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FOR INFORMATION: Copyright © 2013 by SAGE Publications, Inc.
SAGE Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
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United Kingdom Chesney-Lind, Meda.
SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd. The female offender: girls, women, and crime /
B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Meda Chesney-Lind, Lisa Pasko. — 3rd ed.
Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044
India
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte. Ltd.
ISBN 978-1-4129-9669-3 (pbk.)
3 Church Street
#10-04 Samsung Hub 1. Female offenders—United States. 2. Female
Singapore 049483 juvenile delinquents—United States. 3. Discrimination
in criminal justice administration—United States.
I. Pasko, Lisa. II. Title.
HV6046.C54 2013
364.3′740973—dc23 2011039710
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
1. Introduction 1
2. Girls’ Troubles and “Female Delinquency” 10
3. Girls, Gangs, and Violence 33
4. The Juvenile Justice System and Girls 57
5. Trends in Women’s Crime 97
6. Sentencing Women to Prison: Equality Without Justice 119
7. Female Offenders, Community Supervision,
and Evidence-Based Practices 153
Janet T. Davidson
8. Conclusion 181
References 188
Index 212
About the Authors 223
Detailed Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
1. Introduction 1
2. Girls’ Troubles and “Female Delinquency” 10
Trends in Girls’ Arrests 11
Boys’ Theories and Girls’ Lives 16
Criminalizing Girls’ Survival: Abuse, Victimization,
and Girls’ Official Delinquency 24
Delinquency Theory and Gender: Beyond Status Offenses 32
3. Girls, Gangs, and Violence 33
Girls Gone Wild? 33
The Media, Girls of Color, and Gangs 33
Trends in Girls’ Violence and Aggression 37
Girls, Robbery, and “Other” Assaults 39
Girl Gang Membership 42
Girls and Gangs: Qualitative Studies 45
Labeling Girls Violent? 54
Girls, Gangs, and Media Hype: A Final Note 55
4. The Juvenile Justice System and Girls 57
“The Best Place to Conquer Girls” 58
Girls and Juvenile Justice Reform 62
Deinstitutionalization and Judicial Paternalism:
Challenges to the Double Standard of Juvenile Justice 64
Rising Detentions and Racialized Justice 71
Offense Patterns of Girls in Custody—Bootstrapping 80
Deinstitutionalization or Transinstitutionalization?
Girls and the Mental Health System 83
Girls’ Sexuality in Institutional Environments 86
Human Rights Abuses in Girls’ Institutions? 87
Instead of Incarceration: What Could Be Done
to Meet the Needs of Girls? 91
5. Trends in Women’s Crime 97
Unruly Women: A Brief History of Women’s Offenses 98
Trends in Women’s Arrests 100
How Could She? The Nature and Causes of Women’s Crime 102
Embezzlement 103
Driving Under the Influence 104
Larceny Theft/Shoplifting 104
Big Time/Small Time 106
Pathways to Women’s Crime 107
Beyond the Street Woman: Resurrecting the Liberated Female Crook? 111
The Revival of the “Violent Female Offender” 114
6. Sentencing Women to Prison: Equality Without Justice 119
Trends in Women’s Crime: A Reprise 120
Women, Violent Crimes, and the War on Drugs 121
Getting Tough on Women’s Crime 125
Building More Women’s Prisons 129
Profile of Women in U.S. Prisons 130
Childhoods of Women in Prison 130
Current Offenses 133
Property Crimes 134
Drug Use Among Women in Prison 135
Mothers Behind Bars 136
Race and Women’s Imprisonment 138
Different Versus Equal? 140
Prisons and Parity 141
Reducing Women’s Imprisonment Through Effective
Community-Based Strategies and Programs 148
Detention Versus Prevention 150
7. Female Offenders, Community Supervision,
and Evidence-Based Practices 153
Janet T. Davidson
Trends in Probation, Incarceration, and Parole 154
Evidence-Based Practices and Gender-Neutral Supervision 155
Challenging Gender-Neutral Risk-Driven Supervision 162
Criminal History 162
Education and Employment 163
Financial 164
Family and Marital 165
Accommodation 167
Alcohol and Drug Problems 168
Emotional and Personal 169
Challenging Gender-Neutral Supervision: Women’s Histories
of Victimization, Health Problems, and Child Care Needs 171
Histories of Abuse 171
Health and Children 173
Supervision and Reintegration 174
Moving Forward: Gender-Equitable Supervision
for Female Offenders in the Community 175
Promising Examples for Moving Forward 177
8. Conclusion 181
References 188
Index 212
About the Authors 223
Preface
W hat is clear to scholars and practitioners of criminal justice is that
the female offender has long been ignored. Indeed, until the 1970s,
serious discussion about the gendered nature of offending was absent from
most criminological research and from correctional programming and poli-
cies. If girls and women were considered at all, their offenses were often
trivialized or they were portrayed in highly heterosexist ways. The gendered
nature of abuse and victimization that impacts girls’ and women’s crime and
affects their pathways to court and correctional involvement was also largely
overlooked or misunderstood by the system and by researchers.
