The Yakö of the Middle Cross River area of Obubra Division in SE. Nigeria live in five compact villages a few miles apart, each of which was formerly autonomous in its political as well as its ritual organization. They have a common tradition that their forebears all came from Okuni, a settlement some 50 miles away up the Cross River, from which they came overland, for they were not river people, in several parties and over some years. Among the Yakö settlements distinction is made between those in which the original migrants settled—that is, Idomi, where stopped a section of the main group which founded Umor, Umor itself, and the separately settled community of Nko—and the remaining villages of Ekuri and Nkpani which are held to have been founded a generation or two later by local migrations, following dissensions, from Umor.

We have, with the deepest regret, to record the death on 10 October 1949 of Professor Ida Ward after a short but severe illness. Most members of the Institute have long been aware of the great services she has rendered to it in the field of linguistic studies. Not only has she made an outstanding academic contribution, of which Professor Diedrich Westermann writes below; she also worked tirelessly for the fuller appreciation in every quarter of the importance of linguistic studies and the development of vernacular literature for research, education, and social development in Africa. Her lively, shrewd, patient and, above all, kindly personality attracted the interest and co-operation of all concerned, either scientifically or practically, with African languages. Scholars, administrators, and teachers of every country warmed to the quiet determination, measured enthusiasm, and great fairmindedness with which she would present or discuss new developments and opportunities. As Chairman of the Institute's Linguistic Advisory Committee and a member, since 1947, of its Executive Council, Professor Ida Ward gave us invaluable service. All who met and worked with her in committees and conferences in Europe and America, and especially in Africa itself, know well that she embodied in a quite exceptional way our aspirations and scientific standards in the linguistic field, and was for us an ambassador of great value. Her trim, frail presence radiated goodness and common sense as well as high originality of mind. Although she had retired a year previously from her University Chair she was contributing as actively as before to the Institute's work. In his address at a memorial service held in London on 15 October, Professor Turner, Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies, with which she had been so long associated, expressed feelings which we in the Institute fully share, recalling Professor Ward as a great and good woman. Her name is already established in the roll of great women who have done much for Africa.

It is useful to review existing ethnographic writings from time to time in the light of advancing theory. The data considered here are contained in an impressive body of first-rate material collected in accordance with the best descriptive methods on which French ethnographers rely. This paper is in no sense a summary of the data collected by the various Missions Griaule; it is an ‘analytical commentary’ dealing only with the social system of the Dogon of Sanga that a structural analysis of the material reveals. Its purpose is to direct attention to some problems of structure for which further investigation is needed. It can most usefully be read side by side with the principal works on this people so far published.

The basis of the funeral friendship

Among the Ambo there exists a joking relationship based on the interrelations of clan objects, but to call it simply a joking relationship would hardly be appropriate, since the joking relationship is only accessory. The institution is first and foremost a real and close friendship which has for its aim assistance in the funeral of the friend, and this aim is never lost sight of, but is always alluded to even in joking. This social institution of the Ambo people may therefore aptly be termed ‘funeral friendship’ (bunungwe)

Professor Ida C. Ward, until 1948 head of the African Department of the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London, was equally eminent as a teacher and researcher; she had lectured in many European universities and her distinguished gifts were known and appreciated in Europe and America. It is largely through her work and her personality that the African Department of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, has become a world-famous institution in the field of African linguistics. Her name will forever be connected with the study of African languages, and in particular of African tone languages. It was the function of tone in West African languages on which her work centred, and her achievements in this difficult and delicate field have initiated a new phase in our knowledge of African speech. Hers was the unfailing ear, the keen observation of sound-production and the art of reproducing foreign sounds and new sound-sequences, which make the true phonetician. What gave her work such fullness of life and actuality was its intimate linking with practical language study. It may be said that many of her important discoveries were the immediate outcome of her teaching. Teaching, practising, and researching were to her an indissoluble unit. ‘The practical depends on the scientific, for one can never tell what practical problems—or solutions of problems—will be thrown up by meticulous scientific analysis’, and ‘on the other hand, the practical application of scientific research keeps the researcher within bounds, as it were, and will not allow him too far into the realms of conjecture and theorising’. She was an ideal and enthusiastic teacher, never tiring, never losing patience. A group consisting of herself, an African assistant, and a small cluster of students was her ideal; here all were partners in the same aim, and all took an active part in the subject discussed.

Most of the problems of Nyanja orthography are simple and capable of a straightforward solution. What is needed is a revision and clarification of the existing rules and usages rather than any basic reform. The need for such revision has long been felt in Nyasaland as well as in Northern Rhodesia.

Cette étude des pêcheurs itinérants sorkawa du Moyen-Niger fait partie d'un travail général sur les pêcheurs du Niger. C'est le résultat d'enquêtes menées à deux reprises sur le terrain, en 1946-1947 au cours de la descente du Niger en pirogue de sa source à la mer, et en 1948-1949 au cours de séjours parmi les pêcheurs sorkawa en campagne de pêche au Niger français.

