Die übliche Einteilung der afrikanischen Sprachen unterscheidet Buschmann-, Sudan-, Bantu-, hamitische und semitische Sprachen. Statt Buschmannsprachen sagt man besser Khoisan-Sprachen, um die Zusammengehörigkeit des Hottentottischen mit den Buschmann sprachen zum Ausdruck zu bringen; denn obgleich das Hottentottische hamitische Züge hat und eine Sprache eigenen Charakters ist, sind doch seine nächsten Verwandten die Sprachen der Buschleute. Verwandt sind wahrscheinlich auch die hamitischen und semitischen Sprachen, und man spricht deshalb von einer hamito-semitischen Sprachfamilie. Eine eigenartige Stellung nimmt die unter dem Namen nilotische Sprachen bekannte Gruppe ein. Sie bildet in ihren Lauten, der Wortform, dem grammatischen Aufbau und auch im Wort bestand eine Einheit, die sich von ihrer Umgebung deutlich abhebt Die südliche Gruppe (Bari, Masai, Nandi, Tatoga, etc.) zeigt gewisse von manchen Sprachforschern als hamitisch angesehene Merkmale wie z. B. die Unterscheidung des grammatischen Genus am Pronomen, sie pflegt deshalb als niloto-hamitische der nördlichen niloto-sudanischen (Schilluk, Dinka, Nuer, etc.) gegenübergestellt zu werden. Es ist aber sachlich richtiger, die unleugbar vorhandenen Gemeinsamkeiten zu betonen als die Einheit zu zerreissen und die beiden Gruppen je einer anderen Sprachfamilie zuzuteilen. Dies umsomehr als es zum mindesten zweifelhaft ist, ob die bisherige niloto-hamitische Gruppe wirklich den Hamitensprachen zugerechnet werden darf, und weil der Zusammenhang der niloto-sudanischen Gruppe mit den Sudan-sprachen weniger eng ist als z. B. die Verwandtschaft der west-sudanischen Klassensprachen mit den Bantusprachen.

There are few, if any, African societies which do not believe in witchcraft of one type or another. These types can be classified and their areas of distribution marked out. Thus we have the ‘evil eye’ type, the likundu type, and the kindoki type, and doubtless other variations could be distinguished. But though some notion which we can describe as a belief in witchcraft is found in maybe every African society it is far from playing a uniform part in each. In many communities, including the one from which the information used in this paper was gathered, witchcraft is a function of a wide range of social behaviour, while in others it has little ideological importance. In this paper my conclusions about the social relations of the witchcraft concept are drawn from twenty months experience of the Azande nation of the Nile-Uelle divide, where witchcraft is a ubiquitous notion. Whether what is true of this people is true of many other African communities I cannot say.

In central Nigeria, between 8° 30' and 10° 30' N. lat., lies Nupe-land. Two rivers form its boundaries, the Niger to the south and west, the Kontagora river to the north. Another river marks its central axis: the Kaduna. The boundary to the east is formed by the gradually rising land, which eventually reaches the hills of Gwari country. It is a low, open, fertile country, covering roughly 7,000 sq. m., inhabited by a population who were known from the ancient days, and all over Nigeria, as an industrious and able people. The census of 1931 gives their number as 326,000, but for various reasons one may safely take it to be considerably higher, probably up to half a million.

The State in its essential nature is power. Its character is determined by the force with which it asserts its distinction from neighbouring states, by its dealing with the organic bonds in which the life of the people finds expression, and by its success in absorbing into and developing within its own structure the underlying spirit of those bonds. The origin of the State's consciousness of power lies at the point in the interlacing roots of tribal organization where the tension between associations based on kinship and those based on age brings about a change of balance, and leadership begins to pass to the latter, the age-class becoming a warrior class which outgrows the clan and subjects kinship-groupings to its own leaders. Once this change in leadership has taken place, that is to say, when no longer the spirit of the clan but the spirit of the age-class becomes dominant, then, by reason of the resulting tightening-up of the forces of war and of expansion, it is only a question of time before the age-class associations pass into a system of vassalage, with leaders who emerge from the age-grade system and acquire an authority more or less political in character. With the individualization of the leadership goes the differentiation of function in the State, which is first required in the organization of the army. Henceforward the tasks in the service of the State are no longer dependent on a man's place in the tribal organization, but upon accomplishments which can be learned. To acquire these forms of skill, to become proficient in their use and to obtain the advantages secured by them becomes an absorbing task which is pursued in common and given stability by associations for the purpose. This is the birth of organization. Without such organizations the State cannot take form, for they alone ensure to it the concentration of the primitive forces of the tribe for the accomplishment of the aims of the State. Thus these organized associations become agencies to develop and foster the consciousness of statehood. The tribal community consciousness which still persists in the organic tribal relationships and in their leadership systems is gradually, under the absorptive power of the new state-consciousness, forced back into the realm of mere emotion and habit and finally deprived entirely of its spiritual leadership. So that what is in reality the starting-point of man's spiritual existence, namely, his membership of an organic and tribal order of society, comes to be regarded as something purely natural and as the sphere of the instinctive preservation of the species.

