THE PYGMY RACES OF MEN[47]

It is well known that the nations of antiquity entertained a widespread belief in the existence of a race or races of human beings of exceedingly diminutive stature, who dwelt in some of the remote and unexplored regions of the earth. These were called _Pygmies_, a word said to be derived from πυγμή, which means a fist, and also a measure of length, the distance from the elbow to the knuckles of an ordinary-sized man, or rather more than 13 inches.

In the opening of the third book of the _Iliad_ the Trojan hosts are described as coming on with noise and shouting, “like the cranes which flee from the coming of winter and sudden rain, and fly with clamour towards the streams of ocean, bearing slaughter and fate to the Pygmy men, and in early morn offer cruel battle,” or, as Pope has it,

“So when inclement winters vex the plain, With piercing frosts, or thick descending rain, To warmer seas the cranes embodied fly, With noise and order through the midway sky, To Pygmy nations wounds and death they bring, And all the war descends upon the wing.”

The combats between the pygmies and the cranes are often alluded to by later classical writers, and are not unfrequently depicted upon Greek vases. In one of these in the Hope Collection at Deepdene, in which the figures are represented with great spirit, the pygmies are dwarfish-looking men with large heads, negro features, and close woolly or frizzly hair. They are armed with lances. Notices of a less poetical and apparently more scientific character of the occurrence of races of very small human beings are met with in Aristotle, Herodotus, Ctesias, Pliny, Pomponius Mela, and others. Aristotle places his pygmies in Africa, near the sources of the Nile, while Ctesias describes a race of dwarfs in the interior of India. The account in Herodotus is so circumstantial, and has such an air of truthfulness about it, especially in connection with recent discoveries, that it is worth quoting in full.[48]

“I did hear, indeed, what I will now relate, from certain natives of Cyrêné. Once upon a time, they said, they were on a visit to the oracular shrine of Ammon, when it chanced that, in the course of conversation with Etearchus, the Ammonian king, the talk fell upon the Nile, how that its sources were unknown to all men. Etearchus upon this mentioned that some Nasamonians had once come to his court, and when asked if they could give any information concerning the uninhabited parts of Libya, had told the following tale. (The Nasamonians are a Libyan race who occupy the Syrtes, and a tract of no great size towards the east.) They said there had grown up among them some wild young men, the sons of certain chiefs, who, when they came to man’s estate, indulged in all manner of extravagances, and among other things drew lots for five of their number to go and explore the desert parts of Libya, and try if they could not penetrate further than any had done previously. The young men, therefore, dispatched on this errand by their comrades with a plentiful supply of water and provisions, travelled at first through the inhabited region, passing which they came to the wild beast tract, whence they finally entered upon the desert, which they proceeded to cross in a direction from east to west. After journeying for many days over a wide extent of sand, they came at last to a plain where they observed trees growing; approaching them, and seeing fruit on them, they proceeded to gather it. While they were thus engaged, there came upon them some dwarfish men, under the middle height, who seized them and carried them off. The Nasamonians could not understand a word of their language, nor had they any acquaintance with the language of the Nasamonians. They were led across extensive marshes, and finally came to a town, where all the men were of the height of their conductors, and black-complexioned. A great river flowed by the town, running from west to east, and containing crocodiles.”

It is satisfactory to know that the narrative concludes by saying that these pioneers of African exploration,--forerunners of Bruce and Park, of Barth, Livingstone, Speke, Grant, Schweinfurth, Stanley, and the rest,--“got safe back to their country.”

Extension of knowledge of the natural products of the earth, and a more critical spirit on the part of authors, led to attempts to account for this belief, and the discovery of races of monkeys--of the doings of which, it must be said, more or less fabulous stories were often reported by travellers--generally sufficed the commentators and naturalists of the last century to explain the origin of the stories of the pygmies. To this view the great authority of Buffon was extended.

Still more recently-acquired information as to the actual condition of the human population of the globe has, however, led to a revision of the ideas upon the subject, and to more careful and critical researches into the ancient documents. M. de Quatrefages, the eminent and veteran Professor of Anthropology at the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle of Paris, especially, has carefully examined and collated all the evidence bearing upon the question, and devoted much ingenuity of argument to prove that the two localities in which the ancient authors appear to place their pygmies, the interior of Africa near the sources of the Nile, and the southernmost parts of Asia, and the characters they assign to them, indicate an actual knowledge of the existence of the two groups of small people which still inhabit these regions, the history of which will form the subject of this lecture. The evidence which has convinced M. de Quatrefages, and which, I have no doubt, will suffice for those who take pleasure in discovering an underlying truth in all such legends and myths, or in the more grateful task of rehabilitating the veracity of the fathers of literature and history, will be found collected in a very readable form in a little book published last year in the “Bibliothèque scientifique contemporaine,” called _Les Pygmées_, to which I refer my hearers for fuller information upon the subject of this discourse, and especially for numerous references to the literature of the subject, which, as the book is accessible to all who wish to pursue it further, I need not give here.

It is still, however, to my mind, an open question whether these old stories may not be classed with innumerable others, the offspring of the fertile invention of the human brain, the potency of which as an origin of myths has, I think, sometimes been too much underrated. I shall, therefore, now take leave of them, and confine myself to giving you, as far as the brief space of time at my disposal admits, an account of our actual knowledge of the smallest races of men either existing, or, as far as we know, ever having existed on earth, and which may, therefore, taking the word in its current though not literal sense, be called the “pygmies” of the species.

