Part 11

The bow and spear are not their only means of obtaining food. They have certain of the arts of the trapper, perhaps original with them, perhaps borrowed from their larger neighbors. They sink pits in the pathways of their game, covering them with light sticks and leaves and sprinkling earth over the whole. They build hut-like structures, and lay nuts or plantains beneath, for the purpose of tempting chimpanzees, baboons, or other apes. A slight movement causes the hut to fall on the incautious animals. Bow traps are placed along the tracks of civets, ichneumons, and rodents, which snap and strangle them. The Pygmies do not hesitate to attack the elephant, spearing it from beneath, and hunting it for its ivory, which they trade with the settled tribes. In short, they are of unsurpassed agility, and are the best of woodsmen and hunters, their skill being taken advantage of by the settled tribes, who trade with them vegetables, tobacco, spears, knives, and arrows for meat, honey, the feathers of birds, the ivory of the elephant, and other forest spoil. So destructive are they of game that they would soon denude the surrounding forest if they stayed long in one spot, so that they are compelled to move frequently. Schweinfurth speaks of them as cruel and fond of tormenting animals.

They serve the settled natives in other ways, acting as scouts and informing them of the coming of strangers while still distant. Every forest road runs through their camps, their villages command every crossway, and no movement can take place in the forest without their knowledge, while they are adept in the art of concealment.

The superior woodcraft, the malicious disposition, and the poisoned arrows and good marksmanship of these forest folks make them formidable enemies, and the settled tribes hold them in dread and are glad to keep on good terms with them. Yet they find them much of a nuisance, since their dwarfish neighbors claim free access to their gardens and plantain fields, where they help themselves to fruit in return for small supplies of meat and furs. In short, they are human parasites on the larger natives, who suffer from their extortions, yet fear to provoke their enmity. Burrows says that they will never steal, but that they pay very inadequately for the plantains they take, leaving a very small package of meat in return for an ample supply of food.

The Pygmies build their camps two or three miles away from the negro villages, living in groups of sixty to eighty families. A large clearing may have eight to twelve of these Pygmy camps around it, with perhaps two thousand inmates. Their dwellings are of the shape of an oval cut lengthwise, and are built in a rude circle, the residence of the chief occupying the centre. The doors are two or three feet high. On every track leading to the camp, at about one hundred yards' distance, is a sentry house large enough to hold two of the little folks, its doorway looking up the track from the camp. While wandering in the forest they build the flimsiest of leaf shelters.

The intelligence of the Pygmies is of a very low order. In the arts which they have been developing for ages they are experts, they are thoroughly familiar with the habits of animals, and as hunters they are unsurpassed. But in intellect they are decidedly lacking. They are destitute of agriculture, possess no animals except a few dogs, and have none of the elements of culture. The Bushmen, for instance, can count only up to two; all beyond that is "many." Yet this low tribe of desert nomads is, as we have said, skilled in the art of drawing, its sketches of men and animals being widely distributed through Cape Colony.

The Pygmies seem greatly lacking in the social sentiments. Burrows, in his "Land of the Pygmies," says that they do not possess even the most ordinary ties of family affection. Such common and natural feelings of affinity as those between mother and son, brother and sister, etc., seemed to be wanting in them.

It is a fact of great interest that the Pygmy race does not seem confined to Africa, for tribes of men resembling the Pygmies in stature and in various other particulars are found in widely removed localities, as in Malacca, the Andaman Islands, and the Philippine Archipelago, while there are indications that they once spread widely over this island region of the earth. Those of the Philippines, known as Negritos or Aetas, have been somewhat closely observed and may be briefly described.

The Negritos are similar in stature to the Pygmies of Africa, the men averaging four feet eight inches high, and they are like them in general appearance. They are darker in complexion, some being as sable as negroes, and all of them darker than the African Pygmies. Their features are coarse and ill-shaped, their nose depressed, lips full, hair black and frizzled. In body, like the Pygmies, they are thin and spindle-legged. The calf of the leg is not developed in any of these dwarfish people. The Negritos possess one marked and significant characteristic,--the separation of the great toe. This, while it has not the full power of movement shown in the apes, is much more separated from the others than in the whites, and can be readily used in grasping. By its aid the Negrito can not only pick up small objects, but can descend the rigging of a ship head downward, holding on like a monkey by his toes. It may be said that among uncivilized and barefoot people the great toe is usually very mobile. The artisans of Bengal can weave, the Chinese boatmen can row, with its aid, and it adds much to facility in climbing.

The Negritos wear little clothing, have no fixed abodes, and pass a wandering life in the forests, living on game, honey, wild fruits, roots of the arum, and other forest food. Their weapons consist of a bamboo lance, a bow of palm wood, and a quiver of poisoned arrows. It is certainly a striking fact that, wherever found, from South Africa to the Far East, the Pygmy tribes possess the art of poisoning their weapons. This art is not practised by the surrounding peoples, and is the strongest evidence of a community of origin. It seems to point back to a remote period when the Pygmy peoples spread far through the tropics of the Eastern hemisphere, though in the region now under consideration they have almost vanished through the assaults of the Malays.

