceable for holding milk and oil, and all substances of a fatty nature.

The dried shells of nearly all the gourds are universally utilized as vessels, and on account of their light weight, there is no purpose to which they are so generally applied as that of carrying water, both for domestic use and for travelling. In variety of natural form, as well as in their artificial adaptations to use, they exhibit a still greater diversity than either the clay or the wooden wares. For common purposes they are polished to yellow, various shades of brown and brick red, and are often covered with a network of grass or bast; but those that are reserved for rare or more important occasions, are generally branded with well-executed devices. The Mabundas are notoriously skilful in this kind of work, particularly in figures. Amongst the designs thus burnt in I saw arabesques that were sometimes very elaborate, figures of men, animals, birds, reptiles, fishes, and insects; representations of huts, oars, weapons, and implements of many kinds; pictures of the sun and moon, besides scenes of hunting or of fighting, of which two especially attracted my attention, depicting with considerable minuteness the capture of a besieged town, and showing the stone breastworks that have now ceased to be erected as defences in warfare.

It must be confessed that on the whole the designs were executed with a certain amount of skill, and, considered as the production of savages, indicated a kind of artistic power; though I could not pretend to compare them in this respect with the carvings of the Bushmen. Occupying, as they do, a prominent place in the industrial products of the central Zambesi, these carved calabashes must be allowed to indicate a decided advance upon anything of the kind that is to be seen on the southern side of the river. The gourds chosen for the purpose are partly grown in the maize-fields, and partly close round the huts. The smallest-sized gourds were made into snuff-boxes, but not so frequently as among the Bechuanas.

I observed also some very handsome spoons, and some large ladles, made from a peculiar kind of gourd that grows thick at one end; not a few of these were ornamented with devices elaborated with much patience; their general colour was yellow, brown, or chocolate. Not all their spoons are made from gourds, as I saw some made of wood, two feet long, and used for serving out meal-pap or stewed fruit; many of those used for meals are also wood; and altogether I am disposed to think that throughout the savage tribes of Africa none would be found to use wooden utensils more neatly finished off than the spoons of the Mabundas. I may add, that in addition to other wooden productions, I saw some well-made mortars for pounding corn, and some sieves, dexterously put together with broad wood-shavings, to be used for sifting meal.

The Marutse-Mabunda people likewise do a good deal of good basket-work. Perhaps the simplest specimen of this would be found in the circular corn-bags, made of grass or baobab rind, about two feet long and not quite so wide; another sort of bag, hardly more elaborate in its make, is woven from reeds, from the stalks of plants, or from fan-palm leaves; these are of larger dimensions, and are really sacks for carrying dried fish and the heavier descriptions of fruit. Most of the tribes are skilful in making bags of thick bast, and in putting together very rapidly a kind of sweep-net. A basket that is of very easy manufacture is made from pieces of a bark very much resembling our red birch, sewn together with bast. It is nothing more than a tube closed at one end, and having a piece of wood thrust through the other, or a strap attached to form a handle. It is generally used at the ingathering of fruit. Basket-making of a superior character is exemplified in the makuluani baskets, which are manufactured from the lancet-shaped leaflets of the fan-palm; these are very strongly made, and with their close-fitting covers and firm texture, are sufficiently solid to serve the purpose of boxes or chests; so various are they in form, that it is rare to see two alike. The Matabele who have settled in the Barotse valley weave grass and straw into basket-work, so fine and compact that it is quite watertight, and can be used for drinking-cups.

The best specimens of this kind of handicraft are found in the makenke baskets made by the tribes in the Barotse, in spite of the material out of which they are formed being somewhat unmanageable. This material is the root-fibre of the mosura, a tree not unlike a maple. There are two kinds of them, one without any covering, and generally of uniform shape and size; the other with a close-fitting lid, and found in endless diversity of form and dimensions. As works of skill, there is not much to choose between them; they always have elaborate patterns woven into them with fibres that have either been burnt black or dyed of a darker colour than the rest. Except in the Barotse, they are very scarce, and in Sesheke there is the greatest difficulty in obtaining one at all.

Knives of the kind used by men in their daily occupations, and for ordinary domestic purposes, are worn without any sheath, and consist of a thin pointed iron blade, often bent round into a sickle shape, with a handle made of the skin of snakes or lizards. Weapons of offence are assegais of various kinds, daggers, hatchets, knives, and kiris; those of defence being shields and sticks.