Among the various characters by which the different races of men are distinguished from one another, size is undoubtedly one of considerable importance. Not but what in each race there is much individual variation, some persons being taller and some shorter; yet these variations are, especially in the purer or less mixed races, restricted within certain limits, and there is a general average, both for men and women, which can be ascertained when a sufficient number of accurate measurements have been recorded. That the prevailing size of a race is a really deeply-seated, inherited characteristic, and depends but little on outward conditions, as abundance of food, climate, etc., is proved by well-known facts. The tallest and the shortest races in Europe are respectively the Norwegians and the Lapps, living in almost the same region. In Africa, also, the diminutive Bushmen and the tallest race of the country, the Kaffirs, are close neighbours. The natives of the Andaman Islands and those of many islands of the equatorial region of the Pacific, in which the conditions are similar, or if anything more favourable to the former, are at opposite ends of the scale of height. Those not accustomed to the difficulties both of making and recording such measurements will scarcely be prepared, however, to learn how meagre, unsatisfactory, and unreliable our knowledge of the stature of most of the races of mankind is at present, although unquestionably it has been considerably increased within recent years. We must, however, make use of such material as we possess, and trust to the future correction of errors when better opportunities occur.

It is convenient to divide men, according to their height, into three groups--tall, medium, and short; in Topinard’s system,[49] the first being those the average height (of the men) of which is above 1·700 metres (5 feet 7 inches), the last those below 1·600 metres (5 feet 3 inches), and the middle division those between the two. In the short division are included certain of the Mongolian or yellow races of Asia, as the Samoyedes, the Ostiaks, the Japanese, the Siamese, and the Annamites; also the Veddahs of Ceylon and certain of the wild hill-tribes of Southern India. These all range between 1·525 and 1·600 metres--say between 5 feet and 5 feet 3 inches.

It is of none of these people that I am going to speak to-day. My pygmies are all on a still smaller scale, the average height of the men being in all cases below 5 feet--in some cases, as we shall see, considerably below.

Besides their diminutive size, I may note at the outset that they all have in a strongly-marked degree the character of the hair distinguished as frizzly--_i.e._ growing in very fine, close curls, and flattened or elliptical in section, and therefore, whatever other structural differences they present, they all belong to the same primary branch of the human species as the African negro and the Melanesian of the Western Pacific.

I will first direct your attention to a group of islands in the Indian Ocean--the Andamans--where we shall find a race in many respects of the greatest possible interest to the anthropologist.

These islands are situated in the Bay of Bengal between the 10th and 14th parallels of north latitude, and near the meridian 93° east of Greenwich, and consist of the Great and Little Andamans. The former is about 140 miles long, and has a breadth nowhere exceeding 20 miles. It is divided by narrow channels into three, called respectively North, Middle, and South Andaman, and there are also various smaller islands belonging to the group. Little Andaman is a detached island lying about 28 miles to the south of the main group, about 27 miles in length and 10 to 18 in breadth.

Although these islands have been inhabited for a very great length of time by people whose state of culture and customs have undergone little or no change, as proved by the examination of the contents of the old kitchen-middens, or refuse heaps, found in many places in them, and although they lie so near the track of civilisation and commerce, the islands and their inhabitants were practically unknown to the world until so recently as the year 1858. It is true that their existence is mentioned by Arabic writers of the ninth century, and again by Marco Polo, and that in 1788 an attempt was made to establish a penal colony upon them by the East India Company, which was abandoned a few years after; but the bad reputation the inhabitants had acquired for ferocious and inhospitable treatment of strangers brought by accident to their shores, caused them to be carefully avoided, and no permanent settlement or relations of anything like a friendly nature, or likely to afford any useful information as to the character of the islands or the inhabitants, were established. It is fair to mention that this hostility to foreigners, which for long was one of the chief characteristics by which the Andamanese were known to the outer world, found much justification in the cruel experiences they suffered from the mal-practices, especially kidnapping for slavery, of the Chinese and Malay traders who visited the islands in search of _bêche de mer_ and edible birds’-nests. It is also to this characteristic that the inhabitants owe so much of their interest to us from a scientific point of view, for we have here the rare case of a population, confined to a very limited space, and isolated for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years from all contact with external influence, their physical characters unmixed by crossing, and their culture, their beliefs, their language, entirely their own.

In 1857, when the Sepoy mutiny called the attention of the Indian Government to the necessity of a habitation for their numerous convict prisoners, the Andaman Islands were again thought of for the purpose. A commission, consisting of Dr. F. J. Mouat, Dr. G. Playfair, and Lieutenant J. A. Heathcote, was sent to the islands to report upon their capabilities for such a purpose; and, acting upon its recommendations, early in the following year the islands were taken possession of in the name of the East India Company by Captain (now General) H. Man, and the British flag hoisted at Port Blair, near the southern end of Great Andaman, which thenceforth became the nucleus of the settlement of invaders, now numbering about 15,000 persons, of whom more than three-fourths are convict prisoners, the rest soldiers, police, and the usual accompaniments of a military station.