The Negritos are very alert physically, being remarkably fleet of foot, while they can climb like monkeys. They live in groups of about fifty families, shelter being obtained by a simple erection of sloping poles and leaves, though in their more settled locations they built bamboo huts like those of the Malays. They are a short-lived race, seldom living more than forty years. Mentally, they are stupid and apparently incapable of improvement, seeming to stand at the foot of the human scale. Attempts to instruct them have been made, but all proved failures. Efforts to make agriculturists of them have proved similarly futile. They are hereditarily hunters, and hunters they are likely to remain.

The only Eastern locality of which the Pygmy race remained in full possession until recent times is that of the Andaman Islands. This is no longer the case. Great Britain made a penal settlement of these islands after the mutiny in India, and as a consequence the Mincopies, as their native inhabitants are called, have begun to disappear. These islanders are rather taller than the Philippine Negritos, ranging from four and a half to five feet in height, but otherwise there is a somewhat close resemblance between them. Their color is dark brown or black, their hair woolly, and inclined to grow in tufts, like that of the Bushmen. The head, though large in proportion to the body, is really very small and of low cranial capacity. That of the men is only 1244 cubic centimetres, as contrasted with 1554 cubic centimetres of a large number of male Parisians measured by Broca. That of the women differs in the same proportion. Flower says that the Mincopies rank lowest among the human races in this respect; but it must be remembered that the brain usually decreases in size with decrease in stature.

Small as these islanders are, however, their strength is relatively great. They use with ease bows which the strongest English sailors cannot string, though practice may have much to do with this facility. And they can send arrows with a force that seems out of accord with their size. Their agility is remarkable. Travellers speak of the speed of the bullet in describing their running--doubtless with some exaggeration. Their senses are strikingly acute. It is said that they can distinguish fruits by their odor when hidden in the foliage of the jungle, and have wonderful powers of sight and hearing. As in the case of the Aetas, their life is short, though the age of puberty is nearly as great as with us. Fifty is extreme old age with these people, and twenty-two is said to be their average length of life.

Mentally, they are at a low level, the lowest, in the opinion of Owen, among the races of mankind. In counting they have words for only one and two, but can count up to ten by touching the nose with each of the fingers in succession, saying each time, "this one also." Their language is of a primitive type, and in various respects they manifest low intelligence. Yet, as in the case of the Akkas mentioned, they can be taught to the level of other children of twelve or fourteen years. Their mind, in the opinion of Dr. Brander, seems rather to be asleep than incapable. One child was taught to read and write, and to speak English fluently, and gained some knowledge of arithmetic; and this was not an exceptional case.

It does not seem at all remarkable, when we consider the ease with which monkeys can be taught many arts and acts new to them, that those dwarfish men, like other savages, greatly superior as they are in brain power to the apes, should be capable of acquiring the minor elements of education. It is not what they can be taught, but what they have taught themselves, that we must consider in assigning them to their comparative place in intellectual development. In this respect the Mincopies are on a very low plane. They have not even acquired the art of making a fire, though this is almost universal with mankind. All they know is how to keep a fire alive, and in this they are very assiduous. It is probable that they may have obtained fire at first from volcanoes on neighboring islands.

They are lacking, like the Pygmy races in general, in the art of chipping stone, one of the earliest arts acquired by man. Their only means of shaping stone is to put it into the fire until it breaks or splinters, when they can use the sharp splinters for their purposes. They are quite destitute of the art of drawing, and have no means of communicating their thoughts except by speech.

Yet with these deficiencies, they have made some progress in the industrial arts. They make wooden vessels, and can produce pottery which stands the fire and in which they cook most of their food. They make nets of considerable size, which they use to fish with in the narrow streams. They have arrows and harpoons, whose points are fastened to the shaft by a long cord. The fish or land animal struck unwinds this cord in trying to get away, and its speed being checked by the shaft which it drags along, it is easily caught.

The Mincopies possess boats, and these seem to have been early possessions of the Negrito populations, by whose aid they were able to migrate from island to island. Their canoes have nautical qualities which have astonished English sailors. At one time they were probably bold and daring fishermen and navigators, until driven to the forests and mountains by the invasion of the Malays.

As the Pygmies were in all probability the aborigines of Africa, so the Negritos appear to have been the aboriginal people of the Eastern islands, if not of India. Quatrefages, in his work "The Pygmies," finds reason to believe that even at the present day traces of them, pure or mixed, can be found from southeast New Guinea to the Andaman Islands, and from the Sunda Islands to Japan. On the continent their range extends, according to him, "from Annam and the peninsula of Malacca to the western Ghauts, and from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas."

In one part of India the Negrito-like population are called Bander-lokh (literally "man-ape") by the neighboring tribes. The Semangs of Malacca are jet-black in color, with thick lips, flat nose, and protruding abdomen. In regard to the characteristic of prognathism, it is possessed in various degrees, the most pronounced instance being seen in the photograph of one of the Kalangs of Java, a tribe which has recently become extinct. The face of this individual is strikingly ape-like in profile.

