[Sidenote: The sacred fire among the Herero is watched and fed by the chief’s eldest unmarried daughter, who performs other priestly duties.] The duty of maintaining the sacred fire and preserving it from extinction is entrusted to the eldest unmarried daughter of the chief by his great wife; if he has no daughter, the task devolves on the unmarried girl who is next of kin to him. She bears the title of _ondangere_, derived from the name of the sacred fire (_omurangere_).[705] Besides keeping up the fire she has other priestly functions to discharge. Before the men start on a dangerous expedition, she rubs the holy ashes on their foreheads.[706] When a woman brings her new-born infant to the sacred hearth to receive its name, the maiden priestess or Vestal, as we may call her, sprinkles water on both mother and child.[707] Every morning, when the cattle walk out of the fold, she besprinkles the fattest of them with a brush dipped in water.[708] When an ox dies by accident at the village, she lays a piece of wood on its back, praying at the same time for long life, plenty of cattle, and so forth. Moreover, she ties a double knot in her apron for the dead beast, for a curse would follow if she neglected to do so.[709] Lastly, when the site of the village is changed, the priestess walks at the head of the people and of the herds, carrying a firebrand from the old sacred hearth and taking the utmost care to keep it alight.[710]
The chief or headman of the village is also the priest; [Sidenote: The Herero chief acts as a priest.] he alone may perform religious ceremonies except such as fall within the province of the Vestal priestess, his daughter. In his capacity of priest he keeps the sacred bundle of sticks which represent the ancestors, and at sacrifices he offers meat to them that they may consecrate it. When the old village is abandoned, it is his duty to carry, like Aeneas quitting the ruins of Troy,[711] these rude penates to the new home. However, it is deemed enough if he merely places the holy bundle on his back, and then hands it to a servant, who carries it for him. As a priest he introduces the newborn children to the spirits of the ancestors at the sacred hearth, and gives the infants their names; and as a priest he has a cow to himself, whose milk no one else may drink. This milk is kept in vessels which differ from the ordinary milk vessels, not only in shape and size, but also in being marked with the badge of his paternal clan. When a man goes forth from the village with his family and servants to herd the cattle on a distant pasture, or to found another village, he takes with him a burning brand from the sacred hearth wherewith to kindle the holy fire in his new home. By [Sidenote: Fire taken from the chief’s hearth by the founder of a new village.] doing so he acknowledges himself the vassal of the chief from whose hearth he took the fire. In this way a single village may give out swarm after swarm, till it has become the metropolis or capital of a whole group of villages, the inhabitants of which recognise the supremacy of the parent community, and regard themselves as all sitting round its sacred fire. It is thus that a village may grow into a tribe and its headman into a powerful chief, who, by means of marriage alliances and the adhesion of weaker rivals, may extend his sway over alien communities, and so gradually acquire the rank and authority of a king.[712] The political evolution of the Herero has indeed stopped short of this final stage; but among the more advanced branches of the Bantu race, such as the Zulus and the Matabeles, it is possible that the kingship has developed along these lines.