GRIM DISCOVERY

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 39, 15 February 1930, Page 7

GRIM DISCOVERY

HUT OF HUMAN HEADS NATIVE SECRET SOCIETY APBICA'S EARLY HISTORY The discovery of a hut full of human lieada in a secret hiding-place of the Oviinbuudu tribe in Portuguese West Africa was graphically described to a representative of the "Cape Times" recently by the Rev. T. R. Huxtable, a Seventh Day Adventist missionary, and ia regarded by local anthropologists as of very considerable importance. '"About four miles to the east of our station in Angola," said Sir. Huxtable, "there is a great mountain of towering rocks. I had often wished to explore this mountain, but had never found time to do so until one morning I found myself almost at the foot of it, and decided to climb to the top,, "With a small Kaffir boy I started to push through the tall grass that grows very thickly at the base of the mountain, searching for some means of getting to the top. MYSTERIOUS TRUNK. "Working our way round one of the rocks, we came to a place where a number of them 'had fallen together. Other huge stones had fallen on top, making a cavernous passage leading upward. We entered this passage and began working our way up, sometimes on our hands and knees and sometimes flat on our faces. "Looking around, I was surprised to see, half hiddeu under a pile of loose stones, a small European trunk of the stylo regularly used by the Portuguese of this country. As our nearest neighbour is twelve miles away, I thought that someone must have been robbed and this trunk hidden there. Surely it was my duty to investigate. I pulled the trunk out and opened it. The trunk was empty except for two hard, round objects wrapped in a kind of black, greasy cloth. After unrolling several layers of this cloth, imagine my surprise to 'unroll a horrible, grinning human head. "At the sight of it the Kaffir boy let out a yell of terror-and started at top speed for the outside. I shouted after him and compelled him to come back and accompany me. Now thoroughly aroused, I was .more than ever determined to explore the place. HIDDEN AMPHITHEATRE. "We worked our way on towards the top and in the passage up we encountered two or three more tin boxes, also filled with human heads. "At the top we emerged into a natural amphitheatre formed by towering rocks on the one side and by a thick hedge of tall trees that had been planted along the precipice on the other. This place was divided into two compartments by a high wall of poles set into the ground on end. "In the first compartment there was a curious round hut thatched . entirely to the ground and laced about with bark rope. The hut was entirely unlike any native huts that I had ever seen before. It had only a small stone door in front, about eighteen inches square. "I opened the hut, and with a great deal of difficulty they made an entrance through a perfect maze of sticks that guarded the entrance on the inside. "The hut was full of tin boxes and gourds, all of which contained human heads, some of them curiously decorated with sea shells stuck on where the hair and beard would naturally have grown. The eye sockets had been filled up with some kind of gum or wax, and a sea shell stuck in for eyes. "The second compartment looked as if it might have been used at some time for a prison. Under a rock we found a large number pf old assegais and curiously wrought spears, and irons like crude butchers' cleavers. TRIBE OF HEAD-HUNTERS? "What kind of a place was this? Whose heads were these? Had I stumbled into the headquarters of a village of head hunters? Would I ever escape from this place of death, or would my head, properly adorned with sea shells, be left to occupy a niche in this hut of heads? These were some of the questions that came to my mind as I explored the place. "I knew that cannibalism had existed among these peoples in the recent past, and that not long since one of my fellow missionaries had, at great personal risk, liberated a captive doomed to furnish the "piece de resistance" of a cannibal feast in a neighbouring district. "What should I do? If this was the hiding place of head: hunters or cannibals, then the Government should be notified, and these heads seized as evidence. "I decided to send the boy back to the mission for the doctor and director of the mission to come to me with a number of the older Christian boys of this same tribe. Finding a piece of wood I scratched my message on it with my knife and sent the boy off on the run. "He was only too glad to be released from the place, and to breathe pure air again. After nearly three hours of waiting, the doctor and boys arrived, the boys showing every evidence of great alarm and superstitious fear. NATIVE SECRET SOCIETY. "Fortunately, our boss boy, Fred, was the son of a paramount chief of the district, and he was able to explain. Although too young to be admitted to the secret society of which, this was the meeting place, being only about 35 years of age, he nevertheless knew about it from tradition. "The place was the meeting place of a secret society, consisting only of the chiefs, their counsellors, the medicine men, and the very oldest men of the country," he said. "The heads were the heads of the great chiefs of the country. "When a chief is ill with what is evidently his last illness, the old men of the village take complete charge of him, excluding everyone else from his hut. They pass out the word that the chief is slightly ill with a slight fever or a headache, or some minor disease, but nothing of a serious nature. .This deception is, kept up until the old man actually dies. "They then tie a raw hide cord around his neck and hang him up by this cord to the rafters of his hut, and place a large basket under the body. The news is given out then that the old chief is very ill and likely to die. Each day the oldest man in the village goes into the hut and turns the body around a few times. This is continued until the cord severs the head from the body and the body falls into the basket. The word then is given that the old chief is dead, and that they must proclaim a new chief. "The body is then buried, but the head is properly prepared and placed in this hut, where it is kept, it seems, until proper ceremonial feasts have been held to liberate it. After these feasts it is placed on the outside of the hut in the cave, where we found the first heads. The spirit is then supposed to be at liberty to go and come as it pleases. OBJECTS OF WORSHIP. "These heads are objects of great veneration and worship. Each year a feast is held in their honour, when they are taken out and anointed with palm oil and wrapped in a new cloth. The heads of the more distinguished chiefs are decorated with small sea shells. "In times of drought they expose these heads for hours to the hot sun by placing them on top of the rocks. They then pour cold water over them, and anoint them with oil, at the same time praying to them to send rain upon their afflicted country. In times of too much rain the heads are exposed to the rain, and then carefully dried and put away with appropriate prayers for dry weather. "In the old days before the white man came to govern the country, their feasts were always cannibalistic. The victims were confined in the second apartment of this place and fattened for weeks before the feast. "Among the heads was found a curiouß black parcel with only a piece of skull attached. This contained the bones—all that remained—of a chief who had been killed and eaten by lions. One skull was that of a chimpanzee, or gorilla. It wa» pjattd tiara m the abiding place of ths