There is a large variety of assegais, all of them exhibiting good form and workmanship, and carefully adapted to the different uses for which they are designed. Altogether they struck me as the best specimens that I had seen in South Africa, and they are far superior to those of either the Bechuanas or Makalakas. Amongst the stronger and more uncommon of the assegais are those belonging to the chieftains, and serving as insignia of their office; they vary from five feet to six and a half feet in length, a third part of which is iron; the shafts are the most substantial that are made north of the Zambesi, and are generally carved or ornamented with indented lines or circles.

The assegai that is used for hand-to-hand fights is a most formidable weapon, especially as wielded by the Matabele. It has a kind of gutter running along the blade; the neck is formed of embossed rings; the shaft is short and strong, and weighted at the end with an iron band as thick as one’s finger. When it is to be hurled as a javelin, an assegai has a different character; it is much lighter, and has a longer shaft, the length being frequently as much as seven feet; the blade is quite plain, and the neck altogether slighter.

For hunting purposes there are assegais of a good many different sizes; the necks of these are furnished with either single or double barbs, and the blades are sometimes harpoon-shaped, and sometimes like an ordinary spear-head. They may be divided into two leading groups, one being such as are used for killing gazelles and the smaller mammalia; the other including those adapted to buffaloes, lions, zebras, panthers, and wild game generally.

Of all the various sorts of assegais, perhaps the longest is the crocodile spear, of which the most remarkable feature is the head, which carries four barbs, two close to the blade, and the other two, which are bent upward, just where the neck joins the shaft. There are also two special javelins adapted for killing otters; the blades of these are narrow, but very sharp, and averaging about six inches in length. The water-lizard assegai corresponds with the war assegai in every respect, except that its blade is only half as long. Not unlike this is the weapon used for spearing fish, only it has a point much more rounded; all the upward bent barbs, and those projecting outwards from the sides, exhibit very clever workmanship, and every one of the many kinds seems to answer its purpose well.

In its construction no assegai is more simple than that used in hippopotamus-hunting; the shaft of this is made of soft wood, and from two to three feet long. The elephant assegai is entirely of iron, becoming thicker and broader at its lower end, and covered in the middle with a piece of leather. There is a very rude sort of assegai which is often buried in pits, point uppermost, and succeeds occasionally very well as a stratagem for trapping water-antelopes.

Before concluding my summary of thrusting weapons, I must not omit to mention the Marutse-Mabunda daggers. They are distinguished from those of the Bamangwatos, which are by no means despicable weapons, and from those of the Matabele, which are singularly formidable, by the tastefulness of their workmanship. They are remarkable, too, for their perforated sheaths, which, like the handles, are covered with ebony-like carvings; the blades are of iron, and generally of inferior quality to those of either assegais or hatchets.

The sticks which are employed as missiles are from a yard to a yard and a half long; they are double as thick at one end as they are at the other, the lighter extremity being in the usual way about as thick as one’s finger.

Hatchets are made of different shapes by different tribes; not only are they better than those of the southerly tribes as regards form, lightness, and choice of material, but they possess a decided advantage in being firmly set in their sockets, which the tomahawks of the Bechuanas, Kaffirs, Makalakas, and Matabele seldom or never are. The handles are cut out of strong well-seasoned wood, with ornamental patterns burnt in. The weapon generally is so light, that it seems like a toy in the hands of a man, though it can perform very effectual service in close encounters.

Such knives as are used for particular purposes, like wood-carving, and those that are worn as weapons of defence, are longer in the blade, and altogether more carefully made than the common domestic knives; slightly curved at the end, they are made very strong at the back, and are often found highly ornamented, the handles, into which they are well secured, being usually flat, and occasionally elaborately carved.

The kiris, just as they were elsewhere, were short round sticks, with a knob at one end. Amongst the Marutse they were made either of some hard kind of wood or of rhinoceros horn. Those of wood are the more common. The knobs are about as large as a man’s fist, and are not unfrequently scooped out. Ordinarily, the stick part is about two feet long, and from one inch to two inches thick; it is more often than not highly polished; its extremity is sometimes sharpened, sometimes rounded, and examples are met with from time to time in which the end is finished off by an iron ferule.

No weapon of defence is so important as the shield. The Marutse, however, do not excel in its manufacture, like the tribes farther south; what they use is generally made of black and white cowhide, and is upon the whole very like the shield of the Bechuanas, though larger than that of the Zulus or Masarwas.

As the last in my list of weapons, I may refer to the long sticks that are used for defensive purposes; many of these run from six to eight feet in length, their usual thickness being only about an inch; both ends terminate in a ferule of twisted iron.

