Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/482

 448 Tradit ions of the Baganda and Biishongo.

of which one is identified as this very statue." It is the subject of a plate in Messrs. Torday and Joyce's sumptuous volume. But the fact that Shamba's name is attached to it is slender confirmation of the traditions concerning him.

Mr. Torday dates the reign of Shamba at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The traditions of two of the more important events alleged to have occurred later than that period maybe mentioned. In the reign of Bom Bosh, the third sovereign after Shamba, a woman named Lukanya is said to have introduced the art of making manioc bread and of cooking food. Did the Bushongo, having had the means of producing fire for something like nine centuries, always eat their food raw up to two hundred and fifty years ago.'' As to the manioc, Mr. Torday himself recalls that in 1884 the German explorer Wolf penetrated into the territory of the Bushongo and found that they were not acquainted with manioc, but only with maize. And he is constrained to admit that the use of manioc became general among the Bambala only in 1904.-^

The other tradition relates to a battle which must be dated on Mr. Torday 's chronology in the middle of the eighteenth century. It was fought with the Baluba to open the way to an iron mine. Many were killed on both sides. At last a man named Masakana begged permission of the king to fight the whole army of the Baluba alone. The king, at his request, withdrew his warriors, and Masakana threw himself alone upon the enemy. He killed one with his right hand, another with his left ; he killed a third, then another, and then hundreds more. Those who begged for mercy he seized, and threw backwards over his head to the Bushongo, who contemplated his proceedings, with a very natural admiration, at a safe distance in the rear. At last the Baluba fled in despair. Masakana begged the king to retire with his army ; he himself would defend the frontier alone. But the Baluba were so terrified that they humbly

^■- Tordaj' and Joyce, 17-37. "^ Ibid., 28.