Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/45

 THE SOUTH ANGOLAN TRIBES. 25 Meantime the Quissamus, a small black race of uncleanly habits, hold them- selves aloof from all the other natives, although still compelled at times to cross the Cuunza in order to find a market for their products amongst the Portuguese settlers. One of the most precious commodities exported by them are blocks of Silt about ten inches long, which are forwarded to the interior and used as currency throughout a great part of the continent. Dealers armed with fetisheft, which serve also as safe-conducts, introduce in return into their villages articles of European manufacture, such as glass beads used as ornaments by the women. The hair, encircled by a coronet of vegetable fibre in the form of a nimbus, is decked with false pearls alternating with narrow strips of bark. They also wear a robe prepared from the bast of the baobab, which ladies of rank cover behind with an antelope skin embellished with pendant shell ornaments jingling at every step. Their approach is thus heralded from a distance by the tinkling noise of the cowries attached to their costume. The Quissamas are altogether a very courteous and ceremonious people. The South Angolan Tribes. South of the LiboUos and Quissamas dwell the Amboellas, a liantu nation bearing the same name as the numerous tribes of like origin settled more to the southeast on the banks of the Ku-Bango and Upper Zambese. The Seli, or Mu- Seli, a coast tribe near Novo-Redondo, were till recently still cannibals, who at their religious ceremonies slaughtered a fetish victim whose head and heart were pre- sented to the king. Farther south the Mu-Ndomb^ savages, first reduced in the year 1847, are a nomad pastoral people of independent but unaggressive character. They are clothed in skins, and smear their bodies with oil or rancid butter blackened with powdered charcoal. Of all the Angolan peoples they alone wear sandals made of ox-hide. The ciihntaa, or huts, of the villages, scarcely high enough for headroom, resemble haycocks, and are of perfectly spherical form. They are furnished with bedsteads, which are mere heaps of clay levelled on top and lubricated with butter. When the young Mu-Ndombe gets married a banana garden is planted, and if there is no prospect of offspring when the fruit ripens, the wife has the right to claim a divorce. As a rule, the Mu-Ndombes eat nothing but game, abstaining from touching their cattle except at the death of a chief, on which "festive occasion " several hundred heads of oxen are sometimes consumed. At these Gargantuan feasts, which last for ten and even fifteen days, the whole animal is devoured — the half raw flesh, the blood, entrails, skin broiled over the fire, everj'- thing except the bones and horns. Between Benguella and Mossamedes the whole coast region is occupied by the Ba-Kwandos and the Ba-Kwiss^s, ethnical groups which are usually regarded as belonging to a primitive race in process of extinction. They are a small race with a yellowish black complexion, prominent cheek-bones, flat nose, pouting lips, projecting jaws, large paunch, and weak extremities. They are shunned as