It is proposed to describe two specialized aspects of the practice of magicians in the northern part of Sukumaland, Tanganyika Territory, in curing patients who are assumed to be ill because of the malevolence of the spirits of their ancestors. Both the curative powers of these specialists and the diseases they treat are closely connected with the cult of the ancestors, which remains the basic spiritual force in the lives of the majority of the Sukuma people. This cult rests on the belief that the spirits of ancestors may take control of their descendants either partially or completely, and also that to establish contact with the ancestors requires the offices of a magician. It is alleged that these magicians become at times temporary and passive mediums through which their ancestors assist them to diagnose the ills of the people who have paid to consult them; this usually takes the form of self-induced hysteria. Certain other specialized magicians are able to induce hysteria in others as a means of curing them of sickness.

1.1. On the structural level, it is usual to consider and write each element (radical, affix, &c.) as it occurs, both in the form quoted and in all other forms, as an abstraction. On the phonological level, we normally discuss and note down each word in terms of relevant sound units, disregarding structural variations if they happen to be neutralized for the hearer. On the phonetic level, we consider and try to write each sentence as it sounds in the particular utterance under examination. The relationship between the phonological and the phonetic levels is simple and clear, though one should not be misled by this clarity into assuming identity.

East African Bantuists and others farther south have noticed the -e stem cropping up sporadically and unexpectedly in verbal forms and this exposition is an attempt to explain them.

One has realized the dominant importance of ‘state’ in Bantu and seen that, during the development of the languages, time tenses have been formed by inflexion, and in the endeavour to fit these tenses into the framework of the indicative mood one has tended to lose sight of the principles of state. The chaotic diversity of inflexions used to express future or past time in different language groups suggests the comparatively modern development of these tenses.

Anmerkung : Nach einem Aufenthalt von nur zweieinhalb Monaten bei einer Kulturgruppe, wobei eine ethnographische Sammlung angelegt und die Gesamtkultur studiert wurde, jedoch ohne die Beherrschung der Eingeborenensprache, ist es nicht möglich, die soziale Struktui vollständig darzustellen. Es scheint dem Verfasser, daβ die vorliegende Studie einmal dadurch ihre Berechtigung hat, daβ die soziale Struktur der Matakam in ihren Hauptzügen immerhin aufgezeigt werden kann und daβ sich das System durch bemerkenswerte Einfachheit und Klarheit auszeichnet.

Die Gliederung der Studie ist der sozialen Struktur angepaβt. Sie soll nicht allgemein verbindlich sein. Gröβte Klarheit der Systematik wurde erstrebt.

The Luimbi-speaking people occupy a region in the centre of Angola. This area is of a somewhat irregular shape, approximately 200 miles from north to south, between latitudes 10° 30′ and 14° S. and varying from 30 to 100 miles in width roughly between longitudes 17° and 19° E. In general their home thus lies along the Quanza valley from the source of that river to near its confluence with the Luandu river. To the east is the 150-mile stretch of the ‘hungry country’, a sandy but in parts fertile and well-wooded region which is, nevertheless, uninhabited because, by local tradition, it ‘lies under the curse of a king’. This divides the Luimbi from the arrogant, fierce, and once cannibal Chokwe who, however, are tending to infiltrate both south and north.

In the first half of the nineteenth century European knowledge of the course of the Niger was vague. Sir Taubman Goldie summed up the position when he said: ‘In 1819, only those interested in geographical research were familiar with the name of the Niger, or knew that its upper waters, down to Bussa, had been traced fourteen years before by a Scotchman, Mungo Park, the father of African exploration in modern times. It was only in 1831 that the lower waters of the Niger and their path from Bussa to the ocean were discovered by an equally great Englishman, Richard Lander.’ Up to 1831 it was thought that the great river of the Western Sudan, known to flow from west to east, continued across Africa to enter the Nile as a tributary in the region of the Sudd. Alternatively it was popularly supposed to be a tributary of the Congo. To such an extent had this popular idea been accepted that in 1816 the following instructions were issued to Captain Tuckey who, in 1818, led an expedition to explore the River Zaire or Congo. ‘Although the expedition, about to be undertaken for exploring the course of the river Zaire, which flows through the kingdom of Congo . . . was originally grounded on a suggestion of its being identical with the Niger, it is not to be understood, that the attempt to ascertain this point is by any means the exclusive object of the expedition.’

Under the influence of two important developments of the past few years, studies in Nigerian history may be expected in the future to take on a new focus, using for the first time four categories of material which have been either unavailable or neglected in the past. The establishment of the University College Library at Ibadan, with a policy of making as complete as possible its collections of the indigenous publications of the country, and the appointment in 1951, by the Nigerian Government, of a Supervisor of Public Records for the purpose of surveying and preserving the archives of the country, whether official or unofficial, have already brought to light materials which will challenge the historian for many years to come.