The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1931, Page 61

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER 61

A Pastoral People.

“The people practically all follow a pastoral and
agricultural life. The men look after the cattle,
repair the huts and palisades, and hunt. As we
stroll around their fields, we find the women busily
hoeing the ground or attending to the crop of
mealies or Kafir corn; interspersed we shall prob-
ably find crops of beans, sweet potatoes, yams,
pumpkins, or sugar-cane, while children run about
and scare the birds away. It is the women who do
most of the agricultural work. Most of them have
iron hoes, bought at a store, and in some districts
the people have learned to use the plow and are
copying the white man in his methods of agri-
culture.

“When they have filled their baskets with grain
or vegetables, the women raise them to their heads
and in single file walk back to the kraal to prepare
the evening meal. As they approach the village,
a group of men and boys, assagais and knobkerries
in hand, come swiftly over the broken, boulder-
strewn hill, singing and calling to one another.
Two of them are staggering under the weight of
a reed-buck they have killed. Zulus love hunting,
for the excitement as well as for the feast it pro-
vides. Their food consists mostly of porridge made
from mealies or Kafir corn and sour milk; but they
are very fond of meat when it is obtainable. There
will be a feast to-night !”

A Feast.

“The preparations are simple. The buck is
skinned and cut. up, and portions go into various
cooking-pots. Meanwhile, the women grind the
grain between two stones — not a hand-mill; they
merely have a rough slab of stone lying on the
ground and pound and roll the corn upon it with
another stone resembling a clumsy rolling-pin.
Other women prepare a supply of Kafir beer, which
is the national drink.

’ “When the feast is ready, the men gather around
the huge steaming cooking-pots. All eat with the
fingers or with wooden spoons, dipping into the
pot to their hearts’ desire. The Zulu makes the
most of such a feast, eating to the point of gluttony.
He is particularly fond of ox-flesh; but his love
for his cattle (or, at least, for his own cattle!)
prevents his killing them except under very excep-
tional circumstances. One writer declares that the
African would rather feast his eyes on his oxen than
feast his stomach upon their flesh. But*cattle that
die for any cause are always eaten.” “©

Women and Children Have Their Turn.

“The men having finished, the women and
children have their turn. The beer goes round and
round; it is surprising how much these people can
drink without appearing to be intoxicated. And
then begin the singing and dancing. The old men
become reminiscent; their tongues are loosed, and
they tell of the great days of Cetchwayo, their last
king. One old veteran, with the ring on his gray
head, boasts of the day when huge forces of armed
Zulu warriors were flung against the British; of
how a section of this army closed in upon the
English base camp and, after a stubborn fight of
assagais and hide-shields against guns, captured it
and slew every man in it. ‘Men were men in those
days; now they have become soft like women and
hunt buck and gazelle and are even content to tear
up the fields with a plow,’ interjects another old
warrior as he takes a pinch of snuff and smokes
his pipe. And as they listen to such stories, the
eyes of the boys grow large at the great deeds of
their grandsires.

“As the sun sinks behind the purple kopje, the
dance grows more furious. Both men and women
are decked with bead-work, their blankets being
discarded. To the music of rude instruments, or
simply to clapping and the singing of a monotonous
chant, the dance continues far into the night, with
every possible demoralizing feature. These drunken
dances cannot be described in such a place as this.”

“Such is the simple life of the kraal. It still
lingers, in spite of the steady northward advance
of civilization and the increasing tendency of the
men to seek work for a period at the mining centers
or in the towns. Many changes are taking place —
and not all of them for the better. European
clothing is becoming generally worn, especially by
the men. Cheap novelties, purchased in Johannes-
burg or Pietermaritzburg or Durban, find their way
to the kraals when the wanderers return; and too
often vices learned from the white man are repro-
duced in places where he has never been. Happy
is the kraal that comes under a different influence
through having, not far away, a Christian mission-
station with schools for the children, a dispensary to
relieve the sick, and a nobler message than that of
the mines and trader.” 3

ee

WHERE a man is ever for himself, the devil in
the end will have all.