The Father Of Moyara
Was A Powerful Chief, But The Son Now Sits Among The Ruins Of The Town,
With Four Or Five Wives And Very Few People.
At his hamlet a number of stakes
are planted in the ground, and I counted fifty-four human skulls
hung on their points.
These were Matebele, who, unable to approach Sebituane
on the island of Loyela, had returned sick and famishing. Moyara's father
took advantage of their reduced condition, and after putting them to death,
mounted their heads in the Batoka fashion. The old man
who perpetrated this deed now lies in the middle of his son's huts,
with a lot of rotten ivory over his grave. One can not help feeling thankful
that the reign of such wretches is over. They inhabited
the whole of this side of the country, and were probably the barrier
to the extension of the Portuguese commerce in this direction. When looking
at these skulls, I remarked to Moyara that many of them were those
of mere boys. He assented readily, and pointed them out as such. I asked
why his father had killed boys. "To show his fierceness," was the answer.
"Is it fierceness to kill boys?" "Yes; they had no business here."
When I told him that this probably would insure his own death if the Matebele
came again, he replied, "When I hear of their coming I shall hide the bones."
He was evidently proud of these trophies of his father's ferocity,
and I was assured by other Batoka that few strangers ever returned
from a visit to this quarter. If a man wished to curry favor
with a Batoka chief, he ascertained when a stranger was about to leave,
and waylaid him at a distance from the town, and when he brought his head
back to the chief, it was mounted as a trophy, the different chiefs
vieing with each other as to which should mount the greatest number of skulls
in his village.
If, as has been asserted, the Portuguese ever had a chain of trading stations
across the country from Caconda to Tete, it must have passed
through these people; but the total ignorance of the Zambesi
flowing from north to south in the centre of the country,
and the want of knowledge of the astonishing falls of Victoria,
which excite the wonder of even the natives, together with
the absence of any tradition of such a chain of stations,
compel me to believe that they existed only on paper. This conviction
is strengthened by the fact that when a late attempt was made
to claim the honor of crossing the continent for the Portuguese,
the only proof advanced was the journey of two black traders
formerly mentioned, adorned with the name of "Portuguese".
If a chain of stations had existed, a few hundred names of the same sort
might easily have been brought forward; and such is the love of barter
among all the central Africans, that, had there existed a market for ivory,
its value would have become known, and even that on the graves of the chiefs
would not have been safe.
When about to leave Moyara on the 25th, he brought a root which,
when pounded and sprinkled over the oxen, is believed to disgust the tsetse,
so that it flies off without sucking the blood. He promised to show me
the plant or tree if I would give him an ox; but, as we were traveling,
and could not afford the time required for the experiment,
so as not to be cheated (as I had too often been by my medical friends),
I deferred the investigation till I returned. It is probably
but an evanescent remedy, and capable of rendering the cattle safe
during one night only. Moyara is now quite a dependent of the Makololo,
and my new party, not being thoroughly drilled, forced him to carry
a tusk for them. When I relieved him, he poured forth a shower of thanks
at being allowed to go back to sleep beneath his skulls.
Next day we came to Namilanga, or "The Well of Joy". It is a small well
dug beneath a very large fig-tree, the shade of which renders the water
delightfully cool. The temperature through the day was 104 Deg. in the shade
and 94 Deg. after sunset, but the air was not at all oppressive.
This well received its name from the fact that, in former times,
marauding parties, in returning with cattle, sat down here and were regaled
with boyaloa, music, and the lullilooing of the women from the adjacent towns.
All the surrounding country was formerly densely peopled,
though now desolate and still. The old head man of the place told us
that his father once went to Bambala, where white traders lived,
when our informant was a child, and returned when he had become
a boy of about ten years. He went again, and returned when it was time
to knock out his son's teeth. As that takes place at the age of puberty,
he must have spent at least five years in each journey. He added
that many who went there never returned, because they liked that country
better than this. They had even forsaken their wives and children;
and children had been so enticed and flattered by the finery bestowed
upon them there, that they had disowned their parents and adopted others.
The place to which they had gone, which they named Bambala,
was probably Dambarari, which was situated close to Zumbo.
This was the first intimation we had of intercourse with the whites.
The Barotse, and all the other tribes in the central valley,
have no such tradition as this, nor have either the one or the other
any account of a trader's visit to them in ancient times.
All the Batoka tribes follow the curious custom of knocking out
the upper front teeth at the age of puberty. This is done by both sexes;
and though the under teeth, being relieved from the attrition of the upper,
grow long and somewhat bent out, and thereby cause the under lip to protrude
in a most unsightly way, no young woman thinks herself accomplished
until she has got rid of the upper incisors.
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