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westwards to Magu and the other southwards to the Mambila country. Their language is intimately related to Mambila, though it can hardly be described as a Mambila dialect. Culturally they can scarcely be distinguished from the Mambila, having the same religious cults and the same methods of House-building, etc. They were formerly a matrilineal people, lacking the exchange system of marriage which among the Mambila has, coupled with the so-called "purchase" system, resulted in a bilateral form of social organization (as will be explained later).

Reference has been made to the presence among the Mambila of groups of blacksmiths. These groups, who are known as Kila[11] [Notes9] , speak a language of their own which is intimately connected with the Bute and Wawa languages of the French Cameroons. It has some affinities with Mambila which belongs to the same linguistic group as Bute and Wawa. The fact that the blacksmiths have preserved their own language would indicate that their immigration is of recent date, and this is borne out by the Mambila tradition that formerly the Mambila had no iron weapons, their arrows being wooden pointed, and their agricultural work being carried out by means of digging-sticks. Their bowstrings, it is said, were made of fibre and not of leather. On the other hand it is difficult to square this tradition with the fact that the Mambila claim to have been a spear-using people from ancient times, and that they are the possessors of a short unpointed cutting sword of scimitar type unknown in Nigeria. It would appear to be probable that the Mambila have long been accustomed to the use of iron, but that when iron was unobtainable they had resort to the instruments described. They say that if they had no knives they cut up meat with a piece of guinea-corn stalk, the bark of the stalk serving as a blade[12]. This primitive form of knife is still used by children among Nigerian tribes which have attained a high standard of civilization.

A feature of the blacksmith groups is their insistence that all male children born to one of their caste, whether male or female[13], shall become blacksmiths. For this reason blacksmiths are commonly endogamous. But they are not averse, when associated with matrilineal peoples, to allow their daughters to marry outside of their own group. Among the Mambila, therefore, they are quite ready to allow their daughters to marry Mambila men on the "purchase" (but not on the exchange) system, for under

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