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THE  LANDSCAPES  OF  MEMORY: 
A  HISTORY  OF  SOCIAL  IDENTITY  IN  THE  WESTERN  SERENGETI,  TANZANIA 


By 
JAN  BENDER  SHETLER 


A  DISSERTATION  PRESENTED  TO  THE  GRADUATE  SCHOOL  OF  THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  FLORIDA  IN  PARTIAL  FULFILLMENT  OF  THE  REQUIREMENTS  FOR  THE  DEGREE 

OF  DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  FLORIDA 

1998 


Copyright  1998 

by 

Jan  Bender  Shetler 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

If  it  takes  a  village  to  raise  a  child,'  it  takes  a  world  community  to  produce  a  dissertation. 

I  am  grateful  for  the  institutional  support  I  received  during  the  course  of  my  graduate 
studies.  This  research  was  assisted  by  a  grant  from  the  Joint  Committee  on  African  Studies  of  the 
Social  Science  Research  Council  and  the  American  Council  of  Learned  Societies  with  funds 
provided  by  the  Ford,  Mellon,  and  Rockefeller  Foundations.  I  also  received  a  research  grant  from 
the  Institute  of  International  Education  under  the  U.S.  Fulbright  Student  Program  (1995-96).  I 
would  like  to  thank  the  History  Department  at  the  University  of  Florida  for  the  support  received 
over  the  years,  including  a  write-up  grant  from  the  College  of  Liberal  Arts  and  Sciences,  a  research 
assistantship  and  a  teaching  assistantship.  The  African  Studies  Center  also  aided  my  work  through 
three  years  of  Title  VI,  FLAS  funding,  a  study  carrel  and  an  atmosphere  of  creative 
interdisciplinary  interaction. 

I  would  like  to  express  my  sincere  gratitude  to  the  Government  of  Tanzania  for  permission 
to  do  research  in  the  country  under  the  auspices  of  the  Tanzania  Commission  for  Science  and 
Technology  and  the  History  Department  of  the  University  of  Dar  es  Salaam.  At  the  University  of 
Dar  es  Salaam  members  of  the  History  Department  were  always  generous  with  their  time  and 
support.  Special  thanks  to  Dr.  Fred  J.  Kaijage,  Dr.  Bertram  Mapunda,  Dr.  Rugatiri  D.  K. 
Mekacha,  Dr.  B.  Itandala,  Dr.  I.  N.  Kimambo  and  Dr.  Nestor  Luanda. 

My  deepest  appreciation  is  extended  to  my  professors  who  have  given  so  much  of  their 
time  and  intellectual  inspiration  to  my  work.  I  extend  heartfelt  thanks  to  Steve  Feierman  who  has 
fundamentally  formed  the  way  I  think  about  Africa  and  always  pushed  me  toward  excellence. 


Thanks  also  to  David  Schoenbrun  for  doing  what  it  took  to  get  me  through  this  with  compassion 
and  intelligence;  to  R.  Hunt  Davis  Jr.  for  advising,  editing  and  encouraging;  and  to  the  rest  of  my 
committee,  Jeffrey  D.  Needell,  Kathryn  J.  Burns  and  Allan  F.  Bums  for  their  continuing  support.  I 
would  also  like  to  thank  Richard  Waller  for  his  interest  and  ideas  over  the  years.  My  study  at  the 
University  of  Florida  was  enriched  by  a  community  of  scholars  who  demonstrated  a  cooperative 
and  supportive  spirit-including  Holly  Hanson,  Tracy  Baton,  Marcia  Good  Maust,  James  Ellison, 
Edda  Fields,  Todd  Leedy,  Kym  Morrison,  Keri  Schmit,  Dianne  Oyler,  Rebecca  Gearhardt, 
Kearsley  Stewart  and  Rob  Ellers.  1  could  not  have  done  it  without  Holly's  encouragement  and 
reading  of  many  drafts.  While  I  was  in  Dar  es  Salaam  I  enjoyed  the  support  of  a  wider  community 
of  scholars  at  TYCS  including,  Kathleen  Smythe  (who  also  read  and  edited),  Anne  Stacie  Canning 
Colwell,  Patrick  Malloy,  Frances  Vavrus,  Lisa  Richey,  Stefano  Porte,  Beth  Pratt,  Simon  Heck  and 
Ludo  Bok  from  whom  I  learned  and  was  enriched. 

In  Tanzania  numerous  people  aided  my  work,  gave  me  hospitality  and  good  conversation. 
Thanks  to  Mwalimu  Nyamaganda  Magoto  for  all  the  time  he  spent  going  over  thousands  of 
cultural  vocabulary  words  in  Nata;  to  Susana  Nyabikwabe  Mayani  for  teaching  me  Nata  and  being 
my  friend;  to  Adija  Sef  for  her  friendship,  quick  laugh  and  care  of  my  house  and  children;  to 
Mayani  Magoto  for  his  work  in  interviews,  research  on  various  topics  and  interest  in  the  whole 
process;  to  Goko  Kimori  for  coming  over  nearly  every  day  to  find  out  if  1  had  learned  Nata  yet  and 
staying  to  chat;  to  Morigo,  Magoto  Nyawagamba,  Magoto,  Nyangere  and  Marehemu  Nyambura 
Mayani  for  bringing  joy  into  the  days  in  Bugerera;  to  Nyangere  Faini  for  helping  me  with 
transcription;  to  Faini  Magoto  and  Joseph  Magoto  for  always  having  a  meal  and  a  place  to  rest 
when  I  needed  it,  for  all  of  their  hospitality;  to  Mzee  Mswaga  for  being  our  community  eyes  and 
ears  and  thatching  our  roof;  to  Susan  Godshall  for  typing  the  Ngoreme  Dictionary;  to  Ausgustino 
Mokwe  Kisigiro  for  lending  me  his  Nata  dictionary  and  tapes;  to  Padre  James  Eblin,  Maryknoll 


Missioner  from  the  Ishenyi  mission,  for  his  kindness  and  friendship,  for  making  contacts  in  Ishenyi 
and  especially  for  twice  rescuing  me  when  the  car  broke  down;  to  the  Tanzania  Mennonite  Church 
people  in  Nyabange  and  Shirati  who  always  extended  the  hand  of  hospitality  and  support;  to 
Bishop  Solomon  S.  Buteng'e,  Bishop  Joram  Mbeba  and  Marehemu  Bishop  Naftali  Birai  who  were 
always  interested  in  the  work  and  allowed  us  to  lease  a  church  car;  to  David  and  Justine  Foxall  for 
their  kind  hospitality  in  Dar  es  Salaam;  and  to  Brian  Farm  and  Bethany  Woodward  for  their 
hospitality  and  friendship  at  Seronera. 

1  feel  a  deep  debt  of  gratitude  to  Nyawagamba  Magoto  who  extended  the  right  hand  of 
fellowship,  invited  us  into  his  home  and  embraced  the  research  as  if  it  was  his  own.  The  entire 
Magoto  family,  the  brothers  and  sister  of  Nyawagamba  and  their  children,  adopted  us  and  cared 
for  us  as  family.  I  am  also  grateful  for  all  the  work  and  dedication  of  those  who  acted  as  my 
colleagues  to  arrange  interviews,  translate,  make  introductions  and  serve  as  cultural  translators. 
Without  their  help  my  work  would  not  have  been  possible.  They  include  Kinanda  Sigara,  Mayani 
Magoto,  Nyamaganda  Magoto,  David  Mganya  Masama,  Pastor  Wilson  Shanyangi  Machota,  and 
Mnada  Joseph  Mayonga,  all  of  whom  also  provided  me  with  hospitality  and  good  friendship. 
Mnada  rescued  me  from  a  car  breakdown  on  a  rainy  night  with  his  team  of  oxen  and  his  wife 
always  had  a  pot  of  milky  tea  to  cheer  me  up.  I  was  also  aided  in  arranging  interviews  by  Rhoda 
Koreni,  Yohana  Wambura,  Kennedy  Sigira,  Philemon  Mbota,  Thomas  John  Kazi,  D.  M.  Sattima 
and  Ibrahimu  Matatiro  Kemuhe.  Zedekia  Oloo  Siso  is  a  fellow  historian  and  gave  me  access  to  his 
work  in  the  Luo-speaking  area  of  the  region.  Thanks  to  Glen  and  Elin  Brubaker  for  facilitating 
that  exchange. 

So  many  other  people  facilitated  aspects  of  the  research.  On  the  trip  to  Sonjo  Michael 
Wambura  Machambire  gave  up  his  own  business  to  accompany  me,  Ndelani  Sanaya  introduced 
me  to  his  home  village,  and  the  chairman  of  the  village  Emanuel  G.  Goroi  graciously  hosted  our 


group  without  prior  warning.  Father  Ambrose  Chacha  helped  me  with  the  Nyegina  records.  G.  M. 
Kusekwa  with  the  S.  D.  A.  records  at  the  highschool  in  Ikizu,  and  the  archivist  in  Musoma, 
Fredrick  Semkiwa  helped  to  locate  files  there.  In  Mugumu  I  was  always  grateful  for  the  hospitality 
of  our  friends  from  Missions  Moving  Mountains  (Paul  and  Stephanie,  Jim  and  Joanne,  and  Cabot 
and  Betsy)  and  the  Mennonite  Church  (Daniel  and  Prisca  Machota,  and  Wilson  and  Esta 
Machota).  In  Nyabange  the  door  was  always  open  from  Harold  and  Christine  Wenger,  Arlin  and 
Velma  Schrock,  Rachel  lgira,  Perusi  Kyambiriya,  Deus  and  Salome  Tumbago,  Marehumu  Nyerere 
Itinde  and  his  family,  and  many,  many  others.  In  Nyabasi  we  received  welcome  from  Elva  Landis 
and  Elizabeth  Birai;  in  Iramba  from  Father  Charles  Mwiguta;  in  Kisaka  from  Pastor  Zakayo 
Jandwa  and  his  family;  in  Mwanza  from  Juliana  Matoha  Magoto;  in  Bujora  from  Joseph 
Sungulile,  Jefta  Kishosha  and  Mark  Bessire;  and  in  Nyegezi  from  Bhoke  Magoto. 

My  appreciation  also  goes  out  to  my  church  family  at  Emmanuel  Mennonite  Church  in 
Gainesville,  who  provided  the  community  our  family  needed  in  Florida,  and  at  First  Baptist  Church 
in  Dove  Creek,  who  did  the  same  for  us  when  we  arrived  as  strangers  in  Colorado.  Mennonite 
Central  Committee  and  particularly  our  many  colleagues  in  the  organization  got  me  started  on  the 
quest  for  understanding  in  Africa.  1  am  grateful  for  my  training  at  Goshen  College  under  Theron 
Schlabach,  John  Oyer,  Alan  Kreider,  and  James  Hertzler  who  prepared  me  for  this  work  in  more 
ways  than  they  might  know.  Mary  Oyer  and  Robert  Kreider  remain  models  of  scholarship  and 
thoughtful  living. 

My  extended  family  cheered  me  on  and  gave  me  what  1  needed  to  run  the  full  race.  I  am 
thankful  to  Dad  and  Mom  for  all  their  love  and  support  in  a  thousand  ways  during  this  time,  to 
Linda  for  helping  me  to  keep  my  chin  up,  and  to  Jon  for  all  his  help  with  photography  and  video  on 
the  field.  My  Shetler  family  (Luther,  Geneva,  Jo,  Stan,  Terry,  Bonnie,  Lu,  Tami,  and  Mick)  has 
always  believed  1  could  do  this  and  helped  me  not  to  doubt,  too.  However,  my  biggest  debt  of 


gratitude  is  to  my  husband,  Peter,  and  to  my  children,  Daniel  and  Paul,  who  suffered  and  rejoiced 

with  me  through  it  all.  Their  contentment  and  joy  in  living  in  rural  Tanzania  allowed  me  the 

freedom  and  security  to  do  my  own  work.  Paul  knows  and  enjoys  the  stories  as  much  as  1  do,  he 

baked  bread,  gave  me  foot  massages  after  weary  days  of  walking  and  greeted  all  the  old  ladies 

politely.  Daniel  was  my  source  of  good  sense  and  willing  help,  his  cultural  sensitivity  and 

flexibility  were  appreciated  even  as  he  was  growing  into  a  teenager.  Peter  fixed  cars,  computers 

and  broken  hearts,  he  did  my  maps  and  graphics,  supported  and  loved  me  in  every  way,  and 

provided  good  humor  and  perspective  on  the  things  that  really  matter.  To  them  I  give  back  my 

dreams,  in  which  they  also  share,  in  loving  gratitude: 

Had  I  the  heavens '  embroidered  cloths, 
Enwrought  with  golden  and  silver  light, 
The  blue  and  the  dim  and  the  dark  cloths 
Of  night  and  light  and  the  half-light, 
I  would  spread  the  cloths  under  your  feet: 
But  1,  being  poor,  have  only  my  dreams; 
I  have  spread  my  dreams  under  your  feet; 
Tread  softly  because  you  tread  on  my  dreams. 
William  Butler  Yeats,  1899 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii 

LIST  OF  FIGURES xj 

TRANSLITERATION,  ORTHOGRAPHY  AND  GLOSSARY xiii 

FOREWORD   xix 

ABSTRACT xxjx 

CHAPTERS 

1  INTRODUCTION: 

ORAL  TRADITION,  TIME,  SPACE  AND  SOCIAL  IDENTITY 1 

Oral  Traditions  in  Space  and  Time  5 

Oral  Traditions  and  Social  Identity  28 

Research  Methodology  34 

PART  ONE:  THE  SOCIAL  SPACES  OF  ORAL  TRADITION  AND 

HISTORICAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  IN  THE  WESTERN  SERENGETI 54 


ORAL  TRADITION: 

THE  GENDERED  SPACES  OF  HISTORICAL  KNOWLEDGE 

AND  THE  SECRETS  OF  THE  PAST   55 

The  Social  Spaces  of  Historical  Knowledge 56 

The  Colonial  Contexts  of  Men's  Historical  Narratives 63 

Women's  Intimate  Community  Knowledge    81 

Secret  Knowledge ]  00 

Conclusion ]  07 

HISTORICAL  CONSCIOUSNESS: 

THE  DISASTERS  OF  THE  LATE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  AS  RUPTURE  ....  Ill 

Rupture  in  Social  Identity  at  the  Time  of  Crisis 116 

Ecological  Breakdown    1 23 

Indirect  Effects  of  the  Caravan  Trade  133 

Maasai  Raids  ..137 

Conclusion 141 


PART  TWO: 

LONG-TERM  PATTERNS  IN  THE  SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION  OF  SPACE 143 

4  AS1MOKA,  EMERGENCE: 

BUILDING  HOMESTEADS  ON  AN  INTER-CULTURAL  FRONTIER 144 

The  Development  of  a  Regional  Culture  from  Diverse  Interactions  in  the  Distant 

Past 146 

The  Nata  Emergence  Story:  The  Union  of  Hunters  and  Farmers 164 

Social  Reproduction  and  Homestead  Space 169 

The  Ikizu  Emergence  Story:  The  Division  of  Authority  185 

Conclusion 191 

5  ECOLOGICAL  LANDSCAPES  OF  INTERACTION: 

THE  EMERGENCE  TRADITIONS  OF  A  HILL  FARMER  SOCIETY   193 

The  Ecological  Landscapes  of  Interaction  on  the  Frontier 194 

Hills  as  Zones  of  Interaction 203 

Relations  with  Other  Hill  Farmers:  The  Sonjo  Connection    213 

Relations  with  Hunter-Gatherers:  Learning  How  to  Live  on  the  Land 218 

Relations  with  Plains  Herders:  The  Silent  Texts 230 

Conclusion 245 

6  REGIONAL  PATHS  OF  ASSOCIATION: 

THE  CLAN  TRADITIONS  OF  A  MOBILE  SOCIETY  246 

Clans  as  Children  of  the  Homestead    249 

Clan  Histories  as  Pathways  of  Regional  Association  268 

Praise  Names  and  Prohibitions   291 

Prophecy  as  the  Specialist  Knowledge  of  Clans 303 

Conclusion 312 

PART  THREE:  SOCIAL  PROCESS  IN  THE  MIDDLE  PERIOD  OF  SETTLEMENT   ....  315 

7  THE  GENERATION  OF  SETTLEMENT  ( 1 850- 1 870): 

CLAIMING  A  RELATIONSHIP  TO  THE  LAND  316 

The  Spaces  of  Important  Places 317 

The  Living  Dead 325 

Ritual  Possession  of  the  Land 338 

Nineteenth  Century  Settlement  Patterns 347 

Continuity  and  Relationship  to  the  Land  in  the  Context  of  Mobility 362 

Conclusion 369 

8  THE  WALK  OF  THE  GENERATION-SET: 

THE  RITUAL  DEFINITION  OF  TERRITORY 373 

Generation-Set  Ritual  and  the  Middle-Time  Frame   376 

Age-Organization 380 

The  Rituals  of  Healing  the  Land  and  the  Retirement  Ceremony   395 

Interpreting  the  Walk   410 

Territories  and  Boundaries   422 


Conclusion 438 

PART  FOUR:  SOCIAL  TRANSFORMATION  IN  THE  LATE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  440 

9  THE  GENERATION  OF  DISASTERS  (1870-1895): 

CHANGING  FORMS  OF  AGE-ORGANIZATION   441 

Age-Set  Reorganization    444 

Settlement  Reorganization 453 

Resistance  and  Accommodation  to  Maasai  Hegemony 459 

Age-set  Territories:  The  Bounded  Space  of  Saiga 480 

Continuities  in  Strategies  for  Coping  with  Disaster   490 

Conclusion 494 

10  THE  GENERATION  OF  OPPORTUNITY  (C.  1895-1920): 

CHANGING  FORMS  OF  ETHNICITY 495 

Ethnic  Formation   497 

Recovery  from  the  Disasters  and  the  Larger  Context  of  Ethnicity 508 

The  Emergence  of  New  Wealth 528 

Colonial  Rule  and  Changing  Forms  of  Social  Identity   547 

Conclusion 560 

APPENDIX  1 :  NATA  EMERGENCE  TRADITIONS 564 

APPENDIX  2:  IKIZU  EMERGENCE  TRADITIONS 567 

APPENDIX  3:  IKOMA  EMERGENCE  TRADITIONS 571 

APPENDIX  4:  TATOGA  EMERGENCE  TRADITIONS   573 

REFERENCES  CITED 576 

Oral  Sources:  Formal  Interviews 576 

Unpublished  Archival  Sources 585 

Published  Sources,  Dissertations/Theses  and  Conference  Papers 589 

BIOGRAPHICAL  SKETCH 613 


LIST  OF  FIGURES 

Figure  page 

F-l .       Topics  for  the  Study  of  Nata  History xxiv 

F-2.       Magoto  Mossi  Magoto,  Nata  patriarch,  c.  1890-1987   xxvii 

1-1 .       From  Riyara  Hill  in  Nata  looking  East 1 

2-1 .       Regional  Setting  of  the  Western  Serengeti   58 

2-2.       Tribal  Map  of  the  Musoma  District 71 

2-3.       Mwinani  by  Local  Artist  Deus  Nyahega  Tumbago 89 

2-4.       Women's  Story  Telling 91 

3-1 .       Ishenyi  Dispersal  from  Nyeberekera    118 

3-2.       The  Ishenyi  Story  of  Nyeberekera 119 

3-3.       White  Fathers'  Mission.  Nyegina,  Musoma,  Founded  1911    128 

4-1.       Linguistic  Maps  of  the  Lakes  Region  Over  Time 152 

4-2.       Great  Lake  Bantu  Linguistic  Tree  1 57 

4-3.       Dialect  Chaining  Chart  of  the  East  Nyanza  Languages 159 

4-4.       Narration  of  Nata  Emergence  Stories 166 

4-5.       Homestead  Layout    1 76 

4-6.        Interior  House  Design 1 77 

5-1.       Ecological  Map  of  the  Serengeti-Mara  Ecosystem  199 

5-2.       Human  Interaction  with  the  Environment 209 

5-3.       Hunting  Vocabulary  and  Tools   223 

xi 


5-4.  Kuria  Women,  1904   225 

5-5.  Two  Versions  of  the  Story  of  Masuche's  Bao   240 

6-1.  Narrators  of  Clan  Histories 251 

6-2.  Blacksmiths  and  Their  Tools 287 

6-3.  Praise  Shouts  at  the  New  Moon  Dances 293 

6-4.  The  Regional  Distribution  of  Four  Major  Clans 295 

6-5.  Two  Ikizu  Rainmakers    306 

6-6.  The  Ikizu  Utemi  List 310 

7-1.  Nineteenth  century  Settlement  Sites  of  the  Western  Serengeti 321 

7-2.  Respect  for  Ancestors  326 

7-3.  Emisambwa  in  Ngoreme   331 

7-4.  Nata  sites,  Gitaraga  and  Riyara 333 

7-5.  Ikizu  sites  at  Chamuriho  and  Gaka    341 

8-1 .  Sites  of  the  Ikizu  Walk   398 

8-2.  Rikora  Leaders  402 

9-1.  Chronology  of  Generations   449 

9-2.  Remains  of  Stone  Walls,  Ngoreme  Fortified  Settlements   455 

9-3.  Sonjo  Fortified  Settlements   462 

9-4.  Maasai  Relations 470 

9-5.  Map  of  Age-Set  Cycles 486 

10-1.  Narrators  of  "the  Generation  of  Opportunity"   512 

10-2.  Kuria  Warriors,  1904   518 

10-3.  A  New  Generation  of  Wealthy  Men 536 

1 0-4.  Stories  of  the  Nyangi 543 

xii 


TRANSLITERATION,  ORTHOGRAPHY  AND  GLOSSARY 
Texts  that  are  quoted  in  the  body  of  the  paper  are  cited  in  footnotes.  In  cases  where  I  want 
to  give  the  reader  a  fuller  sense  of  the  context  of  an  interview  or  various  versions  of  a  particular 
narrative  without  interrupting  the  flow  of  the  text,  I  have  included  these  in  the  appendix.'  The 
following  conventions  are  used  throughout  the  text. 

1.  Significant  omission  of  the  speaker's  words  is  represented  with  three  dots  surrounded  by 
brackets  [. . .] 

2.  Slight  omission  of  the  speaker's  words  due  to  stumbling  or  repetition  is  represented  by  three  dots 

3.  A  pause  by  the  speaker  is  represented  by  three  dashes  — 

4.  Explanations,  actions  or  omissions  are  included  in  brackets,  without  italics  [  ] 

5.  Long  narratives  are  indented  and  set  in  italics  to  set  them  off  from  the  rest  of  the  text.  All  texts 
are  translated  from  either  a  local  language  or  Swahili;  where  untranslated  words  appear  in  the 
indented  quotations  they  are  represented  without  italics  and  where  a  local  language  word  appears  in 
the  body  of  the  dissertation  it  is  represented  with  italics. 

All  of  these  narratives  were  collected  in  interviews  and  not  in  performance  situations. 
They  are  dialogic  in  nature,  with  frequent  interruptions  and  pause  for  assent.  Different  sections  of 
one  narrative  may  be  told  in  different  settings  for  different  purposes.  All  of  this  makes  it  difficult 


1  I  have  followed  many  of  the  conventions  in  Isabel  Hofmeyer,  "We  Spend  Our  Years  as  a 
Tale  that  is  Told:"  Oral  Historical  Narrative  in  a  South  African  Chiefdom  (Portsmouth: 
Heinemann,  1994),  pp.  xi-xiii. 


to  extract  a  "standard"  version.  Therefore,  long  quoted  sections  in  the  text  represent  only  one  of 

many  variations  of  the  telling  and  tend  to  be  rather  loose  and  free  flowing  accounts.  Footnotes  for 

interviews  include  the  name  of  the  informant,  village  where  the  interview  took  place,  the  date  of  the 

interview,  and  the  ethnic  group  and  gender  of  the  informant  in  parenthesis. 

Standard  Orthography 

The  linguistic  conventions  used  follow  the  orthography  proposed  by  Muniko,  oMagige  and 

Ruel  in  the  Kuria-English  Dictionary.  Because  this  is  the  only  published  dictionary  currently 

available  for  any  of  the  Mara  languages  I  have  chosen  to  use  this  as  the  standard  form,  following 

Swahili  orthography.  Mara  languages  use  seven  distinct  vowels.  This  means  that  in  using  the 

standard  orthography  two  single  letters  each  represent  sounds  which  are  pronounced  differently. 

Muniko,  oMagige  and  Ruel  resolve  the  problem  in  this  way: 

The  open  and  closed  'e'  are  both  written  as  '«'  and  the  open  and  closed  'o'  are  both 
written  as  'o. '  Where,  however,  the  sound  difference  discriminates  between  two  words 
that  are  otherwise  identical  their  respective  pronunciation  is  given  in  the  entry  in 
parenthesis  immediately  following  the  word  itself.  In  these  cases: 

open  'o'as  in  the  English  'hot'  is  written  'o. ' 

closed  'o'as  in  the  English  'open' is  written  'ou. ' 

open  'e'as  in  the  English  'end'  is  written  'e. ' 

closed  'e'as  in  the  English  'rein'  is  written  'ei. ' 
thus:  -kora  (prncd.  -koura),  to  scrape  away:  -kora  (prncd  -kora),  to  do,  make,  -kenga 
(prncd.  -keingaj,  to  ward  off,  parry;  -kenga  (prncd.  -kenga),  to  cut,  sever. 

Other  conventions  used  in  the  Kuria  dictionary  include  the  following.  Long  vowels  are 

indicated  by  doubling.  All  vowels  preceding  'mb',  'nch',  'nd',  'ng',  'nk'  and  'rr'  are  pronounced  long 

and  not  always  indicated  as  such  in  the  orthography.  The  nasalized  'ng'  (pronounced  as  the  English 

word  'singing')  is  written  as  in  Swahili  ng'.  A  trilled  or  rolled  Y  is  written  'rr.'  All  vowels  are 

sounded,  including  those  at  the  end  of  a  word.  The  use  of  W  as  a  quasi-vowel  is  avoided  and  W 

used  only  as  a  consonant.  Muniko  el  al  maintain  that  because  there  are  very  few  words 


xiv 


distinguished  by  tone  alone,  Kuria  is  not  to  be  considered  a  tonal  language,  although  intonation  is 

important.  Therefore  no  marks  of  intonation  are  used.2 

Names  of  languages,  people  and  place  names  are  used  without  the  prefixes.  Therefore,  the 

language  Egikuria,  the  Abakuria  people  and  the  place  Bukuria  all  become  Kuria,  distinguished  by 

context. 

