STRANGE TRIBAL CUSTOMS

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4011, 4 August 1931, Page 7

STRANGE TRIBAL CUSTOMS

TOPSY-TURVY MORAL CODE The inhabitants of Erehwon had a code of morals at variance with that of European nations. “In that country,” wioto Samuel Butler, “ if a man falls into dl-healht, or catches any dis order, or fails bodily in any way befoia he is seventy years old, he is tried before a jury of his countrymen, and it convicted is held up to public scorn and sentenced more or less severely, as the case mas be. . . . But if a man forges a cheque, or sots his house on tire, or robs with violence from the person, or does any other such things as are criminal in England, he is either taken to a hospital and most carefully tended at the public expense, or if he is in good circumstances he lets it be known to all his friends that he is suffering from a severe tit of immorality, just as we do when we are ill, and they come and visit him with great solicitude, and inquire with interest how it all came about, what symptoms first showed themselves, and so forth—questions which he will answer with unreserve; for bad conduct, though considered no less deplorable than illness with ourselves, and as unquestionably indicating something seriously wrong with the individual who misbehaves, is nevertheless held to be the result of either pre-natal or post-natal misfortune.”

The Erchwomans existed only m .Samuel Butler's imagination, but there is in Africa a tribe known as the ilabbe, whose moral code seems to civilised opinion almost as topsy-turvy as that of tlic Erchwonians. Mr William Seabrook recently visited the Habbe people, and he writers about them in uis entertaining book, ‘ Jungle Ways.’ These African natives live on the sides of steep cliffs, and their villages rise one above the other on the faces of die cliffs. “ The mountains and cliffs of the Habbe,” writes Mr Seabrook, “ can easily be located on any large map by drawing a pencil line straight east from Bandiagara, and another pencil line straight south from Timbuctoo; the Habbe inhabit the territory at the point where the pencil lines cross. Furthermore, if you decide to go there, you can go almost the whole way up from the West Coast by' motor truck, thanks to the heroic road-building mania which tiie French colonials have inherited from Julius Ciesar, who built roads to just as incredible places when Gaul was as savage as Africa. But arriving there you will be, for once, at th> end of the road, and at the end »f the world, the 1 jumping-off place as far as modern vehicles are concerned, for the landscape suddenly drops into space, and becomes perpendicular. You (•an drop a pebble that will fall a mile. And it will drop past thickly-inhabited .owns, clinging to the cliff like nests >f barn swallows. It is a mad landscape, with its cliffs, palisades and gorges, subterranean tunnels, honey combed caves, ropes and endless steep stone staircases, as miraculous as •Jacob's ladder to the sky. But it is not merely the landscape that will make you doubt your wits, and suspect that you have been transported by a violent Fourth-dimensional Einstein trick to another planet. It is that the people who inhabit tin's topsy-turvy land are also topsy-turvy mad in certain fundamental attitudes towards life—that is, if we are sane.”

Anions tlie Habbo theft is punished with death; but a murderer meets with sympathy not only from members of liis own family", but also the members of the family of bis victim. A Habbe youth named Endyali, with whom Mr Seabrook discussed matters, explained in regard to the punishment of death for theft:—“ It has to be that way. All our wealth is open. Even our granaries have only wooden locks; we leave our tools in the fields, our saddles and bridles on the limbs of trees. If people stole from each other life would be impossible. Besides, a man who steals once will steal always. A thief is better out of the way. So when a thief is caught he is taken before the Hogoun (high priest) and hanged the next morning. It’s a very good law. It is only once in a Jong time that anybody" is foolish enough to break it.” “ Well, if you hang men for petty theft, how do you punish a murderer? ” asked Mr Seabrook. “Do you boil him in oil or burn him alive, or cut him up into small pieces? ” “ Oh, that is altogether different,” Endyali said “ A thief is no good, never any good. But any man, the most honest, may" have the misfortune to be carried away by anger and kill another. My father might. Or you and 1 might get into a quarrel and one of us kill the other; yet we are honest men. So when a man has the misfortune to.do murder he is not exactly punished at all lie has to do penance and is purified. Mow? Well, uuo of the older ones who have seen it can tell you about it better than 1 can.”

