For The Rest, The Wa Taita Are Essentially A
Peace-Loving And Industrious People; And, Indeed,
Before The Arrival Of The British In The Country, They
Hardly Ever Ventured Down From Their Mountain
Fastnesses, Owing To Their Dread Of The Warlike
Masai.
Each man has as many wives as he can
afford to pay for in sheep or cattle; he provides
each spouse with a separate establishment, but
the family huts are clustered together, and as a
rule all live in perfect harmony.
The most
curious custom of the tribe is the filing of the
front teeth into sharp points, which gives the
whole face a most peculiar and rather diabolical
expression. As usual, their ideas of costume
are rather primitive; the men sometimes wear
a scrap of cloth round the loins, while the women
content themselves with the same or with a short
kilt. Both sexes adorn themselves with a great
quantity of copper or iron wire coiled round their
arms and legs, and smear their bodies all over
with grease, the men adding red clay to the
mixture. Many of the women also wear dozens
of rows of beads, while their ears are hung with
pieces of chain and other fantastic ornaments.
The men always carry bows and poisoned arrows,
as well as a seemie (a short, roughly-fashioned
sword) hung on a leathern thong round the waist.
A three-legged stool is also an important part
of their equipment,
and is slung on the
shoulder when on the
march.
The next people
met with on the road
to the Great Lakes
are the Wa Kamba,
who inhabit the
Ukambani province,
and may be seen from
M'toto Andei to the
Athi River. They
are a very large tribe,
but have little cohesion,
being split up,
into many clans under
chiefs who govern in
a patriarchal kind of
way. In appearance
and dress - or the want of it - they are very like
the Wa Taita, and they have the same custom
of filing the front teeth. As a rule, too, they are a
peace-loving people, though when driven to it by
hunger they will commit very cruel and treacherous
acts of wholesale murder. While the railway
was being constructed, a severe famine occurred
in their part of the country, when hundreds
of them died of starvation. During this period
they several times swooped down on isolated
railway maintenance gangs and utterly annihilated
them, in order to obtain possession of the food
which they knew would be stored in the camps.
These attacks were always made by night. Like
most other native races in East Africa, their only
arms are the bow and poisoned arrow, but in
the use of these primitive weapons they are
specially expert. The arrow-head remains in the
flesh when the shaft is withdrawn, and if the
poison is fresh, paralysis and death very quickly
follow, the skin round the wound turning yellow
and mortifying within an hour or two. This
deadly poison is obtained, I believe, by boiling
down a particular root, the arrow-heads being
dipped in the black, pitchy-looking essence which
remains.
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