Glossary  of  Mara  Words  Used  in  the  Text 

(In  Nata  unless  otherwise  indicated) 

abanyikora  —  generation-set  members  in  power  (Ikizu,  Zanaki) 

agecha  —  famine 

aghaso  —  ritual  of  purification  for  those  who  kill  a  lion,  leopard  or  Maasai 

ahumbo  —  distant  fields  for  crops 

aka  —  homestead 

akoromo  —  digging  stick  (lkoma) 

amachi  —  house  for  young  unmarried  boys 

amang'ana  ga  kare  —  matters  of  the  past,  history 

ambere  —  drum 

ambirisi  —  red  oat  grass,  Themeda  triandra 

amuma  —  oath  (Ngoreme) 

amusera  —  rain  medicine  (Ishenyi),  omoshana  (lkizu) 

anchara  —  famine,  path 

ang'ombe  umwando  —  cattle  given  to  the  clan  at  inheritance 

anyumba  —  house 

arachana  —  topi  skin  worn  over  the  shoulder  for  elderly  men 

aring'a  —  oath 

asaraka  —  gazelle  skin  worn  by  women  as  an  apron 

asaro  —  circumcision  ceremony 

ase  or  ahase  —  soil,  land 

asi  —  hunter/gatherers 

asimoka  —  to  sprout  up,  to  wake  up,  the  rise  of  a  river  (ensemoka  in  Kuria),  origins 

asimoora  —  livestock  corral 

asire  —  debt  between  women  who  borrow  goods  as  neighbors 

bao  —  board  game  common  throughout  Africa 

bene  —  the  people  of,  abahiri  in  Ikizu 

bisa  —  enemy,  Maasai 

budodi  ~  wire  wrapped  bracelets  or  anklets 

buhoro  —  whole,  healthy 


2  S.  M.  Muniko,  B.  Muita  oMagige  and  M.  J.  Ruel,  eds.,  Kuria-English  Dictionary 
(Hamburg:  Lit  Verlag,  for  the  International  African  Institute,  1996),  pp.  v-vi. 


chashabashi  —  ivory  bracelets  worn  by  elders  of  a  certain  rank 

chesiri  —  women's  self-help  farming  groups  (Ngoreme) 

chubha  -  south 

ebereri  ~  fall  pits  for  hunting  wildebeest 

ebeshona  —  strips  of  hide  worn  ritually  on  fingers  (Ikizu) 

ebimenyo  —  settlement  sites 

egeshoko  —  log  which  closes  the  livestock  corral,  ekeshoko  (Ngoreme),  egesaku  (Kuria),  doorway. 

eghise  —  black  wildebeest  or  cattle  tail  used  ritually  for  eldership  titles 

egitara  —  grain  storage  bin 

ekeburu  —  temporary  huts  near  to  the  fields 

ekebuse  —  sandy  upland  soils 

ekehita/ebehita  ~  doorway  or  gateway 

ekehwe/ebehwe  —  ghosts,  spirits  of  the  dead 

ekerisho  —  grazing  land 

ekerongori  —  thin  porridge  for  drinking 

ekimweso  -  ceremony  of  purification,  sanctification  (Ikizu),  usually  with  fire,  ikoroso  (Ishenyi  and 

Ngoreme),  shishiga  (Ikoma) 
ekinyariri  —  month  of  green  flush  after  the  burns  (August  or  September) 
ekireri  —  leader  of  the  generation-set  (Ishenyi) 

ekishomba  —  state  of  ritual  impurity,  danger,  blood  shed  between  families 
ekitana/ebitana  —  medicine  bundles 

ekyaro/ebyaro  -  ritually  controlled  lands,  ikiaro  (Kuria),  clan  lands 
emigiro  —  avoidance 

enchobe  —  horn  of  the  generation-set,  ekombyo  (Zanaki) 
erisambwa/emisambwa  —  spirits  of  the  land,  spirits  of  lineage  ancestors,  places  where  spirits  of  the 

ancestors  who  guard  the  land  are  buried 
eseghero  —  clay  bottom-land  soils 
-gaba  —  to  divide  the  inheritance 
-gonka  —  to  suck  at  the  breast 
-guha  —  to  grow  old 

-gutaacha  asaiga  —  ceremony  to  come  into  your  age-set 
hamate  —  clan,  place,  strangers 
-haraga  —  to  prepare  soil  for  planting  in  the  dry  season 
hengere  —  short  people 
-ibaka  —  to  praise  oneself 
ikwabhe  —  Maasai 

injama  —  Kuria  secret  council  of  the  territory 
irigiha/amagiha  —  hearthstones 
-itaberi  —  to  bless  the  land 
kang'ati  -  leader  of  the  generation-set  (Nata) 
kaswende  —  syphilis 
-kerera  —  the  walk  of  the  generation-set 
kicheneni  —  of  "pure  descent" 

kigori  —  mass  circumcision  ceremony  to  close  an  age-set 
-kerani  —  to  greet,  to  exchange  (difference  in  stress) 
-kunguha  —  to  grow  old 
kwawibancha  -  front  door  of  the  house 


kwibiserani  angibo  —  ritual  to  remove  impurity,  to  reconcile  two  families  with  blood  between  them 

kyawisiko  —  emergency  back  door  of  the  house 

magoro  —  feet  or  legs 

mame  —  maternal  uncle 

masabha  —  north 

masubho  —  secrets,  medicines  of  eldership  ranks  or  in  general 

materego  —  woodland,  wilderness 

-menya  —  to  build 

mkamwana  —  daughter-in-law,  woman  married  by  another  woman  to  produce  her  heir. 

msororo  —  beer  party  in  which  participants  contribute  in  turn  to  the  preparation 

mtemi  —  Sukuma  chief  or  Ikizu  rainmaker/chief 

-musa  —  to  bless  by  sprinkling 

mwami  —  Zanaki  rainmaker's  title 

mwanangwa  —  colonial  headman 

mwinani  —  ogre,  monster  of  folk  tales 

mwiro/bwiro  -  non-blacksmith  or  non-potter 

mwisenge  —  paternal  aunt 

ndezi  —  leather  and  cowry  shell  bracelet  used  in  the  investiture  of  the  Ikizu  mtemi 

ng'ombe  ya  baki  —  the  cow  of  the  young  woman 

ntemi  —  ritual  scar  on  right  breast  (Sonjo) 

nyancha  —  west  or  lake,  specifically  Lake  Victoria 

nyangi  —  celebration  of  life  stages  or  eldership  titles 

nyika  --  wilderness 

nyina  —  mother 

-ny  wa  —  to  drink 

obokima  —  in  Swahili  "ugali",  thick  porridge  eaten  as  staple  food 

obosongo  —  arrow  poison 

obugabho  —  prophecy,  healing,  divination 

obugo  —  fortified  settlement  (Ngoreme) 

oburwe  —  finger  millet 

omnibi  —  wealthy  man,  cattle 

omoboibororu/abibororu  —  native  born 

omogimba  —  rainmaker 

omogomba  —  childless  woman,  barren 

omogongo  wa  mwensi  -  medicine  of  the  generation-set  (Ngoreme),  etnigongo  (Zanaki) 

omogongo  —  back 

omogore/abagore  —  a  person  who  is  bought  for  food  during  the  famine 

omokina/abakina  —  speaker 

omokoro/abakoro  —  the  elders,  ancestors 

omokuungu/abakuungu  ~  old  woman 

omorema/abarema  —  farmer 

omorokingi  -  eldership  title  of  the  Nata 

omoroti/abaroti  —  dream  prophets 

omoseese/abaseese  —  slave  or  dog 

omosimano/abasimano  —  stranger 

omosimbe/abasimbe  -  independent  woman,  managing  her  own  homestead  and  family,  not  married 

omosino  —  widow 


omotangi  —  leader  of  the  generation-set  (Ngoreme) 

omotoro  —  gift  of  food 

omotware  —  male  wife,  married  by  an  independent  woman 

omugabho/abagabho  -  prophet 

omugambi/abagambi  —  speaker 

omuhabe  —  poor  person,  orphan 

omunase  —  prophet  (Ikizu) 

omunywa  ~  mouth 

omuryango  —  outer  room  of  a  woman's  house  for  keeping  small  stock  at  night 

omusangura  -  a  kind  of  tree  at  emisambwa  sites 

omwame  —  wealthy  man,  or  woman 

omwerechi/abawerechi  —  speaker  (Ikizu) 

omwikarabutu  —  woman  specialized  in  circumcision  ceremonies 

omwisani  —  friend,  bloodbrother  (wa  saraga,  bo  maguta) 

omwiti  ~  the  one  who  hits  the  lion  first,  omunoti,  the  one  who  hits  second 

orokoba  —  protection  medicine  around  the  land  or  a  hide  rope  for  milking 

orubago  —  fence 

oruberi  —  settlement 

orutani  —  long  distance  trade,  to  Sukuma 

orutanya  —  long  staff  of  the  generation-set  leader 

-ragera  —  to  eat  porridge,  to  eat 

ribancha  —  homestead  yard 

rihaha  —  rinderpest 

rikora/amakora  —  generation-set 

risaga  -  work  party  in  which  labor  is  rewarded  with  feasting  and  beer 

-risi  —  to  herd  livestock 

rogoro  -  the  east 

-rota  —  to  dream 

ruaki  -  stone  fort  for  protection  during  a  raid  (Nata) 

-sagari  chatugo  —  cattle  clientship 

saiga  —  age-set,  asega  (Ngoreme) 

sarara  —  lungs 

-sengera  ~  to  propitiate  an  ancestral  spirit,  "to  beseech" 

sesera  —  iron  bracelets 

-sisimoka  —  to  spring  up,  as  in  to  wake  up  or  to  sprout  up  from  the  ground 

sukubi  —  cattle  hump 

-tindeka  —  to  store,  to  bury  the  dead 

turi  —  blacksmith  or  potter 

utemi  —  chiefship  (Ikizu) 

yowe  —  alarm  call 


FOREWORD 

When  I  was  choosing  a  research  site  it  seemed  wise  to  return  to  the  Mara  Region  where 
my  husband  and  I  spent  six  years  working  with  the  Tanzania  Mennonite  Church  in  the 
coordination  and  facilitation  of  community  development  projects.  This  work  took  us  to  all  parts  of 
the  region,  developing  significant  personal  relationships  in  many  places.  I  would  thus  have  a 
natural  set  of  contacts  and  social  networks  through  which  to  begin  my  work.  But  more  than  that 
my  desire  to  return  to  graduate  school  and  to  write  African  history  was  born  out  of  my  experiences 
and  friendships  in  the  Mara  Region-and  so  I  felt  a  debt  there. 

I  hoped  that  the  formal  study  of  African  history  would  give  depth  and  understanding  to 
patterns  that  I  saw  in  operation,  but  about  which  I  was  ill-equipped  to  make  sense.  At  that  point, 
as  a  development  worker,  I  saw  history  as  a  tool  of  empowerment,  providing  the  means  for  local 
people  to  understand  themselves  well  enough  to  take  development  into  their  own  hands,  rather  than 
relying  on  help  from  the  outside.  Yet  how  1,  as  an  outsider  learning  local  history,  would  facilitate 
this  was  never  clear.  At  least  1  hoped  to  be  able  to  tell  the  history  of  a  people  whose  "voice"  had 
not  been  heard,  to  show  the  significance  of  a  people  and  a  place  which  had  been  seen  as  an  empty 
spot  on  the  map.  It  was  this  love  and  respect,  also  mixed  with  some  amount  of  paternalism,  that 
allowed  me  to  think  1  was  needed  to  recover  this  neglected  history.  Idealism  falls  hard  in  graduate 
school  and  I  am  now  less  naive  and  more  skeptical,  but  no  less  driven  to  present  a  history  from  the 
perspective  of  those  who  live  it,  even  if  it  is  told  in  and  moderated  by  my  own  voice. 

When  I  returned  to  the  Mara  Region  to  do  my  research  1  was  returning  to  a  place  that 
seemed  a  lot  like  home.  This  was  the  place  where  1  had  given  birth  to  my  second  child,  bumped 


endlessly  over  the  dusty  roads  and  sat  with  friends  over  cups  of  sweet  milky  tea.  1  learned  to  speak 
as  a  child  does  but  had  been  given  responsibilities  such  as  an  adult  has  and  struggled  for  what 
seemed  right.  I  had  seen  close  friends  die  and  had  new  babies  named  after  me.  It  was  a  place  that 
1  "felt"  as  well  as  intellectually  "knew."  It  was  a  set  of  landscapes  and  people  that  I  had  come  to 
love  and  which  had  deeply  changed  me. 

When  we  were  searching  for  a  place  to  live  it  seemed  prudent  to  avoid  living  on  church 
property  or  in  direct  affiliation  with  the  church  in  order  to  distinguish  old  roles  from  new.  It  also 
seemed  important  to  live  in  a  rural  village  that  still  functioned  as  a  community  in  order  to  be  part 
of  the  agricultural  cycle.  Since  this  was  conceived  as  a  regional  study  I  also  wanted  to  be 
somewhat  centrally  located  with  transportation  at  hand.  As  much  as  these  criteria  were  taken 
seriously,  in  the  end  the  decision  to  move  to  Nata  was  based  on  personal  and  subjective  choices. 
Nata  is  in  some  ways  the  smallest  and  least  significant  historically  of  all  of  the  ethnic  groups  in  the 
area.  Yet  by  living  here,  Nata  narratives,  language  and  custom  took  on  a  centrality  they  would  not 
otherwise  have  had. 

The  decision  to  move  to  Nata  was  based  on  a  personal  relationship  and  invitation  from 
Nyawagamba  Magoto.  We  got  to  know  him  as  a  local  development  coordinator  and  a  lay  church 
leader.  He  is  an  energetic  man,  committed  to  introducing  innovation  in  everything  from  imported 
dairy  cows  to  wheel-thrown,  glazed  pottery.  We  came  to  learn  that  he  is  also  part  of  a  large  and 
influential  Nata  family-the  eighteen  sons  and  daughters  of  the  local  patriarch.  Magoto  Mossi. 
Magoto's  children  and  grandchildren  are  influential  in  the  community  as  politicians,  teachers, 
development  workers,  church  leaders,  businessmen  and  village  council  members.  One  son  has  a 
university  education  and  another  son  was  the  founder  of  the  first  cattle  herders'  cooperative  in  the 
region,  "Wafugaji  wa  Mara,"  in  the  1950s,  and  a  former  member  of  parliament.  Magoto  himself 
went  through  all  of  the  eldership  titles,  holding  one  of  the  highest  ranks  until  he  renounced  this 


position  later  in  life.  He  was  also  an  innovator,  introducing  the  first  tractors  and  grain  mills  in  the 
area.  One  of  his  daughters  was  the  first  Nata  girl  to  attend  school.  Magoto  was  wealthy,  his  cattle 
numbering  in  the  thousands  at  one  time.  In  the  early  1 930s  he  opposed  the  Nata  Chief,  Rotigenga, 
and  left  to  live  in  Ikizu-nearly  400  Nata  followed  him.  For  better  or  worse  my  research  in  Nata 
was  under  the  protective  shield  of  Magoto's  legacy.1 

Nyawagamba  promised  that  if  we  would  come  to  live  in  Nata  he  would  build  us  a  house 
and  help  to  facilitate  the  research.  My  husband,  two  sons  (9  and  12  years  old  at  the  time)  and  I 
arrived  in  Nata  at  the  beginning  of  February,  1995,  after  having  spent  a  month  in  Dar  es  Salaam 
clearing  the  formalities  and  doing  an  initial  survey  of  the  archives.  We  found  the  round  walls  and 
roof  framework  of  the  house  up,  with  Nyawagamba  rushing  to  finish  thatching  before  the  big  rains 
began.  We  camped  near  the  house  for  two  weeks  in  the  rain  while  the  house  was  being  finished- 
our  lives  and  possessions  open  to  all  who  walked  down  the  path.  When  we  finally  moved  into  the 
house  we  had  become  known  locally  as  "wazungu  wa  Nyawagamba"  (Nyawagamba's  foreigners). 

Our  house  sat  in  the  small  village  of  Bugerera,  administratively  part  of  the  larger  village  of 
Mbiso  on  the  main  trunk  road  between  Musoma  and  Arusha.  Bugerera  is  the  place  where  many 
Mbiso  families  have  some  of  their  fields  and  send  second  wives  or  elder  sons  out  to  live  for  the 
farming  season.  It  lies  on  the  boundary  between  Nata  and  Ngoreme.  Just  over  the  hill  one  finds 
the  Ngoreme  village  of  Mosongo  and  the  no-man's  wilderness  of  cattle  raiders  and  thieves.  When 
we  first  drove  out  to  Bugerera,  after  having  committed  ourselves  to  live  there,  we  drove  the  ten 
kilometers  from  Mbiso  without  seeing  more  than  a  few  isolated  homesteads.  I  was  sure  that  my 


'  One  of  the  ways  in  which  I  fulfilled  the  ties  of  reciprocal  obligation  to  the  Magoto  family 
was  by  helping  them  to  write  a  personal  history  of  Magoto.  I  am  now  working  with  the  Swahili 
manuscript  by  Mwalimu  Nyamaganda  Magoto  Mossi,  assisted  by  Masoye  Faini  and  Chuba  Faini 
on  behalf  of  the  Magoto  Family,  "Historia  ya  Mzee  Magoto  Mossi  Magoto,  Katika  Maisha  Yake  " 
Nata.  1996. 


research  would  be  doomed  by  living  where  there  were  no  people.  Yet  it  was  the  location  of 
Bugerera  that  taught  me  to  look  for  people  in  the  hills  rather  than  on  the  flood  plain  where  the  car 
could  travel  and  to  see  the  relationship  between  larger  villages  and  their  related  farming  satellite 
communities. 

Since  we  were  friends  and  colleagues  of  Nyawagamba's  before  coming  to  live  with  him 
nothing  between  us  could  be  settled  on  the  basis  of  payment  for  services.  We  were  forced  into 
functioning  in  an  "economy  of  affection"  and  learning  the  unspoken  rules  of  reciprocity.2  We  did 
not  pay  rent  on  the  house,  a  salary  for  Adeja  (Nyawagamba's  wife)  to  help  with  household  chores, 
compensation  for  long  days  spent  on  interviews  instead  of  farming,  or  for  the  milk,  meat  and 
vegetables  that  were  frequently  provided  from  the  Magoto  family  surplus.  We.  in  turn,  provided 
transportation  to  Musoma  or  Mugumu  for  shopping,  hospital  or  other  emergencies.  We  sometimes 
bought  gifts  for  the  family  when  we  went  to  the  town.  My  husband,  Peter,  who  volunteered  in 
Serengeti  National  Park,  made  arrangements  with  Serengeti  tourist  hotels  to  buy  Nata  vegetables, 
fruits,  milk  and  cream  and  transported  them  to  the  hotels  when  he  went  to  the  park.  This  system  of 
reciprocity  was  also  used  for  the  colleagues  that  assisted  me  in  the  other  ethnic  groups  outside  of 
Nata.  These  colleagues  spent  a  lot  of  their  own  time  and  resources  to  facilitate  my  research 
without  direct  compensation.  I  was  told  by  Nyawagamba  when  I  left  that  it  was  better  to  leave 
myself  in  the  debt  of  others,  rather  than  the  other  way  around,  so  that  they  would  feel  free  to 
continue  the  relationship  when  1  returned. 

The  Magoto  children  incorporated  us  into  their  family  as  brother,  sister-in-law  and 
children.  We  were  greeted  in  this  way  throughout  Nata-treated  with  both  the  respect  and 


2  Reference  to  the  "economy  of  affection"  from  Goran  Hyden,  Beyond  Uiamaa  in 
Tanzania:  Underdevelopment  and  an  Uncaptured  Peasantry  (Berkeley:  University  of  California 
Press,  1980). 


obligation  which  followed  these  titles.  This  allowed  me  the  freedom  to  travel  alone  with  my 
brothers-in-law,  or  ask  for  help  from  my  sisters-in-law,  and  allowed  the  children  a  protective  shield 
against  the  curiosity  of  school  children.  The  knowledge  1  have  gained  is  a  "situated  knowledge" 
which  is  firmly  seated  in  a  particular  social  network  and  sense  of  place. 

From  the  moment  I  arrived  in  Nata  it  was  clear  that  the  Magoto  family  had  taken  us,  and 
my  research,  as  their  collective  project.  Nyawagamba  talked  to  elders  before  I  came  and  prepared 
them  to  share  the  history  that  they  knew.  I  told  the  family  that  1  intended  to  spend  the  first  three 
months  studying  Nata  so  that  I  could  do  interviews  in  the  local  language  rather  than  Swahili,  in 
which  I  was  already  fluent.  This  also  seemed  convenient  since  it  was  the  rainy  season  and  it  would 
be  almost  impossible  to  travel  for  the  next  three  months.    1  asked  the  wife  of  one  of  the  Magoto 
brothers  who  lived  nearby  to  help  me  with  language  learning  and  we  worked  at  it  daily  with  a  tape 
recorder,  notebook  and  pen. 

By  the  beginning  of  March,  soon  after  we  were  living  in  our  new  house,  Nyawagamba  and 
his  brother  Mayani  decided  that  it  was  time  for  me  to  start  research.  They  were  anxious  that  1 
should  start  as  early  as  possible  and  not  waste  time  on  language  study,  since  I  was  sure  to  "pick  it 
up"  without  any  difficulty  anyway.  Nyawagamba  and  Mayani  sat  in  our  house  for  a  couple  of 
days  writing  a  list  of  the  things  that  I  should  learn  if  I  was  to  know  Nata  history  and  culture.  They 
envisioned  this  list  as  a  set  of  topics  to  be  systematically  covered  in  my  interviews.  It  was  entitled 
"The  History  of  the  Nata  People"  (in  Swahili,  Historiaya  Wanata).  This  list  is  reproduced  in  full 
on  Table  F-l. 

Soon  after  the  list  was  finished  Nyawagamba  and  Mayani  arranged  an  interview  with 
Megasa  Mokiri  in  Motokeri.  He  had  taken  the  top  eldership  title  in  Nata  and  was  known  as  a 
person  knowledgeable  about  the  past.  He  was  also  in  some  indirect  way  related  to  Magoto  and  so 
bound  to  honor  the  request  for  an  interview.  When  we  arrived  he  was  out  drinking  a  neighbor's 

xxiii 


Figure  F-l:  Topics  for  the  Study  of  Nata  History 

(Mayani  Magoto  and  Nyawagamba  Magoto,  Bugerera,  1  March  1995) 


History  of  the  Nata  People 

1 .  Asimoka  (origins)  of  the  Nata 

2.  Ukwengera  (growth)  of  the  Nata 
l.Obokwiri  (marriage)  of  the  Nata 

4.  Amborori  (divorce)  of  the  Nata 

5.  Amasambwa  (spirits  of  the  land  and  the 

ancestors)  of  the  Nata 

6.  Emigiro  (avoidances)  of  the  Nata 

7.  Nyangi  (life  stage  celebrations  and 

eldership  titles)  of  the  Nata 

8.  Ebehita  (patrilineages)  of  the  Nata 

9.  Chanyumba  (matrilineages)  of  the  Nata 

1 0.  Chahamale  (clans)  of  the  Nata 

1 1 .  Chasaiga  (age-sets)  of  the  Nata 

1 2.  Amakora  (generation-sets)  of  the  Nata 

13.  Asaro  (circumcision)  of  the  Nata 

14.  Rihe  (war)  of  the  Nata 

15.  Charing'a  (oaths  of  peace  or  blood 

brotherhood)  of  the  Nata 

1 6.  Asama  (moving)  of  the  Nata 

1 7.  Ebimenyo  ne  mipaka  (settlement  sites 

and  boundaries)  of  the  Nata 

18.  Ebilana  (medicine  bundles  for 

protection)  of  the  Nata 

1 9.  Imieri  (months)  of  the  Nata 

20.  Ebisego  bya  kwerekiani  amabaga  gase 

(seasons) 

2 1 .  Emeremo  gya  Saiga  (work  of  the  age- 

sets) 

22.  Emeremo  gya  Rikora  (work  of  the 

generation-set) 

23.  Asumo  (trade)  of  the  Nata 

24.  Anchara  (famines)  of  the  Nata 

25.  Omobureni  (young  men) 

26.  Omuki  (young  women) 

27.  Okuibora  (birth)  of  the  Nata 

28.  Orokurya  (death)  of  the  Nata 

29.  Agabho  (inheritance)  of  the  Nata 

30.  Ang'ombe  ya  Baki  ("the  cattle  of  the 

young  women") 

3 1 .  Ang'ombe  yu  Mwando  ("the  cattle  of 

lineage  inheritance") 

32.  Ababisa  (enemies)  of  the  Nata 

33.  Obuluri  (blacksmithing)  of  the  Nata 


34.  Rirema  (farming)  of  the  Nata 

35.  Obotugi  (herding)  of  the  Nata 

36.  Ribiema  (hunting)  of  the  Nata 

37.  Emeremo  egiende  (other  work) 

38.  Abana  kwegi  emeremo  (the  work  of 

children) 

39.  Amang'ana  ga  Kare  (things  of  the  past) 

40.  Obugeni  (hospitality  for  guests)  of  the 

Nata 

41 .  Risaga  (mutual  aid)  of  the  Nata 

42.  Chakabari  (co-wives)  of  the  Nata 

43.  Amarina  (names)  of  the  Nata 

44.  Okusohe  kwa  Abalaki  (the  entrance  of 

the  colonial  force) 

45.  Omutemi  ombele  (the  first  chiefs) 

46.  Kebuno  betemiri  (how  they  ruled) 

47.  Omutemi  wo  kabere  (the  following 

chiefs) 

48.  Abato  Maarufu  (famous  people) 

49.  Risau  (alarm  call)  of  the  Nata 

50.  Kusagari  chatugo  (cattle  clientship) 

5 1 .  Obogwani  bwa  matongo  (relations  with 

other  "tribes") 

52.  Obusani  (friendship) 

53.  Obwiterani  (murder) 

54.  Aghaso  (ritual  for  killing  a  lion,  leopard 

or  Maasai) 

55.  Kwiraheri  (praise  names  and  oaths) 

56.  Imiembo  (songs  and  dances) 


newly  brewed  beer  and  was  only  called  away  with  the  promise  that  some  would  be  brought  home 
for  him.  This  interview  was  conducted  strictly  in  Nata  with  almost  no  translation  to  help  me  follow 
the  conversation.  Mayani  and  Nyawagamba  based  their  questions  on  the  list  with  only  four  or  five 
points  being  covered  in  the  next  four  hours.  My  job  was  to  hold  the  tape  recorder. 

I  take  these  stories  as  a  metaphor  for  my  research  and  its  final  product.  Although  I 
eventually  gained  more  control  over  interviews,  this  was  a  collaborative  project  which  depended  on 
networks  of  relationship  established  in  an  earlier  time  of  my  life.  The  project  succeeded  only  in  so 
far  as  people  like  the  Magoto  family  in  Nata,  Pastor  Machota  in  Ikoma.  David  Maganya  in 
Ngoreme,  Kinanda  Sigara  in  Ikizu  and  Mnada  Mayonga  in  Tatoga  took  an  interest  in  the  research 
and  made  it  their  own.  These  men  spent  uncountable  hours,  days  and  weeks  driving,  bicycling  or 
walking  to  remote  homesteads  with  me,  arranging  for  interviews  and  dealing  with  the  fall-out  after 
I  was  long  gone.    The  stakes  were  particularly  high  for  the  Magoto  family,  who  would  have 
suffered  severe  community  criticism  and  ridicule  if  things  had  gone  badly  for  their  guests. 

The  elders  that  1  interviewed  only  agreed  to  talk  to  me  because  they  were  convinced  that 
the  product  of  my  research  would  be  beneficial  to  their  grandchildren  after  they  were  gone  and 
their  knowledge  forgotten.  The  local  men  who  shared  their  historical  manuscripts  with  me.  the 
archivists  who  took  time  to  dig  through  unsorted  boxes,  the  priests  and  primary  school  teachers 
who  uncovered  dictionaries  and  ethnic  histories  from  dusty  shelves  and  filing  cabinets,  Mwalimu 
Nyamaganda  who  walked  out  to  Bugerera  numerous  times  in  spite  of  his  illness  to  go  over  endless 
lists  of  cultural  vocabulary  and  all  of  those  women  who  shared  their  homes,  meals  and  stories  with 
me  countless  times  did  this  in  large  part  because  of  their  commitment  to  the  preservation  of  local 
history. 

It  is  this  enormous  debt,  this  trust,  that  I  struggle  with  as  I  put  the  words  into  a  narrative 
form  which  must  sustain  a  linear  argument.  Nyawagamba  and  Mayani's  list  remains  a  symbolic 

XXV 


measure  of  how  closely  I  have  fulfilled  these  promises.  One  thing  that  the  list  tells  me  is  that  the 
story  is  not  linear,  but  that  peoples'  lives  are  made  up  of  a  vast  number  of  parts,  which  in  their 
multiplicity  constitute  the  pasts  of  the  people  we  now  call  Nata,  Ikizu,  Tatoga,  Ikoma,  Ishenyi,  or 
Ngoreme.  The  list  also  tells  me  that  Mayani  and  Nyawagamba  considered  history  to  be 
synonymous  with  its  cultural  forms-that  marriage,  oaths,  medicine  bundles  and  naming  are  all  as 
much  a  part  of  the  definition  of  what  it  means  to  be  Nata  as  are  accounts  of  origin,  migration  or 
chiefs.  There  is  no  obvious  organizing  structure  to  this  list,  except  as  a  simple  naming  of  all  of  the 
elements,  without  establishing  hierarchies  or  relationships  among  the  parts.  Perhaps  Nyawagamba 
and  Mayani  felt  that  the  connections  were  obvious,  or  perhaps  they  left  that  task  for  me-allowed 
me  the  freedom  to  unite  all  of  those  disparate  elements  into  one  story.  In  this  sense  the  debt 
becomes  a  burden  because  it  is  a  difficult  task. 

How  can  I  make  local  history  live  in  narrative  form  while  not  denying  its  multiplicity  and 
contextuality?    The  translation  of  historical  imagination  which  must  be  trained  into  a  focused 
thesis  will  have  succeeded  if  the  spirit  of  this  unruly  list  and  the  vision  of  those  who  made  the 
research  possible  remain.  The  story  that  1  tell  is  my  story  and  I  must  take  responsibility  for  its 
outcome  no  matter  how  indebted  it  is  to  the  dedicated  people  who  made  it  possible.  I  must  speak  in 
my  own  voice  while  respecting  those  who  gave  me  that  voice.  It  will  have  succeeded  if  western 
Serengeti  people  do  not  accept  this  as  a  final  product  but  contest  it,  debate  it  and  write  their  own 
histories. 