The effect of this inroad upon the unsophisticated native population, who, though spread over the whole area of the islands, were far less numerous, may easily be imagined. It is simply deterioration of character, moral and physical decay, and finally extinction. The newly-introduced habits of life, vices, and diseases are spreading at a fearful rate and with deadly effect. In this sad history there are, however, two redeeming features which distinguish our occupation of the Andamans from that of Tasmania, where a similar tragedy was played out during the present century. In the first place, the British governors and residents appear to have used every effort to obtain for the natives the most careful and considerate treatment, and to alleviate as much as possible the evils which they have unintentionally been the means of inflicting upon them. Secondly, most careful records have been preserved of the physical characters, the social customs, the arts, manufactures, traditions, and language of the people while still in their primitive condition. For this most important work--a work which, if not done, would have left a blank in the history of the world which could never have been replaced--we are indebted almost entirely to the scientific enthusiasm of one individual, Mr. Edward Horace Man, who most fortunately happened to be in a position (as assistant superintendent of the islands, and specially in charge of the natives) which enabled him to obtain the required information with facilities which probably no one else could have had, and whose observations “On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,” published by the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, are most valuable, not only for the information they contain, but as correcting the numerous erroneous and misleading statements circulated regarding these people by previous and less well-informed or less critical authors.

The Arab writer of the ninth century previously alluded to states that “their complexion is frightful, their hair frizzled, their countenance and eyes frightful, their feet very large, and almost a cubit in length, and they go quite naked,” while Marco Polo (about 1285) says that “the people are no better than wild beasts, and I assure you all the men of this island of Angamanain have heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes likewise; in fact, in the face they are just like big mastiff dogs.” These specimens of mediæval anthropology are almost rivalled by the descriptions of the customs and moral character of the same people published as recently as 1862, based chiefly on information obtained from one of the runaway sepoy convicts, and which represent them as among the lowest and most degraded of human beings.

The natives of the Andamans are divided into nine distinct tribes, each inhabiting its own district. Eight of these live upon the Great Andaman Islands, and one upon the hitherto almost unexplored Little Andaman. Although each of these tribes possesses a distinct dialect, these are all traceable to the same source, and are all in the same stage of development. The observations that have been made hitherto relate mostly to the tribe inhabiting the south island, but it does not appear that there is any great variation either in physical characters or manners, customs, and culture among them.

With regard to the important character of size, we have more abundant and more accurate information than of most other races. Mr. Man gives the measurements of forty-eight men and forty-one women, making the average of the former 4 feet 103⁄4 inches, that of the latter 4 feet 71⁄4 inches, a difference therefore of 31⁄2 inches between the sexes. The tallest man was 5 feet 41⁄4 inches, the shortest 4 feet 6 inches. The tallest woman 4 feet 111⁄2 inches, the shortest 4 feet 4 inches. Measurements made upon the living subject are always liable to errors, but it is possible that in so large a series these will compensate each other, and that therefore the averages may be relied upon. My own observations, based upon the measurements of the bones alone of as many as twenty-nine skeletons, give smaller averages, viz. 4 feet 81⁄2 inches for the men, and 4 feet 61⁄2 inches for the women; but these, it must be recollected, are calculated from the length of the femur, upon a ratio which, though usually correct for Europeans, may not hold good in the case of other races. The hair is fine, and very closely curled--woolly, as it is generally called, or rather, frizzly--and elliptical in section, as in the negroes. The colour of the skin is very dark, although not absolutely black. The head is of roundish (brachycephalic) form, the cephalic index of the skull being about 82. The other cranial characters are fully described in the papers referred to below. The teeth are large, but the jaws are only slightly prognathous. The features possess little of the negro type--at all events, little of the most marked and coarser peculiarities of that type. The projecting jaws, the prominent thick lips, the broad and flattened nose of the genuine negro are so softened down in the Andamanese as scarcely to be recognised; and yet in the relative proportions of the limb-bones, especially in the shortness of the humerus compared with the forearm, and in the form of the pelvis, negro affinities are most strongly indicated.[50]

In speaking of the culture of the Andamanese, of course I only refer to their condition before the introduction of European civilisation into the islands. They live in small villages or encampments, in dwellings of simple and rude construction, built only of branches and leaves of trees. They are entirely ignorant of agriculture, and keep no poultry or domestic animals. They make rude pots of clay, sun-dried, or partially baked in the fire, but these are hand-made, as they are ignorant of the use of the potter’s wheel. Their clothing is of the scantiest description, and what little they have serves chiefly for decorative or ornamental purposes, and not for keeping the body warm. They make no use of the skins of animals. They have fairly well-made dug-out canoes and outriggers, but fit only for navigating the numerous creeks and straits between the islands, and not for voyages in the open sea. They are expert swimmers and divers. Though constantly using fire, they are quite ignorant of the art of producing it, and have to expend much care and labour in keeping up a constant supply of burning or smouldering wood. They are ignorant of all metals, but for domestic purposes make great use of shells, especially a species of _Cyrene_ found abundantly on the shores of the islands, also quartz chips and flakes, and bamboo knives. They have stone anvils and hammers, and they make good string from vegetable fibres, as well as baskets, fishing nets, sleeping mats, etc. Their principal weapons are the bow and arrow, in the use of which they are very skilful. They have harpoons for killing turtle and fish, but no kind of shield or breastplate for defence when fighting. The natural fertility of the island supplies them with abundance and variety of food all the year round. This consists of pigs (_Sus andamanensis_), which are numerous on the islands, paradoxures, dugongs, and occasionally porpoises, iguanas, turtles, turtles’ eggs, many kinds of fish, prawns, mollusks, larvæ of large wood-boring and burrowing beetles, honey, and numerous roots (as yams), fruits, and seeds. The food, the purveying of which affords occupation and amusement for the greater part of the male population, is invariably cooked before eating, and generally taken when extremely hot. They were ignorant of all stimulants or intoxicating drinks--in fact, water was their only beverage; and tobacco, or any substitute for it, was quite unknown till introduced by Europeans.