By keeping the female offender as the central focus, this book removes
the shroud of invisibility from girls’ and women’s offending, their victimiza-
tion histories, and their experiences with court and corrections. As in previ-
ous editions of this book, this third edition explains the historical and
contemporary experiences of girls, women, and crime. It interrogates the
complexities of current issues and offers critical examination of recent
reports that girls and women are becoming more like male offenders in the
criminal justice system.
In addition to updated statistical data and literature on risk behaviors,
arrests, sentencing, and incarceration, new to this edition is the greater discus-
sion of several key areas, such as the increases in girls’ arrests for assault over
the past decade, the impact of sexual abuse and survival sex on girls’ and
women’s court involvement, the criminalization of sexual minority girls in the
youth correctional system, the growth of the female drug offender population,
the increase in the number of executions of women, and the struggle to
develop gender-responsive programming and stronger advocacy efforts in
order to improve the lives of offending girls and women in our communities.
ix
x The Female Offender
T his book, like its second edition, took too long; fortunately, this round
there are two of us to share the blame, which is only one of many rea-
sons to collaborate. Also long is the list of folks who have made us think about
things, helped us with ideas, and basically kept us honest.
For Meda—I once again have to thank my colleagues in the Department
of Women’s Studies and the Department of Sociology at the University of
Hawaii at Manoa for their support. The freedom to write and think as I do
comes from having a great workplace—one that celebrates rather than con-
demns work on girls and women. Special thanks this round goes to Brian
Bilsky, Dick Dubanoski, Kathy Ferguson, Konia Freitas, Tonima Hadi, Susan
Hippensteele, Katherine Irwin, David Johnson, and Mire Koikari for their
encouragement and enthusiasm for my work over the years.
For Lisa—I would also like to add such thanks to friends, family, and col-
leagues who have continuously given me emotional support and always offered
avid interest in this research. To name a few, my parents, Jean and Eugene
Pasko, and my sister, Laura White, as well as Christopher Bondy, Marilyn
Brown, Paul Colomy, Janet Davidson, Moira Denike, Felix Dover, Hava
Gordon, Stephanie Hedrick, Terri Hurst, Michael Kohan, Nancy Marker, Lisa
Martinez, Dave Mayeda, JD McWilliams, Don Orban, Andrew Ovenden, Laura
Padden, Scott Phillips, Stephen Scheele, Tina Slivka, and Rick Vonderhaar.
Both of us are fortunate in our respective communities. Hawaii is such a
rich and wonderful social environment within which to work and live. Close
association with the Office of Youth Services and the many social service and
public agencies with whom they work has greatly enriched our lives and work.
Bernie Campbell, David Del Rosario, Rodney Goo, Carl Imakyure, Cheryl
Johnson, Dee Dee Letts, Bert Matsuoka, David Nakada, Bob Nakata,
xi
xii The Female Offender
Tony Pfaltzgraff, and Suzanne Toguchi have kept us in touch with the youth
of Hawaii and their issues. Marcy Brown, Jo DesMarets, Louise Robinson,
Martha Torney, and Marian Tsuji and have given us much-needed help in
understanding the issues for adult women offenders. All of these folks have
kept us in the community and closer to the reality we want and need to write
about. Likewise, Colorado is also a wonderfully cooperative environment in
which to conduct applied research. Many thanks to the Division of Criminal
Justice (with special thanks to Michele Lovejoy), Colorado Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention Council, Colorado Coalition for Girls, Colorado
Juvenile Defender Coalition, Girls Inc. of Metro Denver, and Colorado
Springs Women’s Resource Agency for their ongoing support of girl-centered
justice issues.