I  dedicate  this  dissertation  to  Magoto  Mossi  Magoto  and  to  his  sister  Nyabikwabe  Mossi, 
whose  legacies  have  made  this  work  possible.  The  only  photo  of  Magoto  is  reproduced  here  out  of 
respect  for  his  patronage  and  in  hopes  that  the  hospitality  of  his  sons  and  daughters  might  be 
reciprocated  in  a  work  about  which  he  would  be  proud  [See  Figure  F-2].    Nyabikwabhe  was  a 
woman  who  managed  her  own  homestead  after  her  husband  disappeared  on  a  migrant  labor  trip  to 


Figure  F-2:  Magoto  Mossi  Magotto,  Nata  patriarch,  c  1890  -  1987 


xxvu 


Nairobi.  She  left  her  legacy  with  many  children  and  grandchildren  in  Nata.  She  is  remembered  by 
her  family  as  a  storyteller,  knowledgeable  about  the  past.  This  is  dedicated  to  her  in  the  hope  that 
the  tradition  of  story-telling  and  remembering  that  she  represents  will  not  be  lost. 


Abstract  of  Dissertation  Presented  to  the  Graduate  School 

of  the  University  of  Florida  in  Partial  Fulfillment  of  the 

Requirements  for  the  Degree  of  Doctor  of  Philosophy 


THE  LANDSCAPES  OF  MEMORY: 
A  HISTORY  OF  SOCIAL  IDENTITY  IN  THE  WESTERN  SERENGETI,  TANZANIA 


By 

Jan  Bender  Shetler 

May  1998 

Chairman:  Steven  Feierman 

Major  Department:  Department  of  History 

This  dissertation  analyzes  changes  in  social  identity  from  the  distant  past  to  the  early 
colonial  years  in  the  western  Serengeti,  Mara  Region,  Tanzania,  through  an  interpretation  of  oral 
tradition.  My  analysis  of  the  core  spatial  images  of  oral  tradition  demonstrates  the  link  between 
different  ways  of  representing  space  and  historical  changes  in  social  identity.    Multiple  social 
identities  grounded  in  the  ecological  diversity  of  the  region  developed  out  of  long-term  social 
processes  based  on  the  elaboration  of  generative  principles  of  social  organization.  The  generative 
principles  of  gender,  economic  production,  clan,  lineage,  generation-set,  age-set  and  ethnicity 
produced  various  kinds  of  social  identities  and  institutions  according  to  the  historical  context. 
Social  identities  changed  profoundly  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  when  an  era  of  ecological 
disasters  caused  western  Serengeti  people  to  undertake  major  social  transformations.  They 
responded  to  the  crises  of  this  period  of  stress  by  renovating  their  systems  of  age-set  organization 
and  by  redefining  the  criteria  for  ethnic  identity,  not  only  to  ensure  their  survival  but  to  convert  the 
difficulties  of  the  early  years  of  colonialism  into  prosperous  ones. 

"The  landscapes  of  memory"  refers  to  the  way  in  which  memories  about  the  past  are  stored 
in  spatial  form.  Oral  traditions  represent  the  past  through  spatial  images  that  correspond  to 

xxix 


particular  forms  of  social  identity.    An  interpretation  of  the  core  spatial  images  of  oral  tradition 
provides  the  historian  with  a  culturally  grounded  representation  of  social  processes  in  the  past.  A 
representation  of  the  past  reconstructed  through  other  forms  of  evidence  like  archaeology,  historical 
linguistics,  comparative  ethnography,  ecology  and  written  sources  demonstrates  an  amazing 
congruence  with  the  historical  understanding  afforded  by  oral  tradition.  This  dissertation  seeks  to 
understand  the  past,  as  much  as  possible,  from  the  perspective  and  categories  of  local  historical 
consciousness.  The  spatial  analysis  of  oral  tradition  contributes  to  the  historical  reconstruction  of 
the  precolonial  past  in  Africa  and  social  history  elsewhere  in  the  world,  particularly  in  places  such 
as  the  Mara  Region  where  historians  must  rely  almost  exclusively  on  oral  tradition  as  a  primary 


Think  of  the  past  as  space  expanding  infinitely  beyond  our  vision.  It  is  not  a  record  of 
progress  or  regress,  stasis  or  change;  uncharted,  it  simply,  smugly,  vastly  is.  Then  we  choose  a 
prospect.  The  higher  it  is,  the  wider  and  hazier  our  view.  Now  we  map  what  we  see,  marking  some 
features,  ignoring  others,  altering  an  unknown  territory,  absurd  in  its  unity,  into  a  finite  collection 
of  landmarks  made  meaningful  through  their  connections.  History  is  not  the  past,  but  a  map  of  the 
past  drawn  from  a  particular  point  of  view  to  be  useful  to  the  modern  traveler. 

Serious  study  of  a  community's  history  does  not  begin  with  a  raid  to  snatch  scraps  to  add 
color  and  flesh  or  nobility  to  the  history  of  another  community.  It  begins  when  the  observer  adopts 
the  local  prospect,  then  brings  the  local  landmarks  into  visibility,  giving  the  creations  of  the 
community's  people-the  artifacts  in  which  their  past  is  entombed,  the  texts  in  which  their  past  lives 
—complete  presence. ' 


****** 


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1 

Figure  1-1 :  From  Riyara  Hill  in  Nata  looking  East  toward  Gitaraga  and  Mochuri 
Mountains  with  Bangwesi  Mountain  in  the  background  and  Serengeti  Plains  beyond. 


1  Henry  Glassie,  Passing  the  Time  in  Ballvmenone:  Culture  and  History  of  an  Ulster 
Community  (Philadelphia:  University  of  Pennsylvania  Press,  1982),  p.  621. 


CHAPTER  1 

INTRODUCTION: 

ORAL  TRADITION,  TIME,  SPACE  AND  SOCIAL  IDENTITY 

This  is  a  project,  as  Glassie  defines  it  in  the  preceding  quotation,  of  adopting  the  "local 
prospect"  in  order  to  "give  presence"  to  the  landscapes  and  the  places  through  which  a  people 
imagine  their  collective  pasts  and  "in  which  their  past  lives."  This  dissertation  explores  these 
landscapes  containing  the  memories  of  the  past  to  understand  social  change  from  the  perspective  of 
those  who  live  it.  As  Glassie  writes,  concerning  the  great  historical  epics  of  Ireland,  "time  is 
absorbed  into  place,  and  place  into  mind  ...  the  land  becomes  history,  and  history  becomes 
thought  as  people  cross  space  in  awareness."2 

In  this  dissertation  1  explore  the  "landscapes  of  memory"  which  structure  knowledge  about 
the  past  in  spatial  form  through  an  interpretation  of  oral  traditions  from  the  western  Serengeti, 
Tanzania.  This  project  will  contribute  to  the  growing  body  of  research  among  Africanist  scholars 
on  the  ways  in  which  the  organization  of  space  functions  in  oral  tradition.3  My  analysis  of  the  core 
spatial  images  of  oral  tradition  demonstrates  the  link  between  different  ways  of  representing  space 

2  Ibid,  p.  664. 

3  Michele  Wagner,  "Whose  History  is  History?:  A  History  of  the  Baragane  People  of 
Buragane,  Southern  Burundi,  1850-1932,"  2  vols.  (Ph.D.  Dissertation,  University  of  Wisconsin- 
Madison,  1991);  Henrietta  L.  Moore,  Space.  Text  and  Gender:  An  Anthropological  Study  of  the 
Marakwet  of  Kenya  f  Cambridge:  Cambridge  University  Press,  1 986);  Karin  Barber.  I  Could 
Speak  Until  Tomorrow:  Oriki.  Women  and  the  Past  in  a  Yoruba  Town  ( Edinburgh-  Edinburgh 
University  Press,1991);  David  William  Cohen,  "The  Cultural  Topography  of  a  'Bantu  Borderland': 
Busoga  1500-1850,"  Journal  of  Africa  History  29  (1988):  57-79;  David  William  Cohen  and  E.  S. 
Atieno  Odhiambo,  Siava:  The  Historical  Anthropology  of  an  African  Landscape  (London:  James 
Currey,  1 989);  Tamara  Giles- Vernick,  "Na  lege  ti  guiriri  (On  the  Road  of  History):  Mapping  Out 
the  Past  and  Present  in  M'Bres  Region.  Central  African  Republic,"  Ethnohistorv  43,  2  (Spring 
1996):245-275. 


3 
and  historical  changes  in  social  identity.  In  this  dissertation,  1  understand  social  identity  as  a 
socially  shared  definition  of  self  in  relation  to  others  that  is  situational  and  relational.  Multiple 
social  identities  coexist  within  the  individual,  activated  according  to  the  situation  and  the 
relationships  involved.  Oral  traditions  produce  and  reproduce  these  identities  through  their 
representation  of  space.  This  study  encompasses  an  ecologically -defined  region— the  western 
Serengeti  of  Tanzania-a  region  larger  than  one  ethnic  group.    Thus,  multiple  and  shifting  forms  of 
social  identity  represented  in  oral  tradition  over  time  and  space  must  be  investigated. 

These  multiple  social  identities  grounded  in  the  ecological  diversity  of  the  region  developed 
out  of  long-term  social  processes  based  on  the  elaboration  of  generative  principles  of  social 
organization.  The  generative  principles  of  gender,  economic  production,  clan,  lineage,  generation- 
set,  age-set  and  ethnicity  produced  various  kinds  of  social  identities  and  institutions  according  to 
the  historical  context.  Social  identities  changed  profoundly  from  a  time  in  the  distant  past  when 
people  gradually  developed  a  regional  system  of  relationships  for  achieving  prosperity  in  a 
marginal  land  to  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  when  an  era  of  ecological  disasters  caused  them 
to  undertake  major  social  transformations.  For  the  western  Serengeti,  as  for  many  other  parts  of 
East  Africa,  crisis  defined  the  late  nineteenth  century.  This  time  of  famine,  disease,  war,  and 
dislocation  served  as  the  dividing  point  between  the  far  and  recent  past  in  oral  tradition.  People 
responded  to  the  crises  of  this  period  of  stress  by  renovating  their  systems  of  age-set  organization 
and  by  redefining  the  criteria  for  ethnic  identity,  not  only  to  ensure  their  survival  but  to  convert  the 
difficulties  of  the  early  years  of  colonialism  into  prosperous  ones.4 


4  Although  German  East  Africa  was  established  as  a  colony  in  1885,  German  colonial  rule 
was  not  effective  around  Lake  Victoria  until  1891  with  the  establishment  of  a  military  post  at 
Mwanza.  The  British  Mandate  of  1922  incorporated  the  Tanganyika  Territory  into  the  British 
Empire  as  a  result  of  the  League  of  Nations  settlements  following  World  War  I. 


4 

Scholars  cannot  understand  these  profound  late  nineteenth  century  changes  apart  from  the 
long-term  historical  processes  in  which  people  developed  patterns  for  building  strong  local 
communities  around  their  relationship  to  the  land  and  to  other  communities  within  regional 
networks  of  reciprocity.  Yet  the  historian  understands  these  older  processes  only  through  oral 
traditions,  traditions  that  the  events  of  the  late  nineteenth  century  have  significantly  altered. 
Western  Serengeti  people  radically  transformed  their  societies  in  the  period  of  disasters  by  drawing 
on  the  generative  principles  of  long-term  social  process,  yet  in  their  oral  representation  of  these 
processes  they  interpret  of  them  in  light  of  their  desire  to  seek  historical  continuity  with,  and 
validation  for,  new  ways  of  building  and  maintaining  strong  communities.  The  fundamental 
importance  of  the  era  of  disasters  to  oral  representations  of  the  deeper  past  requires  that  1  interpret 
the  oral  traditions  of  the  pre-crisis  era  in  light  of  the  experiences  of  the  post-crisis  era.5    The  design 
of  the  dissertation  reflects  this  necessity  by  weaving  reflections  on  the  influence  of  the  era  of 
disasters  on  the  character  and  content  of  all  the  oral  evidence  presented  into  my  analysis. 

The  primary  oral  sources  for  this  study  come  from  the  traditions  of  five  agro-pastoral 
ethnic  groups  that  speak  Bantu  languages  (Nata,  Ikoma,  lshenyi,  Ikizu  and  Ngoreme)  and  two 
pastoral  ethnic  groups  that  speak  Dadog  languages  (Rotigenga  and  Isimajek)  in  the  Serengeti  and 
Bunda  districts  of  the  Mara  Region.  These  stories  guide  my  version  and  compel  me  to  take 
seriously  the  perspective  and  categories  of  local  historical  consciousness.6  A  culturally  sensitive 


5  See  Gwyn  Prins,  "Introduction,"  The  Hidden  Hippopotamus:  Reappraisal  in  African 
history:  The  early  colonial  experience  in  western  Zambia  (Cambridge:  Cambridge  University 
Press,  1980),  pp.  1-16,  who  analyzes  "core  concepts"  in  order  to  place  nineteenth  century  colonial 
contact  in  long-term  local  context. 

6  Richard  Price  eloquently  expressed  this  sentiment  in  his  book  on  the  history  of  maroon 
communities  in  Saramaka,  "All  history  is  thus:  a  radical  selection  from  the  immensely  rich  swirl  of 
past  human  activity.  The  uniqueness  of  this  book  lies  in  its  taking  seriously  the  selection  that  is 
made  by  those  people  who  gather  together  at  this  shrine.  It  is  about  those  distant  people  and  those 
long-age  events  that  Saramakas  today  choose  to  think  about,  talk  about,  and  act  upon:  but  it  is  also 


5 
historical  reconstruction  seeks  to  translate  the  inner  logic  of  oral  traditions  and  the  profound  impact 
of  late  nineteenth  century  crises  on  their  content  into  the  language  of  academic  historical 
discourse.7  The  historian  can  respect  the  integrity  of  oral  traditions  and  build  a  chronology  to 
explain  social  change  by  using  oral  sources  together  with  other  kinds  of  evidence,  from  historical 
linguistics,  archaeology,  comparative  ethnography,  ecological  studies  and  written  sources. 

The  study  of  African  social  history  in  the  precolonial  period  has  recently  fallen  into 
relative  neglect  after  a  prolific  and  optimistic  outpouring  of  research  in  the  1 960s  and  70s.  This  is 
in  large  part  due  to  the  difficulties  inherent  in  using  oral  traditions  as  primary  historical  sources. 
We  still  know  too  little  about  the  precolonial  period  and,  as  a  result,  historians  of  the  colonial 
period  build  on  questionable  foundations.  It  is  my  hope  that  this  dissertation  will  inspire  another 
look  at  oral  sources  through  an  investigation  of  the  spatial  dimension  of  oral  memory.  Although 
the  subject  is  social  transformation  at  a  particular  place  and  time,  historians  could  apply  the 
approach  to  the  interpretation  of  oral  sources  from  other  places  in  Africa  and  to  social  history 
elsewhere  in  the  world. 

Oral  Traditions  in  Space  and  Time 

In  recent  years,  academic  debate  over  the  utility  of  oral  sources  for  writing  history  has 
centered  on  Jan  Vansina's  positivist  approach  to  oral  traditions.  He  asserts  that,  through  rigorous 
application  of  the  proper  methodological  tools,  historians  could  discover  the  objective  past  on 


about  the  ways  that  Saramakas  transform  the  general  past  (everything  that  happened)  into  the 
significant  past,  their  history.  This  book  is  an  attempt  to  communicate  something  of  the 
Saramakas'  own  special  vision  of  their  formative  years."  Richard  Price,  First-Time:  The 
Historical  Vision  of  an  Afro-American  People  ("Baltimore:  Johns  Hopkins  University  Press,  1983), 
p.  5. 

7  Steven  Feierman,  The  Shambaa  Kingdom:  A  History  (Madison:  University  of 
Wisconsin,  1977),  p.  3;  Thomas  Spear,  "Oral  Traditions:  Whose  History?,"  History  in  Africa  8 
(1981):  8. 


6 

which  narrators  once  based  these  texts.  David  W.  Cohen  and  others  have  engaged  this  claim  by 
subtly  undercutting  and  destabilizing  its  first  premises-that  an  orderly  "chain  of  transmission" 
would  lead  the  historian  back  to  the  original  testimony,  that  there  was  a  single  tradition  with  many 
variations  rather  than  multiple  and  conflicting  histories,  and  that  different  sets  of  oral  traditions 
represented  independent  evidence.  Luise  White's  recent  work  on  rumor  and  gossip  questions  the 
criteria  used  by  historians  to  evaluate  their  sources.8  She  asks,  if  people  all  over  East  Africa  tell 
consistent  stories  about  vampires  does  that  mean  they  are  "true?"  This  primary  emphasis  on  oral 
tradition  as  itself  a  historical  product  leaves  little  room  for  a  history  from  oral  traditions  that 
discusses  issues  from  earlier  periods.    Are  we  to  focus  only  on  how  people  talk  about  the  present 
by  reference  to  an  imagined  past?    This  dissertation  argues  that  a  middle  ground  between  these 
two  approaches  exists  that  incorporates  the  critique  of  objectivist  methodology  and  yet  still 
supports  writing  about  the  distant  past,  within  the  standards  set  by  the  discipline  of  academic 
history. 
Oral  Traditions.  Memory  and  History 

Historians  using  oral  traditions  as  their  principal  source  of  evidence  have  been  confounded 
by  the  central  problem  of  ascertaining  the  time  depth  of  oral  narratives.  It  has  been  demonstrated 
many  times  that  the  content  of  oral  tradition  is  not  stable  and  that  it  changes  from  performance  to 


8  See  the  collected  papers  from  the  international  conference,  "Words  and  Voices:  Critical 
Practices  of  Orality  in  Africa  and  in  African  Studies,"  Bellagio,  Italy,  February  24-28,  1997, 
University  of  Michigan,  Ann  Arbor.  On  this  issue  see  David  Newbury,  "Contradictions  at  the 
Heart  of  the  Canon:  Oral  Historiography  in  Africa,  1960-1980;"  Carolyn  Hamilton,  "Living  with 
Fluidity:  Oral  Histories,  Material  Custodies  and  the  Policitics  of  Preservation;"  Luise  White, 
"True  Stories:  Narrative,  Event,  History  and  Blood  in  the  Lake  Victoria  Basin;"  David  William 
Cohen,  "In  a  nation  of  white  cars  ...  one  white  car,  or  "a  white  care"  becomes  a  truth."  This 
destablization  is  not  confined  to  oral  history  alone,  for  an  analysis  of  related  issues  affecting  the 
more  common  methodologies  of  the  historical  profession  see,  Peter  Novick,  That  Noble  Dream: 
The  "Objectivity  Question"  and  the  American  Historical  Profession  tCamhrirlgp-  Cambridge 
University  Press,  1 988). 


7 
performance  over  time  and  in  relation  to  the  historical  contexts  in  which  the  traditions  are  told. 
Different  social  groups  tell  different  stories  about  the  past  and  in  different  ways  to  legitimate  a 
particular  social  order.  The  present  not  only  influences  the  narration  of  the  past  but  knowledge  of 
the  past  most  surely  influences  our  experience  of  the  present.9  The  historian's  analysis  of  any  one 
tradition  must  take  into  consideration  the  present  context  in  which  narrators  tell  it,  as  well  as  all  of 
the  other  historical  contexts  through  which  it  has  passed  in  transmission.  Because  of  these 
difficulties,  many  have  despaired  of  finding  any  verifiable  historical  content  in  oral  traditions  at 
all.10 

One  way  to  assess  the  historical  content  of  oral  tradition  is  through  an  understanding  of  its 
narrative  form.  Studies  of  oral  memory  have  shown  that  narrators  construct  (rather  than 
reproduce)  oral  traditions  in  performance  through  the  use  of  mnemonic  systems,  the  central 
elements  of  which  scholars  of  oral  tradition  call  "core  images"  or  "cliches."  By  recalling  these  core 
images  narrators  improvise  the  entire  narrative  as  they  tell  it.  In  the  Nata  origin  story  the  core 
images  are  a  hunter  following  his  prey  from  the  wilderness  and  a  woman  at  her  cave  by  the  spring. 
Narrators  elaborate  details  of  how  they  met  and  what  they  said  around  these  core  images  to  form 


9  Paul  Connerton,  How  Societies  Remember  (Cambridge:  Cambridge  University  Press, 
1989),  pp.  2-3;  Elizabeth  Tonkin.  Narrating  Our  Pasts:  The  Social  Construction  of  Oral  History 
(Cambridge:  Cambridge  University  Press,  1992).  For  an  analysis  of  social  memory  outside  of 
African  history  see,  Patrick  J.  Geary,  Phantoms  of  Remembrance:  Memory  and  Oblivion  at  the 
End  of  the  First  Millenium  (Princeton:  Princeton  University  Press,  1994). 

10  David  Henige,  "Oral  Tradition  and  Chronology,"  Journal  of  African  History.  12,  3 
(1971):  371-389;  Joseph  C.  Miller,  ed..  The  African  Past  Speaks:  Essays  on  Oral  Tradition  and 
History  (Folkestone,  Kent:  Dawson  Archon,  1 980);  Paul  Irwin,  Liptako  Speaks:  History  from  Oral 
Traditions  in  Africa  (Princeton.  Princeton  University  Press,  1981). 


8 
episodes  or  narrative  units  that  they  string  together  to  create  the  larger  story  anew  in  each 
performance." 

Historians  of  oral  tradition  have  long  postulated  that  it  is  these  core  images  that  hold  the 
key  to  historical  interpretation.  Vansina  proposed  guidelines  for  interpreting  the  "implicit 
meaning"  of  these  "core  images"  or  "cliches,"  such  as  comparison  with  other  traditions  and  other 
cultural  expressions.12  Joseph  Miller  later  suggested  that  since  core  images  serve  as  the  mnemonic 
device  for  recalling  the  story,  people  pass  on  these  images  from  generation  to  generation,  even  if 
they  no  longer  understand  the  original  meaning.  As  time  goes  on  the  parts  of  the  story  that 
narrators  elaborate  with  each  telling  tend  to  lose  their  detail  and  become  generalized,  or  are 
replaced  with  present-day  experiences.  Miller  postulated  that  the  core  images  held  the  best 
possibility  of  bearing  "information  from  and  about  the  past."13  Steven  Feierman's  structuralist 
interpretation  of  the  core  images  in  the  Shambaa  origin  myth  of  Mbegha,  in  terms  of  the  historical 
development  of  kingship,  remains  one  of  the  best  examples  of  this  kind  of  interpretation. '" 

Some  of  the  most  important  core  images  found  in  African  traditions  are  spatial  images  of 
landscape,  place  or  topography.  As  Elizabeth  Hofmeyr  put  it,  "oral  memory  has  a  close  mnemonic 
relationship  with  place  and  location,  and  in  a  variety  of  societies  people  often  bank  information  in 
the  landscape."  She  questions  whether  people  can  sustain  memory  if  they  lose  touch  with  the 


"  The  theory  is  first  argued  in  A.  B.  Lord,  The  Singer  of  Tales  (Cambridge,  Mass: 
Harvard  University  Press,  1964);  see  also,  Joseph  C.  Miller,  "Introduction:  Listening  for  the 
African  Past,"  in  The  African  Past  Speaks,  ed.  Joseph  C.  Miller  (Folkestone,  Kent:  Dawson 
Archon,  1 980),  pp.  5-9. 

12  Jan  Vansina,  Oral  Tradition  as  History  (Madison:  University  of  Wisconsin  Press,  1985), 
pp.  144-6. 

"  Miller,  "Listening  for  the  African  Past,"  p.  8. 

14  Feierman,  The  Shambaa  Kingdom,  pp.  40-69. 


9 
places  and  landscapes  of  the  core  images."  However,  the  recognition  that  core  images  often 
appear  as  spatial  images  does  not  solve  the  problem  of  their  interpretation.  The  first  generation  of 
historians  to  interpret  oral  traditions  in  Africa  accepted  the  literal  meaning  of  place  names  in 
migration  or  clan  origin  traditions  resulting  in  untenable  reconstructions  of  the  movement  of  large 
and  discrete  groups  of  people  over  long  distances.16  The  internal  meaning  of  spatial  images  is  not 
always  explicit  and  not  all  spatial  images  are  core  images. 

How  then  does  the  historian  discern  which  spatial  images  in  oral  traditions  contain 
information  about  the  past  and  how  she  should  interpret  them?  For  example,  place-names  can  be 
added  later  to  migration  stories  or  even  changed.  The  Ikoma  origin  story  claims  that  the  original 
ancestor  migrated  from  Sonjo,  on  the  other  side  of  the  Serengeti  plains,  and  then  lists  a  number  of 
other  places  that  are  within  the  western  Serengeti.  The  Sonjo,  however,  claim  that  the  British  gave 
them  this  ethnic  name  in  reference  to  the  Sonjo  bean  that  was  prevalent  in  the  area  (the  Sonjo  call 
themselves  Wantemi).  If  this  is  true  then  this  ethnonym-cM/n-place-name  could  not  have  been  part 
of  a  precolonial  tradition.  Nevertheless,  through  a  careful  interpretation  of  the  important  spatial 
references  in  oral  tradition  the  historian  can  analyze  the  historical  connection  between  Sonjo  and 
Ikoma.  On  closer  examination  of  many  Ikoma  origin  stories  one  notices  that,  in  place  of  Sonjo, 
some  narrators  use  the  name  Regata.  A  present  day  village  named  Rhughata  in  Sonjo  claims  its 
origins  at  Jaleti  and  Ngrumega  (perhaps  a  transliteration  of  the  Rivers  Mbalageti  and  Grumeti  in 


15  Hofmevr.  "We  Spend  our  Years."  pp.  106,  125,  132-133,  160. 

16  In  his  paper  for  the  Bellagio  Conference," Words  and  Voices,"  1 997,  David  Newbury, 
"Contradictions  at  the  Heart  of  the  Canon,"  called  this  group  the  "fundamentalists,"  including;  G. 
Hartwig,  "Oral  Tradition  Concerning  the  Early  Iron  Age  in  Northwestern  Tanzania,"  African 
Historical  Studies  4  (1974):  3-115;  J.  B.  Webster,  D.  H.  Okalany,  C.  P.  Emudong,  and  N.  Egimu- 
Okuda,  The  Iteso  During  the  Asonva  (Nairobi:  East  African  Publishing  House,  1973). 


10 
the  western  Serengeti).17  Ngoreme  tradition  mentions  origins  in  Sonjo  but  specifically  name  the 
village  of  Tinaga,  a  village  that  Sonjo  people  claim  the  Maasai  destroyed  in  raids,  causing  the 
people  to  flee  to  "Ikoma."18  The  landscape  described  in  these  stories  is  the  bush,  inhabited  by 
hunters  following  the  wildebeest  migration.  Indeed,  if  one  followed  the  wildebeest  migration  from 
Sonjo,  he  would  end  up  in  lkoma  or  Ngoreme.  The  historian  must  conclude  that  a  thick  set  of 
historical  interactions  from  different  time  periods  existed  between  Sonjo  and  Ikoma,  expressed  by 
oral  traditions  as  the  migration  of  a  single  ancestor. 

Examples  of  prestigious  places  being  added  onto  the  beginning  of  origin  stories  to  claim 
affiliation  with  powerful  kingdoms  also  exist.  The  claim  of  association  may  be  at  the  root  of  Jita 
claims  to  Oanda  origins  or  Kanadi  (Sukuma)  claims  to  Hima  origins.  Both  Ganda  and  Hima 
peoples  represent  royal  clans  who  formed  centralized  states  on  the  other  side  of  Lake  Victoria, 
states  whose  power  people  across  the  wider  Lakes  Region  admired,  feared  and  resisted.  Many 
western  Serengeti  traditions  that  claim  origins  in  the  east  name  the  specific  places  of  Mount 
Kilimanjaro  and  Arusha,  which  are  major  points  of  reference  for  Tanzanian  nationalism.  In 
western  Kenya  many  ethnic  groups  claim  origins  in  Misri  (Egypt)  in  a  biblical  exodus  model."    In 
each  of  these  cases  the  place-names  following  the  prestigious  name  are  specific,  localized  places 
with  rich  cultural  meanings  attached  to  them.    Usually,  the  direction  of  the  place  relative  to  the 
community's  present  location  is  important  either  symbolically  or  historically.  The  historian  cannot 
simply  identify  spatial  references  and  accept  their  unmediated  historical  veracity  but  must  rather 


17  Interview  with  Emmanuel  Ndenu,  Sale,  6  December  1995  (Sonjo  &). 

"  Interviews  with  Peter  Nabususa,  Samonge,  5  December  1995;  and  Samweli  Ginduri, 
Samonge,  6  December  1995  (Sonjo  tf). 

19  William  R.  Ochieng',  "Misri  Legends  in  East  African  History,"  East  Africa  Journal 
(October  1972):  27-31. 


11 

pay  attention  to  the  cultural  meaning  of  these  core  spatial  images  and  carefully  interpret  them 
alongside  other  traditions  and  other  kinds  of  evidence.  These  images  are  important  in  any 
historical  reconstruction  because  they  are  integral  to  oral  memory  itself. 

