Note 734 — Chapter XV · THE FIRE-DRILL

I have assumed that the ancestral sticks, whatever their origin, represent only men. This is plainly implied by Dr. Brincker, who tells us that “each of these sticks represents the male member of generation and in the Bantu sense a personality, which stands for the presence of the deceased chief on all festive occasions and especially at religious ceremonies” (“Character, Sitten, und Gebräuche, speciell der Bantu Deutsch-Südwestafrikas,” Mittheilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin, iii. (1900) Dritte Abtheilung, p. 74). In savage society women are of too little account for their ghosts to be commonly worshipped. Speaking of the Bantu peoples, a writer who knows them well observes: “This lack of respect for old women is a part of the natives’ religious system, and is connected with their conception of a future life, in which women play a subordinate part, their spirits not being able to cause much trouble, and therefore not being of much account” (Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir, p. 23).