As with all other human beings existing at present in the world, however low in the scale of civilisation, the social life of the Andamanese is enveloped in a complex maze of unwritten law or custom, the intricacies of which are most difficult for any stranger to unravel. The relations they may or may not marry, the food they are obliged or forbidden to partake of at particular epochs of life or seasons of the year, the words and names they may or may not pronounce,--all these, as well as their traditions, superstitions, and beliefs, their occupations, games, and amusements, of which they seem to have had no lack, would take far too long to describe here; but, before leaving these interesting people, I may quote an observation of Mr. Man’s, which, unless he has seen them with too _couleur-de-rose_ eyesight, throws a very favourable light upon the primitive, unsophisticated life of these poor little savages, now so ruthlessly broken into and destroyed by the exigencies of our ever-extending empire.

“It has been asserted,” Mr. Man says, “that the ‘communal marriage’ system prevails among them, and that ‘marriage is nothing more than taking a female slave’; but, so far from the contract being regarded as a merely temporary arrangement, to be set aside at the will of either party, no incompatibility of temper or other cause is allowed to dissolve the union; and while bigamy, polygamy, polyandry, and divorce are unknown, conjugal fidelity till death is not the exception but the rule, and matrimonial differences, which, however, occur but rarely, are easily settled with or without the intervention of friends.” In fact, Mr. Man goes on to say, “One of the most striking features of their social relations is the marked equality and affection which subsists between husband and wife,” and “the consideration and respect with which women are treated might with advantage be emulated by certain classes in our own land.”

It should also be mentioned that cannibalism and infanticide, two such common incidents of savage life, were never practised by them.

We must now pass to the important scientific question, Who are the natives of the Andaman Islands, and where, among the other races of the human species, shall we look for their nearest relations?

It is due mainly to the assiduous researches into all the documentary evidence relating to the inhabitants of Southern Asia and the Indian Archipelago, conducted through many years by M. de Quatrefages, in some cases with the assistance of his colleague, M. Hamy, that the facts I am about to put before you have been prominently brought to light, and their significance demonstrated.

It is well known that the greater part of the large island of New Guinea, and of the chain of islands extending eastwards and southwards from it, including the Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides, and New Caledonia, and also the Fijis, are still inhabited mainly by people of dark colour, frizzly hair, and many characteristics allying them to the negroes of Africa. These constitute the race to which the terms Melanesian, negroes, or Oceanic, are commonly applied in this country. They are the “Papouas” of Quatrefages. Their area at one time was more extensive than it is now, and has been greatly encroached upon by the brown, straight-haired Polynesian race with Malay affinities, now inhabiting many of the more important islands of the Pacific, and the mingling of which with the more aboriginal Melanesians in various proportions has been a cause, among others, of the diverse aspect of the population on many of the islands in this extensive region. These Papouas, or Melanesians, however, differ greatly from the Andamanese in many easily-defined characters, which are, especially, their larger stature, their long, narrow, and high skulls, and their coarser and more negro-like features. Although undoubtedly allied, we cannot look to them as the nearest relations of our little Andamanese.

When the Spaniards commenced the colonisation of the Philippines, they met with, in the mountainous region in the interior of the Island of Luzon, besides the prevailing native population, consisting of Tagals of Malay origin, very small people, of black complexion, with the frizzly hair of the African negroes. So struck were they with the resemblance that they called them “Negritos del Monte” (little negroes of the mountain). Their local name was Aigtas, or Inagtas, said to signify “black,” and from which the word Aëta, generally now applied to them, is derived. These people have lately been studied by two French travellers, M. Marche and Dr. Montano; the result of their measurements gives 4 feet 83⁄4 inches as the average height of the men, and 4 feet 61⁄2 inches the average for the women. In many of their moral characteristics they resemble the Andamanese. The Aëtas are faithful to their marriage vows, and have but one wife. The affection of parents for children is very strong, and the latter have for their father and mother much love and respect. The marriage ceremony, according to M. Montano, is very remarkable. The affianced pair climb two flexible trees placed near to each other. One of the elders of the tribe bends them towards each other. When their heads touch, the marriage is legally accomplished. A great _fête_, with much dancing, concludes the ceremony.

It was afterwards found that the same race existed in other parts of the archipelago, Panay, Mindanao, etc., and that they entirely peopled some little islands--among others, Bougas Island, or “Isla de los Negros.”

As the islands of these eastern seas have become better known, further discoveries of the existence of a small Negroid population have been made in Formosa, in the interior of Borneo, Sandalwood Island (Sumba), Xulla, Bourou, Ceram, Flores, Solor, Lomblem, Pantar, Ombay, the eastern peninsula of Celebes, etc. In fact, Sumatra and Java are the only large islands of this great area which contain no traces of them except some doubtful cross-breeds, and some remains of an industry which appears not to have passed beyond the Age of Stone.