No work of this scope, though, could have been considered without an
equally rich national and international community of scholars with whom we
shared ideas, expressed frustration, and plotted strategies. Many of these folks
are scholar/activists, so their work is enriched by their commitment to seek not
only the truth but also social justice. We extend deep thanks here to Christine
Alder, Joanne Belknap, Barbara Bloom, Lee Bowker, Kathy Daly, Mona
Danner, Walter Dekeseredy, Mickey Eliason, Kim English, Karlene Faith,
Laura Fishman, John Hagedorn, Ron Huff, Tracy Huling, Russ Immarigeon,
Nikki Jones, Karen Joe Laidler, Vera Lopez, Dan Macallair, Mike Males, Marc
Mauer, Merry Morash, Barbara Owen, Ken Polk, Nicky Rafter, Robin
Robinson, Vinnie Schiraldi, Marty Schwartz, Francine Sherman, Andrea
Shorter, Brenda Smith, and last but certainly not least, Randy Shelden.
Nationally and internationally, practitioner/scholars have insisted that
they be listened to as well—to understand how girls and women they work
with in their communities live. Here we must thank Ilene Bergsman, Kimberly
Bolding, Carol Bowar, Alethea Camp, Ellen Clarke, Sue Davis, Elaine
DeConstanzo, Jane Higgins, Elaine Lord, Judy Mayer, Ann McDiarmid, Andie
Moss, C’ana Petrick, and Paula Schaefer for keeping this work in touch with
their reality. Also, wonderful journalists who care about girls and women have
worked with me to publicize their situation while also doing important muck-
raking work that criminologists should have done and would have in better
days. Special thanks here to Gary Craig, Adrian Le Blanc, Elizabeth Mehren,
Marie Ragghianti, Nina Siegal, and Kitsie Watterson.
Most important, our heartfelt thanks to the girls and women who found
themselves in the criminal justice system for having the courage to speak the
Acknowledgments xiii
truth in the face of extraordinary pain. Many of these girls and women must
remain anonymous, but fortunately not all. Thanks, most of all, to Linda Nunes
for her friendship after so many years, and for giving the hope that women can
make it through such systems and survive with integrity. Thanks also to Dale
Gilmartin for her help with the girls’ issue and her courage to write about her
own experience, and to Michelle Alvey for her strength, courage, and trust. We
hope that we’ve done justice to your insights and your experiences.
Finally, thanks to Jerry Westby for never giving up hope that this book
would appear. Thanks also to Erim Sarbuland for the final push over the top.
Introduction
Myself (by J., 2010)
1
2 The Female Offender
myself.
myself
myself.
mean-spirited initiatives to control the lives (and especially the sexuality and
morality) of young girls, most notably African American and Hispanic girls,
who are construed as welfare cheats and violent, drug-addicted gang members
(Lopez, Chesney-Lind, & Foley, 2011; Males, 1994; Nichols & Good, 2004).
Consider the recent and racially different depictions of girls’ violence and
aggression and the media’s fascination with “girls gone wild.” As this book
will document, when dramatic pictures of girls of color carrying guns, com-
mitting violent crimes, and wearing bandannas suddenly appeared in the
popular media, there were very few careful studies to refute the vivid images.
Additionally and without much critical thought, the current attention on
“reviving Ophelias” and white girls’ “mean girl” associations and deployment
of violence also contribute to a characterization of girlhood as riddled with
aggression, ferocity, and intragender victimizations (Chesney-Lind & Irwin,
2008). Why? Why this absence of critical thinking about girls, violence, and
crime? Criminology has long suffered from what Jessie Bernard has called the
“stag effect” (Bernard, 1964, as cited in Smith, 1992, p. 218). Criminology has
attracted male (and some female) scholars who want to study and understand
outlaw men, hoping perhaps that some of the romance and fascination of this
role will rub off. As a result, among the disciplines, criminology is almost
quintessentially male.
In recent times, feminist criminology has challenged the overall masculin-
ist nature of criminology by pointing out two important conclusions. First,
women’s and girls’ crime was virtually overlooked, and female victimization
was ignored, minimized, or trivialized. Women and girls existed only in their
peripheral existence to the center of study—the male world. Second, whereas
historical theorizing in criminology was based on male delinquency and crime,
these theories gave little awareness to the importance of gender—the network of
behaviors and identities associated with the terms masculinity and femininity—
that is socially constructed from relations of dominance, power, and inequality
between men and women (Belknap, 2007; Chesney-Lind & Shelden, 2004;
Daly & Chesney-Lind, 1988). Feminist criminology demonstrates how gender
matters, not only in terms of one’s trajectory into crime but also in terms of
how the criminal justice system responds to the offenders under its authority.
Because of the interaction between the stag effect and the relative absence
of criminological interest in gender theorizing and girls’ issues, this book will
show that the study of “delinquency” has long excluded girls’ behavior from
theory and research. To some extent, adult women offenders have also been
4 The Female Offender
ignored because it seemed clear that women committed less criminal behavior.
