Definition of Bambuti
plural Bambutis
also BaMbutis
: a short-statured hunter-gatherer people consisting of four distinct groups living in the Ituri Forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
- They speak of the world beyond the plantations as being a fearful place, full of malevolent spirits and not fit to be lived in except by animals and BaMbuti, which is what the village people call the Pygmies.
- —Colin M. Turnbull, The Forest People, 1968
- There is no doubt that such pygmies exist—anthropologists have written volumes about them, particularly the Bambuti, who inhabit an extended area of tropical Africa.
- —H. L. Stevenson, UPI Reporter, 2 June 1977
- It was persistent Bambuti pygmy descriptions, after all, that set the English colonial officer and naturalist Sir Harry Johnston on to the search that became the greatest triumph of his career, the eventual discovery of the forest giraffe, the okapi.
- —Redmond O'Hanlon, Granta, Spring 1992
- The best evidence on this comes from more modern human groups living in small-scale societies with low population densities: the Inuit, Bambuti, Kung Bushmen and others.
- —Julia Goggin Gardiner, New York Times, 27 Aug. 2000