The  historian  best  approaches  the  interpretation  of  spatial  images  by  first  understanding 
how  and  why  our  minds  spatialize  memory.  Studies  of  memory  have  shown  that  people  store 
recollections  of  the  past  as  spatial  rather  than  temporal  images.20  We  remember  events  and  people 
by  locating  them  in  particular  places.  Thus  memories  appear  to  us  as  a  sequence  of  places  rather 
than  as  the  orderly  passage  of  time.  In  his  exploration  of  the  "poetics  of  space,"  Gaston  Bachelard 
writes,  "Memories  are  motionless,  and  the  more  securely  they  are  fixed  in  space,  the  sounder  they 
are."21  This  insight  has  profound  implications  for  the  historian  using  the  evidence  of  memory  as  a 
primary  source.  As  Bachelard  notes,  "to  localize  a  memory  in  time  is  merely  a  matter  for  the 
biographer  and  only  corresponds  to  a  sort  of  external  history,  for  external  use,  to  be  communicated 
to  others."22  The  job  of  the  historian,  like  the  biographer,  is  to  fix  memories  within  a  chronological 
sequence  in  order  to  understand  change  over  time  and  its  possible  causes.  Yet  if  Bachelard  is  right, 
memory  cannot  provide  the  historian  with  precise  temporal  sequences  or  duration. 

This  insight  corresponds  with  my  experience  in  listening  to  oral  traditions  in  the  western 
Serengeti.  Elders  took  great  care  to  give  me  sequences  of  place-names  yet  without  narrative 
explanation.  In  the  early  stages  of  my  research  1  was  puzzled  because  people  seemed  to  care  more 


20  Frances  A.  Yates,  The  Art  of  Memory  (Chicago:  University  of  Chicago  Press,  1966); 
Jonathan  D.  Spence,  The  Memory  Palace  of  Matteo  Ricci  (New  York:  Viking,  1984);  Mary  J. 
Carruthers,  The  Book  of  Memory:  A  Study  of  Memory  in  Medieval  Culture  (Cambridge: 
Cambridge  University  Press.  1 990);  George  Johnson,  In  the  Palaces  of  Memory:  How  We  Build 
Worlds  Inside  Our  Heads  (New  York:  Alfred  A.  Knopf,  1991). 

21  Gaston  Bachelard,  The  Poetics  of  Space,  trans.  Maria  Jolas  (New  York:  Orion  Press, 
1964;  first  published  by  Presses  Universitaires  de  France,  1958),  p.  9. 

22  Ibid. 


12 
about  specifying  place  rather  than  time  frame.  When  asked  when  they  took  place  the  narrators 
usually  said  either,  "a  very  long  time  ago  before  the  grandfather  of  my  grandfather."  or,  for  more 
recent  memories,  they  would  name  a  specific  age-  or  generation-set.  In  contrast,  specific  place- 
names  and  spatial  images  were  the  central  organizing  features  of  oral  traditions.  For  example,  the 
Nata  origin  story  took  place  at  Bwanda,  in  the  ecological  space  where  farming  and  hunting 
landscapes  meet.  The  last  great  battle  with  the  Maasai  took  place  at  Ndabaka,  which  means  "the 
plain  of  tears"  in  Dadog.  In  its  starkest  form  narrators  presented  the  period  of  settlement  as  a 
simple  list  of  place-names  or  migration  points  with  almost  no  elaboration.  People  attached  great 
importance  to  the  accurate  recitation  of  lists  of  place-names  and  spatial  features  in  oral  narratives. 

In  his  study  of  "Ilongot  headhunting,"  Renato  Rosaldo  found  that  the  Illongot  people 
presented  stories  about  the  past  as  sequences  of  the  "names  of  places  where  they  had  'erected  their 
house  posts'  and  'cleared  the  forest.'"  They  conceptualized  history  as  a  movement  through  space,  or 
as  a  group  of  people  walking  in  a  single  file  along  a  trail  and  stopping  at  a  sequence  of  named 
resting  places.  Narrators  named  no  dates  or  time  periods  in  these  stories  because  events  were 
"mapped  onto  the  landscape,  not  onto  a  calendar."  Rosaldo  called  the  Ilongot  historical  idiom  a 
"spatialization  of  time"  and  convincingly  reconstructed  Ilongot  history  by  making  correspondences 
between  place-name  sequences  and  temporal  chronologies  from  references  in  other  sources.23 
Another  example  is  Bruce  Chatwin's  description  of  how  Australian  Aboriginals  conceptualize 
history  as  "song  lines"  or  "dreaming  tracks"  that  are  particular  paths  on  the  ground,  established 
when  the  ancestors  "sang"  the  world  into  existence.  Each  track  is  a  "song"  or  a  "map"  by  which 
people  remember  the  past.24  Similarly,  in  the  American  tradition,  the  mention  of  Plymouth, 


23  Renato  Rosaldo,  Ilongot  Headhunting  1883-1974;  A  Study  in  Society  and  History 
(Stanford:  Stanford  University  Press,  1980),  pp.  42-  58. 

24  Bruce  Chatwin,  The  Songlines  (New  York:  Viking,  1987),  pp.  2,  12. 


13 
Jamestown,  Bunker  Hill,  or  Gettysburg,  for  example,  evokes  an  emotion-laden  history  in  the 
popular  consciousness. 

Clearly,  the  historian  cannot  reconstruct  the  temporal  framework  of  oral  memory  without 
an  internal  knowledge  of  its  spatial  component.  To  return  to  Bachelard's  image,  as  "biographers," 
we  are  in  the  business  of  putting  memory  back  into  chronological  sequence  to  present  our  "external 
history,  for  external  use,  to  be  communicated  to  others."  To  do  this  we  need  to  pay  particular 
attention  to  the  indigenous  conceptual  frameworks  that  govern  the  use  of  time  and  space  in  oral 
narratives.  As  we  have  seen,  oral  traditions  use  space  as  a  metaphor  for  time  or  as  a  mnemonic  for 
social  processes  that  are  no  longer  temporally  anchored.  Oral  traditions  often  use  an  epic  spatial 
scale  as  a  metaphor  for  emphasizing  the  importance  or  permanence  of  certain  social  processes. 
History  itself  is  a  cultural  construct  that  determines  the  structure  and  use  of  oral  narratives  about 
the  past.  The  historical  interpretation  of  oral  tradition  must,  in  effect,  attempt  to  reverse  the 
spatialization  of  memory  to  recover  what  people  originally  meant  these  images  to  convey. 

If  the  spatial  elements  of  oral  tradition  are  part  of  a  mnemonic  system  then  the  historian 
can  use  them  as  "evidence  in  spite  of  themselves"  that  provide  tangible  information  about  the 
past.25  The  spatial  elements  of  oral  tradition-references  to  place-names,  landscapes,  topographical 
features  and  the  social  organization  of  space-are  crucial  elements  in  the  historical  reconstruction 
of  this  region,  rather  than  geographical  background.  While  historians  have  often  disregarded  these 
elements  as  useless  details  they  provide  bits  of  evidence  from  the  past,  transmitted  to  the  present 
because  of  their  function  in  oral  memory.  Imagined  landscapes,  embedded  in  oral  traditions  as 
core  images,  are  artifacts  from  the  past  that,  although  people  might  understand  their  meaning 


25  Marc  Bloch,  The  Historian's  Craft,  trans.  Peter  Putnam  (Manchester:  Manchester 
University  Press,  1954),  p.  61;  Feierman,  The  Shambaa  Kingdom,  p.  4;  Miller,  "Listening  for  the 
African  Past."  pp.  6-8. 


14 
differently  or  lose  their  meaning  altogether  in  different  time  periods,  remain  tenacious  fragments  of 
past  social  worlds  transmitted  in  oral  memory.26  Like  the  ceramic  artifacts  that  an  archaeologist 
unearths,  a  particular  shard  may  have  been  used  in  subsequent  generations  as  a  shallow  water 
container  for  chicks  in  the  yard  or  later  picked  up  off  the  refuse  heap  by  a  child  to  be  made  into  a 
toy.  Still,  the  archaeologist  can  sometimes  reconstruct  its  original  use  and  historical  context 
through  careful  comparison  with  similar  shards  found  in  other  places,  other  kinds  of  artifacts  found 
nearby,  and  contemporary  pottery  forms  and  their  uses. 

These  encoded  fragments  yield  information  about  the  past  only  as  historians  interpret  them 
within  their  cultural  context  and  alongside  other  kinds  of  evidence.  For  example,  when  1  was 
trying  to  decipher  what  the  lists  of  settlement  names  meant  historically,  most  elders  could  tell  me 
where  the  places  were  located  but  few  could  tell  me  anything  else  about  these  places.  However, 
once  I  began  asking  to  go  visit  those  places,  I  soon  realized  that  only  people  from  particular 
lineages  could  take  me  there  because  these  are  the  sites  of  important  ancestral  graves.  This  gave 
me  some  idea  of  the  social  groups  that  inhabited  these  settlements,  information  about  residential 
mobility  and  why  some  knew  the  names  and  not  these  more  precise  meanings  attached  to  the  place. 
When  we  arrived  at  those  places,  elders  told  the  stories  of  the  rainmaker  or  prophet  buried  there.  I 
observed  how  settlements  at  these  sites  might  have  been  situated  ecologically  or  in  relation  to  other 
settlements.  The  same  places  might  be  mentioned  in  other  traditions,  a  redundancy  that  provided 
valuable  alternate  meanings  for  the  place.  The  place-names  themselves  could  sometimes  be 
translated  literally,  suggesting  historical  association  with  the  place.  Mapping  these  sites  in  relation 


26  See  Glassie's  poetic  treatment  of  the  Irish  landscape  as  a  mnemonic  artifact  in  which  the 
past  is  entombed  in  Passing  the  Time,  pp.  621-65.  See  also  Barber,  1  Could  Speak,  pp.  27,  34  on 
oriki  praise  poems  as  "fragments  of  the  past." 


15 
to  each  other  showed  how  settlements  were  spatially  related.  The  conclusions  1  draw  from  this 
evidence  are  not  firm  but  do  represent  a  logical  set  of  possibilities. 

Core  spatial  images  also  yield  important  historical  content  because  they  refer  to  particular 
forms  of  social  relationship  or  identity.  In  his  study  of  social  memory,  Paul  Connerton  theorizes 
that  "our  memories  are  located  within  the  mental  and  material  spaces  of  the  group."  Individuals 
preserve  memories  as  members  of  a  group  and  these  memories  are  situated  within  the  socially- 
specific  spatial  framework  provided  by  that  group.27  Memories  are  not  only  spatially  located  but 
also  socially  located  within  particular  groups.  We  can  identify  each  oral  tradition  with  the  history 
of  a  particular  social  unit.  Different  social  groups  located  in  one  place  may  preserve  radically 
different  memories  about  the  same  time  period  because  each  builds  on  its  own  "mental  map."28 

Landscapes  are  not  neutral  backdrops  to  the  events  of  history.  They  shape  and  are  shaped 
by  human  action  as  people  imagine  and  use  the  landscapes.29    A  classic  argument,  first  articulated 
by  Durkheim  and  Mauss  in  1 903,  holds  that  the  built  spaces  we  inhabit  represent  the  structure  of 
our  society.  Scholars  have  demonstrated  this  mainly  in  the  layout  of  homestead  and  village  as  well 
as  the  interior  design  of  houses.30  In  this  dissertation,  I  extend  this  observation  to  hypothesize  that 


21  Connerton,  How  Societies  Remember,  p.  37,  Connerton  draws  on  the  early  work  of  the 
French  social  theorist,  Maurice  Halbwachs. 

28  Ibid,  pp.  20,  28. 

29  For  the  social  theory  of  space  see  for  example,  Edward  W.  Soja,  Postmodern 
Geographies:  The  Reassertion  of  Space  in  Critical  Social  Theory  (London:  Verso,  1989);  and 
Allan  Pred,  Making  Histories  and  Constructing  Human  Geographies:  The  Local  Transformation  of 
Practice.  Power  Relations,  and  Consciousness  (Boulder:  San  Franciscan,  Oxford:  Westview  Press, 
1990). 

30  Emile  Durkheim  and  Marcel  Mauss,  Primitive  Classification,  trans,  and  ed.  Rodney 
Needham  (Chicago:  Chicago  University  Press,  1963;  first  published  in  French,  1903.)    Bourdieu 
enlarges  this  argument  with  his  notion  of  habitus,  Pierre  Bourdieu,  Outline  of  a  Theory  of  Practice, 
trans.  Richard  Nice  (London:  Cambridge  University  Press,  1977;  first  published  in  French,  1972), 
pp.  1-71.  For  an  application  of  spatial  theory  to  African  ethnography  see  the  collection  of  essays, 


16 
oral  traditions  encode  social  relationships  and  identities  by  employing  a  spatial  imagery  that 
includes  landscapes  and  topography.    Different  ways  of  imagining  the  landscape  in  the  spatial 
images  of  oral  traditions  correspond  to  different  social  identities  that  can  be  situated  in  the  past  by 
understanding  their  cultural  context  and  by  using  other  kinds  of  evidence.  These  spatial  images 
both  represent  forms  of  social  identity  and  persons  adopting  these  social  identities  use  spatial 
images  to  represent  them. 

For  example,  oral  traditions  about  the  origins  of  clans  describe  each  clan  ancestor  as  a  son 
of  the  founder  of  the  ethnic  group,  within  one  territory.  Yet,  the  spaces  invoked  by  clan  histories 
and  praise  names  are  dispersed,  with  each  clan's  spaces  interspersed  among  those  of  other  clans. 
This  supports  the  inference,  based  on  several  kinds  of  evidence,  that  in  earlier  times,  as  in  more 
recent  ones,  regional  networks  of  trade  and  the  movement  of  ritual  experts,  connected  dispersed 
clan  settlements.  The  same  clan  names  with  the  same  associations  of  place  and  ritual  avoidance 
are  found  throughout  the  region  in  nearly  every  ethnic  group.  Oral  traditions  say  that  dispersed 
Hemba  or  Gaikwe  clan  members  enjoyed  access  to  trade  with  the  Asi  hunter/gatherers  (who  lived 
on  the  margins  of  the  western  Serengeti)  through  friendship  oaths.  Since  clan  networks  like  these 
do  not  function  any  more  and  because  little  evidence  exists  for  them  in  the  colonial  period,  one  can 
reasonably  assume  that  they  belong  to  an  earlier  period.  We  cannot  date  precisely  the  period 
during  which  these  clan  networks  functioned,  but  situating  them  relatively  in  time  may  be  possible 
by  mapping  the  regional  distribution  of  clan  names,  words  that  refer  to  clan  functions,  and 
variations  in  lineage  organization. 


Anita  Jacobson-Widding,  ed.,  Body  and  Space:  Symbolic  Modes  of  Unity  and  Division  in  African 
Cosmology  and  Experience  (Uppsala:  Almqvist  and  Wiksell  International,  1 991 );  and  Denise  L. 
Lawrence  and  Setha  M.  Low,  "The  Built  Environment  and  Spatial  Form,"  Annual  Review  of 
Anthropology  19  (1990):  453-505. 


17 

Even  relative  chronologies  for  the  forms  of  identity  to  which  the  core  spatial  images  refer 
are  difficult  to  identify,  because  oral  traditions  consist  of  layers  laid  down  in  different  time  periods. 
Some  have  described  oral  traditions  as  resembling  palimpsests,  or  tablets  that  various  people  have 
written  over  with  the  older  writing  just  barely  visible  beneath.  Christopher  Wrigley,  writing  on 
Ganda  "mythical  traditions,"  says  that  oral  traditions  are  like  textbooks  of  law,  "which  are  being 
constantly  re-edited  to  reflect  new  knowledge  or  interest  but  keep  the  basic  shape  given  them  by 
their  original  authors.""  Thus,  origin  stories  may  indeed  contain  both  existential  reflection  on 
enduring  realities  of  the  human  condition  and  very  old  historical  content.  Both  of  these  contents 
may  receive  new  interpretations  when  new  identities,  in  relation  to  new  communities,  gain  greater 
importance.  In  identifying  which  layer  is  older,  the  spatial  images  around  which  people  tell  the 
stories  provide  crucial  clues. 

For  example,  in  the  stories  about  the  origins  of  western  Serengeti  ethnic  groups,  the  core 
spatial  images  are  not  the  spaces  of  bounded  ethnic  territories.  They  are  instead  the  gendered 
spaces  of  the  homestead  and  the  ecological  spaces  of  economic  subsistence  strategies.  In  addition, 
people  tell  the  origin  story  of  first  man,  the  hunter,  and  first  woman,  the  farmer,  throughout  the 
region,  not  confined  to  one  ethnic  group.  Each  separate  group  creates  its  own  elaborations  on  a 
common  story.  The  historian  can  date  the  economic  subsistence  patterns  and  homestead  layouts 
represented  in  these  spatial  images  to  the  distant  past  through  historical  linguistics  and  comparative 
ethnography.  Thus,  one  can  reasonably  argue  that  the  core  images  of  these  origin  stories  are  based 


31  Christopher  Wrigley,  Kingship  and  State:  The  Buganda  Dynasty  (Cambridge: 
Cambridge  University  Press,  1996),  p.  49.  Thanks  to  James  Ellison  for  his  archeological 
explanation  of  this  concept:  "Imagine  a  landscape  inhabited,  people  dropping  artifacts  that  reflect 
relations  of  exchange  over  a  great  distance  and  to  the  south.  Then  people  die,  the  site  is  covered  by 
eolian  deposits,  and  other  people  move  in  who  drop  artifacts  that  reflect  trade  in  another  set  of 
directions  and  at  a  much  closer  radius.  They  die.  Winds  deflate  the  sediments  leaving  these  quite 
different  artifacts  side  by  side,"  personal  communication,  23  June  1997. 


18 

on  the  founding  myths  of  much  older  social  groupings  that  narrators  have  reconfigured  into  ethnic 
stories.  Because  the  characters  in  these  ethnic  origin  stories  are  sometimes  members  of  particular 
clans,  it  also  seems  likely  that  people  have  used  these  stories  to  understand  the  relationship  between 
clans. 

In  the  search  for  historical  meaning,  this  dissertation  analyzes  and  contextualizes  the  core 
spatial  images  of  each  set  of  oral  traditions.  The  relative  age  of  these  images  may  be  suggested  by 
interpreting  their  cultural  meaning  alongside  of  other  forms  of  evidence  and  in  light  of  commentary 
from  other  traditions.  Through  this  process  one  can  see  how  the  different  elements  of  a  single 
tradition  might  have  been  added  at  different  time  periods.    Origin  stories  may  have  begun  as 
founding  myths  explaining  the  relationship  between  men  and  women  and  the  interdependence  of 
hunting  and  farming  as  economic  strategies,  or,  the  importance  of  farming  in  "civilizing"  human 
families.  Then  particular  variations  of  these  stories  about  first  man  and  first  woman  and  their 
children  became  identified  with  the  clans  of  those  who  first  claimed  the  land.  In  this  case  the 
stories  explained  the  relationships  between  clans  and  provided  the  basis  for  the  priority  in 
particular  circumstances  of  some  clans  over  others.  Later,  as  ethnic  groups  began  to  define 
themselves,  narrators  turned  the  same  stories  that  underwrote  the  rights  of  clans  to  tell  of 
ethnogenesis. 

Multiple,  situational,  and  relational  identities  seem  to  be  an  ancient  pattern  in  this  region, 
perhaps  as  a  result  of  the  interaction  of  diverse  languages,  subsistence  patterns  and  cultures  from 
earliest  times.  Even  if  particular  sets  of  oral  traditions  tell  of  particular  forms  of  social  identity  and 
in  relation  to  a  relative  time  periods  in  the  past,  other  forms  of  social  identity  surely  existed  too. 
People  who  lived  on  the  marginal  lands  of  the  western  Serengeti  built  their  security  by  forming 
extensive  regional  relationships  based  on  many  different  kinds  of  identities,  rather  than  centralized 
hierarchies.  We  cannot  imagine  a  time  when  no  lineages  or  clans,  age-  or  generation-sets  existed, 


19 
but  we  can  dimly  perceive  times  when,  in  specific  historical  circumstances,  regional  clan  networks 
played  a  more  important  role  than  they  now  do;  when  lineage  was  the  idiom  for  asserting  a 
relationship  with  the  land  and  when  the  principle  of  age  began  to  eclipse  that  of  generation.  The 
interpretation  of  spatial  imagery  thus  provides  tools  for  understanding  these  important  shifts  in 
social  process  over  time. 

In  a  society  where  identities  were  multiple,  situational  and  relational,  many  different  sets  of 
oral  traditions,  describing  the  diverse  histories  of  many  different  social  groups,  operated  at  the 
same  time.  If  a  particular  social  group  remembers  and  performs  a  particular  set  of  oral  traditions, 
its  people  can  only  preserve  the  particular  histories  and  landscapes  of  that  group  and  cannot  carry 
the  weight  of  a  more  integrated  social  history.    One  elder,  who  is  a  member  of  many  different 
social  groups,  may  relate,  for  example,  ethnic  origin  history,  clan  migration  history,  generation-set 
ritual  history,  age-set  initiation  history,  and  lineage  settlement  history  all  in  one  session,  with  each 
kind  of  history  situated  in  a  particular  temporal  frame.  Each  of  these  separate  histories  has  become 
one  ethnic  history  in  the  memory  of  one  man.  Yet  how  can  we  understand  the  indigenous 
chronology  that  orders  these  different  kinds  of  stories  in  one  man's  narration  of  the  past  in  relation 
to  each  other  and  in  terms  of  a  linear  chronology? 
Periodization  of  Oral  Tradition  and  Concepts  of  Time 

The  organization  of  this  dissertation  follows  the  indigenous  chronology  implicit  in  the 
corpus  of  oral  traditions  told  today,  beginning  with  the  stories  of  ethnic  and  clan  origins  and  ending 
with  the  stories  of  the  late  nineteenth  century  disaster  and  recovery.  I  do  not  accept  this 
chronology  in  any  absolute  sense  but  contingent  upon  an  understanding  of  the  kinds  of 
temporalities  reflected  in  oral  tradition.  However,  indigenous  periodizations  of  oral  traditions  bear 
some  relationship  to  the  relative  age  of  information  about  the  past  carried  into  the  present.  They 
are  not  purely  imaginative  reconstructions  of  the  past  based  on  the  present. 


20 

The  historical  consciousness  of  the  western  Serengeti,  in  spite  of  the  preference  for  spatial 
rather  than  temporal  organization  of  oral  traditions,  employs  a  division  of  time  into  chronologically 
ordered  periods.  Oral  traditions  can  be  grouped  into  three  types  of  traditions  according  to  this 
indigenous  periodization.  Ethnic  origin  stories  of  first  man,  the  hunter,  and  first  woman,  the  farmer 
refer  to  the  oldest  time  period.  They  often  include  clan  narratives  in  which  the  children  of  the 
ancestral  parents  disperse.  Oral  traditions  of  settlement  sites  or  migration  stories  and  accounts  of 
rituals  concerning  the  land  characterize  the  middle  period.  The  most  recent  period  contains  the 
historical  accounts  of  the  generations  from  the  last  two  decades  of  the  nineteenth  century  onward. 
These  traditions  tell  of  the  disasters  of  that  period  and  the  ways  in  which  people  coped  and  even 
began  to  prosper  in  the  early  colonial  period.  We  can  understand  only  these  last  stories  as 
"historical"  in  so  far  as  they  employ  a  linear  chronology  of  past  events  ordered  by  cycles  of  age-set 
or  generation-set  names. 

For  the  last  or  historical  period,  narratives  are  grouped  according  to  the  memories  of  a 
particular  "generation."  Those  who  were  in  their  youth  at  the  time  of  the  disasters  refer  to  this 
experience  as  the  formative  point  for  their  generation.  Those  in  the  generation  who  were  in  their 
youth  during  the  early  colonial  years  oriented  their  identity  around  the  cattle  wealth  acquired  from 
new  opportunities  for  trade.  Rosaldo  used  the  concept  of  "cohort  analysis"  to  find  structure  in  the 
individual  biographies  of  age-peers  set  in  a  particular  historical  context.  As  he  followed  many  of 
these  lives  through  time  he  saw  that  age-peers  began  defining  themselves  by  formative  historical 
experiences  when  their  "shared  collective  identity  was  formed."  This  then  became  the  enduring 
characteristic  of  a  self-conscious  group.32 


32  Rosaldo,  lloneot  Headhunting,  pp.  1 10-113. 


21 

The  division  of  time  into  three  periods  in  oral  tradition  corresponds  closely  to  what  oral 
historians  have  found  elsewhere  in  Africa.  Rich  oral  traditions  typically  surround  the  period  of 
origins  and  that  of  recent  times,  separated  by  a  "floating  gap"  of  scarce  and  cryptic  information  in 
the  middle  period.  In  the  western  Serengeti,  the  narratives  of  this  middle  period  contain  lists  of 
place-names  referring  to  settlement  sites  or  stops  on  a  migration  route.  Earlier  historians  of  oral 
tradition  in  Africa  accepted  this  indigenous  periodization  as  representative  of  relative  chronological 
time.  Vansina  assumed  that  these  bodies  of  tradition  referred  to  successive  time  periods  and  he 
explained  the  "floating  gap"  by  the  fact  that  beyond  a  certain  time  depth,  oral  memory  reaches  it 
limits.  As  traditions  got  older,  they  became  more  generalized  and  mythologized.33 

Anthropologists  met  this  positivist  method  of  ordering  oral  traditions  into  a  chronological 
framework  with  an  unsettling  critique.  Structuralists  demonstrated  that  these  three  types  of 
tradition  do  not  refer  to  time  at  all  but  to  structures  of  society  in  the  present.  They  saw  the 
mythical  accounts  as  "founding  myths"  that  justify  the  existence  of  the  present  social  system.  For 
these  scholars  the  middle  period  represents  a  static  model  or  "social  charter"  of  the  same  system 
and  only  in  the  recent  period  do  oral  historians  offer  accounts  of  change  and  pose  explanations  as 
to  causality.34  While  this  understanding  of  indigenous  periodization  challenged  the  possibility  of 
historical  reconstruction,  many  historians  went  on  to  demonstrate  that  even  as  "mythical  charters," 
oral  traditions  still  contain  evidence  about  the  past.35    Some  historians,  such  as  Feierman, 


33  Vansina,  Oral  Tradition  as  History,  pp.  23-24. 

34  For  a  classic  example  of  the  structuralist  interpretation  of  oral  traditions  see.  Claude 
Levi-Strauss,  "The  Story  of  Asdiwal,"  in  The  Structural  Study  of  Myth  and  Totemism.  ed. 
Edmunch  Leach  (London:  Tavistock  Publications,  1967),  pp.  1-47. 

35  Jan  Vansina,  Oral  Traditions  as  History,  p.  23;  Spear,  "Whose  History?,"  pp.  165-181; 
Thomas  Spear,  Kenya's  Past:  An  Introduction  to  Historical  Method  in  Africa  (Harlow,  Essex: 
Longman,  1981);  Miller,  "Listening  for  the  African  Past,"  p.  4. 


22 
accommodated  the  critique  by  incorporating  structuralist  analysis  into  their  historical 
reconstruction.36 

Thomas  Spear  picked  up  this  challenge  to  the  historicity  of  oral  tradition  by  finding  a 
different  basis  for  maintaining  that  the  three  kinds  of  traditions  represented  time  periods  (recent, 
middle  and  early).  He  showed  that  each  kind  of  oral  tradition  is  characterized  by  a  different  sense 
of  time  (linear,  cyclical  and  mythical  respectively).  His  own  work  demonstrated  that  Kenyan 
Mijikenda  oral  traditions  of  the  earlier  periods  "contain  accurate  historical  narrative  over  four 
centuries  and  continue  to  describe  accurately  institutions  that  have  not  existed  for  130  years."  The 
different  time  sense  in  each  type  results  from  increasing  abstraction,  changing  in  "meaning  from 
literal  to  intended  to  symbolic  as  the  events  they  recall  recede  into  the  past."  Thus  oral  traditions 
of  the  early  period  describe  "things-as  they  became,"  the  middle  period  describes  "things-as-they- 
should-be"  and  the  late  period  describes  "things-as  they-are."37 

Although  a  rough  correspondence  exists  between  these  three  types  of  oral  traditions  and 
three  levels  of  historical  time  depth  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  accept  this  periodization  as 
corresponding  to  any  absolute  sense  of  chronological  time.  Any  one  of  these  types  contains 
material  from  many  different  time  periods.  The  function  of  oral  traditions  locally  is  not  to  archive 
the  past  in  any  "pure"  form.  Narrators  have  transmitted  traditions  because  they  provide  useful 
information  for  negotiating  the  paths  of  present  social  relationship  based  on  the  experience  of  the 
past.38  They  represent  wisdom  from  the  past  distilled  into  an  idealized  form. 