The Sunda Islands form the southern limit of the Negrito area; Formosa, the last to the north, where the race has preserved all its characters. But beyond this, as in Loo Choo, and even in the south-east portion of Japan, it reveals its former existence by the traces it has left in the present population. That it has contributed considerably to form the population of New Guinea is unquestionable. In many parts of that great island, small, round-headed tribes live more or less distinct from the larger and longer-headed people who make up the bulk of the population.

But it is not only in the islands that the Negrito race dwell. Traces of them are found also on the mainland of Asia, but everywhere under the same conditions; in scattered tribes, occupying the more inaccessible mountainous regions of countries otherwise mainly inhabited by other races, and generally in a condition more or less of degradation and barbarism, resulting from the oppression with which they have been treated by their invading conquerors; often, moreover, so much mixed that their original characters are scarcely recognisable. The Semangs of the interior of Malacca in the Malay peninsula, the Sakays from Perak, the Moys of Annam, all show traces of Negrito blood. In India proper, especially among the lowest and least civilised tribes, not only of the central and southern districts, but almost to the foot of the Himalayas, in the Punjab, and even to the west side of the Indus, according to Quatrefages, frizzly hair, negro features, and small stature are so common that a strong argument can be based on them for the belief in a Negrito race forming the basis of the whole pre-Aryan, or Dravidian as it is generally called, population of the peninsula. The crossing that has taken place with other races has doubtless greatly altered the physical characters of this people, and the evidences of such alteration manifest themselves in many ways; sometimes the curliness of the hair is lost by the admixture with straight-haired races, while the black complexion and small stature remain; sometimes the stature is increased, but the colour, which seems to be one of the most persistent of characteristics, remains.

The localities in which the Negrito people are found in their greatest purity, either in almost inaccessible islands, as on the Andamans, or elsewhere in the mountainous ranges of the interior only, and their social condition and traditions, wherever they exist,--all point to the fact that they were the earliest inhabitants; and that the Mongolian and Malay races on the east, and the Aryans on the west, which are now so rapidly exterminating and replacing them, are later comers into the land, exactly as, in the greater part of the Pacific Ocean, territory formerly occupied by the aboriginal dark, frizzly-haired Negroid Melanesians has been gradually and slowly invaded by the brown Polynesians, who in their turn, but by a much more rapid process, are being replaced by Europeans.

We now see what constitutes the great interest of the Andamanese natives to the student of the ethnological history of the Eastern world. Their long isolation has made them a remarkably homogeneous race, stamping them all with a common resemblance not seen in the mixed races generally met with in continental areas. For although, as with most savages, marriages within the family (using the term in a very wide sense) are most strictly forbidden, all such alliances have necessarily been confined to natives of the islands. They are the least modified representatives of the people who were, so far as we know, the primitive inhabitants of a large portion of the earth’s surface, but who are now verging on extinction. It is, however, not necessary to suppose that the Andaman Islanders give us the exact characters and features of all the other branches of the race. Differences in detail doubtless existed--differences which are almost always sure to arise whenever races become isolated from each other for long periods of time.

In many cases the characters of the ancient inhabitants of a land have been revealed to us by the preservation of their actual remains. Unfortunately we have as yet no such evidence to tell us of the former condition of man in Southern Asia. We may, however, look upon the Andamanese, the Aëtas, and the Semangs, as living fossils, and by their aid conjecture the condition of the whole population of the land in ancient times. It is possible, also, to follow Quatrefages, and to see in them the origin of the stories of the Oriental pygmies related by Ctesias and by Pliny.

We now pass to the continent of Africa, in the interior of which the pygmies of Homer, Herodotus, and Aristotle have generally been placed. Africa, as is well known, is the home of another great branch of the black, frizzly-haired, or Ethiopian division of the human species, which does, or did till lately, occupy the southern two-thirds of this great continent, the northern third being inhabited by Hamite and Semite branches of the great white or Caucasian primary division of the human species, or by races resulting from the mixture of these with the Negroes. But besides the true Negro there has long been known to exist in the southern part of the continent a curiously modified type, consisting of the Hottentots and the Bushmen--Bosjesmen (men of the woods) of the Dutch colonists--the latter of whom, on account of their small size, come within the scope of the present subject. They lead the lives of the most degraded of savages, dwelling among the rocky and more inaccessible mountains of the interior, making habitations of the natural caves, subsisting entirely by the chase, being most expert in the use of the bow and arrow, and treated as enemies and outcasts by the surrounding and more civilised tribes, whose flocks and herds they show little respect for when other game is not within reach. The physical characters of these people are well known, as many specimens have been brought to Europe alive for the purpose of exhibition. The hair shows the extreme of the frizzly type; being shorter and less abundant than that of the ordinary Negro, it has the appearance of growing in separate tufts, which coil up together into round balls compared to “peppercorns.” The yellow complexion differs from that of the Negro, and, combined with the wide cheek-bones and form of the eyes, so much recalls that of certain of the pure yellow races that some anthropologists are inclined to trace true Mongolian affinities and admixture, although the extreme crispness of the hair makes such a supposition almost impossible. The width of the cheek-bones and the narrowness of the forehead and the chin give a lozenge-shape to the front view of the face. The forehead is prominent and straight; the nose extremely flat and broad, more so than in any other race, and the lips prominent and thick, although the jaws are less prognathous than in the true Negro races. The cranium has many special characters by which it can be easily distinguished from that of any other. It has generally a very feminine, almost infantile, appearance, though the capacity of the cranial cavity is not the smallest, exceeding that of the Andamanese. In general form the cranium is rather oblong than oval, having straight sides, a flat top, and especially a vertical forehead, which rises straight from the root of the nose. It is moderately dolichocephalic or rather mesaticephalic, the average index of ten specimens being 75·4. The height is in all considerably less than the breadth, the average index being 71·1. The glabella and supra-orbital ridge are little developed, except in the oldest males. The malar bones project much forwards, and the space between the orbits is very wide and flat. The nasal bones are extremely small and depressed, and the aperture wide; the average nasal index being 60·8, so they are the most platyrhine of races.

