HERE, a Bantu tribe inhabiting the Tanganyika plateau, com bining agriculture with animal husbandry. Sheep, goats and fowls are kept in addition to cattle, the care of which is almost exclusively man's province, while women are responsible for agri cultural economics, raising millet, yams, maize and a variety of leguminous and other vegetable crops. While their characteristics are chiefly Eastern they display certain lacustrian contacts and Southern influences can be traced in their internal organization.
The most characteristic feature is the tembe, a long building partitioned into separate chambers for families. Each chamber is subdivided into two rooms, the outer one for boys, the inner for women and the head of the family. A tembe varies in size from one sufficient for a few families to the length of a kilometre, and a village may consist of anything from one small tembe to a num ber of large ones adjoining. The houses are made of palings neatly plastered with clay, with a slightly curved roof also constructed with palings covered with rushes and caulked with clay.
Kinship is mainly reckoned in the paternal line and the maternal kinship imposes obligations for one generation only, whereas any paternal relationship that can be proved in the remotest degree is important and is a bar to marriage. Marriage is arranged be tween a man and the bride's father and involves the payment of a dowry by the former. Polygyny is practised, but the first wife must be the mother's brother's daughter, and only of ter this statutory marriage may a man exercise his own choice. On mar riage a boy or girl leaves the family chamber and builds anew. A peculiar system of totemism prevails, as every one possesses one or two totems inherited paternally. The totem may be an animal or part of an animal or a part of all animals, for instance a sheep's head or the heart of all animals. But though there is no prohibition against killing the totem, a dispensatory ceremony is required before it may be eaten. The possession of the same totem is no bar to marriage unless a common paternal ancestor can also be determined.
The weapons employed are the heavy-bladed thrusting spear, light throwing spears with barbed blades and a battle axe, showing an influence which is probably traceable to the Angoni. A large oval shield of ox-hide is carried.
The Hehe believe in a vague deity Nguruhe, who controls things in general but to whom neither prayers nor sacrifices are offered. Their religion consists mainly of the worship of ancestor-spirits (masoka), to whom prayers are made for success and prosperity and the avoidance of evils. Offerings of grain, milk or flesh are made at the grave of an ancestor by the head of the family.
See E. Nigmann, Die Wahehe 0908). (J. H. D.)