Dr. Baumann, The Great Authority On The Bubi Language Says It Is A
Bantu Stock.
{56} I know nothing of it myself save that it is harsh
in sound.
Their method of counting is usually by fives but they are
notably weak in arithmetical ability, differing in this particular
from the mainlanders, and especially from their Negro neighbours,
who are very good at figures, surpassing the Bantu in this, as
indeed they do in most branches of intellectual activity.
But the most remarkable instance of inferiority the Bubis display is
their ignorance regarding methods of working iron. I do not know
that iron in a native state is found on Fernando Po, but scrap-iron
they have been in touch with for some hundreds of years. The
mainlanders are all cognisant of native methods of working iron,
although many tribes of them now depend entirely on European trade
for their supply of knives, etc., and this difference between them
and the Bubis would seem to indicate that the migration of the
latter to the island must have taken place at a fairly remote
period, a period before the iron-working tribes came down to the
coast. Of course, if you take the Bubi's usual explanation of his
origin, namely that he came out of the crater on the top of Clarence
Peak, this argument falls through; but he has also another legend,
one moreover which is likewise to be found upon the mainland, which
says he was driven from the district north of the Gaboon estuary by
the coming of the M'pongwe to the coast, and as this legend is the
more likely of the two I think we may accept it as true, or nearly
so. But what adds another difficulty to the matter is that the Bubi
is not only unlearned in iron lore, but he was learned in stone, and
up to the time of the youth of many Porto-negroes on Fernando Po, he
was making and using stone implements, and none of the tribes within
the memory of man have done this on the mainland. It is true that
up the Niger and about Benin and Axim you get polished stone celts,
but these are regarded as weird affairs, - thunderbolts - and suitable
only for grinding up and making into medicine; there is no trace in
the traditions of these places, as far as I have been able to find,
of any time at which stone implements were in common use, and
certainly the M'pongwe have not been a very long time on the coast,
for their coming is still remembered in their traditions. The Bubi
stone implements I have seen twice, but on neither occasion could I
secure one, and although I have been long promised specimens from
Fernando Po, I have not yet received them. They are difficult to
procure, because none of the present towns are on really old sites,
the Bubi, like most Bantus, moving pretty frequently, either because
the ground is witched, demonstrated by outbreaks of sickness, or
because another village-full of his fellow creatures, or a horrid
white man plantation-making, has come too close to him.
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