The domestic life of the Negro is based upon polygyny, so vital an element of the native social system that attempts to abolish plurality of wives would result in the most serious social dis order. Descent in the Negro world is often reckoned through the female, though many tribes with a patriarchal system are found. Traces of totemism are found sporadically. Secret societies are found in their highest development among the Negroes of the west coast.
The Negro is principally a vegetarian. Meat is everywhere regarded as a great delicacy. The cattle-keeping tribes rarely slaughter for food, because cattle are a form of currency. Fish is also an important article of diet in the neighbourhood of large rivers, especially the Nile and Congo. The two cultivated plants which form the mainstay of native life, manioc in the west and centre and mealies in the south and east, are neither of African origin. Cannibalism (q.v.) is found in its simplest form in Africa, where the majority of cannibal tribes eat human flesh because they like it. Among the true Negroes it is confined mainly to the Welle and Ubangi districts, though found sporadically (and due to magical motives) on the west coast, and among the Bantu Negroids in south-western Belgian Congo and the Gabun.
Religion.—In the western forests where communities are small the Negro is a fetishist, combined more or less with nature worship. Where communication is easier worship becomes more systematic, and definite supernatural agencies are recognized, presiding over definite spheres of human life. Ancestor-worship appears and often assumes paramount importance, and is typical of all the eastern and southern portions of the continent. Malig
nant powers receive attention from man, with a view to propitia tion or coercion. Beneficent agencies require no attention, since, from their very nature, they must continue to do good. In the western culture area, among both Negro and Bantu Negroid tribes, is the belief that any form of death except by violence must be due to evil magic exercised by, or through the agency of, some human individual; to discover the guilty party the poison ordeal is freely used. Similar ordeals are used in British Central Africa to discover magicians, and the wholesale "smelling-out" of "witches," was well-known among the Zulu-Xosa tribes. Every where magic, both sympathetic and imitative, is practised, both by the ordinary individual and by professional magicians, and most medical treatment is based on this, although the magician is usually an herbalist of some skill. Where the rainfall is uncer tain, the production of rain by magical means is one of the chief duties of the magician, a duty which becomes paramount in the eastern plains among Negroes and Bantu Negroids alike.
The Bantu Negroids all speak dialects of one tongue (see BANTU LANGUAGES). The Sudanic family of languages is spoken in the area recognized as the habitat of the Negro, but Hamitic speech (Nilotic group) is also used by Negroes.