With regard to the stature, we have not yet sufficient materials for giving a reliable average. Quatrefages, following Barrow, gives 4 feet 6 inches for the men, and 4 feet for the women, and speaks of one individual of the latter sex, who was the mother of several children, measuring only 3 feet 9 inches in height, but later observations (still, however, insufficient in number) give a rather larger stature; thus Topinard places the average at 1·404 metres, or 4 feet 71⁄2 inches; and Fritsch, who measured six male Bushmen in South Africa, found their mean height to be 1·444 metres, or nearly 4 feet 9 inches. It is probable that, taking them all together, they differ but little in size from the Andamanese, although in colour, in form of head, in features, and in the proportions of the body, they are widely removed from them.

There is every reason to believe that these Bushmen represent the earliest race of which we have, or are ever likely to have, any knowledge, inhabiting the southern portion of the African continent, but that long before the advent of Europeans upon the scene, they had been invaded from the north by Negro tribes, who, being superior in size, strength, and civilisation, had taken possession of the greater part of their territories, and, mingling freely with the aborigines, had produced the mixed race called Hottentots, who retained the culture and settled pastoral habits of the Negroes, with many of the physical features of the Bushmen. These, in their turn, encroached upon by the pure-bred Bantu Negroes from the north, and by the Dutch and English from the south, are now greatly diminished, and indeed threatened with the same fate that will surely soon befall the scanty remnant of the early inhabitants who still retain their primitive type.

At present the habitat of the Bushman race is confined to certain districts in the south-west of Africa, from the confines of the Cape Colony, as far north as the shores of Lake Ngami. Farther to the north the great equatorial region of Africa is occupied by various Negro tribes, using the term in its broadest sense, but belonging to the divisions which, on account of peculiarities of language, have been grouped together as Bantu. They all present the common physical characteristics typical of the Negro race, only two of which need be specially mentioned here--medium or large stature, and dolichocephalic skull (average cranial index about 73·5).

It is at various scattered places in the midst of these that the only other small people of which I shall have to speak, the veritable pygmies of Homer, Herodotus, and Aristotle, according to Quatrefages, are still to be met with.[51]

The first notice of the occurrence of these in modern times is contained in “The strange adventures of Andrew Battell of Leigh in Essex, sent by the Portugals prisoner to Angola, who lived there and in the adjoining regions near eighteen years” (1589 to 1607), published in _Purchas his Pilgrimes_ (1625), lib. vii. chap. iii. p. 983:--

“To the north-east of _Mani-Kesock_ are a kind of little people, called _Matimbas_; which are no bigger than Boyes of twelve yeares old, but very thicke, and live only upon flesh, which they kill in the woods with their bows and darts. They pay tribute to _Mani-Kesock_, and bring all their Elephants’ teeth and tayles to him. They will not enter into any of the _Maramba’s_ houses, nor will suffer any to come where they dwell. And if by chance any _Maramba_ or people of _Longo_ pass where they dwell, they will forsake that place and go to another. The women carry Bows and Arrows as well as the men. And one of these will walk in the woods alone and kill the Pongos with their poysoned Arrows.”

Battell’s narrative, it should be said, is generally admitted to have an air of veracity about it not always conspicuous in the stories of travellers of his time. In addition to the observations on the human inhabitants, it contains excellent descriptions of animals, as the pongo or gorilla, and the zebra, now well known, but in his day new to Europeans.

Dapper, in a work called _Description de la Basse Ethiopie_, published in Amsterdam in 1686, speaks of a race of dwarfs inhabiting the same region, which he calls _Mimos_ or _Bakke-Bakke_, but nothing further was heard of these people until quite recent times. A German scientific expedition to Loango, the results of which were published in the _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1874, and in Hartmann’s work, _Die Negritier_, obtained, at Chinchoxo, photographs and descriptions of a dwarf tribe called “Baboukos,” whose heads were proportionally large and of roundish form (cephalix index of skull, 78 to 81). One individual, supposed to be about forty years of age, measured 1·365 metres, rather under 4 feet 6 inches.

Dr. Touchard, in a “Notice sur le Gabon,” published in the _Revue Maritime et Coloniale_ for 1861, describes the recent destruction of a population established in the interior of this country, and to which he gives the name of “Akoa.” They seem to have been exterminated by the M’Pongos in their expansion towards the west. Some of them, however, remained as slaves at the time of the visit of Admiral Fleuriot de Langle, who in 1868 photographed one (measuring about 4 feet 6 inches high) and brought home some skulls, which were examined by Hamy, and all proved very small and sub-brachycephalic.

