Hut Found Full

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 898, 15 February 1930, Page 28

Hut Found Full

of Human Heads MISSIONARY’S FIND EARLY AFRICAN HISTORY The discovery of a hut full of human heads in a secret hiding-place of the Ovimbundu tribe in Portuguese West Africa was graphically described to a representative of the "Cape Times” recently by the Rev. T. R. Huxtable, a Seventh Day Adventist missionary, on leave In Capetown, and is regarded by anthropologists as of very considerable importance. “About four miles to the east of our station in Angola,” said Mr. Huxtable, “there is a great mountain of towering rocks. I had often wished to explore this mountain, but had never found, time to do so until one morning I found myself almost at the foot of it, and decided to climb to the top. “With a small Kafir boy I started to push through the tall grass that grows very thickly at the base of the mountain, searching for some means of getting to the top. "Working our way round one of the rocks we came to a place where a number of them had fallen together. Other huge stones had fallen on top, making a cavernous passage leading upward. We entered this passage, and began tvorking our way up, sometimes on our hands and knees and sometimes flat on our faces. "Looking around, I was surprised to see, half hidden under a pile of loose stones, a small European trunk of the style regularly used by the Portuguese of this country. As our nearest neighbour is 12 miles away I thought that some one must have been robbed and this trunk hidden here. Surely it was my duty to Investigate. I pulled the trunk out and opened it. "The trunk was empty except for two-hard, round objects wrapped in a kind of black, greasy cloth. After unrolling several layers of this cloth imagine my surprise to unroll a horrible, grinning human head. "At the sight of it the Kafir boy let out a yell of terror and started at top speed for the outside. I shouted after him and compelled him to come hack and accompany me. Now thoroughly aroused I was more than ever determined to explore the place. “We worked our way on toward the top and in the passage up we encountered two or three more tin boxes, also filled with human heads. At the top we emerged info a natural amphitheatre formed by towering rocks on the one side and by a thick hedge of tall trees that had been planted along the precipice on the other. This place was divided into two compartments by a high wall of poles set into the ground on end. "in the first compartment there was a curious round hut thatched entirely to the ground and laced about with bark rope. The hut was entirely unlike any native huts that I had ever seen before. It had only a small stone door in front, about IS inches square. “The hut was full of tin boxes and gourds, all of which contained human heads, some of them curiously decorated with sea shells stuck on where the hair and beard would naturally have grown. The eye sockets bad been filled up with some kind of gum '■ or wax and a sea shell stuck in for eyes. "The second compartment looked as if it might have been used at some time for a prison. Under a rock we found a large number of old assegais and curiously wrought spears, and ! irons like crude butchers’ cleavers. | “What should I do? If this was I ihc hiding place of head hunters or! cannibals. then the Government j

should be notified and these heads I seized as evidence. “I decided to send the boy back to the mission for the doctor and director of the mission to come to me with a number of the older Christian boys of this same tribe. Finding a piece of wood I scratched my message on it with my knife and sent the boy off on the run. “Fortunately our boss boy, Fred, was the son of a paramount chief of the district, and he was able to explain. Although too young (to be admitted to the secret society of which this was the meeting place, being only about 35 years of age), he nevertheless knew about it from tradition. “The place was the meeting place of a secret society consisting only of the chiefs, their counsellors, the medicine men and the very oldest men of the country,” he said. “The heads were the heqds of the great chiefs of the country. “When a chief is ill with what is evidently his last illness, the old men of the village take complete charge of him, excluding everyone else from his hut. They pass out the word that the chief is slightly ill with a slight fever or a headache, or some minor disease, but nothing of a serious nature. This deception is kept up until the old man actually dies. ‘They then tie a raw hide cord around his neck and hang him up by this cord to the rafters of his but and place a large basket under the body. The news is given out then that the old chief is very ill and likely to die. Each day the oldest man in the village goes into the hut and turns the body around a few times. This is continued until the cord severs the head from the body and. the body falls into the basket. The word then is given that the old chief is dead and that they must proclaim a new chief. “The body is then buried, but the head is properly prepared and placed in this hut, where it is kept, it seems, until proper ceremonial feasts have been held to liberate it. After these feasts it is placed on the outside of the hut in the ‘ cave, where we found the first heads. The spirit is then supposed to be at liberty to go and come as it pleases. “These heads are objects of great veneration and worship. Each year a feast is held in their honour, when they are taken out and anointed wilh palm oil and wrapped in a new cloth. The heads of the more distinguished chiefs are decorated with small sea shells. “In the old days before the white man came to govern the country their feasts were always cannibalistic. The victims were confined in the second apartment of this place and fattened for weeks before the feast. "That some of these heads are very old is witnessed by the great antiquity of the place. The old chief whose special duty was to guard the heads became very friendly with me when he saw that I meant to do them no harm. He gave me a great deal of information about the customs and practices of the tribe, which 1 have since verified from other sources. “He showed me the rock over which they had to climb to get to the top of the mountain. They had to climb a ladder and pass over a large rock. The bare feet of the natives during the centuries had worn a path in the ! solid rock at least 14 inches deep. Many years ago, beyond the memory I of tlie oldest men. there was an earlhj quake that shook the rocks and I broke them up, thus opening a new passage to tlie top. “About a mile from this place another linge rock, the top of which is almost flat, only gradually sloping, where the wives of the chiefs are buried. The bodies are laid upon this rock and covered with loose stones piled up about the body iu such a way as to make a very crude sepulchre. So far as I could learn, there is no religious veneration of the remains of the women.”