Il est difficile de séparer les Sorkawa du reste de la caste des pécheurs sorko de la population songhay, desquels ils sont issus et dont ils ont conservé un grand nombre de traditions. Mais en fait, la situation géographique, historique et ethnique des Sorkawa, leurs manières de vivre et de penser en font un groupe très à part.

Les populations du cercle de Natitingou sont sans doute, au Dahomey, celles qui ont été le moins profondément affectées par l'influence européenne. Au moins l'apparance extérieure de leur vie a-t-elle fort peu changé. On les presente comme un cas extrême de résistance aux influences étrangères, et c'est en partie exact. Leurs contacts avec les cultures africaines voisines ont été assez réduits dans la période historique récente, et il n'en est pas autrement, jusqu'ici, avec la culture européenne. Mais alors que nul peuple voisin n'avait réussi à s'installer chez eux pour tenter de leur imposer une administration centralisée, les Européens l'ont fait. Ils demeurent, en tant que groupes, réticents devant ces formes nouvelles. Mais les individus ont vite recouru à l'administration et à la justice nouvelles lorsque leurs solutions semblaient permettre, dans tels cas particuliers, de faire échec à l'ordre ancien qui allait à l'encontre de leurs intérêts. Ainsi se sont produitès les premières failles dans la structure traditionnelle. Elles se sont étendues de proche en proche et l'action des conceptions et des solutions nouvelles, par leur seule présence virtuelle, a déjà été grande. Dans le domaine du mariage, en particulier, on peut en constater les effets étendus. C'est l'étude du problème du consentement, familial et individuel, au mariage, qui sera abordée ici dans un de ces groupes, habitant les environs de Natitingou. On verra que l'équilibre très délicat des institutions anciennes pouvait être aisément bouleversé, et l'a été déjà.

Les formes mêmes du mariage et les règles de l'attribution des enfants seront seulement décrites dans la mesure où leur connaissance est nécessaire à notre propos.

As the title of this paper suggests, the movement described in it is not the first of its kind to have been recorded in Central Africa. About fourteen years ago Dr. Audrey I. Richards reported on a witchfinding movement associated with the Nyanja word mcape. (Local variations include mcapi, mucapi, &c.—referring to the medicine—and the Bemba called the medicine-vendors the Bamucapi.)

This paper presents a preliminary account of the results of field research among the Teita, a tribal group not previously studied. It aims at giving a survey of the main structural features of the Teita tribal system and of the genealogical groupings within it. I hope to devote a separate article to a study of residential relations as cohesive factors within the tribal structure.

The Nsaw are a section of the Tikar people who are believed to have come originally from the region of Bornu and to have established themselves near Tibati in what is now the French Cameroons. About 300 years ago small bands, some under the leadership of sons of the King, broke away and eventually reached Bamenda. The sequence of the various migrations is confused, but among the last was probably that of the Nsaw under their Paramount Chief, the Fɔn. They are a negroid people who speak a semi-Bantu language, and they now number approximately 32,000. Their territory, some 700 square miles in area, is bounded on the east by the frontier of the French Cameroons, on the south by the Ndop Plain, on the west by Oku (an independent sub-tribe of Nsaw), and on the north-west and north by Bum and Nsungli. Most of it is high rolling grassland at an average height of 5,000 feet above sea-level, but the landscape, nevertheless, presents an appearance of alternating woodland and meadow, for in the villages, which are anything from one to five miles apart, compounds are overshadowed by tall dark groves of kola trees, while along the numerous streams are plantations of raffia palm.

A Sketch of two incidents recorded in my field notes will serve to introduce the subject of this paper.

1. Nanyuki and his wife Mwango were completing their marriage by the enyangi ceremony. I was to see the second of the major sacrifices, which takes place at the husband's homestead. A day after the appointed time, Nanyuki informed me that everything was being held up. Mwango, he said, refused to go on unless he gave her a he-goat. He had tried all day in vain to get her one; none of his neighbours wanted to barter, and he could not afford money. I almost suspected a device for putting me off and preventing me from being present at the ceremony. Why should Nanyuki, who, I knew, was eager to get back to work in his swamp garden, allow his plans to be upset by Mwango's whim? However, his anxiety and exasperation seemed genuine enough; he told me that he could not think what to do, and would have to consult Kebaso, his dead father's brother.

In the French Cameroons, West Africa, live the Bamum whose population is estimated at about 75,000. Their territory is bounded on the north by that of the British Trusteeship territory of the Cameroons. Their western and south-western boundaries are formed by the River Nun, while the Rivers Mape (a tributary of the Mbam) and the Mbam form its eastern boundaries. The tribe consists of a recent ruling group of Tikar who, migrating from Rifum—now called Bamkin—settled among other Tikar whose social and political organization was of the lineage type so common in West Africa. This ruling group, who claim to have come originally from the environs of Bornu, rapidly conquered the surrounding independent, uncentralized, local villages and created the powerful Bamum kingdom which withstood Fulani raids.