Lord Lugard in, an article which appeared in the Daily Telegraph for July 30th, 1934, indicated some of the directions in which anthropology could assist the administration of primitive peoples. He referred to functional anthropology, but the limits of his article did not allow him to indicate the methods through which such assistance could be sought by the administrator and supplied by the anthropologist.

Any anthropologist working in Africa at the moment is really experimenting with a new technique. Anthropological theory was evolved very largely in Oceania, where the relative isolation of small island communities provided something like ‘typical’ primitive social groups. Most of Rivers's hypotheses were based on Melanesian material, and Malinowski's functional method, the inspiration of most modern field work in all parts of the world, originated on an island off New Guinea with only 8,000 inhabitants. The anthropologist who embarks for Africa has obviously to modify and adapt the guiding principles of field work from the start. He has probably to work in a much larger and more scattered tribal area, and with a people that are increasing in numbers rather than diminishing. He has to exchange his remote island for a territory where the natives are in constant contact with other tribes and races. More important still, he has arrived at a moment of dramatic and unprecedented change in tribal history. Melanesian societies, it is true, are having to adapt themselves slowly to contact with white civilization, but most of the tribes in Africa are facing a social situation which is, in effect, a revolution. In fact, the whole picture of African society has altered more rapidly than the anthropologist's technique.

My investigations into witchcraft among the Nupe were carried out under extremely adverse conditions. In February 1932 Bida, the capital of Nupe Emirate, had seen an outbreak of witchcraft which threw the whole country into a state of gravest unrest. Three women, an alleged witch with her daughter and granddaughter, were stoned to death by the enraged people of Bida when they tried to obtain justice against their accusers. The house of one of the town notables who was involved in the case was set fire to. The town was in turmoil, and the ensuing trial before the European authorities, complicated as it was by political issues and violent party feuds, was carried out under great difficulties. It lasted three months, and ended with two death sentences and two sentences of long-term imprisonment. When I arrived in Nupe country in January 1934, these happenings were still alive in every one's memory.

The Isa people are a sub-tribe of the Edo or Bini tribe, who inhabit a large area to the East of Benin City—their parent town—called ‘Esan’ or Ishan, which is bordered on the East by the River Niger. The language spoken is a dialect of Edo, and their customs are a development of those found in Benin. The people are organized into a large number of independent communities, some of which are true clans (according to the definition given in Notes and Queries on Anthropology), and others which can only be described as ‘Village Groups’. Each of these clans or groups has at its head a hereditary chief called Onogie (pl. Enogie), who traces his descent to the original founder from Benin or elsewhere, who was given the land by the Oba of Benin. The title of Onogie was also given by the Oba to recognize his right to rule over the community which was composed of his descendants and immigrants from other districts.

All over present-day Africa witch-finders seem to appear, as it were from nowhere, flourish for a time, and then disappear. Either it is some individual of unusual personality in his community who announces a magic remedy for human sufferings, and so obtains a following, or else it is a more or less organized band of wonderworkers which crosses the border from some neighbouring territory with all the kudos attached to the foreign and the strange. Among these latter the celebrated Bamucapi, who recently swept from Nyasaland into Northern Rhodesia and later reached Southern Rhodesia and the Congo, are an interesting example. The actual origin of this movement is difficult to discover, but I watched it at its height in the Bemba country of N.E. Rhodesia in the summer of 1934, and I want in this article to describe very shortly the methods of these witch-finders, and to try to account for their success.

Although for reasons of a misguided economy a Native Census was not undertaken in 1931 and consequently complete statistics for the Native population of South Africa are entirely lacking, the available evidence points to a marked increase in the Native urban population. The 1921 census revealed the fact that Native women also were settling in town in much larger numbers than had previously been the case, and all indications point to a much greater increase in this section of the urban population since then. This growing inclination of the Native to settle his wife and children in the urban centre where he earns his livelihood indicates a tendency on his part to divorce himself from his rural bonds and to regard the town as his permanent home and not as the place of his solely temporary employment. The children of these families will, in all likelihood, eventually form a permanent and stable urban population, entirely dissociated from a rural background. Many of them—the potential citizens of a town—have been reared in a slum yard. Such yards represent for many Natives their first, and perhaps only, experience of a home.

