The ruined cities of Mashonaland : being a record of excavation and exploration in 1891 / by J. Theodore Bent ; with a chapter on the orientation and mensuration of the temples by R.M.W. Swan.

Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The ruined cities of Mashonaland : being a record of excavation and exploration in 1891 / by J. Theodore Bent ; with a chapter on the orientation and mensuration of the temples by R.M.W. Swan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    ostrich feathers hi them, whilst their black legs were bare. Ma-Batuen, the chief's mother, received us some- what coldly when we penetrated into her hut; she is the chief widow of old Gasetsive, Batuen's father, a noted warrior in his day. The Sechuana tribes have very funny ideas about death, and never, if possible, let a man die inside his hut; if he does accidentally behave so indiscreetly they pull down the wall at the back to take the corpse out, as it must never go out by the ordinary door, and the hut is usually aban- doned. Gasetsive died in his own house, so the wall had to be pulled down, and it has never been repaired, and is abandoned. Batuen built himself a new palace, with a hut for his chief wife on his right, and a hut for his mother on the left. His father's funeral was a grand affair; all the tribe assembled to lament the loss of their warrior chief, and he was laid to rest in a lead coffin in the midst of his hotla. The superstitious of the tribe did not approve of the coffin, and imagine that the soul may still be there makmg frantic efforts to escape. All the Ba-Ngwatetse are soldiers, and belong to certain regiments or years. When a lot of the youths are initiated together into the tribal mysteries generally the son of a chief is amongst them, and he takes the command of the regiment. In the old ostrich-feather days Kanya was an important trading station, but now there is none of this, and inasmuch as it is off the main road north, it is not a place of much importance from a white man's point of view,