36  Feierman,  The  Shambaa  Kingdom,  pp.  40-69. 

37  Spear,  "Whose  History,"  pp.  167,  171-2. 

38  See  Feierman,  "Introduction,"  The  Shambaa  Kingdom,  pp.  10-16. 


23 

However,  this  indigenous  periodization  of  oral  traditions  according  to  a  relative  chronology 
does  give  some  indication  of  time  depth  in  that  the  spatial  images  of  each  genre  can  be  correlated 
with  a  particular  temporality  (rather  than  time  period).  The  core  spatial  images  of  the  origin  stories 
refer  to  ancient  patterns  of  production  and  reproduction  in  the  region,  as  they  had  developed  out  of 
the  gendered  interactions  of  hunters,  herders  and  farmers  in  the  deep  past  and  as  they  have 
continued  to  exist  in  more  recent  periods.  The  lists  of  settlement  site  names  refer  to  historic 
residence  patterns  in  the  not-too-distant  past  but  before  the  more  immediate  memories  of  the  late 
nineteenth  century  famines. 

We  can  be  reasonably  sure  that  oral  traditions  do  contain  information  about  the  past 
because  of  the  remarkable  congruence  between  historical  reconstructions  based  on  the  core  spatial 
images  of  oral  tradition  and  that  based  on  the  evidence  of  historical  linguistics,  comparative 
ethnography,  archaeology  or  written  sources,  which  we  assume  to  have  historical  validity.  If  those 
who  tell  oral  traditions  cannot  have  known  about  this  other  evidence  how  otherwise  would  they  tell 
such  similar  stories  concerning  social  processes  in  the  distant  past?  Oral  traditions  provide  a 
culturally  grounded  expression  of  historical  processes  partly  available  to  us  from  other  kinds  of 
evidence. 

The  historians  must  also  accept  the  limitations  of  oral  traditions.  The  genres  of  oral 
tradition  corresponding  to  "mythical  time"  and  "social  process  time"  cannot  by  themselves  show 
change  over  time.  Only  the  comparison  of  various  versions  of  the  same  types  of  traditions 
throughout  the  region  or  among  different  social  groups  can  accomplish  this  result.39  Even  then 


39  See  Matthew  Schoffeleers,  "Oral  history  and  the  retrieval  of  the  distant  past:  On  the  use 
of  legendary  chronicles  as  sources  of  historical  information,"  in  Theoretical  explorations  in  African 
religion,  eds.  Wim  an  Binsbergen  and  Matthew  Schoffeleers  (KP1:  London,  1985),  pp.  164-188. 


24 
these  lead  only  to  tenuous  hypotheses,  usually  confirmed  by  written  sources  (that  are  not  available 
here  before  the  late  nineteenth  century). 

Traditions  of  the  oldest  indigenous  time  periods  supply  a  description  of  the  spatial 
organization  of  social  relationships  over  the  long  period  in  which  they  unfolded.40    The  core  spatial 
images  of  these  traditions  represent  the  underlying  principles,  or  what  Pierre  Bourdieu  calls  the 
"generative  schemes,"  of  social  practice,  a  practice  elaborated  and  improvised  on  in  daily  life, 
according  to  the  specific  context.  Generative  schemes  are  not  so  much  "rules"  as  "strategies"  by 
which  people  choose  from  a  range  of  options  to  enact  social  practice.41  These  are  the  mental 
dispositions  inculcated  during  the  earliest  phases  of  socialization,  inscribed  in  the  body  and 
cultivated  in  the  routines  of  life.  People  do  not  consciously  understand  how  the  system  works  but 
unconsciously  know  how  to  make  it  work.  The  basic  principles  by  which  one  knows  how  to  carry 
out  relationships  based  on  common  parentage,  age,  generation,  expertise  or  wealth  can  generate 
unlimited  practical  applications  depending  on  the  situation.  For  example  in  the  western  Serengeti, 
a  stranger  could  be  incorporated  as  a  son  to  secure  additional  labor;  peers,  as  age-mates,  could  be 
organized  on  a  regional  scale  for  raiding  or  reconciliation;  wealthy  men  could  be  induced  by 
followers  to  provide  large  communal  feasts  to  gain  legitimate  respect;  and  networks  of  friendships 
sealed  by  blood  oaths  could  be  fashioned  into  long-distance  trading  partnerships.  People  make  and 
maintain  relationships  when  they  are  useful  either  materially  or  symbolically,  rather  than  existing 
as  the  result  of  a  disembodied  social  system.  Social  maps  are  not  reified  representations  but 
various  and  changing  according  to  the  context. 


40  Randall  M.  Packard,  "The  Study  of  Historical  Process  in  African  Traditions  of  Genesis: 
the  Bashu  Myth  of  Muhiyi,"  in  The  African  Past  Speaks,  ed.  Joseph  C.  Miller  (Folkestone,  Kent: 
Dawson  Archon,  1980),  pp.  157-177. 

41  Bourdieu,  Outline  of  a  Theory  of  Practice,  pp.  1-71. 


25 

Oral  tradition  rationalizes  these  generative  principles  that  govern  the  daily  elaboration  of 
social  practice  into  an  "official"  version  of  social  organization  to  preserve  the  existing  social  order. 
Oral  traditions  turn  what  is  a  dynamic  process  into  a  static  model.  When  we  understand  lineage  as 
a  strategy  rather  than  a  structure,  we  see  people's  everyday  actions  as  significant  because  they  are 
making  choices  rather  than  following  a  script.  The  core  spatial  images  of  early-period  traditions 
present  social  organization  in  a  rigid  and  timeless,  "traditional"  form.  Although  this  is  the  "given" 
spatial  text,  people  have  "read"  it  in  countless  ways  over  time.'12    The  exclusive  narration  of  the 
"official  version"  has  now  silenced  some  of  these  various  interpretations.  By  understanding  how 
various  people  have  "read"  these  spatial  "texts"  since  the  time  of  documented  historical  sources, 
one  can  imagine  a  similarly  varied  spectrum  of  possibilities  in  the  past.  Another  way  of 
understanding  the  possible  past  readings  that  are  now  silenced  is  to  look  at  the  regional  variation  on 
these  basic  generative  themes  of  social  organization.  Different  historical  contexts  influence  the 
regional  variations. 

An  example  of  contextual  "readings"  of  generative  principles,  reflected  in  the  oral 
traditions  as  a  static  model,  concerns  gender  relations  represented  in  the  spatial  layout  of  the 
homestead.  The  house  is  represented  as  a  female  domain  and  the  courtyard  and  cattle  corral  as  a 
male  domain.  The  oppositions  of  inside/outside,  enclosed/exposed,  passive/active  are  embedded  in 
these  spatial  configurations.  Through  historical  linguistics  and  comparative  ethnography  the 
historian  can  show  that  these  gendered  spatial  patterns  are  very  old  and  still  exist  today.  However, 
from  evidence  in  the  colonial  record  and  from  my  own  observation,  women  have  clearly  turned 
these  dichotomies  to  their  own  advantage  and  found  ways  to  cross  and  blur  the  boundaries. 


42  Ibid;  Moore,  Space.  Text  and  Gender,  pp.  79  -  86,  who  suggests  that  spatial 
organization  is  like  a  "text"  that  can  be  "read." 


26 
Embedded  in  the  origin  traditions  (primarily  as  told  by  men)  are  hints  of  the  ways  in  which  women 
and  men  have  reinterpreted  these  spaces  over  time. 

The  historian  might  better  understand  the  three  types  of  oral  traditions,  not  as  referring  to 
different  time  periods  or  concepts  of  time,  but  to  different  temporalities  or  time  scales.  Because  we 
can  connect  each  set  of  oral  traditions  with  a  particular  social  group  and  the  material  spaces  that  it 
occupies,  each  of  these  identities  also  has  its  own  temporality.  The  indigenous  chronology  places 
oral  traditions  connected  with  identities  based  on  gender  and  subsistence  economy  in  the  oldest 
time  frame,  almost  out  of  time.  Comparison  to  other  evidence  shows  that  these  identities  are  very 
old  and  relatively  stable  over  time.  The  earliest  traditions  represent  a  different  temporal  frame  of 
very  slow  changes  over  long  time  periods  and  enduring  social  forms.  The  origin  stories  do  not 
objectively  represent  particular  events  and  years  but  they  do  adequately  represent  long-term  social 
processes. 

This  insight  draws  on  Braudel's  classic  history  of  the  Mediterranean  in  which  he  uses  three 
different  temporalities:  the  longue  duree  (history  of  imperceptible  changes  in  the  relationships  of 
man  to  his  environment),  the  conjuncture  (the  slow  but  perceptible  rhythms  of  social  process)  and, 
the  evenemenl  (the  short  term  political  time  of  remembered  history).43    Braudel's  model  allows  for 
each  type  of  analysis  to  supply  a  different  kind  of  historical  information  through  its  own  time 
frame.    Each  temporal  scale  implies  a  corresponding  spatial  scale  and  social  unit.  A  narrative 
concerning  the  relationship  of  man  to  the  environment  demands  a  deep  time  scale  and  an  extensive 
ecological  field.  In  Braudel's  analysis  the  geographical  spaces  of  mountain  and  sea  where  people 


43  Fernand  Braudel,  The  Mediterranean  and  the  Mediterranean  World  in  the  Aee  of  Philip 
U,  trans.  Sian  Reynolds  and  ed.  Richard  Ollard  (Harper  Collins:  London,  1992;  first  published  in 
French,  1949.). 


27 
fished  and  farmed  were  set  in  the  history  of  the  long  duree,  while  the  courtly  spaces  of  kings  were 
the  venues  of  short  term  diplomatic  history.'14 

However,  if  we  analyze  separately  the  temporality  of  each  set  of  social  identities,  rather 
than  the  total  society  for  each  time  period,  than  we  cut  social  history  on  a  "vertical"  rather  than  a 
"horizontal"  axis.  In  effect,  each  of  these  temporal  slices  represents  a  particular  kind  of  social 
identity,  over  an  ongoing  period  of  time,  rather  than  a  picture  of  an  integrated  society  during  one 
time  period.  This  moves  the  analysis  from  a  simple  past  tense  to  a  past  continuous  tense.  For 
example,  the  space/time  frame  of  origin  stories  refers  to  the  demonstrably  ancient  strategies  of 
subsistence  and  social  reproduction  that  are  still  practiced  today.  These  are  basic  generative 
schemes  around  which  other  social  organization  is  elaborated.  The  space/time  frame  of  the  stories 
of  settlement  sites  and  land  rituals  refers  to  processes  in  the  not-too-distant  past  by  which  people 
established  the  rights  to  the  land  that  exist  today.  The  space/time  frame  of  stories  concerning 
nineteenth  century  disaster  and  opportunity  are  within  a  chronological  framework  of  historical 
change  and  refer  to  newly  evolving  forms  of  social  organization— age-set  territories  and  ethnic 
identities.  Each  space/time  frame  moves  forward  at  its  own  rate  to  the  present. 

In  reality,  one  individual  simultaneously  embodies  each  of  these  various  identities 
represented  by  oral  tradition.  These  diverse  identities  cannot  be  separated  and  are  functionally 
interdependent.  One  cannot  understand  a  woman  outside  her  role  as  farmer,  mother,  sister  or 
healing  expert.  A  scholar  cannot  divide  the  history  of  an  integrated  society  for  analytical  purposes 
into  the  separate  histories  of  gender,  economy,  clans,  age-sets  or  generation-sets.    Braudel 
recognized  that  this  dissection  of  history  into  "geographical  time,"  "social  time"  and  "individual 
time"  was  only  a  device  that  "divided  man  into  his  multiple  selves"  and  "cut  across  living  history 


"  Prins,  The  Hidden  Hippopotamus,  p.  8,  uses  Braudel's  model  in  his  attempt  to  "study  all 
the  time  scales  of  change"  and  their  interplay  with  each  other. 


28 
that  is  fundamentally  one."45    However,  by  making  this  "vertical"  dissection  one  better  appreciates 
the  historical  dynamics  of  social  identities  that  were  multiple,  situational  and  relational  in  nature. 

Using  this  method,  the  oral  traditions  retain  their  integrity,  allowing  for  a  translation  that 
takes  seriously  local  historical  consciousness.  Explaining  nineteenth  century  changes  in  social 
identity  without  understanding  the  previous  forms  of  social  identity  that  operated  over  the  long- 
term  is  impossible.  Yet  to  understand  these  long-term  processes  without  understanding  the 
disasters  of  the  late  nineteenth  century,  through  which  oral  traditions  about  the  earlier  periods  are 
filtered  is  also  impossible.  Throughout  the  dissertation,  I  interpret  oral  traditions  about  the  earlier 
period  in  light  of  the  nineteenth  century  transformations  in  social  identity,  and  understand 
representations  of  social  organization  in  the  nineteenth  century  as  products  of  earlier  cultural 
formation.  In  each  chapter  I  present  a  different  genre  of  oral  tradition,  explore  its  core  spatial 
images  and  the  references  to  social  identity  in  its  cultural  and  historical  context. 
Oral  Traditions  and  Social  Identity 

People  in  the  western  Serengeti  who  tell  oral  traditions  today  refer  explicitly  to  the  social 
identity  of  ethnicity.  Yet  the  stories  themselves  represent  a  variety  of  other  kinds  of  social 
boundaries  and  they  operate  within  a  common  set  of  regional  assumptions,  or  generative  principles. 
Similar  stories  for  similar  periods  in  each  of  the  ethnic  groups  with  whom  I  conducted  interviews, 
suggest  the  possibility  of  a  common  regional  history,  with  local  variations  corresponding  to 
differing  historical  and  geographical  contexts.  Telling  this  story  as  seven  different  ethnic 
narratives  may  have  better  represented  western  Serengeti  historical  consciousness  in  the  colonial 
and  postcolonial  periods,  but  it  would  not  fairly  reflect  precolonial  consciousness. 


45  Braudel.  "Preface  to  the  First  Edition,"  The  Mediterranean,  p.  xiv. 


29 

These  traditions  show  that  social  identity,  in  the  past  as  well  as  in  the  present,  is  multiple, 
situational  and  relational  rather  than  unitary  and  fixed.  None  but  the  most  recent  traditions  use  the 
space  of  the  ethnic  group  as  the  core  spatial  image.  Instead,  the  core  spatial  images  that  represent 
the  identities  of  male/female,  farmer/hunter/herder,  lineage  or  clan  member,  age-  or  generation-set 
member  seem  to  reflect  older  historical  knowledge.  The  social  identities  based  on  locality,  rank, 
authority,  expertise,  or  wealth  also  figure  prominently  in  these  traditions.  People  today  take  on 
different  identities  depending  on  the  identity  of  those  to  whom  they  are  talking  and  the  situation  in 
which  they  find  themselves. 
Personal  Names  as  an  Illustration  of  Relational  and  Situational  Identity 

Practices  surrounding  personal  identity  and  naming  show  people  deploying  multiple  and 
situational  identities  to  negotiate  and  strategize  their  interests.  A  quality  not  unique  to,  but 
certainly  characteristic  of,  this  region  is  the  use  of  a  multiplicity  of  names  for  any  one  person.  A 
man  may  take  a  personal  name,  an  ancestral  name,  a  teasing  name,  a  father's  name,  a  mother's 
name,  a  clan  name,  a  kinship  term  of  address,  a  praise  name,  a  youth  name  or  an  elder's  name  at 
different  times  in  his  life.  Only  certain  people  may  have  the  right  to  call  him  a  particular  name. 
No  single  name  fixes  a  person's  identity.  Young  people  use  different  names  when  they  apply  for  a 
job  or  sign  up  to  retake  an  exam.  One  of  the  first  missionaries  in  the  region  reported  that  when  he 
began  teaching  local  children  at  his  home  the  children,  having  been  instructed  at  their  homes  not  to 
give  their  proper  names,  called  themselves  "hammer,"  "saw,"  "stone,"  cartridge,"  and  "war."46 
After  a  person  has  a  child,  people  call  him  or  her  in  reference  to  the  child's  name,  "Mama  Bhoke" 
or  "Baba  Mwita"  (in  Swahili).  Names  position  a  person  within  particular  kinds  of  social 


46  Valemar  E.  Toppenberg,  Africa  Has  My  Heart  (Mountain  View,  California:  Pacific 
Press  Publishing  Assoc,  1958),  pp.  52-53.  "The  parents  believed  that  we  would  have  some  magic 
power  over  them  if  we  were  told  their  proper  names." 


30 

relationships.  Each  lineage  relationship  has  a  name,  age-mates  call  each  other  by  another  name, 

those  who  have  been  circumcised  together  or  done  one  of  the  eldership  titles  together  call  each 

other  by  yet  another  name. 

A  partial  list  of  these  names  that  individuals  with  specific  relationships  would  call  one 

another  was  related  to  me  in  this  way  by  a  Nata  elder: 

Bashori;  the  name  for  the  one  with  whom  you  were  circumcised,  putting  oil  on  together. 

Barogumu:  the  name  for  a  "friend  of  oil,  "for  whom  a  goat  was  killed. 

Banchabo:  the  name  for  the  person  who  sponsors  you  in  achieving  the  Titinyo  rank. 

Banagera:  the  name  for  the  person  who  runs  behind  you  in  the  Titinyo  ceremony. 

Baguruki:  the  name  for  the  one  who  sponsors  you  in  achieving  the  Aguho  rank. 

Semung'anta:  the  name  for  the  one  brings  you  into  the  Eghise  rank. 

Omusani  wa  kusaragana:  the  name  for  your  blood  brother  from  another  ethnic  group. 

Barera:  the  name  for  the  man  who  marries  your  first  daughter. 

Basigero:  the  name  for  the  man  who  marries  your  second  daughter 

Babusheni:  the  name  for  the  one  who  marries  your  third  daughter. 

Bachoro:  the  name  that  the  wife  of  your  first  son  uses  to  greet  her  father-in-law. 

Bangondu:  the  name  that  a  daughter-in-law  uses  to  greet  her  father-in-law. 

Babogusi:  the  name  that  elders  of  the  same  rank  call  each  other  at  a  feast. 

Bagechoncho:  the  name  for  the  one  who  takes  off  the  headdress  in  the  Aguho  feast.  " 

These  names  could  be  mutually  used  whenever  people  met,  not  only  in  the  particular  situation  to 

which  it  refers. 

Greetings  often  refer  to  the  relationship  to  the  person  being  greeted,  rather  than  to  a 

personal  identity.  The  younger  or  subordinate  of  the  pair  calls  out  the  relationship  in  the  greeting, 

"sister-in-law,"  "mother,"  or  "paternal  aunt."  The  person  responding  calls  back  the  same  name  and 

then  the  greetings  go  on  as  to  the  day,  the  cattle,  the  fields  and  the  health  of  those  at  home.    People 

of  the  same  generation  most  often  greet  each  other  as  brothers  or  sisters.    One  can  characterize 

each  person  she  meets  as  belonging  to  her  own  generation,  the  generation  of  her  children,  parents  or 

grandparents.  Therefore,  if  she  does  not  know  what  her  particular  family  relationship  is  to  this 

person,  she  can  greet  her  as  "mother,"  "grandmother,"  or  "daughter."  That  person  would  return  the 


47  Interview  with  Megasa  Mokiri.  Motokeri,  6  March  1 995  (Nata  cf ). 


31 
same  greeting.  I  would  greet  a  very  old  woman  as  "grandmother"  and  she  would  return  the 
greeting  "grandmother,"  not  "granddaughter,"  as  it  names  the  relationship  rather  than  the  person. 

Because  any  one  person  in  the  community  may  have  multiple  relationships  to  any  other 
person,  much  latitude  exists  for  "playing"  with  greetings  and  names.  Depending  on  an  individual's 
dealings  with  this  person,  she  might  want  to  evoke  a  relationship  of  superiority  (older  generation), 
comradeship  (age-mates),  obligation  (a  paternal  aunt)  or  joking  respect  (brother-in-law).  Since 
names  are  multiple,  they  are  open  to  negotiation.  Someone  may  refuse  to  greet  a  person  as  they 
were  greeted,  demanding  a  greeting  of  greater  respect.  A  discussion  over  the  basis  of  a  claim  to  be 
greeted  in  this  manner  would  then  result,  involving  complicated  genealogical  or  historical  accounts. 
Since  we  were  incorporated  into  a  family  in  Nata,  my  own  children  often  and  twelve  years  could 
demand  the  greeting  of  "father"  from  youth  twice  their  age  according  to  the  principle  of  generation 
(the  father  of  these  youth  was  a  grandson  of  Magoto  in  the  same  way  that  my  children  were 
considered  "grandsons"  of  Magoto,  and  thus  their  equivalence).  The  point  of  all  this  seems  to  be  to 
acquire  as  many  names,  and  thus  social  relationships,  as  possible,  in  the  same  way  as  other  people 
might  acquire  material  goods.48 

Relationship  and  situation  define  personal  identity.  Who  I  am  depends  on  whom  1  am 
talking  to,  my  relationship(s)  to  him  or  her,  and  the  context  in  which  we  find  ourselves,  including 
what  each  of  us  wants  out  of  the  interaction.  Social  identity  is  relational  and  situational  rather  than 
immutable  and  unitary  or  defined  by  an  ontological  sense  of  undivided  being.  Dr.  Mekacha.  a 
Nata  professor  of  linguistics  at  the  University  of  Dar  es  Salaam,  told  me  that  he  is  called  a 
different  name  by  his  parents,  his  grandmother  and  his  age-mates  when  he  is  home-besides  being 


48  Just  as  Guyer  and  Belinga  have  postulated  "wealth-in-knowledge"  as  a  refinement  of  the 
"wealth-in-people"  paradigm,  this  suggests  a  further  elaboration  of  "wealth-in-relationships."  Jane 
1.  Guyer  and  Samuel  M.  Eno  Belinga,  "Wealth  in  People  as  Wealth  in  Knowledge:  Accumulation 
and  Composition  in  Equatorial  Africa,"  Journal  of  African  History  36  (1995):  91-120. 


32 
named  as  an  educated  man  from  Dar  es  Salaam.  In  terms  of  social  identity,  when  he  is  in  Nata 
people  identify  him  by  his  lineage  or  place  of  residence.  When  he  is  in  Musoma,  people  identify 
him  as  Nata.  When  he  is  in  Dar  es  Salaam,  people  identify  him  as  Kuria.49  Each  of  those 
positional  identities  is  dependent  on  where  he  is  and  to  whom  he  is  speaking. 

A  person  can  never  assert  his  social  identity  in  a  vacuum.  He  must  state  it  in  relation  to 
someone  else  and  to  a  specific  space  and  time.  It  is  only  in  Dar  es  Salaam  that  people  name  Dr. 
Mekacha  as  Kuria.  If  someone  would  call  him  Kuria  in  Musoma,  he  would  be  deeply  offended 
because  of  the  connotation,  for  others  in  the  Mara  Region  and  throughout  Tanzania,  of  Kuria  cattle 
theft.  What  it  means  to  be  Kuria  today  is  different  from  what  it  might  have  meant,  if  the  term  was 
used  at  all,  at  the  beginning  of  the  century  when  people  admired  and  imitated  the  Kuria  for  their 
courage  and  skill  in  cattle  raiding.  The  boundaries  of  social  identity  are  constantly  in  flux. 
Social  Boundaries 

Each  of  these  identities  defines  boundaries  with  people  who  are  different  and,  at  the  same 
time,  defines  reciprocal  obligations  with  those  who  are  the  same.  Identity  only  functions  in 
reference  to  what  it  is  not  and  within  an  arena  in  which  people  define  difference.  Although  farmers 
in  the  western  Serengeti  also  hunted  and  farmed,  they  defined  themselves  in  distinction  to  hunters 
and  herders  in  order  to  establish  relations  of  interdependence  between  communities  which  practiced 
different  subsistence  economies.  Multiple  identities  flourished  because  they  were  the  most 
important  social  resource  in  a  harsh  environment  where  land  was  plentiful  and  people  scarce.  It 
was  only  by  successfully  calling  on  the  bonds  of  reciprocity  within  various  groups  that  a  family 
could  survive  a  drought  or  grow  wealthy  and  powerful.  The  way  to  authority  was  not  a  vertical 
movement  through  a  hierarchy  but  a  set  of  horizontal  movements  aimed  at  creating  and 


'  Interview  with  Dr.  Rugatiri  Mekacha,  Dar  es  Salaam,  24  May  1996  (Nata  cf). 


33 
maintaining  intricate  networks  of  relationship.50  Jane  Guyer  and  Samuel  Belinga  describe  this  as  a 
"compositional,"  rather  than  an  "accumulative,"  process  for  gaining  "wealth-in-knowledge" 
through  various  social  relationships." 

By  looking  at  each  of  these  social  identities  as  it  is  portrayed  in  oral  tradition,  each  with  its 
own  organization  of  space,  I  hope  to  illuminate  the  complexity  and  creativity  of  noncentralized 
societies.  Without  centralized  hierarchies  of  chiefs  or  kings  (but  certainly  not  without  hierarchy) 
western  Serengeti  people  responded  creatively  to  the  stresses  of  the  late  nineteenth  century.  They 
fashioned  new  solutions  out  of  the  social  resources  at  hand.  Defining  a  multiplicity  of  identities  in 
order  to  spread  out  social  capital  and  minimize  risk  also  maximized  opportunity.  The  peoples  of 
the  western  Serengeti  not  only  survived  the  nineteenth  century  disasters  but  they  forged  an  era  of 
unprecedented  cattle  wealth  in  the  early  colonial  years. 

Because  prosperity  in  this  marginal  environment  rested  on  these  identities  and  the  networks 
of  reciprocity  that  they  composed,  oral  traditions  preserved  the  knowledge  necessary  to  maintain 
these  relationships.  We  can  understand  oral  traditions  as  "mental  maps,"  or  spatial  representations 
of  social  relationships  necessary  in  daily  life.52  "Social  maps"  are  a  metaphorical  way  of 


50  Miller  uses  a  similar  model  to  explain  the  trade  networks  of  the  slave  trade,  Joseph  C. 
Miller.  Way  of  Death:  Merchant  Capitalism  and  the  Angolan  Slave  Trade  1730-1830  (Madison: 
University  of  Wisconsin  Press,  1988). 

51  Guyer  and  Belinga,  "Wealth  in  People,"  p.  103. 

52  For  some  of  the  earliest  work  on  "mental  maps"  see,  Peter  Gould  and  Rodney  White, 
Mental  Maps  (Baltimore:  Penguin,  1 974);  David  Lowenthal  and  Martyn  J.  Bowden,  Geographies 
of  the  Mind:  Essays  in  Honor  of  John  Kirtland  Wright  (New  York:  Oxford  University  Press, 
1976).  For  an  application  of  "mental  maps"  in  African  history  see,  Barrie  Sharpe,  "Ethnography 
and  a  Regional  System:  Mental  Maps  and  the  Myth  of  States  and  Tribes  in  North-Central 
Nigeria,"  Critique  of  Anthropolopv.  6,  3  (1986):33-65. 


34 
representing  social  relationships  and  also  a  description  of  the  organization  of  physical  space." 
Narrators  transmitted  and  maintained  these  maps  because  they  distilled  into  spatial  form  the 
wisdom  of  the  older  generation  who  had  already  walked  the  paths  of  these  relationships.  Yet  in  the 
transmission  of  oral  tradition,  narrators  described,  as  well  as  reinterpreted,  the  spaces  of  social 
relationship  each  time  they  told  the  stories  and  lived  them  out  in  daily  practice. 

Each  kind  of  oral  tradition  represents  a  different  mental  map  to  a  different  set  of  social 
identities,  corresponding  to  a  particular  temporality  and  space  in  the  historical  consciousness.  It  is 
only  by  overlaying  these  maps  that  the  shape  of  regional  social  history  emerges.  I  define  a  region 
as  the  geographical  extent  of  a  historical  set  of  significant  social  relationships  that  change  over 
time.54    These  mental  maps  are  the  very  framework  within  which  people  store  group  memories  and 
without  which  social  memory  ceases  to  exist.  The  transmission  of  these  maps  to  a  new  generation 
reproduces  social  identity  and  the  new  generation  in  turn  represents  these  identities  in  its 
interpretation  of  the  past  through  the  present.  This  study  necessarily  encompasses  a  larger 
geographical  area  than  that  of  a  single  ethnic  unit  because  only  within  a  larger  region  is  it  possible 
to  see  multiple  maps  on  multiple  scales  representing  multiple  identities  in  action. 

Research  Methodology 

Historians  have  recently  been  criticized  for  handling  oral  tradition  as  a  "container  of  facts" 
using  a  "documentary  model,"  rather  than  as  living  discourse."  As  a  result  historians  must  now 


"  Shirley  Ardener,  ed.,  Women  and  Space:  Ground  Rules  and  Social  Maps  (New  York: 
St.  Martin's  Press,  1981),  pp.  13-14;  and  Hofmeyr,  "We  Spend  Our  Years  "  pp.  160-166.  both  use 
the  concept  of  a  "social  map." 

