Customs
As with many of the peoples of southwest Tanzania, in marriage ceremonies the groom carried a bow in his right-hand and an arrow in his left "to pierce any man who seduces your wife".
At a chief's burial a grave is dug inside the chief's hut, but only after a whole sheep is buried. The chief is placed in a sitting position on his royal stool, with a brightly colored bird's feather placed in his hair.
The main crops of the Wanda were finger millet, sorghum, sesame, peanuts, and maize. These crops were cultivated on ridges. Iron tools and weapons were not produced by the Wanda, these being traded in, mostly from the Fipa.
The Wanda worshipped gods, certain large trees, and the graves of certain chiefs.
Read more about this topic: Wanda People
Famous quotes containing the word customs:
“We set up a certain aim, and put ourselves of our own will into the power of a certain current. Once having done that, we find ourselves committed to usages and customs which we had not before fully known, but from which we cannot depart without giving up the end which we have chosen. But we have no right, therefore, to claim that we are under the yoke of necessity. We might as well say that the man whom we see struggling vainly in the current of Niagara could not have helped jumping in.”
—Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)
“Is a civilization naturally backward because it is different? Outside of cannibalism, which can be matched in this country, at least, by lynching, there is no vice and no degradation in native African customs which can begin to touch the horrors thrust upon them by white masters. Drunkenness, terrible diseases, immorality, all these things have been gifts of European civilization.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)
“Change often makes accepted customs into crimes.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)