Previous contributors to this symposium have described in some detail the problem of culture contact as it appeared to them in their own fields, and the methods they employed in studying it there. I do not propose here to cover similar ground, particularly as I have already published a short statement of the lines along which I have been attempting during the last five years to inquire into the presentday culture of the Kxatla in Bechuanaland Protectorate. My purpose is rather to set down briefly what appear to me as the essential elements to be considered in any field study of modern culture contacts, as reflected, shall we say, in the relations between the European and Native inhabitants of South Africa.

It is natural that the urgent need for systematic study of culture contact should first and most forcibly be felt with regard to areas where the process of ‘civilization’ or modernization is already comparatively far advanced, whether it be in the form of detribalization in urban and industrial districts or of the adaptation of the tribal system among an important and powerful people like the Baganda. In the first place, those areas present the most pressing practical problems and exhibit the most acute symptoms of social, economic, and political strain. In the second place, as a corollary of their accessibility to exotic influences, they are the areas most easily accessible to observers trained and untrained, and their troubles often force themselves on the attention of the civilized world. They have, however, certain disadvantages from the point of view of the student of culture contact, in that, as Miss Mair has shown, the opportunity to study the stages in their development has gone for ever. By careful investigation a useful and reliable, if incomplete, picture can be drawn of the working of the social order just before the torrent of modern civilization broke in upon it, and the comparison between past and present which such a reconstruction makes possible provides us with knowledge which is both necessary for the explanation of existing phenomena and also of the greatest practical value. But just as one cannot tell by looking at the finished product whether a pot has been fashioned from the lump or by the coil method, so, in the absence of proper observation at the time, we cannot reconstruct a picture of the intermediate stages in the creation of the present situation, or ever know the details of the processes whereby native society adjusted itself to some innovations and was dislocated by others.

Dès les premiers temps de l'occupation du Cameroun les autorités françaises entreprirent un vigoureux effort sanitaire et médical. Déjà un important réseau de postes médicaux était établi lorsque la maladie du sommeil se répandant avec une violence inouïe au centre même du pays, il fallut lutter contre ses trop rapides progrès avant de songer à toute autre œuvre médicale, et le Service de Santé du Territoire porta son principal effort à combattre la trypanosomiase.

Dès 1903 Brumpt, suivi quelques années plus tard par Martin, Lebœuf et Roubaud avaient, en Afrique Équatoriale Française, étudié de près la maladie, sa transmission et son traitement; au Cameroun c'est en 1910 que les Allemands entreprirent vraiment la lutte. Il semble, à ceux qui ont vu la trypanosomiase endémique et somme toute bénigne de la Basse Sangha gagner la Haute Sangha sous forme d'épidémie meurtrière, que le commerce du caoutchouc ait été en Afrique équatoriale une des causes les plus certaines de la dispersion de la trypanosomiase humaine.

Dans les pays où elle existait de tout temps les habitants se contaminèrent en beaucoup plus grand nombre en faisant la récolte du latex qui se pratiquait surtout en saison des pluies au moment où les glossines abondent et sont plus agressives. Le portage, le pagayage, surtout la montée des fleuves à la perche tout le long de ces gîtes à tsé-tsé que sont les rives des fleuves équatoriaux ont causé un chiffre innombrable de contaminations. La maladie évoluait sur ces populations jusqu'ici saines avec une violence inconnue chez les tribus depuis longtemps parasitées. Il est probable que la guerre et le portage que nécessitaient les opérations militaires ont aussi beaucoup répandu la trypanosomiase humaine.

Les notes qui suivent résument des observations faites dans les territoires du Soudan occidental, notamment en Haute Volta, au Soudan Français, en Haute Côte d'Ivoire, en Guinée et enfin au Sénégal depuis plusieurs années. Elles portent exclusivement sur la personne et les activités nocives, réelles ou supposées, de certains individus, auxquels on attribue les caractéristiques suivantes. Ce sont des hommes ou des femmes, doués de facultés sumaturelles qui leur permettent de se métamorphoser, de voler dans les airs, de pénétrer dans les profondeurs de la terre, enfin et surtout, de faire périr les autres hommes en dévorant leurs organes internes, de préférence le cœur et le foie. Ces êtres malfaisants sont généralement qualifiés de sorciers dans les langues européennes (witch; Hexe), sans que l'on prenne soin de les distinguer des magiciens dont ils empruntent parfois les procédés. Il conviendrait, selon nous, de les appeler ‘sorciers mangeurs d'hommes’, en raison de l'irrésistible impulsion qui les oblige, suivant les croyances indigènes, à commettre des actes d'une anthropophagie particulière.

Are there elements in indigenous African cultures which might be used as vehicles for alien acculturation? Since cultural contacts in Africa must inevitably increase, thus tending to modify the native political, economic, and social order, can we distinguish features in African society which might well be retained, at least long enough to serve as aids in articulating the two cultures, native and foreign, or ease the transition, to the advantage of both?

