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Updated: June 17, 2025
All the Batoka tribes follow the curious custom of knocking out the upper front teeth at the age of puberty.
When Baba was lying mangled by the furious beast which tore him off his horse, he shed no tear, but quietly prayed as long as he was conscious. I had no hand in his instruction: if these Batoka ever become like him, and they may, the influence that effects it must be divine.
The Makololo had once dispossessed the Batoka of Kalunda, but we could not see the fissure, or whatever it is, that rendered it a place of security, as it was on the southern bank. The crack of the Great Falls was here continued: the rocks are the same as further up, but perhaps less weather-worn and now partially stratified in great thick masses.
Herds of cattle of two or three varieties graze on the islands in the river: the Batoka possessed a very small breed of beautiful shape, and remarkably tame, and many may still be seen; a larger kind, many of which have horns pendent, and loose at the roots; and a still larger sort, with horns of extraordinary dimensions, apparently a burden for the beast to carry.
On our land party coming up, we were told that the oxen were bitten by the tsetse: they could see a great difference in their looks. One was already eaten, and they now wished to slaughter another. A third fell into a buffalo-pit next day, so our stock was soon reduced. The Batoka chief, Moshobotwane, again treated us with his usual hospitality, giving us an ox, some meal, and milk.
He was evidently proud of these trophies of his father's ferocity, and I was assured by other Batoka that few strangers ever returned from a visit to this quarter.
I called out, "Stop, stop; I don't want that;" but they, imagining I was dissatisfied, only tumbled about more furiously, and slapped their thighs with greater vigor. The men being totally unclothed, this performance imparted to my mind a painful sense of their extreme degradation. My own Batoka were much more degraded than the Barotse, and more reckless.
Two young Makololo with their Batoka servants accompanied us to see if Kebrabasa could be surmounted, and to bring a supply of medicine for Sekeletu's leprosy; and half a dozen able canoe-men, under Mobito, who had previously gone with Dr. Livingstone to Loanda, were sent to help us in our river navigation. Some men on foot drove six oxen which Sekeletu had given us as provisions for the journey.
The instrument of culture over all this region is a hoe, the iron of which the Batoka and Banyeti obtain from the ore by smelting. The amount of iron which they produce annually may be understood when it is known that most of the hoes in use at Linyanti are the tribute imposed on the smiths of those subject tribes.
Another, though a less gifted son of song, belonged to the Batoka of our own party. Every evening, while the others were cooking, talking, or sleeping, he rehearsed his songs, containing a history of everything he had seen in the land of the white men, and on the way back.
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