Another tribe, the M’Boulous, inhabiting the coast north of the Gaboon river, have been described by M. Marche as probably the primitive race of the country. They live in little villages, keeping entirely to themselves, though surrounded by the larger negro tribes, M’Pongos and Bakalais, who are encroaching upon them so closely that their numbers are rapidly diminishing. In 1860 they were not more than 3000; in 1879 they were much less numerous. They are of an earthy-brown colour, and rarely exceed 1·600 metres in height (5 feet 3 inches). In the rich collections of skulls made by Mr. R. B. Walker and by M. Du Chaillu, from the coast of this region, are many which are remarkable for their small size and round form. Of many other notices of tribes of negroes of diminutive size, living near the west coast of Equatorial Africa, I need only mention that of Du Chaillu, who gives an interesting account of his visit to an Obongo village in Ashango-land, between the Gaboon and the Congo; although unfortunately, owing to the extreme shyness and suspicion of the inhabitants, he was allowed little opportunity for anthropological observations. He succeeded, however, in measuring one man and six women; the height of the former was 4 feet 6 inches, the average of the latter 4 feet 8 inches.[52]

Farther into the interior, towards the centre of the region contained in the great bend of the Congo or Livingstone River, Stanley heard of a numerous and independent population of dwarfs, called “Watwas,” who, like the Batimbas of Battell, are great hunters of elephants, and use poisoned arrows. One of these he met with at Ikondu was 4 feet 61⁄2 inches high, and of a chocolate brown colour.[53] More recently Dr. Wolff describes, under the name of “Batouas” (perhaps the same as Stanley’s Watwas), a people of lighter colour than other negroes, and never exceeding 1·40 metres (4 feet 7 inches) high, but whose average is not more than 1·30 (4 feet 3 inches), who occupy isolated villages scattered through the territory of the Bahoubas, with whom they never mix.[54]

Penetrating into the heart of Africa from the north-east, in 1870, Dr. Schweinfurth first made us acquainted with a diminutive race of people who have since attained a considerable anthropological notoriety. They seem to go by two names in their own country, _Akka_ and _Tikki-tikki_, the latter reminding us curiously of Dapper’s Bakke-bakke, and the former, more singularly still, having been read by the learned Egyptologist, Mariette, by the side of the figure of a dwarf in one of the monuments of the early Egyptian empire.

It was at the court of Mounza, king of the Monbuttu, that Schweinfurth first met with the Akkas. They appear to live under the protection of that monarch, who had a regiment of them attached to his service, but their real country was farther to the south and west, about 3° N. lat. and 25° E. long. From the accounts the traveller received, they occupy a considerable territory, and are divided into nine distinct tribes, each having its own king or chief. Like all the other pygmy African tribes, they live chiefly by the chase, being great hunters of the elephant, which they attack with bows and arrows.

In exchange for one of his dogs, Schweinfurth obtained from Mounza one of these little men, whom he intended to bring to Europe, but who died on the homeward journey at Berber. Unfortunately all the measurements and observations which were made in the Monbuttu country by Schweinfurth perished in the fire which destroyed so much of the valuable material he had collected. His descriptions of their physical characters are therefore chiefly recollections. Other travellers--Long, Marno, and Vossion--though not penetrating as far as the Akka country, have given observations upon individuals of the race they have met with in their travels. The Italian Miani, following the footsteps of Schweinfurth into the Monbuttu country, also obtained by barter two Akka boys, with the view of bringing them to Europe. He himself fell a victim to the fatigues of the journey and climate, but left his collections, including the young Akkas, to the Italian Geographical Society. Probably no two individuals of a savage race have been so much honoured by the attentions of the scientific world. First at Cairo, and afterwards in Italy, Tebo (or Thibaut) and Chairallah, as they were named, were described, measured, and photographed, and have been the subjects of a library of memoirs, their biographers including the names of Owen, Panceri, Cornalia, Mantegazza, Giglioli, Zannetti, Broca, Hamy, and de Quatrefages. On their arrival in Italy, they were presented to the king and queen, introduced into the most fashionable society, and finally settled down as members of the household of Count Miniscalchi Erizzo, at Verona, where they received a European education, and performed the duties of pages.

In reply to an inquiry addressed to my friend, Dr. Giglioli, of Florence, I hear that Thibaut died of consumption on 28th January 1883, being then about twenty-two years of age, and was buried in the cemetery at Verona. Unfortunately no scientific examination of the body was allowed, but whether Chairallah still lives or not I have not been able to learn. As Giglioli has not heard of his death, he presumes that he is still living in Count Miniscalchi’s palace.

One other specimen of this race has been the subject of careful observation by European anthropologists--a girl named Saida, brought home by Romolo Gessi (Gordon’s lieutenant), and who is still, or was lately, living at Trieste as servant to M. de Gessi.

The various scattered observations hitherto made are obviously insufficient to deduce a mean height for the race, but the nearest estimate that Quatrefages could obtain is about 4 feet 7 inches for the men, and 4 feet 3 inches for the women, decidedly inferior, therefore, to the Andamanese. With regard to their other characters, their hair is of the most frizzly kind, their complexion lighter than that of most negroes, but the prognathism, width of nose, and eversion of lips characteristic of the Ethiopian branch of the human family are carried to an extreme degree, especially if Schweinfurth’s sketches can be trusted. The only essential point of difference from the ordinary negro, except the size, is the tendency to shortening and breadth of the skull, although it by no means assumes the “almost spherical” shape attributed to it by Schweinfurth.

