Identifier: inwildestafricar00macq (find matches)
Title: In wildest Africa : the record of a hunting and exploration trip through Uganda, Victoria Nyanza, the Kilimanjaro region and British East Africa, with an account of an ascent of the snowfields of Mount Kibo, in East Central Africa, and a description of the various native tribes
Year: 1910 (1910s)
Authors: MacQueen, Peter, 1865-1924
Subjects:
Publisher: London : George Ball and sons
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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ances given for our benefit received exactlythe same amount. Count Coudenhove, who conducted the diplomaticpour parlers very delicately and graciously, told memeanwhile that the Wataveta are almost a perfectcommunistic republic in the woods. When all thearrangements were made, twenty young men andsixty women and girls presented themselves to thechief for the dance of Welcome to the returningWarriors. The Taveta dance as we saw it is aweird and interesting sight. A row of armed mendressed in colobus monkey furs, with gleamingspears and plumes of ostrich feathers stand on oneside of the open green. Opposite to them a bevyof the most beautiful girls of the village, arrayedwith gorgeous beads, their bodies glistening withgroundnut oil and Kilimanjaro ochre, are arranged.A big drum sounds from the end of the lines andthe two columns move up together. First the women sing a weird chant and wavetheir bodies back and forth in graceful contours.Then the warriors start a march, each brandishing
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Photogrupli by Teter Dutkewich, copyri^lu, \,<i).i, by L iiUtrwood s; L iidtrwood, N. Y.FOUR BELLES OF THE TAVETA FOREST. In the Taveta Forest 179 his gleaming spear. The young fellow who leadsthe dance throws up his spear and jumps after it tocatch it in mid air, singing as he does so a martialpaean like the ancient Greeks. Thus the two linesmove up together and the men and women join ina sort of waltz movement. Then they retreat totheir former positions; and advance again as before.This is repeated ten or a dozen times before theyget tired and sit down in the shade. After the dances were over we walked throughthe forest to a place, where, in a sunny corner ofthe woods, there was a little mound on which wesaw a human skull. Upon inquiry I found thatthis was the skull of the head of a family. When aman dies among the Wataveta he is buried in hishouse or near the house in a sitting posture. Thegrave is opened when putrefaction stops, and thehead is taken out and put in a nice, quiet

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