"  For  an  analysis  of  "regions"  in  terms  of  the  "mental  maps"  of  oral  tradition  see  Jan 
Bender  Shetler,  "'Region'  as  a  Historical  Product:  Mental  Maps  of  Western  Serengeti  Oral 
Tradition,"  a  paper  presented  at  the  American  Historical  Association,  Seattle,  1998  and  to  be 
included  as  an  essay  in  a  forthcoming  book  on  African  Regional  History. 

"  Newbury,  "Contradictions  at  the  Heart,"  p.  32. 


35 
look  carefully  at  their  own  subjectivity  as  researchers  and  participants  in  the  process.  To  evaluate 
the  historical  analysis  of  this  dissertation  the  reader  must  understand  how  the  oral  texts  were 
created  in  the  interview  process,  the  place  of  the  researcher,  and  how  these  texts  were  then  used  in 
conjunction  with  other  kinds  of  sources. 
Situated  Knowledge 

Rather  than  taking  the  vantage  point  of  the  all-seeing  observer,  this  dissertation  "sees" 
from  the  position  of  a  guest  in  the  community  trying  to  understand  how  people  conceptualize  their 
pasts.  This  is  what  Donna  Haraway  calls  "situated  knowledge"  in  which  only  a  "partial 
perspective"  is  claimed,  allowing  for  other  interpretations  without  the  splitting  of  subject  and 
object.  The  story  told  here  is  the  result  of  a  particular  set  of  interactions,  conversations  and 
relationships  between  myself  and  people  from  the  western  Serengeti  who  agreed  to  share  their 
knowledge  with  an  outsider.  I  do  not  claim  to  speak  for  or  on  behalf  of  them,  but  only  to  bear 
witness  to  what  I  experienced  and  to  what  I  could  "see"  from  this  vantage  point.56    Another  way  to 
understand  the  knowledge  that  this  dissertation  represents  is  as  a  dialogue  between  myself  and 
those  I  encountered  in  the  western  Serengeti,  Musoma,  Mwanza,  Dar  es  Salaam,  as  well  as  my 
colleagues  and  professors  at  the  University  of  Florida  and  the  University  of  Dar  es  Salaam, 
interaction  with  the  literature  and  those  people  with  whom  I  live  and  work  everyday." 

However,  because  this  project  was  conceived  and  carried  out  as  a  collaborative  project 
with  so  many  colleagues  in  Nata,  Ikoma,  Ishenyi,  Ikizu,  Ngoreme,  Zanaki,  Ruri,  Kuria  and  even 


56  Donna  J.  Haraway,  Simians.  Cvborgs  and  Women:  The  Reinvention  of  Nature  (London: 
Free  Association  Books,  1991),  pp.  183-201. 

57  For  the  concept  of  research  as  dialogue  see  Dennis  Tedlock  and  Bruce  Mannheim.  eds„ 
"Introduction,"  The  Dialogic  Emergence  of  Culture  (Urbana  and  Chicago:  University  of  Illinois 
Press,  1995),  pp.  1-20;  See  also  Dennis  Tedlock.  The  Spoken  Word  and  the  Work  of 
Interpretation  (Philadelphia,  University  of  Pennsylvania  Press,  1983).  pp.  285-338. 


36 
Sonjo,  I  am  obligated  to  try  to  present  an  account  that  will  do  justice  to  their  efforts.  I  have  laid 
out  some  of  these  personal  commitments  in  the  Foreword.  The  constraint  of  these  other  voices  on 
my  work  has  been  a  constant  source  of  inspiration  as  well  as  a  reminder  of  the  scholar's  larger 
social  obligations  in  a  world  of  injustice  and  inequality.  It  is  my  hope  that  my  readers  will  hear  the 
voices  of  those  in  the  western  Serengeti  who  contributed  their  knowledge  above  the  din  of  my  own 
analysis. 

Although  1  have  attempted  to  understand  the  past  as  much  as  possible  from  the  perspective 
of  those  in  the  western  Serengeti,  in  terms  of  their  categories,  I  cannot  claim  to  present  this  past 
knowledge  in  an  unmediated  form,  in  which  the  oral  traditions  are  left  to  "speak  for  themselves." 
The  conceptualization  of  this  material  into  a  form  contained  in  an  academic  historical  argument  is 
obviously  mine.  I  interrogate  the  historical  knowledge  of  the  western  Serengeti  with  all  available 
professional  and  critical  tools  while  striving  to  foreground  the  understandings  contained  in  the  oral 
traditions  themselves.  As  the  narrator  is  located  in  a  particular  place  of  knowledge,  conversations 
with  other  forms  of  knowledge  are  not  only  possible  but  necessary  for  understanding,  since  all 
knowledge  is  ultimately  relational.  Although  the  dialogues  that  occurred  with  people  in  the  western 
Serengeti  are  foundational  to  this  project,  other  dialogues  in  Dar  es  Salaam  and  on  this  side  of  the 
ocean  both  before  and  after  the  research  experience  have  significantly  shaped  the  outcome.  I  also 
have  access  to  information,  through  the  linguistic  analysis  of  words  and  the  ethnographic  analysis 
of  cultural  traits,  that  local  people  do  not  understand  as  evidence  about  the  past.    This  "evidence  in 
spite  of  itself  allows  an  outsider  to  construct  bundles  of  cultural  meaning  which  local  people  take 
for  granted. 

"Situated  knowledge"  also  does  not  presume  that  the  position  from  which  history  is  "seen" 
is  innocent  or  unitary.  All  knowledge  about  the  past  is  contested  and  deeply  implicated  in  relations 
of  power.  Attempts  to  see  from  the  perspective  of  local  historical  consciousness  require  us  to  look 


37 
for  the  relations  of  power  behind  the  texts  and  to  comprehend  how  people  use  these  texts  in  the 
struggles  of  everyday  life.    The  multiplicity  of  knowledge  implicit  in  Mayani  and  Nyawagamba's 
list  of  historical  topics  discussed  in  the  Foreword  demonstrates  that  no  single  perspective  can  do 
justice  to  all  social  positions.  Conflicting  positions  are  often  evident  even  within  one  text.  My 
position  of  power  as  a  white,  Swahili-speaking,  Christian,  American  woman  (wife  and  mother)  was 
certainly  a  factor  both  in  eliciting  and  interpreting  these  narratives. 

Throughout  my  research  I  encountered  suspicion  about  why  I  wanted  to  gather  this 
information  and  how  I  would  use  it.  My  assistants  usually  explained  my  situation  to  those  1 
interviewed,  often  when  I  was  not  present.  Most  of  the  elders  agreed  to  share  their  knowledge  with 
the  hope  of  a  book  from  which  their  grandchildren  could  learn  about  the  history  and  culture  of  this 
region.  Many  were  sure  that  1  would  make  lots  of  money  from  this  knowledge.  At  the  heart  of 
their  suspicion  was  the  sense  that  knowledge  about  other  people  gives  one  power  over  them.  As  I 
learned  more,  my  questions  began  to  reflect  this  knowledge,  to  which  the  elders  often  responded 
with  a  nervous  laugh  and  an  aside  to  my  assistant,  "how  does  she  know  that?"  Elders  respected 
this  knowledge  and  took  me  more  seriously  in  later  interviews,  resulting  in  more  careful  and 
detailed  answers.  On  the  other  hand  the  elders  also  became  much  more  wary  and  certain  areas 
were  deliberately  hidden.  By  the  end  of  the  interview  process  I  understood  most  of  what  people 
said  in  the  local  languages,  since  they  are  all  closely  related.  Nevertheless,  I  still  felt  more 
comfortable  asking  the  questions  in  Swahili.  Therefore,  some  answers  in  local  languages  were 
directed  toward  my  assistants,  containing  information  that  they  would  not  otherwise  have  shared 
with  me. 

A  general  suspicion  existed  that  an  American  would  not  bother  living  in  the  "bush"  unless 
she  had  some  ulterior  motive.  I  heard  many  possibilities  suggested.  We  lived  near  the  park  and 
since  people  were  always  suspicious  about  new  plans  to  take  their  land  away  for  park  expansion, 


38 
they  wondered  if  the  park  had  sent  me  to  gather  information  for  this  purpose.    Since  cattle  raiding 
and  game  poaching  are  large  security  concerns  of  the  government  in  this  area,  people  also  met 
these  topics  with  some  caution.  Some  thought  we  were  prospecting  for  gold.  A  deeper  and  more 
vague  concern  was  that,  with  rising  U.S.  power  at  the  end  of  the  Cold  War,  Americans  would  re- 
colonize  Africa  by  first  learning  the  secrets  of  its  people.  Just  as  I  was  doing  my  main  interviews 
Tanzania  was  getting  geared  up  for  the  first  multi-party  elections,  so  some  people  assumed  that 
some  party  or  candidate  in  the  elections  had  paid  me  to  promote  their  cause.  Many  communities  in 
which  1  did  interviews  had  known  me  as  a  Mennonite  Church  development  worker  (1985-91).  1 
rented  the  car  I  drove  from  the  Tanzania  Mennonite  Church  that  had  the  church  name  written  on 
the  door.  The  only  time  anyone  totally  denied  me  an  interview  was  not  because  of  my  church 
connections  but  because  I  was  white.  The  elder  said: 

These  people  are  like  God,  they  know  where  the  sun  goes  at  the  end  of  the  day  because 
they  can  follow  it  with  their  airplanes:  people  like  that  are  too  powerful  to  be  messed 
with,  you  cannot  predict  what  they  will  do  with  the  information  that  you  give  them. 58 

The  single  most  important  factor  in  calming  these  fears  and  suspicions  seems  to  have  been 

that  I  am  a  woman,  married  with  half-grown  children.  The  general  assumption  is  that  women  are 

straightforward,  open  and  willing  to  work  for  altruistic  reasons,  while  men  always  have  an  ulterior 

and  deceitful  motive,  for  personal  benefit.  Only  women  with  children  are  treated  as  adults.  In  the 

system  of  generational  relationships  people  in  alternate  generations  have  the  most  intimate 

relationships,  while  those  in  adjacent  generations  maintain  a  more  distant  and  formal  relationship. 

Some  of  the  men  I  interviewed  considered  me  as  their  grandchild  but  more  often  I  was  considered 

in  their  daughter's  generation.  Thus  the  interviews  were  formal  but  very  serious  and 


58  Interview  with  Simora  Nyamotoma,  Robanda,  12  July  1995  (Ikoma  <r). 


39 
straightforward.  Interviews  with  men  who  treated  me  like  a  granddaughter  sometimes  produced 
unexpected  information  but  were  harder  to  keep  on  track." 

Tanzanian  historians  Buluda  Itandala  and  Isaria  Kimambo  also  reported  dealing  with 
similar  issues  of  suspicion  in  their  dissertation  research.  Kimambo  stated  that  old  men  were  loathe 
to  discuss  ritual  practice  openly  because  "such  information  formed  the  secrets  of  their  society- 
secrets  that  they  revealed  only  to  initiated  members  of  the  society."    He  slowly  broke  through  this 
resistance  by  using  the  little  information  that  he  gained  from  those  who  trusted  him  to  learn  to  ask 
the  right  questions  of  the  elders.    Both  commented  that  they  only  began  to  get  inside  information 
when  they  used  "well-known  and  trusted  local  people"  to  introduce  them  to  the  informants.60    The 
personal  bond  of  reciprocal  relationship  allowed  for  the  possibility  of  divulging  secrets. 

A  history  told  from  the  standpoint  of  "situated  knowledge"  may  differ  in  its  interpretation 
from  the  sources  of  its  knowledge.  The  Nata,  Ikizu,  Ikoma  and  other  elders  who  told  me  these 
stories  of  the  past  may  not  agree  with  my  rendition.    I  must  take  into  consideration  a  historical 
consciousness  that  the  transformations  of  the  late  nineteenth  century  have  seriously  altered.  I  must 
in  a  sense  privilege  the  knowledge  of  the  ancestors  and  their  ways  of  knowing  over  that  of  the 
living,  seeking  out  the  specific  ways  in  which  the  ancestors  live  in  the  present  and  learning  from 
them.  If  the  pact  of  obligation  for  a  fair  rendition  of  the  past  is  with  anyone,  it  is  to  them,  and  their 
way  of  imagining  the  past,  that  I  am  held  accountable.  1  strive  to  bear  witness  to  each  of  these 
concerns,  knowing  that  I  am  a  product  of  my  own  multiple  identities  situated  in  time  and  space. 


Similar  generational  interactions  during  his  research  are  described  by  Rugatiri  D.  K. 
Mekacha,  The  Sociolinguisitic  Impact  of  Kiswahili  on  Ethnic  Community  Languages  in  Tanzania: 
ACaseStudvofEkinata  (Bayreuth,  Germany:  Bayreuth  African  Studies,  1993),  p.  51. 

60  A.  Buluda  Itandala,  "A  History  of  the  Babinza  of  Usukuma,  Tanzania,  to  1890"  (Ph.D. 
Dissertation,  Dalhousie  University.  May  1 983),  p.  9.  Isaria  N.  Kimambo,  A  Political  History  of 
the  Pare  of  Tanzania,  c.  1500-1900  (Nairobi:  East  African  Publishing  House,  1969),  p.  x. 


40 

Oral  Sources 



This  research,  conducted  over  a  period  of  eighteen  months  in  Tanzania  (January  1995-July 
1996),  was  primarily  concerned  with  the  search  for  the  remains  of  this  previous  historical 
consciousness  in  oral  traditions  told  today.  Although  people  reworked  oral  traditions  to  fit  new 
identities  during  the  late  nineteenth  century  disasters  and  the  subsequent  colonial  era,  they  did  not 
obliterate  earlier  understandings.  Many  versions  of  each  kind  of  oral  tradition  remain,  without  a 
central  dynastic  account.  The  narration  of  oral  tradition  resembles  a  conversation  rather  than  a 
recitation  and  history  emerges  in  a  process  of  dialogue.  No  formalized  genres  of  oral  literature 
exist,  except  perhaps  the  recitation  of  praise  names  and  proverbs.    Almost  no  local  popular 
histories  appear  in  print  that  would  influence  the  content  of  oral  tradition.  Many  versions  of  the 
same  stories  from  different  social  positions  and  among  different  ethnic  groups  were  collected  for 
comparison  and  cross  reference. 

I  collected  historical  narratives  among  five  different  Bantu-speaking  peoples  (Nata,  Ikoma, 
Ishenyi,  Ngoreme  and  Ikizu)  and  two  different  Dadog-speaking  peoples  (Rotigenga  and  Isimajek) 
of  the  western  Serengeti,  as  well  as  a  few  interviews  among  neighboring  peoples  (Sonjo,  Kuria, 
Sizaki,  Zanaki  and  Ruri).61  I  asked  open-ended  questions,  trying  to  solicit  all  kinds  of  knowledge 
about  the  past,  without  confining  it  to  the  expected  ethnic  narratives.  The  interviews  were  often 
four  hours  in  length,  following  the  interests  and  knowledge  of  the  elder  rather  than  a  set  list  of 
questions.  After  many  interviews  among  many  ethnic  groups  I  found  repetition  of  some  stories, 
with  variations,  as  well  as  references  to  similar  social  and  cultural  institutions  of  the  past.  From 
these  similarities  and  variations  a  wider  regional  history  began  to  come  into  focus.  When  I  put 
these  accounts  side  by  side,  similar  experiences  and  forms  of  organization  emerged  in 


1  See  References  Cited  for  list  of  informants,  ethnic  origins  and  other  personal  data. 


41 
corresponding  generations  across  ethnic  lines.  The  elders  were  telling  a  common  history  as  seven 
unique  histories. 

The  Mara  Region  is  an  ideal  venue  for  this  kind  of  regional  comparative  study  of  oral 
traditions  because  so  many  different  ethnic  groups  exist  within  a  small  geographical  area,  each 
claiming  its  own  unique  identity  and  history.  It  is  also  a  region  in  which  colonial  penetration 
happened  late  and  incompletely.62  A  much  different  process  was  underway  here  than  in 
neighboring  areas,  where  the  emergence  of  a  pan-Sukuma,  pan-Luo  and  pan-Maasai  ethnic  identity 
became  an  important  political  force,  with  clear  implications  for  the  transmission  of  historical 
knowledge.  Without  a  tradition  of  chiefs  or  hierarchical  leadership,  the  Mara  Region  also  differs 
from  the  kingdoms  of  the  Great  Lakes  Region  where  "big"  dynastic  history  often  overshadowed 
"little"  commoner  or  clan  histories.  By  the  same  token,  no  single,  centralized  tradition  exists  to  use 
in  comparison  with  marginal  traditions. 

A  strategy  employed  in  the  research  was  to  collect  historical  narratives  from  different 
positions  in  the  social  network.  Elders  who  had  reached  the  top  titles  in  the  nyangi  system,  leaders 
of  the  age  or  generation-sets,  lineage  or  clan  leaders,  rainmakers  and  prophets  each  had  a  slightly 
different  version  of  the  past  that  highlighted  the  power  and  authority  of  each  of  these  kinds  of 
social  relationship.  Although  colleagues  usually  took  me  to  see  people  of  respected  position,  I  also 
tried  to  talk  to  ordinary  participants  in  these  social  organizations  and  to  people  in  their  roles  as 
fanners,  hunters,  herders,  specialists  and  household  members  on  a  more  informal  basis. 

I  also  began  to  collect  manuscripts  of  ethnic  histories  written  by  local  intellectuals,  often 
primary  school  teachers  or  government  clerks.  They  usually  handwrote  these  in  school  notebooks 


62  For  an  analysis  of  this  process  see  Kirsten  Alsaker  Kjerland,  "Cattle  Breed;  Shillings 
Don't:  The  Belated  Incorporation  of  the  abaKuria  into  Modern  Kenya"  (Ph.D.  Dissertation 
University  of  Bergen.  1995). 


42 
and  stored  them  away  in  trunks.  One  Ngoreme  man  who  worked  in  the  parish  church  office  had 
his  manuscripts  typed  and  duplicated  but  I  had  trouble  finding  even  one  complete  copy  twenty 
years  later.  These  accounts,  similar  to  "encyclopedic  informant"  narratives,  were  compilations  of 
histories  learned  from  elders  and  written  in  the  same  style.  I  am  trying  to  get  some  of  these 
histories  published  in  Tanzania  for  local  use.63 

Ethnographic  participant-observation  in  a  rural  community  and  an  informal  household 
survey  in  one  village  augmented  this  study.64  I  went  with  the  leaders  of  the  different  groups  to  the 
important  historical  places  on  the  landscape,  hearing  the  stories  connected  to  those  sites  and 
observing  their  location,  ecology  and  situation.  All  of  this  information  added  depth  and  insight  to 
the  historical  processes  described  in  oral  tradition.  Most  of  my  cultural  knowledge  outside  formal 
interviews  is  a  result  of  living  as  a  guest  of  the  Magoto  family  in  Bugerera/Mbiso  Nata.  My 
husband,  two  children  and  I  lived  there  continuously  from  February  1995  through  April  1996. 
My  Nata  language  teacher  was  a  sister-in-law  of  the  family,  my  cultural  vocabulary  informant  a 
brother  and  my  main  resources  and  colleagues  for  everything  from  interviews  to  logistics  were  two 
other  brothers.  Because  of  this  locus  of  learning,  my  account  is  specifically  situated  with  Nata  at 
the  center. 

Oral  traditions  were  collected  in  an  interview  setting  because  of  the  need  to  visit  many 
ethnic  groups  in  a  large  area.  Elders  do  not  normally  perform  these  stories  in  a  formal  setting  but 
tell  them  in  small  segments  in  the  natural  course  of  conversation,  often  among  elders  at  their  own 


63  See  References  Cited  for  a  list  of  local  manuscripts.  On  encyclopedic  informants  see 
Patrick  Pender-Cudlip,  "Enclyclopedic  Informants  and  Early  Interlacustrine  History."  The 
International  Journal  of  African  Historical  Studies  4.  1  (1971):  198-210. 

The  results  and  methodology  of  this  survey  will  be  discussed  in  more  detail  in  Chapter  7. 
In  brief,  it  consisted  of  asking  a  few  key  informants  to  tell  me  who  lived  in  each  household  in  the 
village,  what  their  relationships  to  each  other  and  to  others  in  the  village  were,  along  with  other 
personal  information. 


43 
gatherings.  Being  a  young  woman  I  would  not  normally  have  had  access  to  these  situations.  I 
conducted  formal  taped  interviews  with  1 64  informants  and  had  at  least  as  many  informal 
encounters  over  fifteen  months.  Interviews  usually  took  place  in  the  home  of  the  elder,  always  with 
a  colleague  to  accompany  and  assist  me.  When  I  interviewed  men,  I  went  with  a  man  from  that 
community,  when  I  interviewed  women,  I  usually  went  with  a  woman  from  that  community.  Most 
interviews  attracted  an  audience  of  family  and  neighbors  who  were  important  participants  as 
audience.    A  young  Nata  woman  did  the  transcription  of  most  of  the  taped  interviews  in  local 
languages  and  then  went  over  their  meaning  with  me.  Tapes,  translations  and  transcripts  of 
interviews  will  be  deposited  with  the  African  Studies  Association  oral  data  collection  housed  at  the 
Archives  of  Traditional  Music,  Indiana  University,  Bloomington.  Translations  and  transcripts  will 
be  forwarded  to  the  University  of  Dar  es  Salaam,  History  Department  and  the  Musoma  Regional 
Archives. 

I  was  able  to  conduct  interviews  in  each  of  these  seven  ethnic  groups  because  of 
preexisting  relationships  in  the  region.  I  worked  there  for  six  years  as  a  church  development 
worker  (1985-1991)  and  so  had  valuable  social  networks  already  in  place.65  A  local  assistant  in 
each  ethnic  area  arranged  the  interviews,  accompanied  me  to  them  and  helped  with  translation  and 
explanation  during  the  interview.  These  were  not  hired  assistants  but  friends,  colleagues  and 
friends-of-friends.  The  class  differences  between  informants  and  assistants  was  minimal  and  both 
were  residents  in  the  same  community.  In  Nata  I  went  with  members  of  the  family  with  whom  we 
lived,  in  Ikizu  a  man  from  our  village,  in  Ikoma  an  older  pastor,  and  in  Ngoreme  a  young 
development  projects'  coordinator  from  the  program  in  which  I  had  previous  worked. 


65  1985-1991,  Co-Coordinator  for  the  Congregational  Development  Department  of  the 
Tanzania  Mennonite  Church,  Lake  Diocese  and  Co-Country  Representative  for  Mennonite  Central 
Committee,  North  America,  stationed  in  Nyabange,  near  to  Musoma,  Tanzania. 


44 


These  people  were  not  chosen  because  of  their  particular  knowledge  of  history  but  because 
they  knew  their  communities,  people  there  respected  and  trusted  them,  and  they  were  available. 
Some  of  the  hardest  work  they  did  took  place  in  the  introductions,  often  involving  a  long  period  of 
questions  and  answers  about  my  work.  Each  assistant  was  committed  to  the  process  because  of  an 
interest  in  history  and  because  the  bonds  of  reciprocity  connected  them  to  me.  People  did  not  see 
them  as  my  dependents  but  as  hosts  of  a  guest  to  the  community  who  could  bring  potential 
benefits.  Because  my  assistants  were  also  learners  asking  their  own  questions  during  the 
interviews.  1  learned  by  watching  their  interactions.  They  were  a  valuable  source  of  cultural 
information  and  also  colleagues  for  discussing  how  the  interview  had  gone.    I  sometimes  took  an 
assistant  from  one  ethnic  group  to  interviews  in  a  different  ethnic  area.  Their  questions  often 
probed  the  places  where  the  two  groups  differed,  or  where  ethnic  stereotypes  were  most  intense. 
These  assistants  played  a  critical  role  in  the  formation  of  my  own  historical  consciousness. 
Written  Sources 

However,  oral  sources  are  not  the  only  problematic  sources  of  historical  evidence,  and  as 
this  section  demonstrates,  each  of  the  other  sources  (archival,  ethnography,  historical  linguistics, 
archaeology)  have  their  own  histories  and  difficulties  as  evidence  of  the  past.  The  Mara  Region 
itself  also  presents  some  problems  for  this  kind  of  study.  Almost  no  academic  historical  research 
has  been  done  in  this  region,  requiring  the  preliminary  establishment  of  the  most  fundamental 
historical  framework.66  Early  written  accounts  are  scarce  to  nonexistent:  a  very  few  travelers' 


66  Gerald  Hartwig,  The  Art  of  Survival  in  East  Africa:  The  Kerebe  and  Long-Distance 
Irade  (New  York,  1 970);  and  A.  O.  Anacleti,  "Pastoralism  and  Development:  Economic  Changes 
in  Pastoral  Industry  in  Serengeti  1750-1961"  (Master's  thesis,  University  of  Dar  es  Salaam.  June 
1 975),  are  the  two  exceptions. 


45 
accounts;67  a  little  colonial  ethnography;68  and  colonial  archival  sources.  Both  the  German  and 
British  papers  in  the  National  Archives  for  this  region  have  significant  sections  entirely  missing.69 
The  first  missionaries  in  the  region  were  the  White  Fathers,  who  only  visited  the  western  Serengeti 
from  their  lakeshore  stations  on  rare  occasion  in  the  first  decade  of  the  twentieth  century.  The 
Seventh  Day  Adventist  missionaries  also  came  during  this  time  but  seemed  more  interested  in 
obliterating  local  custom  than  in  recording  it.  Mennonite  Mission  arrived  in  the  1930s,  by  which 
time  other  Europeans  introduced  them  to  local  custom  and  history.70 


67  Oscar  Baumann,  Durch  Massailand  zur  Nilquelle:  Reisen  und  Forschungen  der  Massai- 
Expedition.  des  deutschen  Antisklaverei-Komite  in  den  Jahren  1891-1893  (Berlin:  Dietrich  Reimer, 
1894);  Paul  Kollmann,  The  Victoria  Nvanza:  The  Land,  the  Races  and  their  Customs,  with 
Specimens  of  some  Dialects,  trans.  H.  A.  Nesbitt  (London:  Swan  Sonneschein  and  Co.  Ltd.,  1899); 
and  Max  Weiss,  Die  Volkerstamme  im  Norden  Deutsch-Ostafrikas  (Berlin:  Carl  Marschner,  1910; 
reprint  ed.,  New  York:  Johnson  Reprint  Corporation,  1971)  are  some  of  the  few  available. 

68  Edward  Conway  Baker,  Musoma  District  Commissioner,  his  collected  papers  are 
available  on  microfilm  from  Oxford  University  Press,  as  well  as  in  the  Cory  Papers  at  the  East 
Africana  Library,  University  of  Dar  es  Salaam.  Ethnographic  accounts  by  other  authors  are  also 
available  among  the  Hans  Cory  Papers  at  the  University  of  Dar  es  Salaam.  For  the  Zanaki  see, 
Otto  Bischofberger,  The  Generation  Classes  of  the  Zanaki  (Tanzania)  (Fribourg.  Switzerland:  The 
University  Press,  1972).  For  the  Kwaya  see  Hugo  Huber,  Marriage  and  Family  in  Rural  Bukwava 
(Tanzania)  (Fribourg,  Switzerland:  The  University  Press,  1973).  For  the  Kuria  see  Eva  Tobisson, 
Family  Dynamics  among  the  Kuria:  Agro-Pastoralists  in  Northern  Tanzania  (Goteborg,  Sweden: 
Acta  Universitatis  Gothoburgensis,  1 986)  and  various  articles  by  anthropologist  Malcolm  Ruel. 

69  The  National  Archives  in  Dar  es  Salaam  has  excellent  indexes  for  locating  materials. 
Much  of  what  is  listed  in  the  indexes  on  the  Musoma  District  is  unavailable.  In  comparing  the 
amount  of  material  listed  in  the  index  for  the  Tarime  sub-district  of  Musoma  to  the  Musoma  office 
itself  it  appears  that  much  of  the  Musoma  district  materials  never  made  it  to  the  National  Archives. 
1  do  not  yet  have  an  explanation  for  this.  I  was  not  able  to  find  any  colonial  papers  in  the  Musoma 
Archives.  Much  of  my  archival  materials  are  consequently  from  the  Lake  Province  (Mwanza)  and 
Secretariat  files  rather  than  from  the  district  itself.  This  is  unfortunate  because  what  is  largely 
missing  is  the  original  letters  from  the  Musoma  Chiefs  in  Swahili.  The  German  files  were  also 
few.  The  story  of  the  Germans  burning  their  papers  as  they  fled  Musoma  to  Busegwe  where  th 
S.D.A.  mission  was  used  as  their  temporary  headquarters  is  told  in,  Toppenberg,  Africa  Has  My 
Heart,  p.  67. 

