Bantu
Webster's Dictionary [1]
(n.) A member of one of the great family of Negroid tribes occupying equatorial and southern Africa. These tribes include, as important divisions, the Kafirs, Damaras, Bechuanas, and many tribes whose names begin with Aba-, Ama-, Ba-, Ma-, Wa-, variants of the Bantu plural personal prefix Aba-, as in Ba-ntu, or Aba-ntu, itself a combination of this prefix with the syllable -ntu, a person.
The Nuttall Encyclopedia [2]
The name of most of the races, with their languages, that occupy Africa from 6° N. lat. to 20° S.; are negroid rather than negro, being in several respects superior; the name, however, suggests rather a linguistic than an ethnological distinction, the language differing radically from all other known forms of speech—the inflection, for one thing, chiefly initial, not final.