At the time of my brief sojourn in the district, the number of guns that had been introduced into the country from the south and west amounted to 500 flint muskets, 1500 ordinary percussion muskets, eighty percussion elephant-guns, 150 rifles, thirty double-barrelled guns of various sorts, ten breech-loaders, and three revolvers. After I left, the great bulk of these were thrown into the Zambesi by the people in revolt, and as they were not replaced, I do not suppose that the entire number of fire-arms in the kingdom would exceed 1100 or 1200 at the most.

In the manufacture of such clothing as they wear, the Marutse tribes fail to exhibit anything like the same skill as in other branches of handicraft. The shape of the various articles of their attire is not bad, but they have not the knack, elsewhere common, of arranging a number of skins so that a garment has the appearance of being formed out of one single fur; nor do they ever think of mending any holes or rents with pieces of skin that correspond in kind or colour with the surrounding parts. The Bechuana sorts his skins with much care, according to their colour, size, or length of hair, and only uses those of one species of animal for the same garment; among the Marutse, on the other hand, we find all kinds of fur patched promiscuously together without any regard to symmetry. Their mantles, too, are not finished off by being ornamented with claws or tails like those of the Bechuanas. In the matter of sewing, the tribes north and south of the river may be said to be about on a par; it is done by means of an awl and the finest animal sinews that can be procured.

Such skins as have to be prepared for making into aprons, sandals, straps, or bags, are thoroughly damped, and kept rolled up for some time; the hair is then scraped off with the hand, or a blunt knife; each skin is then turned face downwards to the ground, where it is fixed firmly with wooden pegs; with the help of a wedge-shaped piece of iron, or a scraper made on purpose and called a “pala,” or, in cases where the hide is very thick, with a sort of brush made of ten or twenty nails some five or six inches long, every particle of flesh or sinew is cleared away, after which some oily substance is rubbed thoroughly in upon both sides. The process is finally completed by the men, who, in time to a tune, apply the friction of their hands till the skin is quite dry and supple.

The handkerchiefs and sheets that I have mentioned must rank amongst the best specimens of the industrial skill of the country; without being in any degree coarse, the texture is substantial, and dark stripes are often woven with very good effect upon a lighter ground.

For agricultural work there is hardly any other implement except the mattock, which however is a much more efficient tool than is generally met with to the south. The hatchet employed for cutting wood is very similar in shape to the battle-axe; it is made of very good iron, and is sometimes ornamented with raised patterns; the handle is quite straight, and about two feet long. In hollowing out canoes and wooden bowls, and in preparing planks, the people use hatchets of various sizes, nearly all of them made in the same shape as the “pala.” Their hammers are made of iron of superior quality, and are better than any used by the Bechuanas. The chisels, both the hard chisels for working metal, and those for soft materials, are of many different sizes, and are either curved or straight; their nails are both round and square. For boring and drilling they use gimlets very like our own, these as well as their screws being all manufactured by a file. Their tongs and pincers seem of a very primitive character, nevertheless, they answer their purpose sufficiently well; the anvils at which the smiths work are all of the rudest construction.

I observed three different kinds of oars in use, the long, the short, and the hunting-oars. The last are the exclusive property of the king, and in common with some of the others, form part of the tribute. The long oars are over ten feet, the short about six feet long, and are made of stout straight stems; at their paddle ends the short are usually broader than the long, and have their extremities run out to a point instead of being cut straight off; both these kinds are occasionally carved or branded with ornamental designs, although not so often as the hunting-oars. These hunting-oars have a forked end, and are bound together by an iron clamp across them, to keep them from splitting; they are generally about ten feet long; the principal time for using them is during floods, when they are brought out for letshwe and puku chasing.

Tobacco-pipes are of two kinds, the one that is least elaborate being of more common use in the west of the country, the other in the south. The former is not unlike a Turkish pipe, consisting of a straight stem about a yard long, of the thickness of a man’s thumb, occasionally carved, attached to a small clay bowl, that is likewise generally decorated with carved devices. The second form differs from the first solely in having a calabash for a stem, the smaller end of which constitutes the mouthpiece. A native rarely forgets his pipe, even on his shortest journeys, especially if he is travelling with a white man, and carries his tobacco in a little cotton or leather bag that is tied to his mantle or waistbelt. For longer journeys the dacha-pipe is an indispensable companion; the water reservoirs of these exhibit an infinite variety of form. Dacha is composed of the dried leaves of a kind of hemp, which is planted round nearly all the South African huts; when smoked through water it is slightly intoxicating in its effects. The pipes consist of three parts; the bowl, the stem, and the horn containing the water, the broad end of the horn forming the mouthpiece by which the smoke is inhaled. An inclination to cough is induced by the inhalation, and the more violent the tendency the greater the enjoyment.