70  White  Fathers'  sources  were  found  in  the  archives  of  the  White  Fathers'  Regionals' 
House  in  Nyegezi,  Tanzania,  a  few  other  Catholic  sources  were  located  at  the  Maryknoll  Father's 
Language  School  library  in  Makoko,  Musoma.  The  White  Fathers'  stations  closest  to  the  research 


46 

If  a  full  range  of  early  written  sources  were  available  more  comparison  of  versions  written 
at  an  earlier  time  could  be  done.  A  more  complete  colonial  record  would  also  facilitate  the 
understanding  of  how  historical  consciousness  has  changed  in  the  last  century.  This  work  relies 
primarily  on  oral  sources,  with  scarce  written  sources  supplying  confirmation  at  critical  points.71 

I  worked  in  the  Tanzania  National  Archives  and  the  East  Africana  Collection  at  the 
University  of  Dar  es  Salaam  over  a  period  of  three  months.  The  archives  of  the  White  Fathers, 
Seventh  Day  Adventist,  Mennonite,  Bujora  Sukuma  and  Mara  Region  were  consulted  while  I  lived 
in  Nata.  Given  more  time  and  resources  I  would  consult  the  European  archives  as  well.  The 
Lancaster  Mennonite  Historical  Society  Archives  and  the  Seventh  Day  Adventist  Archives  were 
consulted  in  the  United  States.  Northwestern  University  holds  seminar  papers  from  Universities  in 
Dar  es  Salaam,  Nairobi  and  Makerere  in  Kampala.  The  Musoma  District  Books,  E.C.  Baker 
Papers  and  Church  Missionary  Society  papers  are  available  on  microfilm. 


area  was  Ukerewe  Island  and  Nyegina  station  (established  1911).  S.D.A.  primary  sources  were 
unavailable  in  Tanzania.  I  located  some  in  the  General  Conference  Headquarters  in  Silver  Spring, 
Maryland.  For  an  account  of  the  S.D.A.  mission  in  Tanzania  see,  K.  B.  Elineema,  Historia  va 
Kanisa  la  Waadventista  Wasabato  Tanzania  1903-1993  (Dar  es  Salaam:  Dar  es  Salaam 
University  Press,  1 993).  Mennonite  Mission  papers  were  also  unavailable  in  Tanzania  for  the 
early  years  and  located  at  the  Lancaster  Mennonite  Historical  Society  in  Lancaster.  PA.  For  an 
account  of  the  Mennonite  Mission  in  Tanzania  see,  Mahlon  M.  Hess,  Pilgrimage  of  Faith: 
Tanzania  Mennonite  Church.  1934-83  (Salunga,  PA:  Eastern  Mennonite  Board  of  Missions  and 
Charities,  1985);  see  also  Joseph  C.  Shenk,  Kisare:  A  Mennonite  of  Kiseni  (Salunga,  PA:  Eastern 
Mennonite  Board  of  Missions  and  Charities,  1984);  Joseph  C.  Shenk,  Silver  Thread:  The  Uns  and 
Downs  of  a  Mennonite  Family  in  Mission  (1895-1995)  (Intercourse  PA:  Good  Books,  1996):  and 
David  W.  Shenk.  Mennonite_Safari  (Scottsdale  PA:  Herald  Press,  1974). 

"  In  addition  to  my  own  collection  of  oral  traditions  1  also  made  use  of  the  collected  oral 
traditions  from  North  Mara  of  Zedekia  Oloo  Siso,  manuscripts  of  ethnic  histories  from  Ikizu, 
Ngoreme,  Ishenyi  and  Sizaki  written  by  local  authors  and  published  oral  traditions  of  the  Kuria, 
Maasai,  Sukuma,  Luo  and  Sonjo,  see  References  Cited. 


47 
Historical  Linguistics 

Historical  linguistics  represents  a  form  of  historical  reasoning  from  evidence  gained  by 
comparing  languages  spoken  today  to  identify  changes  in  words  and  sound  patterns  over  time.  The 
method  of  historical  linguistics  rests  on  the  assumption  that  language  is  a  system  where  sound  and 
meaning  go  together  arbitrarily.  That  condition  allows  historians  to  figure  out  how  different 
languages  are  related  to  each  other  by  regular  changes  in  languages  over  time,  how  local  language 
innovations  came  about  and  also  how  contact  with  other  languages  influenced  the  development  of  a 
language.72 

The  classification  of  languages  into  families  gives  the  historian  an  indication  of  historical 
events  and  processes  that  took  place  among  the  speakers  of  these  languages.  Genealogical  trees  of 
language  families  are  constructed  by  comparing  lists  of  core  vocabularies  from  related  languages 
to  determine  how  many  cognates  they  have  in  common  (known  as  lexicostatistics).  By  identifying 
consistent  sound  shifts  in  cognate  words  for  two  closely  related  languages,  historical  linguists 
reconstruct  words  in  the  proto-language  from  the  cognates  in  these  languages.  By  comparing  many 
related  languages  over  a  wide  region  it  is  also  possible  to  reconstruct  the  nature  of  a  proto- 
language  itself  and  the  relationship  among  all  of  the  languages  that  descended  from  one  proto- 
language.  Historical  linguists  can  suggest  where  speakers  of  a  proto-language  might  have  lived  by 
looking  at  the  geographical  distribution  of  its  descendant  languages. 

Splits  in  a  family  tree  can  then  be  dated  very  approximately  by  counting  the  differences  in 
cognate  percentages  of  core  vocabularies  between  related  languages  (known  as  glottochronology). 


For  an  overview  of  the  methodology  of  historical  linguistics  see:  Derek  Nurse,  "The 
Contributions  of  Linguistics  to  the  Study  of  History  in  Africa,"  Journal  of  African  History  38 
(1997):  359-391;  David  Lee  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  a  Good  Place  (Portsmouth:  Heinemann, 
forthcoming),  pp.  34-48;  Jan  Vansina,  Paths  in  the  Rainforest  (Madison:  The  University  of 
Wisconsin  Press,  1990),  pp.  9-16. 


48 
This  method  rests  on  the  observation  that  random  replacement  of  items  in  the  core  vocabulary  of 
any  language  accumulates  at  a  regular  pace  over  a  period  of  centuries.  For  the  Great  Lakes  Bantu 
family  of  languages  Schoenbrun,  following  Ehret,  assumes  that  sixteen  out  of  100  items  in  the  list 
of  core  vocabularies  "will  be  replaced  each  500  years,  either  by  morphological  analogy,  or  by 
borrowing  from  another  language."73  Thus  if  the  group  averages  for  Suguti  and  Mara  languages 
share  56  percent  of  their  cognates,  we  know  that  these  two  branches  of  the  East  Nyanza  family  of 
languages  must  have  been  separated  about  600  A.D.  or  1400  years  ago.  Within  the  western 
Serengeti,  languages  like  Nata  and  Ikoma  share  86  percent  of  their  cognates  and  thus  diverged  less 
then  500  years  ago.  These  time  scales  can  then  be  correlated  with  the  independently  derived 
chronologies  of  archaeology,  where  they  are  available,  although  both  systems  of  dating  are 
extremely  vague  with  wide  margins  of  error. 

Historical  linguists  can  also  look  at  individual  words  in  a  language  that  may  be  different 
from  the  cognates  in  related  languages,  to  determine  innovations  in  the  past.  These  innovations 
may  be  the  result  of  adopting  words  from  other  languages  (loanwords)  or  developing  new  words 
internally  (innovations).  Loanwords  from  other  language  groups  provide  evidence  for  cross- 
cultural  contacts  in  the  past  that  can  be  dated  by  the  methods  of  glottochronology  explained  above. 
In  western  Serengeti  languages  many  loanwords  from  Southern  Nilotic  languages,  particularly 
words  about  livestock,  suggest  that  Mara  Bantu-speakers  moving  out  into  the  drier  areas  of  the 
interior  learned  from  their  neighbors  how  to  diversify  and  expand  their  economic  subsistence 
patterns  by  increased  stock  raising.  From  a  reconstruction  of  the  Southern  Nilotic  family  tree  we 
know  that  Mara  Southern  Nilotic-speakers  were  in  the  region  about  the  same  time  that  East 
Nyanza  Bantu-speakers  arrived. 


73  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  p.  36. 


49 

Internal  innovations  of  new  words  are  also  possible,  providing  the  historian  with  some 
evidence  of  historical  processes  for  which  new  words  had  to  be  developed.  These  words  can  be 
investigated  by  looking  at  how  the  root  word  from  which  it  derives  was  used  in  other  languages 
throughout  the  region.  For  example,  in  the  first  chapter  I  demonstrate  the  status  of  a  post- 
menopausal woman,  omokuungu,  by  looking  at  the  etymology  of  the  word.  This  word  is  derived 
from  the  old  proto-Bantu  verb  -kung,  "to  gather,  to  assemble."  In  other  places  around  the  lake  it 
refers  to  a  rich  person  with  followers,  or  to  a  chief.'4  Uniquely  in  the  Mara  languages  this  word 
refers  to  elderly  women  with  many  children.  This  would  indicate  that  the  "wealth  in  people"  that 
women  controlled  through  gathering  their  children  was  extremely  important  on  this  inter-cultural 
frontier. 

Although  correlating  the  speakers  of  a  language  with  an  ethnic  group  or  even  a  distinct 
community  of  people  in  the  past  would  be  convenient  for  the  historian,  linguistic  evidence  alone 
cannot  support  this.  Historical  linguists  can  only  talk  about  people  who  spoke  the  same  language 
(but  who  might  also  be  multilingual  and  practice  a  culture  distinct  from  other  speakers  of  the 
language).  If  one  language  disappears  and  another  becomes  dominant  in  the  record  of  historical 
linguistics  this  does  not  necessarily  mean  that  one  group  conquered  or  expelled  the  other.  A 
language  can  spread  ahead  of  its  speakers  and  divisions  in  the  family  tree  of  a  language  do  not 
necessarily  mean  that  people  had  to  move."  As  Derek  Nurse  points  out,  "historians  and 
archaeologists  are  frequently  prone  to  interpret  a  linguistic  tree  as  a  literal  historical  development, 


74  David  Lee  Schoenbrun,  The  Historical  Reconstruction  of  Great  Lakes  Cultural 
Vocabulary:  Etymologies  and  Distributions  (Cologne:  Rhdiger  Koppe  Veriag,  forthcoming),  #209 
and  #210;  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  pp.  185-187. 

75  For  a  similar  critique  applied  to  archaeology  see  Martin  Hall,  "Origins:  Unwrapping  the 
Iron  Age  Package,"  Farmers.  Kings  and  Traders:  The  People  of  Southern  Africa  200-1860 
(Chicago;  The  University  of  Chicago  Press,  1987),  pp.  17-31. 


50 
as  a  movement  of  people  from  one  point  in  space  or  time  to  another,  or  as  one  component  of  a 
homogeneous  'cultural  tradition'."76 

In  spite  of  these  pitfalls,  historians  can  learn  a  lot  about  the  ways  that  people  lived  in  the 
past  by  reconstructing  the  cultural  vocabularies-for  example,  what  kind  of  subsistence  patterns 
they  followed,  what  their  settlements  and  homesteads  looked  like  and  what  kinds  of  authority  they 
recognized.  These  reconstructions  are  based  on  the  assumption  that  a  word  in  a  language  refers  to 
a  real  object.  If  historians  have  available  a  series  of  linguistic  stages,  with  cultural  vocabularies 
for  each,  then  they  can  postulate  a  sequence  of  changes  in  social  institutions  and  activities  over 
time.  It  is  often  only  through  the  evidence  of  historical  linguistics  that  we  can  discern  interactions 
with  peoples  whose  culture  and  language  have  long  disappeared. 

I  have  relied  heavily  on  the  historical  linguistic  work  already  done  in  this  region  by 
Christopher  Ehret  and  David  Schoenbrun.77  For  example,  Schoenbrun  classified  the  Lakes  Bantu 
languages  and  Ehret  the  Southern  Nilotic  and  Southern  Cushitic  languages  in  the  region.  Both 
have  published  lists  of  loanwords  and  etymologies  making  it  relatively  easy  to  compare  my  lists  of 
cultural  and  core  vocabularies.  I  collected  core  vocabularies  of  100  words  (Ehret  and 
Schoenbrun's  list)  in  Ngoreme,  Ikizu,  Nata,  Ikoma,  Ishenyi,  Sonjo  and  Dadog.  I  assembled  a 
nearly  complete  1563  cultural  vocabulary  list  (University  of  Dar  es  Salaam  list)  in  Nata  and  parts 
of  it  in  some  other  languages.  From  these  core  vocabularies  I  constructed  a  dialect  chaining  chart 


76  Nurse,  "The  Contributions  of  Linguistics,"  p.  370. 

Christopher  Ehret,  Southern  Nilotic  History:  Linguistic  Approaches  to  the  Study  of  the 
Past  (Evanston:  Northwestern  University  Press,  1 97 1 );  David  Lee  Schoenbrun.  "Early  History  in 
Eastern  Africa's  Great  Lakes  Region:  Linguistic,  Ecological,  and  Archeological  Approaches,  ca. 
500  B.C.  to  ca.  A.D.  1000"  (Ph.D.  dissertation,  UCLA,  1985);  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place:  and 
Schoenbrun,  Etymologies.  I  used  Ehret  and  Schoenbrun's  200  word  list  for  core  vocabularies  and 
a  combination  of  Schoenbrun's  and  University  of  Dar  es  Salaam's  1563  word  list  for  cultural 
vocabulary. 


51 
of  the  cognate  percentages  that  appears  in  Chapter  4.    The  cultural  vocabularies  and  the 
etymologies  of  words  are  used  frequently  throughout  the  dissertation.  1  also  had  access  to  a  few 
unpublished  dictionaries  of  some  languages  in  the  region  and  a  recently  published  Kuria-English 
dictionary.78 

By  learning  one  Mara  language,  Nata,  I  could  understand  at  a  basic  level  the  other  four 
Bantu  languages.  I  learned  no  Dadog.  Knowledge  of  the  local  language  was  important  for  a  more 
nuanced  cultural  understanding  than  would  have  been  possible  in  Swahili.  It  allowed  the  elders  the 
freedom  to  speak  in  their  own  languages,  rather  than  translate  into  Swahili.  Extensive  previous 
knowledge  of  Swahili  was  an  asset  but  was  also  an  impediment  to  learning  Nata  more  fluently. 
Other  Sources  of  Evidence:  Archaeology  and  Ecology 

Although  historical  linguistics  and  comparative  ethnography  are  the  primary  sources  of 
evidence  used  in  conjunction  with  oral  traditions,  I  also  rely  on  published  works  in  archaeology  and 
ecology.  Little  archaeological  work  exists  for  the  period  of  my  study  and  in  the  precise  area  where 
I  worked,  however,  a  lot  has  been  done  on  pastoral  and  hunter/gatherer  communities  during  the 
Neolithic  period  in  the  Rift  Valley  and  the  Serengeti.79  In  addition,  a  vast  body  of  scientific 
research  exists  on  the  Serengeti-Mara  ecosystem  that  provides  valuable  information  on  climatic 
patterns,  soil  and  vegetation  types  and  distribution,  wild  animal  ecologies  and  the  effects  of  human 


78  Muniko,  et.  al.,  Kuria-English  Dictionary. 

79  See  for  example  Peter  Robertshaw,  ed.,  Early  Pastoralists  of  South-western  Kenya 
(Nairobi:  British  Institute  in  Eastern  Africa,  1990);  John  Bower,  "The  Pastoral  Neolithic  of  East 
Africa,"  Journal  of  World  Prehistory  5,  I  (1991):  49-82;  Peter  Robertshaw  and  David  Collett,  "A 
New  Framework  for  the  Study  of  Early  Pastoral  Communities  in  East  Africa,"  Journal  of  African 
History.  24  (1983):  289-301;  Desmond  J.  Clark  and  Steven  A.  Brandt,  eds..  From  Hunters  to 
Farmers:  The  Causes  and  Consequences  of  Food  Production  in  Africa  (Berkeley:  University  of 
California  Press,  1984).  Closer  to  Lake  Victoria  see  R.  C.  Soper  and  B.  Golden,  "An 
Archeological  Survey  of  Mwanza  Region,  Tanzania,"  Azania  4  (1969):  48-53.  North  of  the  Mara 
Region  see,  J.  E.  G.  Sutton,  The  Archaeology  of  the  Western  Highlands  of  Kenya  (Nairobi: 
British  Institute  in  Eastern  Africa,  1973). 


52 
induced  perturbations  such  as  burning  or  intensive  livestock  grazing  on  the  ecosystem.80  This 
research  sets  the  material  parameters  that  patterned  subsistence  economies  and  social  interaction  of 
early  settlers  in  the  region. 

Throughout  the  dissertation  I  also  represent  the  information  provided  in  oral  traditions  on 
maps  of  a  geographical  grid.  These  maps  are  tools  for  understanding  the  spatial  relationship 
between  places  on  the  landscape.81  The  bird's  eye  view  is  an  artificial  device  used  by  people  who 
have  not  grown  up  walking  to  these  places  and  provides  insights  into  historical  process  not 
otherwise  available.  Because  local  people  do  not  see  the  landscape  from  this  perspective,  these  are 
not  adequate  representations  of  the  "mental  maps"  of  oral  tradition  but  remain  useful  to  the 
historian. 
Historical  Reconstruction  and  Chapter  Organization 

This  dissertation  is  organized  into  four  sections  according  to  indigenous  time  frames.  The 
first  section  concerns  the  present  era  in  which  the  research  was  conducted,  the  colonial  period  in 
which  these  narratives  were  reformulated  into  ethnic  accounts  and  the  disaster  years  in  which 
social  identity  was  significantly  transformed.  Because  the  analysis  of  this  dissertation  is  heavily 
dependent  on  the  narrative  form  of  oral  tradition  and  its  transmission,  the  next  chapter  looks  at 
these  issues  in  terms  of  the  social  organization  of  knowledge  about  the  past.  The  third  chapter 
familiarizes  the  reader  with  the  events  of  the  late  nineteenth  century  disasters  because  of  their 
significance  in  the  reshaping  of  historical  consciousness  that  must  be  "read"  into  the  oral  traditions 
analyzed  in  the  rest  of  the  dissertation. 


80  The  classic  study  in  this  regard  is  A.R.E.  Sinclair  and  M.  Norton-Griffiths,  eds. 
Serengeti:  Dynamics  of  an  Ecosystem  (Chicago:  University  of  Chicago  Press,  1979). 

81  Thanks  to  Peter  Shetler  for  his  assistance  and  expertise  in  GIS  and  other  forms  of 
computer  mapping  in  creating  these  maps. 


53 

The  second  section  is  concerned  with  the  oldest  period  of  indigenous  history  or  time  frame, 
looking  at  the  traditions  of  ethnic  and  clan  origins,  analyzing  them  in  terms  of  the  social 
organization  of  space  over  the  tongue  duree.  Although  they  have  been  overlaid  with  material  from 
other  time  periods,  I  concentrate  on  the  core  images  of  these  traditions  that  correspond  to  the 
spaces  of  production,  reproduction,  regional  networks  of  association  and  settlement.  These 
traditions  do  not  yield  a  sense  of  change  over  time,  but  they  do  provide  a  basic  framework  for 
understanding  the  social  organization  of  space  in  the  distant  past  in  terms  of  generative  principles. 

The  third  section,  on  the  middle  period  of  indigenous  history,  looks  at  the  lists  of  settlement 
sites  names  and  descriptions  of  rituals  concerning  the  land  that  refer  to  a  period  of  time  in  which 
people  established  rights  to  the  land  that  exist  today.  Long-term  settlement  patterns,  methods  for 
incorporating  strangers  and  rituals  for  marking  boundaries  are  described.  These  means  by  which 
people  established  a  relationship  to  the  land  were  used  in  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
to  create  new  territorial  groupings  in  response  to  disaster. 

The  fourth  and  final  section  represents  the  climax  of  the  story  in  which  the  creative 
changes  in  the  spatial  organization  of  social  identity  take  place  in  response  to  the  disasters  of  war, 
famine,  disease  and  later  colonial  intrusion.  It  describes  how  age-set  territories  emerged  in  the  east 
to  reconfigure  settlement  structure  and  how  a  sense  of  ethnicity  developed  in  the  early  colonial 
years.  It  is  only  by  setting  the  events  of  the  late  nineteenth  century  in  the  context  of  long-term 
social  process  that  the  full  meaning  of  the  nineteenth  century  changes  are  understood. 

In  each  chapter  successive  layers  in  the  interpretation  of  oral  traditions  are  analyzed  by 
looking  at  different  versions  as  they  shed  light  on  various  aspects  of  the  form  of  social  identity 
under  consideration.  In  this  way  the  oral  traditions  themselves  set  the  terms  of  the  analysis  and 
other  forms  of  evidence  used  to  elaborate  further  these  themes. 


PART  ONE: 

THE  SOCIAL  SPACES  OF  ORAL  TRADITION  AND 
HISTORICAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  IN  THE  WESTERN  SERENGETI 


5-4 


CHAPTER  TWO 

ORAL  TRADITION: 

THE  GENDERED  SPACES  OF  HISTORICAL  KNOWLEDGE 

AND  THE  SECRETS  OF  THE  PAST 

To  approach  the  history  of  the  western  Serengeti  from  the  perspective  of  its  oral  traditions, 
the  historian  must  first  consider  the  performance  context  in  which  people  tell  these  narratives. 
When  and  where  are  stories  of  the  past  told,  to  whom,  by  whom,  for  what  purposes?  Why  are  they 
remembered?  How  is  this  knowledge  used  in  contests  of  power?  How  have  shifting 
understandings  of  the  past  modified  historical  narratives  over  the  generations? 

Individual  members  of  particular  social  groups  formulate,  transmit,  and  maintain  historical 
knowledge  within  the  physical  spaces  that  they  occupy  in  daily  practice,  physical  spaces  that 
structure  their  interaction  with  others.  In  particular,  a  gendered  division  of  knowledge  about  the 
past  is  explored  in  the  lived  spaces  where  men  and  women  transmit  separate  realms  of  knowledge. 
The  present  generation  of  elders  developed  their  ethnic  narratives  within  the  expanded  space  of  the 
colonial  territory  and  its  reliance  on  the  written  word.  Although  most  people  consider  historical 
traditions  as  men's  knowledge,  women  significantly  influence  the  transmission  of  oral  traditions 
through  their  informal  knowledge  of  current  community  affairs.  In  addition,  women  occupying 
exceptional  social  positions  cross  these  boundaries  of  gendered  knowledge  and  gain  access  to  men's 
knowledge. 

The  classification  of  some  kinds  of  knowledge  as  "secret"  and  available  only  to  insiders 
also  confines  knowledge  about  the  past  to  particular  social  spaces.    Inside  or  specialized 
knowledge  represents  a  key  social  resource  that  initiates  preserve  in  things  and  places  as  well  as  in 

55 


56 
people.  Cohen's  caution  against  a  formalist  definition  of  oral  tradition  as  a  set  of  fixed  texts  allows 
us  to  see  how  historical  knowledge  is  exchanged  in  "the  everyday  critical,  lively,  intelligence  which 
surrounds  the  status,  activities,  gestures,  and  speech  of  individuals."1  Yet  the  social  spaces  that 
people  inhabit  restrict  the  ways  that  they  can  share  and  alter  that  knowledge.  Although  historical 
knowledge  crosses  social  boundaries,  it  does  so  in  structured  ways.  Each  kind  of  oral  tradition 
contains  the  knowledge  of  a  particular  social  group  as  they  represent  themselves  in  relation  to 
others,  within  a  field  of  multiple  and  overlapping  sets  of  knowledge,  rather  than  as  a  discrete  subset 
of  the  collective  knowledge  of  an  integrated  society.  Social  groups  not  only  represent  the  spatial 
organization  of  social  relations  in  their  oral  traditions  but  also  maintain  and  transmit  these 
narratives  within  the  spaces  that  structure  their  relationships.  Understanding  the  social 
organization  of  knowledge  prepares  the  way  to  interpret  oral  traditions. 
The  Social  Spaces  of  Historical  Knowledge 

Historical  narratives  are  not  disembodied  social  facts  but  are  inseparable  from  the 
historical  context  and  geographical  space  in  which  people  tell  them.  Discerning  the  social  units 
defined  by  oral  tradition  and  the  social  definition  of  the  people  who  tell  oral  tradition  provides  key 
insights  into  the  historical  meaning  of  these  narratives. 
Locating  the  Western  Serengeti  as  a  Region 

The  largest  social  space  of  western  Serengeti  oral  traditions  defines  a  region  within  which 
the  narrators  of  these  traditions  locate  themselves.  The  principal  narrators  of  oral  tradition 
analyzed  in  this  dissertation  include  the  Bantu-speaking  hill  farmers  of  the  western  Serengeti-the 
Ikoma,  Nata,  Ishenyi,  Ikizu  and  Ngoreme  ethnic  groups.  They  now  occupy  the  Serengeti  and 
Bunda  Districts  in  the  southeastern  portion  of  the  Mara  Region  of  Tanzania.  However,  hill 


1  D.  W.  Cohen,  "The  Undefining  of  Oral  Tradition,"  Ethnohistorv.  36,  1  (Winter  1 989)- 
12. 


57 
farmers  have  not  been  the  only  inhabitants  of  this  region  over  the  long-term.  The  adaptation  of 
farmers  to  the  ecology  of  this  region  and  their  ongoing  prosperity  depended  upon  interaction  with 
pastoralists  and  hunter/gatherers.  The  story  of  Bantu-speaking  hill  farmers  is  integrally  connected 
to  that  of  Dadog-speaking  pastoralists  in  the  western  Serengeti,  the  Rotigenga  and  Isimajek 
Tatoga.2  I  cannot  do  justice  to  the  Tatoga  story  here,  but  will  use  it  to  shed  light  on  the 
development  of  the  region  as  a  whole.  I  hope  that  their  story  can  one  day  be  published  in  its  own 
right.  The  other  set  of  actors  in  this  story,  the  Asi  hunter-gatherers,  do  not  have  a  voice  here 
because  1  could  not  identify  any  Asi  descendants  in  the  western  Serengeti  who  knew  these 
traditions.  Regrettably,  they  are  only  represented  here  in  the  stories  of  others.  I  hope  that  the 
research  will  someday  be  done  to  gather  what  fragments  remain  of  this  tradition.  [See  Figure  2-1 : 
Regional  Setting  of  the  western  Serengeti.] 

No  local  designation  exists  for  this  group  of  Bantu-speaking  farmers  as  a  whole  except 
Rogoro,  or  "the  people  of  the  east,"  yet  even  the  area  to  which  this  refers  varies  relative  to  the 
location  of  the  speaker.  These  people  feel  a  diffuse  sense  of  collective  identity  due  to  their  common 
historical  background,  shared  cultural  assumptions,  and  proximity  to  each  other.  Another  way  to 
define  this  group  would  be  to  use  the  colonial  term,  "South  Mara."  1  rejected  this  term  because  it 
also  includes  peoples  along  the  shores  of  Lake  Victoria,  whose  traditions  are  significantly  different 
from  those  in  the  interior.  No  absolute  set  of  boundaries  defines  the  regional  unity  of  western 
Serengeti.  My  research  was  concerned  with  five  ethnic  groups,  given  the  limitations  of  field 
research,  but  logically  could  have  expanded  to  include  Zanaki,  Sizaki  and,  at  a  larger  scale  still, 
Kuria  or  the  Mara  Region  as  a  whole.  Limited  interviews  among  these  neighboring  groups  allow 
for  a  regional  comparison. 


1 1  use  Dadog  to  refer  to  the  language  and  Tatoga  to  refer  to  the  people,  including  both 
Rotigena,  Isimajek  and  the  larger  Tatoga  community  in  other  places  in  Tanzania. 


QUJQ.       ™ 


59 

I  use  the  term  "region"  to  refer  to  the  western  Serengeti  or  to  the  Mara  as  a  whole  in  the 
sense  that  they  represent  the  geographical  boundaries  of  intercommunicating,  interacting  sets  of 
people.  "Region"  defines  neither  a  homogeneous  cultural  or  social  unit  nor  economic  relations  of 
exchange  or  formalized  marketing  systems,  as  has  been  the  trend  in  much  of  the  recent  regional 
analysis.  Regions  are  rather  historical  products  constantly  negotiated  and  transformed.3  Even  the 
most  rigidly  conceived  regional  boundaries  with  the  Maasai  to  the  east  or  the  Sukuma  to  the  south 
were  frequently  crossed  through  trade,  marriage,  prophecy  or  refuge.  Although  the  case  could  be 
made  for  defining  a  western  Serengeti  region  based  on  linguistic  and  cultural  unity,  it  would  then 
only  include  the  Bantu-speaking  farmers.  This  region,  both  past  and  present,  has  functioned  based 
on  its  linguistic,  cultural  and  economic  diversity. 