Mr Seabrook obtained information on this matter from Endyali’s father, Dounairon, who was ill in lied. “ i will tell you what happened in the case of the gardener Yaro, for that was a ease i knew all about,” said Dounairon. “ He killed a man named Kogu Endou, who was a cousin of our family, so that 1 rcmeiHbor.it well. One evening after the summer rains had ended, and during the period when we were all busied with the cisterns and ponds in the rucks from which we irrigate in the later dry season, people came running hero to the house to tell me that Yaro had just come in from the fields, waving his arms, crying, and shouting that he had murdered his neighbour Kogu Endow—it had been a quarrel about

an irrigation channel —and that lie was on liis way to the Hogoun. To understand our customs in such matters you must know that they came to me, not as mayor or chief of Sangha, but simply because Kogu was a man of our family and 1 was the family’s head. My powers concern the material alfairs ol the clan, but the Hogoun, as high priest, is master of all matters which onevrn life and death, the spirit and the soul; so it was naturally to him that Yaro must go. My duty in the matter was only a family one—to go first and condole with the family of Kogu, who had been killed, and then to condole with the family of Yaro, who had killed him. The women of the two families, including Kogu’s mother and Yarn's mother, joined together and bemoaned tho whole night long, consoling each other, bemoaning ivogu and bemoaning Yaro. “ The next day Yaro, the murderer, who had been praying all night with the Hogoun, appeared before tho assemblage of both families, and we cried vith him and condoled and mourned for him and lor Kogu, say-

in" : ‘ Alas, an ill thing has befallen Varo, and an ill thing has belallen Ivugu.’ Ihe mother ut Vaio and the moUier ol Kogu men prepared food lor Varo, and we all embraced him and wept with him, for his misfortune was very great, and bade him a long farewell. Tor Varo must go on a long journey, leaving our mountains, and must remain wandering in exile tor tluee veins; and whenever people might say to him: ‘ Who art thour’ he must weep and reply: ‘Alas, 1 ant that Taro who murdered Kogu in the lie Ids at bangiia. and 1 am also as one dead.’ for dining the three years that Varo was wanin exile we nil snid in Sniighn that Varo was dead. Hut at the end of the three years and on the day when he had committed the murder, our famiiies again reassembled, for on that claj ue knew that unless some other late had overtaken him Yarn would return iToiii the dead to he purified. On the afternoon of that day, toward the evening, the Hogoun sent dvwivuucvs, through Saii'dia announcing that the needful had"heen done and that Varo was re turning Irom the dead. “ This is how he returned, as all men must who have done a murder, lie returned wearing a shroud, a burial garment of fine cloth with blue stripes, boldine with one hand to the tail ot a black bull which was led through the crowd by servants of the llngoun, and holding in his other hand a piece of salt, while the crowd cried ; ‘ Behold it is Varo returning from t.he dead. When Kogu returns also everything will be as it was before.’ Arriving where our two families were assembled. Varo was welcomed and embraced, and he presented the piece ot salt and the shroud to Kogu’s mother. The bull was sacrificed, and the two families feasted together. saying: ‘Kogu must also return, and then everything will be as it was before.’ For Varo it was now all I’,, jrted. 14c was purified; his brothers gav back to him the house and fields which they had tended for him in his absence and people embraced bini ami said: ‘Ah, what yon -have suffered! I<' o , it js a terrible misfortune to have hiihal one’s neighbour, and now ill" misiortnne had been lifted from him by ; uriiication.” . .. Kogu returned in the iorm of a child hern as the result of a temporary union o' Ko<fu’« brother and n girl belongin'' vo V.Ws family. The child was named Kog’i. and when it grew up it would inlie l- ■: Kogu’s property. “Thus the ■ ■ is- wined our there Js forgive. Ms«. and e v ervth.ins is ns it was be fore.” said DminnHon to Mr Seabrook