Although snuff-boxes of home manufacture, as well as those introduced by white men, are found throughout South Africa, I nowhere saw such a variety as amongst the Marutse. The materials utilized for this purpose are almost too diversified to enumerate; ivory, hippopotamus tusks, the bones of animals and birds, stag’s horn, rhinoceros horn, claws, snakes’ skins, leather, wood, reeds, gourd shells, and any fruit husks that were either globular or oval; besides all these, not a few metal boxes were to be met with that were of foreign make, and had been brought into the country by Europeans.

The boxes made of ivory most frequently have small circular patterns burnt in, and they are attached to the mantle or bracelet by a string of beads, a piece of bast, or a strap; they were, as far as I could judge, used exclusively by the upper classes. The most like them were the boxes made of rhinoceros horn. Both kinds have only one small aperture at the top, while those of the Bechuanas have a second opening at the bottom.

Of all the kinds, that which struck me as most simple is made of reeds and the bones of birds; it is the sort commonly used by boys and young girls; but another form, hardly less simple, is that in ordinary use amongst the Makalakas, made of the horns of animals, either wild or domestic, and nearly always more or less carved; undoubtedly, however, the kind which is most frequently to be seen consists merely of fruit-shells, and of which four or five at once are often attached by a strap to the mantle, all of them polished carefully into a shining black, or a dark violet or plum colour. The most elaborate carvings appear to be lavished on the wooden boxes, which are worn by the Mamboë and Manansas, but the poorer classes amongst these often carry their snuff in little cotton or leather bags.

Indispensable as I have said the dacha-pipe is to the native on his longer journeys, and his tobacco-pipe when he leaves home at all, yet no necessity of life is so absolutely requisite to him as his snuff-box, and whether at work or at leisure, at home or abroad, sleeping or waking, he never fails to have it within reach.

Besides snuff-boxes, amulets and cases for charms are continually worn as ornaments, the materials of which they are composed being of the most heterogeneous character, and in addition to the variety already enumerated, comprising teeth, scales, tortoiseshell, husks, seeds, feathers, grass, and tallow.

Amongst metal ornaments, besides rings, bracelets, and anklets, I saw a good many earrings of iron, copper, and brass; gold I never saw. The iron and copper articles were partly produced from the native smelting-furnaces, and partly composed of the wire introduced by Europeans; all the brass things were made of imported metal. Foreign jewellery was rarely worn in its original form, but the material was almost invariably melted down, and reproduced in a design to suit the taste of the country. Nothing in this way is in greater requisition than the anklets, of which the queens and the wives of men of rank wear from two to eight on each leg. The poorer classes have their bracelets and anklets generally made of iron, and do not wear so many of them. It is comparatively rare to see any made of copper. Ordinarily only one or two rings are worn on each foot, but the wives of the koshi and kosanas are not unfrequently to be seen with four. As the king makes a rule of buying all the best and strongest imported wire for himself, the subjects have to be satisfied with the inferior qualities; the result is that all the good jewellery is found near Sesheke and in the Barotse, and amongst the tributary Makalakas and Matongas, and its quality degenerates altogether in the more remote east and north-east countries, where it is seldom anything better than what is produced from the native iron. The little earrings, whether of iron, brass, or copper, hardly differ at all from those of the Bechuanas.

Not a few ornaments are made of bone and ivory; amongst these again bracelets and anklets predominate. All rings in ivory are turned upon a lathe, and made precisely to fit the part on which they are to be worn; their finish is little short of faultless, and even when left plain, without any carvings, they are really elegant examples of workmanship. I obtained a few of them as curiosities, but only with great difficulty. Ivory is also worked up into little oblong cases, bars, and disks, that are fastened to the hair by bast strings passed through the holes with which they are perforated. Hair-pins in great variety are made from bone and hippopotamus ivory, and trinkets of all sizes are cut out of the tips of large horns and the thicker substance of the horns of the gazelle; they are either twisted into the hair, or strung together to form bracelets. The delicate long-toothed combs of the Marutse are a striking illustration of their skill, and amongst the finest specimens of wood-carving in all South Africa.

Slaves make their bracelets and other ornaments, whether for the neck or feet, from the untanned skins of gnus, zebras, and antelopes, with the hair outside; the Masarwas also make headbands from the manes of zebras. Hair of all kinds, and the bristles of many animals, are worked up into tufts, fringes, bosses, balls, and pads, which are fastened to straps and bound round the chin for dancing; many of them are, however, used like the trinkets, for the decoration of the hair. Plumes of two or three handsome feathers are often fastened on the head, especially on such occasions as a visit to the royal residence, the festival dances, or expeditions either for hunting or for war. Amongst the Matabele people these plumes are a remarkably conspicuous feature, and I succeeded in procuring one which was considerably larger than the head of the man who had been accustomed to wear it.

