Treaty Skull

Within the same period [six months from the coming into force of the Treaty] Germany will hand over to his Britannic Majesty's Government the skull oj the Sultan Mkwawa, which was removed from the Protectorate of German East Africa and taken to Germany

--Article 246, Treaty of Versailles

Inside this famed skull had been the shrewd brain of the black Sultan Mkwawa of Tanganyika. Some say he died by his own hand, others that he was beheaded when his rebellion in the 90's against the Imperial Germanization of East Africa failed and he was about to be captured. Inside the living skulls of the Negroes ot East Africa grew a superstition that they were doomed to endless calamity until Mkwawa's skull was returned to them The Britons who tried to rule them bribed the tribal chiefs into loyalty. But without the skull, the chiefs lost all prestige and power among their people. Meanwhile the German Government, not particularly anxious to help British rule in what had once been Germany's great African colony, denied that it had ever removed the skull from East African territory Last week came evidence that Germany had not lied, in a letter to The East African Standard from H. Malcolm Ross, British land agent in Tanganyika.

In 1921, he wrote, while custodian of enemy property, he had found a pile of packing cases in a German warehouse in the East African lake town of Bukoba. One "was slightly packed with sawdust and had a smaller case inside. This also was very well made and strongly fastened. When I opened this the contents proved to be a native's skull. Whether this was the skull of Mkwawa I cannot say, but very great care had been taken in packing it." He concluded that he did not know what became of the skull, because he left it where it was.

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