Everywhere that these dwarfish people are found, whether in Africa, India, or Malaysia, they present the appearance of being an aboriginal race, now largely annihilated by the incursions of larger and better-armed people, but once widespread and numerous. As to their place of origin, whether in Africa, India, or the island region, it is useless to speculate, as the facts on which an opinion could be based are not known. Wherever found they are in close relation to the black races, the negroes of Africa, the Papuans of Polynesia, and evidences of a considerable degree of mixture of races exist. This is especially the case in Polynesia and India, where the Negritos appear to shade off into the full-sized blacks through an intermediate series of half-breeds.

Yet one fact of ethnological importance needs to be mentioned. The Negritos and Pygmies are everywhere brachycephalic, or short-headed, with the exception of the Bushmen, who are dolichocephalic, or partially so. Negroes and Papuans are strongly dolichocephalic. In this respect the Pygmy peoples agree more closely with the short-headed Mongolian or yellow races than with the long-headed negro or black races, though in general features they come near the latter.

In truth, this race of dwarfs may be the primitive stock from which the Mongolians branched off on the one hand, and the Negroes on the other, since they are in some measure intermediate between the two. Latham says of the Rajmalis mountaineers, "Some say their physiognomy is Mongolian, others that it is African." Quatrefages is strongly of the opinion that the negro is of Indian origin, and reached Africa through migration. He bases his opinion on the negroid characters of existing tribes in India, Persia, and elsewhere in Asia, and on the similar characters of the aboriginal Polynesians. As regards the Pygmies, they probably spread over the whole of this section of the earth at a period of remote antiquity, and very long ago developed the racial differences which appear to exist between separate tribes. Distinctions of this kind can be seen in the East, and a marked one is pointed out by Stanley between the Wambutti and the Akka, as already stated.

Wherever found the Pygmies are hunters, usually making the deep forest their home, and are masters through their agility, cunning, and deadly weapons of the whole world of lower animals. Physically they are probably not far removed from the man-ape, their remote ancestor, for they retain various ape-like characters, as in aspect of face, shape of body, occasional hairiness, diminutive size, shortness of legs, imperfect development of the calf, occasional waddling gait in walking, and the other particulars above pointed out. There are certainly abundant reasons for believing them to be, as we have suggested, the final result of the first great conflict in the evolution of man, that with the lower animals.

This assured mastery once gained, the occasion for further development of this people ceased while they remained in the forest habitat which they had inherited from their ape ancestors. Here the problem of food getting was fully solved and there was nothing to instigate any new step in evolution. The period of conflict ended, a period of rest supervened, and, so far as the Pygmies are concerned, this period still continues. Though later races, their probable descendants, have left the forest and set up new stages of development through new conflicts with adverse conditions, the Pygmies remain in their resting state, and, if left to themselves, might continue in this state for ages in the future as they have done for ages in the past. As the case now stands, however, annihilation threatens some of them, while educative and other influences from without may bring to an end the physical and mental isolation of the others.

In considering the Pygmies as they exist to-day, in fact, it is impossible to say how far their habits and possessions are original with themselves and how far they have been derived from others. There can be no question that they have been influenced by the customs of surrounding peoples of higher culture, and that they have received implements and methods from without. To get down to the pure Pygmy, as an outcome of evolution within himself, we would need to strip off all these adventitious aids, if we could distinguish them from the conditions native to the race, and thus behold him as he was before he fell under the influence of men of higher grade. Were it possible to isolate him in this way, and present his original self, we should have before us an ethnological specimen of the highest interest and importance, as the ultimate resultant of the first great stage in the evolution of man from his ape ancestor.

THE CONFLICT WITH NATURE

It has been a frequently debated question whether man comprises a single species or two or more species of animal descent. If a line be drawn from the Gold Coast in tropical Africa to the steppes of Tartary in central Asia, it will present two markedly distinct races of men at its two extremities. At its southwestern end we find the most long-headed, prognathous, frizzly-haired, dark-skinned race of mankind. At its northeastern end is the most round-headed, orthognathous, straight-haired, and yellow-skinned race. Midway between these appear intermediate peoples, with heads round, oval, or oblong, hair straight or curly, skin fair or dark, faces upright or protruding, men possibly, to judge from their physical character, a result of the amalgamation of these two distinct races.

These differences may be the result of original difference in species or may be due to climatic and other influences of nature. Some writers accept the one view, some the other, and neither is sustained by any great weight of facts. The Pygmy race presents somewhat similar differences. Usually round-headed, these small men are in some instances long-headed, while such marked distinctions appear at times that Stanley classed two neighboring tribes as separate races. Here they present features of the Mongolian, there they are similar to the Negro. This goes to indicate that the distinction between the Negro and the Mongolian began far back in time, but it does not prove that it is the result of original difference in species, or that two distinct forms of ape separately developed into man. While this is quite possible, the theory of a single species has been most widely accepted. The chief writers on the subject think that the differences arose during that undeveloped stage of mankind when resistance to the transforming influences of nature was still weak, and when the structure of the human frame may have yielded readily to agencies which would have little or no effect upon it now.