spirit of a chief who had been drowned and whose body was never recovered. "That some of these heads are very old is witnessed by the great antiquity pi the place. The old chief whose special duty was to guard the heads became very friendly with me when ha saw that I meant to do them no harm. • He gave me a great deal of information about the customs and practices of the tribe, which I have since verified .from other sources. • AN AGE-OLD PATH. "He showed me the rock over whichthey had to climb to get to the top of the mountain. They had to climb a ladder and pass over a large rock. The bare feet of , the natives during the centuries had worn a path in the solid rock at least 14 inches deep. Many years ago, beyond the memory o£ the oldest men, there was au earthquake that shook the rocks and broke them up, thus opening a new passage to the top. . . "Also evidence of the great antiquity of the place are the holes, many of them several inches deep, that have been worn in the rooks by the women pounding out their mealie meal. As they use only wooden mallets to pound the grain, it is certain that it has taken centuries to have worn these holes in the solid granite. Many of the holes have been abandoned because of the depth, which made it inconvenient to use them longer. Others are still in use. "About a mile from this place is another huge rock, the top of which is almost flat, only gradually sloping, where the wives of the chiefs are buried. The bodies are laid upon this rock and covered with loose stones piled up about the body in such a way as to make a very crude sepulchre. So far as I could learn, there is no religious veneration of the remains of the women." IMPORTANCE OF DISCOVERY. Professor T. T. Barnard, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Cape Town, considers the discovery made by Mr. Huxtable of considerable interest and importance. "The Ovimbundu," he said in an interview, "inhabit the country immediately inland from Benguela and are one of the tribes of which we know very little. "As regards the hoard of he.ids, the custom of secret mountain burial is widespread in Africa, cropping up among the Swazi and many Angola tribes. The custom of decorating the heads of chiefs is more or less confined to the Congo. The, cowrie (kauri) shells used in this instance are highly valued throughout Africa, and form a coinage in the whole Congo basin and further afield in the Uganda and elsewhere."