Word: tribal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1920-1929
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...romances of wild countries. Some of Dyott's facts are interesting. Indians never kill ordinary elephants, regarding them as almost sacred because of their capacity for work. They kill only rogue elephants, lonely, vindictive bulls who have become killers when driven out of their tribe by the hostility of tribal females. If an Indian kills a rhinoceros without permission, he is fined; if he kills another, he is executed. Best shot: the tiger finding that his enemies have surrounded...
...restless day in the African Kamerun. Elephants had passed. The apes fidgeted in the trees. Along came a hunter. Through the leaves he sighted a sleek black form. Game. He shot. A screech, not animal, and out of the branches flopped a Negress, dead, naked, devoid of tribal tattoos. Apparently apes had reared her from infancy. Clumsily she had learned to climb, to sleep hammock-wise across two stout branches, to eat fruits, to jabber, to live their life...
...vices more readily than his virtues. They have developed such a dangerous craving for liquor that there is a prohibition against selling it to them. In fact, about the only way in which civilization has helped them is that the Belgium government has wiped out the ancient bloody tribal wars which once roared through the land...
...Marriage conditions are among the most unusual features of the tribal life. All a man has to do to obtain a wife is to present her parents with enough goats. The number of his wives is limited only by his wealth; most of the negroes have three or four, while the richest may have as many as 500. On the other hand, divorce is just as easy as marriage; if the woman is dissatisfied, she simply leaves her husband and returns home without ceremony, if she gives her former mate the sum paid...
...conflict between the ancient tribal religion and the modern manners being adopted is often ludicrous. The African negro has no deity, but, in its place, a host of superstitions. These assume every possible form and apply to every thing. For instance, the wife of the chief is supposed to spit on the gun to insure success in the hunt. When I once failed to bag my game it was suggested that one of the women had failed to spit, and should be imprisoned! In another case the same man who drives a Ford in the afternoon may feel secure from...