The one exception to this generalization is prostitution, which probably came
in for some scrutiny because the study of sexuality became both academically
fashionable and easily marketed in the 1970s (Winick & Kinsie, 1971). But
aside from a few titillating books on prostitution, the silence about girl and
women offenders was more or less absolute for most of criminology’s history.
Such a situation, as this book will document, has hidden key information from
public view and allowed major shifts in the treatment of women and girls—
many on the economic margin—to occur without formidable public discussion
and debate. Girls and women do get arrested, tried, and sentenced to prison. In
fact, there have been major changes in the way that the United States has
handled girls’ and women’s crime in recent decades that do not necessarily
bode well for the girls and women who enter the criminal justice system.
First, for all that they are ignored, girls should no longer be an after-
thought in the delinquency equation. In fact, girls remain slightly more than
30% of juvenile arrests in the year 2009 (Federal Bureau of Investigation
[FBI], 2010a). Despite the fact that girls are nearly a third of those brought into
the juvenile justice system, they have rarely claimed anywhere near that share
of public attention or resources. As an example, the Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) Girls Study Group recently completed a
nationwide review of 61 girls’ delinquency programs and found that many
programs did not complete evaluations and that no program could be rated as
effective. Indeed, by the end of their review, most of the programs had lost
funding and were no longer in existence (Zahn, 2009). Although the last 15 years
have seen a growth in gender-responsive programming as well as national and
state conferences gathered to address women offenders’ issues, the “get tough
on crime” initiatives, particularly for drug offenses, and push for incarceration
continue to adversely affect women and girls. In the area of women’s crime
and punishment, a disturbing reality persists: In 1980, there were about 12,000
women in prison; by 2000, there were more than 85,000; and by 2009, there
were 113,000—a nine-fold increase in less than 30 years (Bureau of Justice
Statistics, 2001, 2010a; Maquire & Pastore, 1994, p. 600). Moreover, this
imprisonment rate for women continues to grow. In 1990, the incarceration
rate for female offenders was 31 out of 100,000 female residents; by 2009, it
was 68 out of 100,000 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010b). Currently, more
than 1.25 million women are under some kind of criminal justice supervision
(Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2010c).
Chapter 1 Introduction 5
But why, you might ask, should “normal” people be concerned about the
lives of girls and women who become involved with the criminal justice system
and end up in prison? What do these people have to do with normal citizens and
their daily lives? There are a couple of ways to answer that question. First and
most important, these girls and women are not that different from normal peo-
ple. Gibbons (1983), for example, points out that the majority of those in the
criminal justice system are actually “ordinary individuals who, for the most
part, engage in sporadic and unskilled crimes” (p. 203). As we shall see, this is
especially true of the girls and women who are the focus of this book.
The role played by social control agencies—the police, the courts, the
prisons—in labeling and shaping the “crime problem” is frequently underesti-
mated. We also often overlook the important role the concept of criminal as
“outsider” plays in the maintenance of the existing social order (Becker, 1963;
Schur, 1984). Clearly, harsh public punishment of a few “fallen” girls and
women as witches and whores has always been integral to enforcement of the
boundaries of the “good” girls’ and women’s place in patriarchal society.
Anyone seriously interested in examining women’s crime or the subjugation
of women, then, must carefully consider the role of the contemporary criminal
justice system in the maintenance of modern patriarchy.
Another question to ponder, particularly as we begin to explore the
experiences of women and girls in the criminal justice system, is why crime,
particularly violent crime, is almost exclusively a male preserve, and why
sexual crime and its buffer charges (such as being a juvenile “runaway” or an
adult prostitute) are found so exclusively in the female realm.
As this book will demonstrate, the women whose lives are changed by these
labels are often the victims of what might be called “multiple marginality”
(Bloom, Owen, & Covington, 2003; Vigil, 1995) in that their gender, race, and
class have placed them at the economic periphery of society. Understanding the
lives and choices of girls and women who find themselves in the criminal justice
system also requires a broader understanding of the contexts within which their
“criminal” behavior is lodged. There are important links between girls’ problems
and women’s crime—links that are often obscured by approaches that consider
“delinquency” and “crime” to be separate and discrete topics.
Recent research, for example, on the backgrounds of adult female offend-
ers reveals the importance of viewing them as people with life histories. A few
facts about the lives of adult women in U.S. prisons make this point very
powerfully: Female offenders are three times more likely than their male
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DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI
I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.