Dans l'état présent de nos informations ethnographiques, deux migrations sont à considérer au Mayombe: celle des Basundi, à laquelle aurait succédé à une époque déjà plus rapprochée celle des Bakongo.

Les premiers seraient originaires de la région des Manianga. Leurs légendes non seulement parlent d'un roi Makoko qui aurait regné à Muembe-Tsundi, elles rappellent aussi que Matsundi Nzila, après avoir erré au nord de la Tshiloango, aurait conduit les émigrants Tsundi dans la partie septentrionale du Mayombe belge actuel, où il se serait établi à Nganda-Tsundi. De là certaines fractions du groupe auraient gagné la basse Lubuzi, d'autres plus nombreuses se seraient dirigées vers le sud-est de la région.

Mit dem Terminus hamitisch im sprachwissenschaftlichen Sinne bezeichnet man seit Richard Lepsius eine Reihe afrikanischer Sprachgruppen, die charakteristische Erscheinungen mit dem Semitischen teilen. Bei Lepsius fungiert das grammatische Geschlecht als Hauptkriterium, ob eine afrikanische Sprache hamitisch sei oder nicht, und diese Unterscheidung trifft in der Tat überall dort zu, wo es alle Nomina umfasst und der Begriff ‘Männlich-Weiblich’ über ‘Gross-Klein’ dominiert. Als nichthamitisch erweist sich in diesem Sinne das Masai, wo en-duηani, das Femininum von ol-tuηani, ‘Mann’, nicht das ‘Weib’, sondern den ‘kleinen Mann’ bezeichnet. Dem-gegenüber ist Leo Reinisch, dessen hohe Verdienste in einer anderen Richtung liegen, nie zu einer Erkenntnis des inneren Gegensatzes zwischen dem Hamitischen, dem Nuba und den Nilotensprachen gekommen. Die Basis der modernen Hamitenforschung bildet Carl Meinhofs Werk über Die Sprachen der Hamiten, das erstmalig eine Scheidung der Sprachenwelt des nigritischen Afrikas von den Sprachen der hellen, lockenhaarigen Afrikaner bietet; diesem Prinzip zuliebe wurde allerdings auch das Ful (von Meinhof selbst dem Urbantu nahestehend gedacht) und wegen des grammatischen Geschlechtes auch das Masai in den Kreis der Betrachtung miteinbezogen, wodurch der Rahmen als zu weit gefasst erscheint. Dieser Umstand, noch mehr aber hemmungsloses Etymologisieren von semitistisch-ägyptologischer Seite haben denn auch Carl Brockelmann veranlasst, die Existenz eines hamitischen Sprachstammes überhaupt in Frage zu stellen. Nachdem aber Ernst Zyhlarz in seiner Arbeit über ‘Ursprung und Sprachcharakter des Altägyptischen’ die Schlüsselstellung des Ägyptischen in den Vordergrund gerückt hat, sei es im folgenden versucht, eine gedrängte Darstellung der Hamitenfrage nach dem gegenwärtigen Stande zu geben.

In this survey of vernacular text-books I am confining my attention to the Union of South Africa and the three High Commission Territories of Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland. In this area we have five important literary language forms in use, viz. Xhosa and Zulu (belonging to the Nguni cluster of Bantu), and Southern Sotho, Tšwana, and Northern Sotho (belonging to the Sotho cluster). Reference will be made to two other languages spoken in the northern and eastern Transvaal, Venda and Tonga (commonly written as Thonga, and belonging to the cluster of languages spoken in Portuguese East Africa from Delagoa Bay northwards). I do not intend to deal with the languages spoken in the Mandated Territory of South-west Africa, nor with such intrusions as that of Kalanga into the Bechuanaland Protectorate.

Dans les notes qui vont suivre je me propose d'exposer les règles coutumières relatives au mariage chez les Guissiga, Moundang et Toubouri. Ces trois peuplades indigènes sont avec maintes autres appelées ‘Kirdi’. Ce terme, d'usage courant, n'a cependant aucune valeur raciale: il est employé par les indigènes islamisés, foulbé ou bororo, pour désigner indistinctement tous les païens.

If we are to understand the firm belief in witchcraft we must first investigate the African's conception of ‘medicine’. In many Bantu languages the word for ‘medicine’ is identical with, or similar to, the word for ‘tree’, e.g. Zulu umuthi, Herero omuti, Lamba umuti, mean both ‘tree’ and ‘medicine’ ; in Ila musamo (plural misamo) is ‘medicine’ and isamo is ‘tree’. This points, I imagine, to the fact that most medicines are of vegetal origin.