Some further information about the Akkas will be found in the work, just published, of the intrepid and accomplished traveller, in whose welfare we are now so much interested, Dr. Emin Pasha, Gordon’s last surviving officer in the Soudan, who, in the course of his explorations, spent some little time lately in the country of the Monbuttu. Here he not only met with living Akkas, one of whom he apparently still retains as a domestic in his service, and of whose dimensions he has sent me a most detailed account, but he also, by watching the spots where two of them had been interred, succeeded in obtaining their skeletons, which, with numerous other objects of great scientific interest, safely arrived at the British Museum in September of last year. I need hardly say that actual bones, clean, imperishable, easy to be measured and compared, not once only, but any number of times, furnish the most acceptable evidence that an anthropologist can possess of many of the most important physical characters of a race. There we have facts which can always be appealed to in support of statements and inferences based on them. Height, proportions of limbs, form of head, characters of the face even, are all more rigorously determined from the bones than they can be on the living person. Therefore, the value of these remains, imperfect as they unfortunately are, and of course insufficient in number for the purpose of establishing average characters, is very great indeed.

As I have entered fully into the question of their peculiarities elsewhere,[55] I can only give now a few of the most important and most generally to be understood results of their examination. The first point of interest is their size. The two skeletons are both those of full-grown people, one a man, the other a woman. There is no reason to suppose that they were specially selected as exceptionally small; they were clearly the only ones which Emin had an opportunity of procuring; yet they fully bear out, more than bear out, all that has been said of the diminutive size of the race. Comparing the dimensions of the bones, one by one, with those of the numerous Andamanese that have passed through my hands, I find both of these Akkas smaller, not than the average, but smaller than the smallest,--smaller also than any Bushman whose skeleton I am acquainted with, or whose dimensions have been published with scientific accuracy. In fact, they are both, for they are nearly of a size, the smallest normal human skeletons which I have seen, or of which I can find any record. I say normal, because they are thoroughly well grown and proportioned, without a trace of the deformity almost always associated with individual dwarfishness in a taller race. One only, that of the female, is sufficiently perfect for articulation. After due allowance for some missing vertebræ, and for the intervertebral spaces, the skeleton measures from the crown of the head to the ground exactly 4 feet, or 1·218 metres. About three-quarters of an inch more for the thickness of the skin of the head and soles of the feet would complete the height when alive. The other (male) skeleton was, judging by the length of the femur, about a quarter of an inch shorter.

The full-grown woman of whom Emin gives detailed dimensions is stated to be only 1·164 metres, or barely 3 feet 10 inches.[56] These heights are all unquestionably less than anything that has been yet obtained based upon such indisputable data. One very interesting and almost unexpected result of a careful examination of these skeletons is that they conform in the relative proportions of the head, trunk, and limb, not to dwarfs, but to full-sized people of other races, and they are therefore strikingly unlike the stumpy, long-bodied, short-limbed, large-headed pygmies so graphically represented fighting with their lances against the cranes on ancient Greek vases.

The other characters of these skeletons are Negroid to an intense degree, and quite accord with what has been stated of their external appearance. The form of the skull, too, has that sub-brachycephaly which has been shown by Hamy to characterise all the small Negro populations of Central Africa. It is quite unlike that of the Andamanese, quite unlike that of the Bushmen. They are obviously Negroes of a special type, to which Hamy has given the appropriate term of _Negrillo_. They seem to have much the same relation to the larger long-headed African Negroes that the small round-headed Negritos of the Indian Ocean have to their larger long-headed Melanesian neighbours.

At all events, the fact now seems clearly demonstrated that at various spots across the great African continent, within a few degrees north and south of the equator, extending from the Atlantic coast to near the shores of the Albert Nyanza (30° E. long.), and perhaps, from some indications which time will not allow me to enter into now (but which will be found in the writings of Hamy and Quatrefages), even farther to the east, south of the Galla land, are still surviving, in scattered districts, communities of these small negroes, all much resembling each other in size, appearance, and habits, and dwelling mostly apart from their larger neighbours, by whom they are everywhere surrounded. Our information about them is still very scanty, and to obtain more would be a worthy object of ambition for the anthropological traveller. In many parts, especially at the west, they are obviously holding their own with difficulty, if not actually disappearing, and there is much about their condition of civilisation, and the situations in which they are found, to induce us to look upon them, as in the case of the Bushmen in the south and the Negritos in the east, as the remains of a population which occupied the land before the incoming of the present dominant races. If the account of the Nasamonians related by Herodotus be accepted as historical, the river they came to, “flowing from west to east,” must have been the Niger, and the northward range of the dwarfish people far more extensive twenty-three centuries ago than it is at the present time.[57]

This view opens a still larger question, and takes us back to the neighbourhood of the south of India as the centre from which the whole of the great Negro race spread, east over the African continent, and west over the islands of the Pacific, and to our little Andamanese fellow-subjects as probably the least modified descendants of the primitive members of the great branch of the human species characterised by their black skins and frizzly hair.