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This is the most southerly kingdom of the Wahuma, though not the farthest spread of its people, for we find the Watusi, who are emigrants from Karague of the same stock, overlooking the Tanganyika Lake from the hills of Uhha, and tending their cattle all over Unyamuezi under the protection of the native negro chiefs; and we also hear that the Wapoka of Fipa, south of the Rukwa Lake are the same.
Strange as it may appear, neither these Watuta nor the Watusi know anything of their common origin.
They are very different in physical form and appearance from one another; for, whilst the Watusi alias Wahuma retain their Abyssinian type, the Watuta alias Zulu Kafirs are much more like the Somali and Masai thus, I think, showing that the Wahuma have detached themselves at a later period than the Kafirs from the parent stock.
Now, these Watuta are still pushing northwards, fighting, plundering, and conquering wherever they go. They have knocked the Watusi out of the southern hills of Urundi, overlooking the Tanganyika Lake, and have spread to the southern limits of Usui, devastating the countries en route, in the same way as they have done on the west of the Nyassa.
How or when their name became changed from Wahuma to Watusi no one is able to explain; but, again deducing the past from the present, we cannot help suspecting that, in the same way as this change has taken place, the name Galla may have been changed from Hubshi, and Wahuma from Gallas.
Whilst doing so they came at Fipa on the Wapoka, another offshoot of the Cushite-Abyssinians, who, crossing the Nile, took the name of Wahuma, and have spread as far down south as Fipa, where their name, in course of time, had changed from Wahuma to Watusi, and from Watusi to Wapoka, in the same way as the Watuta had changed their name from Masai to Kafir and Zulu Kafir, and again from that to Watuta.
Villages rose to our view everywhere. Food was cheap, milk was plentiful, and the butter good. After a four hours' march, we crossed the Kanengi River, and entered the boma of Kahirigi, inhabited by several Watusi and Wahha. Here, we were told, lived the King of Uhha's brother. This announcement was anything but welcome, and I began to suspect I had fallen into another hornets' nest.
When two people of these tribes meet, the former presses his hands together, the Watusi uttering a few words in a low voice. If a Watusi man meets a woman of his own tribe, she lets her arms fall by her side, while he gently presses them below the shoulders, looking affectionately in her face.
An Arab trader, whom they had met, had sixty wives, who lived together in a double-poled tent, with which he always travelled. One of them was a Watusi, a beautiful, tall girl, with large, dark eyes, and the smallest mouth and nose, with thin lips and small hands. Her noble race will never become slaves, preferring death to slavery. The Wanyamuezi treat the Watusi with great respect.
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