But Though The Batoka Appear Never To Have Had Much Inclination To
Fight With Men, They Are Decidedly Brave Hunters Of Buffaloes And
Elephants.
They go fearlessly close up to these formidable animals,
and kill them with large spears.
The Banyai, who have long bullied
all Portuguese traders, were amazed at the daring and bravery of the
Batoka in coming at once to close quarters with the elephant; and
Chisaka, a Portuguese rebel, having formerly induced a body of this
tribe to settle with him, ravaged all the Portuguese villas around
Tette. They bear the name of Basimilongwe, and some of our men found
relations among them. Sininyane and Matenga also, two of our party,
were once inveigled into a Portuguese expedition against Mariano, by
the assertion that the Doctor had arrived and had sent for them to
come down to Senna. On finding that they were entrapped to fight,
they left, after seeing an officer with a large number of Tette
slaves killed.
The Batoka had attained somewhat civilized ideas, in planting and
protecting various fruit and oil-seed yielding trees of the country.
No other tribe either plants or abstains from cutting down fruit
trees, but here we saw some which had been planted in regular rows,
and the trunks of which were quite two feet in diameter. The grand
old Mosibe, a tree yielding a bean with a thin red pellicle, said to
be very fattening, had probably seen two hundred summers. Dr. Kirk
found that the Mosibe is peculiar, in being allied to a species met
with only in the West Indies. The Motsikiri, sometimes called
Mafuta, yields a hard fat, and an oil which is exported from
Inhambane. It is said that two ancient Batoka travellers went down
as far as the Loangwa, and finding the Macaa tree (jujube or
zisyphus) in fruit, carried the seed all the way back to the great
Falls, in order to plant them. Two of these trees are still to be
seen there, the only specimens of the kind in that region.
The Batoka had made a near approach to the custom of more refined
nations and had permanent graveyards, either on the sides of hills,
thus rendered sacred, or under large old shady trees; they reverence
the tombs of their ancestors, and plant the largest elephants' tusks,
as monuments at the head of the grave, or entirely enclose it with
the choicest ivory. Some of the other tribes throw the dead body
into the river to be devoured by crocodiles, or, sewing it up in a
mat, place it on the branch of a baobab, or cast it in some lonely
gloomy spot, surrounded by dense tropical vegetation, where it
affords a meal to the foul hyenas; but the Batoka reverently bury
their dead, and regard the spot henceforth as sacred. The ordeal by
the poison of the muave is resorted to by the Batoka, as well as by
the other tribes; but a cock is often made to stand proxy for the
supposed witch. Near the confluence of the Kafue the Mambo, or
chief, with some of his headmen, came to our sleeping-place with a
present; their foreheads were smeared with white flour, and an
unusual seriousness marked their demeanour. Shortly before our
arrival they had been accused of witchcraft; conscious of innocence,
they accepted the ordeal, and undertook to drink the poisoned muave.
For this purpose they made a journey to the sacred hill of
Nchomokela, on which repose the bodies of their ancestors; and, after
a solemn appeal to the unseen spirits to attest the innocence of
their children, they swallowed the muave, vomited, and were therefore
declared not guilty. It is evident that they believe that the soul
has a continued existence; and that the spirits of the departed know
what those they have left behind them are doing, and are pleased or
not according as their deeds are good or evil; this belief is
universal. The owner of a large canoe refused to sell it, because it
belonged to the spirit of his father, who helped him when he killed
the hippopotamus. Another, when the bargain for his canoe was nearly
completed, seeing a large serpent on a branch of the tree overhead,
refused to complete the sale, alleging that this was the spirit of
his father come to protest against it.
Some of the Batoka chiefs must have been men of considerable
enterprise; the land of one, in the western part of this country, was
protected by the Zambesi on the S., and on the N. and E. lay an
impassable reedy marsh, filled with water all the year round, leaving
only his western border open to invasion: he conceived the idea of
digging a broad and deep canal nearly a mile in length, from the
reedy marsh to the Zambesi, and, having actually carried the scheme
into execution, he formed a large island, on which his cattle grazed
in safety, and his corn ripened from year to year secure from all
marauders.
Another chief, who died a number of years ago, believed that he had
discovered a remedy for tsetse-bitten cattle; his son Moyara showed
us a plant, which was new to our botanist, and likewise told us how
the medicine was prepared; the bark of the root, and, what might
please our homoeopathic friends, a dozen of the tsetse are dried, and
ground together into a fine powder. This mixture is administered
internally; and the cattle are fumigated by burning under them the
rest of the plant collected. The treatment must be continued for
weeks, whenever the symptoms of poison appear. This medicine, he
frankly admitted, would not cure all the bitten cattle. "For," said
he, "cattle, and men too, die in spite of medicine; but should a herd
by accident stray into a tsetse district and be bitten, by this
medicine of my father, Kampa-kampa, some of them could be saved,
while, without it, all would inevitably die." He stipulated that we
were not to show the medicine to other people, and if ever we needed
it in this region we must employ him; but if we were far off we might
make it ourselves; and when we saw it cure the cattle think of him,
and send him a present.
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