Another art in which the Marutse excel is that of weaving grass, wood-fibre, bast, or straw, into the neatest of bracelets, in a way even superior to the Makalakas, who have the repute of being very adroit in work of this kind. The boys who do the greater part of this weaving are very particular in their choice of material, and will only gather certain kinds of grass at the right season, which, after being dyed most carefully yellow or crimson to suit their taste, they make up with great patience into elaborate designs; it is in this respect that their work is superior to that of the Makalakas, who although they are dexterous enough in manipulating the fibre, are comparatively indifferent to the quality of the substance they are weaving.

Threaded so as to be worn as bracelets, or fastened together in pairs so as to fit the back of the head, claws of birds and of many animals are used as ornaments, and I have known three small tortoise-shells placed in a row along the top of the skull. The little shells brought by the Portuguese, small round tarsus and carpus bones polished black, seeds, and small fruits with hard rinds, are further examples of the almost endless variety of decorations in which the Marutse-Mabundas delight.

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Although several of the ornaments that have been introduced by the traders pass as currency, nothing in this respect can compare with beads, of which different tribes exhibit a preference for certain colours. Hereabouts the violet, the yellow, and the pink were reckoned as of no value at all; those which were most highly appreciated were the light and dark blue, after which rank the vermilion, Indian red, white, black, and green. The whole of these are of the kind of small beads about one-twentieth of an inch in diameter. Amongst the medium-sized beads, about one-fifth of an inch long, those seem to be most sought after which are variegated, or have white spots on a dark ground, but sulphur-coloured and green are likewise in good request. To every tribe alike the shape of the beads is quite a matter of indifference.

No matter how ill a traveller in the Marutse district may be, nor how many bearers he may require, if only he has a good stock of blue beads, he may always be sure of commanding the best attention and of securing the amplest services; his beads will prove an attraction irresistible to sovereign and subject, to man, woman, and child, to freeman and bondsman alike.

It may fairly be claimed for the Marutse that they have decidedly better taste in the use of beads as ornaments than any of the tribes south of the Zambesi. They avoid crowding them on to their lower extremities, like the Bakuenas and Bamangwatos, or huddling them round their necks and arms, like the Makalakas; but they string them, and arrange them with considerable grace on different parts of their body.

Nearly all the tribes bestowed great pains on the arrangement of their hair. Some of them combed it out regularly; others, the Mankoë for instance, whose hair was extra long, kept it powdered in a way that helped to set off their well-formed figures to advantage, and many plaited it into little tufts containing three or four tresses each; but I did not observe that any of them covered it with manganese, like the Bechuanas, or twisted it into a coronetted tier like the Zulus.

A good deal of ingenuity is exhibited in making playthings of clay for the young. Very often these take the shape of kishi dancers in various attitudes, or of hunters, or of animals, particularly those with horns, or of elephants and hippopotamuses. The clay selected for the purpose is dark in colour, and the puppets vary from two to five inches in length. Toys are likewise made of wood, especially by the Mabundas, spoons and sticks ornamented with figures being great favourites with the children.

Mats form another item in the native industry, and are used for different purposes, according to the material of which they are made--it may be of rushes, grass, straw, or reeds. They are always neatly finished off, and frequently have darker bands or borders of some sort woven into the pattern; in colour they are usually a bright yellow, and the ornamental part black or red.

Bolsters are carved of wood, and however primitive they might be in design, I saw many of which the details were very elaborate in execution. The stools in common use are simply short round blocks of wood, about ten or twelve inches high, and five or six inches broad, slightly curved at the top; but some of these were very laboriously carved, and stood upon carefully cut fluted pedestals. Wherever a man of rank goes it is part of his dignity to be followed by an attendant carrying his stool.

My list of the Marutse handicraft would hardly be complete if I omitted to mention the fly-flappers. These are made in two parts, the handle and the whisk; the handles are either wood, reed, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, or buffalo hide; or occasionally they are formed of the horns of a gazelle or a rhinoceros; the whisks are composed of the long hair of the withers or tails of animals, of manes or feathers, no material being more common than the tails of bullocks, gnus, and jackals. The brush is fastened either inside or outside the handle, with bast, grass, horsehair, or sinew; and in most cases the handle is carved, though sometimes it is decorated instead with rings of horsehair or bands of snake-skin.