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Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa
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Historical SummaryOther tribes remove the upper teeth, and Livingstone relates that an invading Makololo chief was unable to suppress the practice among the Batoka tribes:
All the Batoka tribes follow the curious custom of knocking out the upper front teeth at the age of puberty. This is done by both sexes; and though the under teeth, being relieved from the attrition of the upper, grow long and somewhat bent out, and thereby cause the under lip to protrude in a most unsightly way, no young woman thinks herself accomplished until she has got rid of the upper incisors. This custom gives all the Batoka an uncouth, old-man-like appearance. Their laugh is hideous, yet they are so attached to it that even Sebituane was unable to eradicate the practice. He issued orders that none of the children living under him should be subjected to the custom by their parents, and disobedience to his mandates was usually punished with severity; but, notwithstanding this, the children would appear in the streets without their incisors, and no one would confess to the deed.2
Where the attention and cutting are directed toward the sex organs a number of procedures are distinguishable: (1) a simple incision of the lower or upper surface of the prepuce in boys, (2) circumcision, or the removal of the prepuce by a circular cut, (3) the unique operation of subincision in some Australian tribes, where the whole length of the glans is split to the middle on the lower surface and remains open throughout life, and (4) sacrificial or consecrational castration or ablation of the sex organs. There are also forms of self-attention in this direction, seen in the latitudinal piercing of the male organ for the insertion of a small wooden or metal cylinder or a ring,3 and in the self-amplification of girls, beginning sometimes in early childhood, under the instruction and with the assistance of old women, involving the destruction of the hymen and taking also the direction of the enlargement of the labia (Hottentot apron) in a fashionable way.4
2Livingstone, D.n/an/an/an/an/a, , 571.
3 Kennedy, R., The Ethnology of the Greater Sunda Islands, 367–368 (manuscript).
4 Torday, E., "The Principles of Bantu Marriage," Africa, 2: 257.
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Chicago: "Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa," Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa in Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, ed. Thomas, William I. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1937), Original Sources, accessed April 18, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=EID4AIBQEJ23W9P.
MLA: . "Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa." Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, in Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, edited by Thomas, William I., New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1937, Original Sources. 18 Apr. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=EID4AIBQEJ23W9P.
Harvard: , 'Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa' in Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa. cited in 1937, Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences, ed. , McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York. Original Sources, retrieved 18 April 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=EID4AIBQEJ23W9P.
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