I  have  chosen  to  call  this  group  "the  peoples  of  the  western  Serengeti,"  rather  than  of 
eastern  South  Mara,  because  of  their  orientation  east  toward  relationships  in  the  Serengeti  during 
the  late  nineteenth  century,  when  the  social  transformations  this  dissertation  narrates  took  place. 
"Serenget"  is  a  Maasai  word,  referring  to  a  historical  Maasai  section  and  meaning  "wide-open 


3  On  some  recent  theoretical  work  still  using  the  concept  of  hierarchical  relations  of 
exchange  to  define  regions  see  for  example,  Claudio  Lomnitz-Adler,  "Concepts  for  the  Study  of 
Regional  Culture."  American  Ethnologist  18,2(May  1991):  195-214;  Eric  Van  Young, 
"Introduction:  Are  Regions  Good  to  Think?,"  Mexico's  Regions:  Comparative  History  and 
Development  (San  Diego:  Center  for  U.S.-  Mexican  Studies,  UCSD.  1992),  pp.  1-36.  For  a 
review  of  the  literature  see  Carol  A.  Smith,  "Regional  Economic  Systems:  Linking  Geographical 
Models  and  Socioeconomic  Problems,"  Regional  Analysis.  Vol.  I :  Economic  Systems  (New  York: 
Academic  Press,  1976),  pp.  3-63;  Mary  Beth  Pudup,  "Arguments  within  Regional  Geography," 
Progress  in  Human  Geography  1 2,  3  (September  1 989):  369-39 1 .  As  applied  to  a  historical  study 
in  Africa,  see  Charles  H.  Ambler.  Kenya  Communities  in  the  Age  of  Imperialism:  The  Central 
Region  in  the  Late-Nineteenth  Century  (New  Haven:  Yale  University  Press,  1988);  and  Allen  M. 
Howard,  "The  Relevance  of  Spatial  Analysis  for  African  Economic  History:  The  Sierra  Leone  - 
Guinea  System,"  Journal  of  African  History  1 7,  3  ( 1 976):  365-388.  My  use  of  "region"  is  closer 
to  that  of  Richard  Waller  for  interior  East  Africa  in  "Ecology,  Migration  and  Expansion  in  East 
Africa."  African  Affairs  84  (July  1985):  356-7. 


60 

spaces."  1  use  this  word  simply  because  of  its  widespread  recognition.  The  peoples  of  this  region 
would  not  recognize  this  name  as  their  own  but  would  recognize  their  common  story.4 

The  western  Serengeti  is  bounded  on  the  east  by  the  Great  Serengeti  Plains  and 
Maasailand,  on  the  north  by  the  Mara  River  and  Kurialand,  on  the  west  there  is  a  gradual  shift, 
without  any  natural  division,  toward  the  peoples  of  Lake  Victoria,  and  on  the  south  by  the 
Mbalageti  River  and  Sukumaland.  These  boundaries  define  an  ecologically  unified  area,  called  the 
Serengeti-Mara  ecosystem  by  ecologists,  in  which  the  interdigitation  of  hills,  woodlands  and 
grasslands  allowed  farmers,  hunters  and  herders  to  develop  interdependent  specializations.  Yet  the 
ecological  unit  is  not  fixed  either,  as  a  gradual  change  in  ecology  occurs  as  one  nears  the  lake  with 
no  natural  boundaries. 

From  the  colonial  period  on  the  peoples  of  the  western  Serengeti  began  to  see  themselves 
as  part  of  the  Mara  Region,  or  Musoma  District  as  it  was  then  known.  These  were  the  boundaries 
within  which  the  colonial  imagination  of  place  shaped  the  image  of  the  Musoma  "tribes"  and 
reoriented  historical  vision  toward  the  lake  and  to  the  west. 
Narrative  Forms  and  Narrators 

Historical  narratives  in  the  western  Serengeti  are,  like  those  of  many  other  non-centralized 
societies  in  Africa,  weak  and  loosely  structured.  They  appear  more  in  the  form  of  conversation 
than  as  epic  poetry  in  set  verse.'  No  particular  word  exists  in  local  language  for  this  genre  of  oral 
tradition  except  as  amang'ana  ga  kare  (matters  of  the  past).  No  formal  experts  control  this 


4 1  had  many  interesting  discussions  with  local  people  about  what  to  call  this  group.  Many 
voted  for  Rogoro,  the  people  of  the  east,  but  just  as  many  declared  it  was  not  an  encompassing 
term.  Some  wanted  the  name  of  a  mountain  to  designate  their  unity  but  could  not  agree  on  whether 
that  should  be  Bangwesi  or  Chamuriho. 

5  Hofmeyr,  "We  Spend  Our  Years,"  p.  4;  and  David  W.  Cohen,  Womunafu's  Bunafu-  A 
Study  of  Authority  in  a  Nineteenth  Century  African  Community  (Princeton:  Princeton  University 
Press,  1977),  pp.  8-9. 


61 

knowledge  although  some  are  considered  more  knowledgeable  than  others.  Those  who  know  more 
about  "matters  of  the  past"  acquired  their  knowledge  through  personal  desire  or  aptitude,  rather 
than  purely  as  a  function  of  their  position.  Some  people  have  a  "gift"  for  it,  given  by  the  ancestors. 
Elders  attain  legitimacy  as  narrators  of  "matters  of  the  past"  through  a  combination  of  ability, 
respect,  experience  and  the  sanction  of  the  ancestors,  manifested  in  the  effectiveness  of  the  tales. 

In  the  western  Serengeti  individuals  tended  to  specialize  in  particular  kinds  of  knowledge 
depending  on  their  own  interests  and  experience.  Each  was  a  historian  in  his  or  her  own  right 
because  they  not  only  mastered  this  knowledge  but  organized  and  found  new  meaning  in  it. 
Similarly,  Guyer  and  Belinga  emphasize  that  the  preservation  and  transmission  of  knowledge  in 
Equatorial  Africa  were  personalistic:  "different  people  took  on  different  parts  of  the  overall 
expanding  corpus,  largely  by  choice  rather  than  the  ascription  of  parentage  or  assignment  within 
secret  societies."'' 

A  profile  of  the  person  most  often  recommended  to  me  as  one  who  knew  about  these 
"matters  of  the  past"  consists  of  a  man  more  than  sixty  years  of  age  who  occupied  some  position  of 
authority  or  respect  in  the  "traditional"  structures  of  society.7  If  that  man  also  had  education  and 
political  office,  the  community  valued  him  as  an  able  intermediary  with  an  outsider.  On  the  other 
hand,  many  felt  that  educated  people  disparaged  "traditional"  knowledge.  Educated  men  often 
presented  the  past  simplistically  as  "warring  tribes"  ruled  by  "clan  headmen."  Material  wealth  was 
not  a  particular  criterion  for  recommendation.  All  were  respected  elders  who  people  in  the 
community  consulted  for  their  wisdom.  Some  highly  respected  community  leaders  did  not  have 
much  to  say  about  the  past,  although  people  assumed  that  they  must.  Almost  all  had  some 


6  Guyer  and  Belinga,  "Wealth  in  People,"  pp.  110-111. 

7  By  contrast  among  the  Tatoga  I  was  often  taken  to  interviews  with  men  in  a  younger 
generation. 


62 
experience  in  the  colonial  labor  force  but  the  most  knowledgeable  elders  had  spent  much  of  their 
lives  at  home.  Those  with  the  most  extensive  social  networks,  and  thus  prestige,  in  the  community 
tended  to  be  the  ones  most  knowledgeable  about  the  past. 
Gendered  Knowledge 

The  formal  restriction  of  historical  knowledge  to  elderly  men  stands  out  most  in  the  social 
organization  of  knowledge.  Women,  elderly  or  not,  possessed  entirely  distinct  forms  of  knowledge 
about  the  past.  When  I  would  ask  to  speak  with  those  who  knew  about  history,  local  colleagues 
led  me  almost  exclusively  to  interviews  with  older  men.  Both  men  and  women  alike  agreed  that 
men  of  this  generation  were  the  keepers  of  historical  knowledge.  When  I  insisted  on  talking  to 
women,  I  found  that  most  women  did  not  know  the  larger  ethnic  accounts  of  origin,  migrations, 
clans,  ritual  and  battle,  which  made  up  the  spontaneous  content  of  interviews  with  men.  At  first  I 
thought  that  women  were  just  reluctant  to  give  me  their  versions  of  the  past,  but  I  later  became 
convinced  that  women  possessed  not  just  another  version  but  wholly  different  kinds  of  knowledge 
about  the  past.  In  South  Africa,  Hofmeyr  describes  a  similar  gendered  division  of  oral  literature  in 
which  people  said  that  men  told  "true"  histories  while  women  told  "fictional  narratives."  She  goes 
on  to  claim  that  the  content  and  style  of  these  stories  are  similar,  the  only  difference  being  the 
spaces  in  which  they  are  told.8 

1  argue,  however,  that  because  people  learn  about  the  past  in  particular  gendered  spaces, 
men  and  women  share  neither  styles  of  oral  narration  nor  types  of  knowledge  about  the  past.  They 
transmit  and  maintain  knowledge  by  the  ways  in  which  gendered  space  is  represented  and 
organized  in  daily  practice.  Men  and  women  occupy  separate  spheres  of  interaction  in  their  daily 
routines,  sharing  the  same  world  but  participating  in  different,  though  intersecting,  sets  of 


63 
discourses  about  that  world.9  They  keep  and  transmit  historical  knowledge  by  the  paths  that  they 
walk  each  day  and  the  positions  that  they  occupy  in  the  imagined  male  and  female  spaces  that 
permeate  their  world.  Women  may  learn  some  of  men's  knowledge  about  the  past  but  they  do  not 
transmit  those  stories  in  the  narrative  style  of  men  nor  in  the  formal  setting  of  men's  courtyard 
meetings. 

The  Colonial  Contexts  of  Men's  Historical  Narratives 
Men's  public  knowledge  of  the  past  is  now  almost  entirely  represented  as  a  body  of  unique 
ethnic  traditions,  for  example,  of  the  Nata  or  the  Ishenyi.  As  1  demonstrate  in  later  chapters, 
western  Serengeti  people  created  ethnicity  in  its  present  form  as  a  result  of  the  late  nineteenth 
century  disasters,  solidified  by  the  colonial  experience.  The  stories  they  tell  about  ethnogenesis, 
however,  do  not  date  from  this  period.  Men  reworked  narratives  from  many  different  kinds  of 
social  units,  representing  different  kinds  of  social  boundaries,  into  a  unified  corpus  of  ethnic 
history.  While  I  analyze  the  specifics  of  these  changes  in  oral  traditions  in  later  chapters,  here  I  am 
concerned  with  how  the  space  of  "tribes"  within  the  larger  colonial  territory  shaped  knowledge 
about  the  past.10  The  creation  of  ethnic  history  was  not  only  an  imposition  of  colonial  hegemony 
but  also  a  creative  adaptation  of  old  knowledge  to  new  circumstances.  It  was  a  product  both  of 
opportunistic  men  reaping  the  benefits  of  the  new  system  and  of  common  people  trying  to  make 


9  See  Janice  Boddy,  Wombs  and  Alien  Spirits:  Women.  Men  and  the  Zar  Cult  in  Northern 
Sudan  (Madison:  University  of  Wisconsin  Press,  1989),  pp.  5-7,  on  the  analysis  of  spirit 
possession  cults  controlled  by  women  as  a  counter  hegemonic  discourse  to  the  dominant  male, 
Islamic  discourse. 

10 1  use  the  term  "tribe"  only  as  it  refers  to  the  colonial  creation  of  "tribal"  units  for 
administrative  purposes  and  not  as  a  traditional  category  of  social  identity.  I  use  quotation  marks 
to  remind  the  reader  of  this  interpretation.  As  will  become  clear  in  later  chapters  the  way  that 
"tribe"  came  to  be  defined  locally  differed  significantly  from  other  places  in  Tanganyika. 


64 
sense  of  a  new  world  in  which  old  relationships  took  on  new  meaning  and  new  relationships  were 
assimilated  into  old  patterns. 
Men's  Colonial  Experience 

The  colonial  experience  deeply  affected  men's  oral  narratives  of  the  past.  With  the  advent 
of  indirect  rule  the  social  unit  of  political  significance  became  the  "tribe."  Nevertheless,  because 
colonial  officers  failed  to  define  the  boundaries  of  "tribe"  and  no  traditional  system  of  chiefs 
existed  in  the  Musoma  District,  local  people  enjoyed  ample  room  in  the  negotiations  to  set 
boundaries.  Certain  individuals,  families  or  groups  gained  significant  benefits  by  defining  "tribal" 
boundaries  to  promote  their  own  interests.  Wambura  Igina  of  the  Simbiti  chiefdom  became  the 
second  German  chief  by  translating  the  people's  questions  to  the  German  officer  as  their  call  for 
Igina's  appointment  as  chief."  Fundi  Kenyeka  of  Busegwe  became  a  German  chief  because  he  was 
a  blacksmith  and  provided  them  with  nails.12  Both  made  themselves  useful  to  the  Germans  and 
thereby  attained  the  status  of  representing  their  "people,"  among  whom  they  had  but  little 
"traditional"  authority. 

Within  the  colonial  system  of  indirect  rule,  many  men  had  the  opportunity  to  negotiate  a 
beneficial  reconfiguration  of  "tribe"  and  authority  in  their  narrations  of  the  past."  When  the 
colonial  officers  of  Musoma  realized  that  the  system  of  chiefs  was  not  working,  because  the  chiefs 
lacked  traditional  authority,  they  began  investigating  "pre-European  tribal  organization"  to  restore 


11  Zedekia  Oloo  Siso,  Buturi,  'The  Oral  Traditions  of  North  Mara,"  unpublished 
manuscript  in  author's  collection.  1995. 

12  E.  C.  Baker,  "Tribal  History  and  Legends,"  9  December  1929,  microfilm,  Musoma 
District  Books  (MDB). 

13  For  the  wider  application  of  this  observation  in  the  Lakes  region  see  David  Schoenbrun. 
"A  Past  Whose  Time  Has  Come:  Historical  Context  and  History  in  Eastern  Africa's  Great  Lakes 
Region,"  History  and  Theory  32,  4  (1993):  32-56. 


65 
the  "ancient  rights  and  powers"  of  the  clan  elders  as  the  basis  for  indirect  rule.'4  In  1945,  Hans 
Cory  led  the  effort  to  visit  each  chiefdom,  or  to  call  elders  to  Musoma,  to  question  them  about 
"tribal"  practice  and  history.  A  major  reorganization  of  "tribes"  and  a  new  Constitution  for  North 
and  South  Mara  resulted,  in  1 948. "    This  colonial  way  of  interpreting  the  past  through  the  lens  of 
"tradition"  and  "tribe"  became  widespread  and  strongly  influenced  local  historical  narrative. 

Men  formulated  ethnic  histories,  not  surprisingly,  in  this  era  when  they  had  increasing 
opportunity  to  travel  and  meet  people  from  other  places.  Some  among  the  present  generation  of 
elders  were  the  first  to  go  to  school  in  Musoma;  some  had  careers  as  government  clerks  or  mine 
supervisors  throughout  the  Territory;  others  went  as  far  as  Burma  with  the  K.A.R.  (King's  African 
Rifles)  in  World  War  Two  or  to  Nairobi,  Tanga  and  Magadi  Soda  as  migrant  laborers.    Away 
from  home,  men  began  to  see  themselves  as  part  of  larger  communities,  seeking  out  people  who 
came  from  areas  neighboring  their  homes  and  who  spoke  similar  languages.  Laborers  in  Nairobi 
popularized  Kuria  identity  by  forming  the  Kuria  Union  in  1945,  expanded  one  year  later  to  "The 
South  and  North  Mara  Tanganyika  Union,"  based  on  a  common  tradition  and  origin.  Their  goals 
were  to  promote  modernization,  help  the  sick,  arrange  for  funerals,  and  return  fugitive  women  from 
Nairobi."  Migrant  laborers  walking  to  Magadi  Soda  in  Kenya  found  hospitality  among  the  Sonjo, 


14  District  Commissioner,  Musoma,  "Memorandum  on  the  Revival  and  Application  of  the 
Clan  Regime  in  the  Musoma  District,"  4  July  1945,  CORY  #347,  EAF,  UDSM. 

15  Hans  Cory,  "Report  on  the  pre-European  Tribal  Organization  in  Musoma  (South  Mara 
Distict  and  Proposals  for  adaptation  of  the  clan  system  to  modern  circumstances,"  1945,  CORY 
#  1 73,  EAF,  UDSM;  Hans  Cory,  "South  Mara  Constituent  Assembly,  a  new  constitution  for  the 
South  Mara  Council... ,"  1959-60,  CORY  #385,  EAF,  UDSM.  Hans  Cory,  "Report  on  the 
general  situation  in  Kuria  Chiefdoms  of  North  Mara  and  proposals  for  its  improvement...,"  1945- 
49,  CORY  #171.  EAF,  UDSM.  For  a  discussion  of  this  process  as  a  territorial  model  see,  C. 
Winnington-Ingram,  "Reforming  Local  Government  in  a  Tanganyika  District,"  Journal  of  Africa 
Administration  2,  2  (April  1950):  10-12. 

16  Tarime  District  Office,  Native  Administration,  Kuria  Union  Meetings  1946-52  83/3/2 
TNA. 


66 
in  the  midst  of  Maasailand,  based  on  a  shared  ntemi  scar  on  the  right  breast.  Subtle  shifts  in  the 
historical  imagination  took  place  as  narratives  began  to  account  for  a  larger  nation  of  "tribes."" 
The  Colonial  Concept  of  "Tribe" 

The  peoples  of  Musoma  District  reworked  existing  identities  to  comply  with  the  need  of  the 
colonial  government  for  "tribes,"  but  they  did  it  on  their  own  terms  and  created  small  units  that 
were  responsive  to  local  control.  However,  as  these  units  became  the  basis  for  political  action  they 
took  on  a  life  of  their  own  and  the  "tribal"  assumed  the  status  of  the  "traditional."  To  understand 
the  idiom  in  which  elders  cast  oral  traditions  today,  we  must  look  at  how  they  adopted  and 
transformed  European  notions  of  "tribe"  in  this  region. 

The  "tribal"  model  of  African  society  is  a  nineteenth  century  European  idea  developed  as 
emerging  nations  sought  their  ancient  origins  in  self-conscious  "tribes."18  This  model  sees  "tribes" 
as  discrete  and  bounded  entities  whose  movement  and  influence  the  observer  can  trace,  like  billiard 
balls  rolling  across  space  and  time  as  a  unit.  The  influence  of  this  model  on  colonial  officers  is 
apparent  as  they  characterized  each  "tribe"  in  the  western  Serengeti  with  distinct  origins  and 
customs,  despite  their  obvious  linguistic  and  cultural  similarities.  One  of  the  first  Musoma  District 
Officers  stated,  based  on  oral  tradition,  that  the  Ikizu  and  Sizaki  "are  Sukuma"  who  "arrived 


17  For  similar  processes  throughout  Africa  see:  Leroy  Vail,  ed.,  The  Creation  of  Tribalism 
in  Southern  Africa  (Berkeley  and  Los  Angeles:  University  of  California  Press,  1991);  in 
Tanganyika  see  John  lliffe,  A  Modern  History  of  Tanganyika  (Cambridge:  Cambridge  University 
Press,  1979);  in  other  places  E.  Hobsbawm  and  T.  Ranger,  eds.  The  Invention  of  Tradition 
(Cambridge:  Cambridge  University  Press,  1983);  and  Terence  O.  Ranger,  "The  Invention  of 
Tradition  Revisisted:  The  Case  of  Colonial  Africa,"  in  Legitimacy  and  the  State  in  Twentieth 
Century  Africa,  Terence  O.  Ranger  and  O.  Vaughan,  eds.  (Oxford:  St.  Anthony's  College,  !  993), 
pp.  62-1 1 1.  Benedict  Anderson.  Imagined  Communities:  Reflections  of  the  Origin  and  Spread  of 
Nationalism  < London:  Verso,  1983). 

18  See  an  analysis  of  the  "tribal  model"  in  Igor  Kopytoff,  "Introduction:  The  Internal 
African  Frontier,"  in  The  African  Frontier:  The  Reproduction  of  Traditional  African  Societies 
(Bloomington:  Indiana  University  Pres,  1987),  pp.  3-4. 


67 
fourteen  generations  ago,"  and  that  the  Nata  are  "an  offshoot  of  the  Ikizu  from  whom  they 
separated  owing  to  floods."  The  same  officer  described  other  western  Serengeti  peoples  (the 
Ikoma,  Ishenyi  and  Ngoreme)  as  Sonjo,  who  have  "become  somewhat  mixed  owing  to  the 
settlement  of  Bakuria  in  the  area.""  The  Musoma  District  Book  records  a  single,  static  precolonial 
"tradition"  for  each  group-discovered  by  seeking  the  "true"  origins  of  peoples  who  had  come  into 
contact  with  many  other  groups  in  their  "tribal"  migrations. 

In  the  "tribal"  model  colonial  officers  sought  the  origins  of  a  "tribe"  using  the  concept  of 
biological  parentage  or  "blood,"  rather  than  adoption,  incorporation  or  assimilation.  The  image  of 
blood  relations  underwrites  the  larger  historical  scheme  of  evolution  in  which  not  only  the  plant  and 
animal  kingdoms,  but  also  humans,  follow  a  unilineal  trajectory  toward  a  higher  state  of  being. 
Each  "tribe"  can  thus  be  located  according  to  its  social  and  cultural  development,  with  western 
culture  at  the  pinnacle.  The  development  of  humans  is  represented  as  a  tree  in  which  many 
branches  emerge  on  the  way  to  the  top,  with  one  set  of  roots.  Each  "tribe"  is  similarly  imagined  to 
have  one  set  of  roots  with  many  branches  that  diverged  during  migration.20 

However,  colonial  observers  found  the  heterogeneous  composition  of  the  peoples  of 
Musoma  District  difficult  to  reconcile  with  these  preconceived  notions  of  "tribe."  The 
inconsistencies  that  they  record  provide  the  historian,  from  another  perspective,  with  a  unique 
glimpse  of  people  in  the  process  of  becoming  "tribes."  The  fluidity  of  the  situation  and  the  ways  in 
which  local  people  were  reworking  their  own  histories  is  obvious.    Migration  histories  of  the 
Musoma  peoples  told  of  ancestors  coming  from  every  direction,  rather  from  a  single  point  of 


"  Baker/'Tribal  History  and  Legends,"  9  December  1929,  MDB.  See  also  Native  Affairs 
Census  1926-1929,  Chiefdom  Census  1926,  246/P.C./3/21,  TNA. 

;0  For  a  comprehensive  review  of  anthropology  and  the  "tribafparadigm  in  Africa  see 
Sally  Falk  Moore,  Anthropology  and  Africa:  Changing  Perspectives  on  a  Changing  Scene 
(Charlottesville  and  London:  The  University  Press  of  Virginia,  1994). 


68 
origin.  They  spoke  Bantu  languages  and  yet  appeared  in  dress,  circumcision  rites  and  age-set 
organization  to  be  Nilotic-speakers.  Kinship  systems  did  not  consistently  follow  matrilineal  or 
patrilineal  patterns,  and  did  not  form  a  neat  segmentary  system  of  clans.  A  "tribe"  was  nearly  as 
likely  to  raid  one  of  its  own  clans  as  those  of  another  "tribe."21  Traditional  chiefs  did  not  exist  and 
the  "tribal"  units  themselves  were  difficult  to  identify.  The  smaller  units,  sometimes  called  "sub- 
tribes,"  warranted  their  own  chiefs,  but  were  too  small  and  numerous  for  effective  administration; 
while  the  larger  "tribal"  units  had  no  inherent  cohesion  or  unifying  institutions  of  authority.22 
Since  "tribes"  were  assumed  to  be  biologically  separate,  though  related,  societies  and 
cultures,  colonial  writers  most  often  explained  heterogeneity  as  a  result  of  "mixed  stock."  For 
example,  the  District  Officer  characterized  the  Zanaki  as  consisting  of  "an  admixture  of  Kuria 
blood  from  the  north  and  a  heavy  strain  of  Sukuma  from  the  south."23  The  German  colonial 
encyclopedist,  Schnee,  described  the  Ruri  as  a  people,  "strongly  coursing  with  Massai  and  Wageia 
[Luo]  blood,  shot  through  with  Bantu,  who  have  also  adopted  Massai  armaments  and  military 
tactics."24 


21  An  example  of  a  contemporary  scholarly  formulation  of  the  "tribal  model"  is  colonial 
anthropologist  E.  E.  Evans-Pritchard,  The  Nuer:  A  Description  of  the  Modes  of  Livelihood  and 
Political  Institutions  of  a  Nilotic  People  (Oxford-  ClarpnHnn  Prec    1940),  pp.  120-122.  Here  he 
identifies  the  important  characteristics  of  a  tribe:  1)  a  common  and  distinct  name;  2)  a  common 
sentiment;  3)  a  common  and  distinct  territory;  4)  a  moral  obligation  to  unity  in  war;  5)  a  moral 
obligation  to  settle  feuds  and  other  disputes  by  arbitration;  6)  a  segmented  structure  with 
opposition  between  its  segments;  7)  an  important  structural  relation  between  the  lineage  structures 
of  the  dominant  clan  and  the  territorial  system;  8)  a  unity  within  a  system  of  tribes;  and  9)  the 
tribal  organization  of  age-sets. 

22  Edward  Conway  Baker,  "North  Mara  paper,"  1 935,  Tanganyika  Papers,  microfilm 
project  of  Oxford  University  Press. 

23  E.C.  Baker,  "Tribal  History  and  Legends."  9  December  1929,  MDB. 

24  Heinrich  Schnee,  ed„  Deutsches  Kolonial-Lexikon.  3  Vols.  (Leipzig:  Quelle  and  Meyer, 
1920),  p.  679. 


69 

A  closer  look  at  the  social  realities  behind  these  observations  demonstrates  that  other 
boundaries  were  at  work  besides  the  ethnic  in  these  ascriptions  of  various  groups  to  a  particular 
parentage.  For  example,  elders  did  not  describe  the  relationship  of  Nata  to  Ikizu  as  one  of  a 
"splinter  group"  from  parental  stock  but  rather  of  a  shared  system  of  eldership  titles.  1  interpret  the 
relationship  of  the  Ikizu  and  Sizaki  to  Sukuma  in  their  origin  stories  not  as  one  defined  by  "blood," 
but  by  Ikizu  and  Sizaki  acceptance  of  the  limited  authority  of  a  Kwaya  rainmaker  clan  from 
Kanadi,  Sukuma,  to  gain  access  to  power  over  fertility.  The  language,  society  and  culture 
remained  Mara  and  not  Sukuma.  Similarly  the  Ikoma,  Ngoreme  and  Ishenyi,  whom  oral  traditions 
say  came  from  Sonjo,  share  very  few  cultural,  linguistic  or  social  elements  with  Sonjo.  What  they 
do  have  in  common  is  a  shared  experience  of  extreme  Maasai  pressure  in  the  second  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  that  created  refugees  on  both  sides  of  the  Serengeti  plain.  Yet,  spokesmen  from 
each  group  were  willing  to  present  these  diverse  connections  as  "blood"  relations  in  the  "tribal" 
idiom. 

The  categories  and  terms  of  classification  for  the  Musoma  "tribes"  subtly  shifted 
throughout  the  colonial  period  as  those  who  implemented  indirect  rule  constantly  redefined  "tribal" 
identity  in  their  search  for  "tradition."  This  confusion  is  evident  in  the  population  statistics  of  the 
various  chiefdoms.  In  1909  the  German  officer  in  Shirati  reported  a  total  of  twenty-six  Sultans 
(Chiefs)  north  and  twenty-eight  Sultans  south  of  the  Mara  River  with  a  total  estimated  population 
of  1 1 0,000.25  A  German  classification  of  "tribes"  listed  more  than  thirty,  with  the  major 
classifications  including  the  Nata  and  Ikoma  as  Maasai  peoples  and  the  Sizaki,  Ngoreme,  Ikizu  and 


25  Schultz,  Schirati,  to  Governor,  Dar  es  Salaam,  25  December  1909,  Schirati   1 909-1910 
G/45/2,  TNA. 


70 
Ishenyi  as  "Shashi"  peoples.26  The  first  British  census  in  1928  listed  a  population  total  of  199,520 
with  nine  major  "tribes"  (Kuria,  Girango.  Rangi,  Jita,  Sizaki,  Zanaki,  Ngoreme,  Simbiti  and 
Ikoma).27  A  1 937  report  on  governance  identified  "upwards  of  forty  petty  chiefs"  and  thus 
corresponding  "tribes."28  The  1948  census  recorded  nineteen  chiefdoms  south  of  the  Mara  River- 
the  largest,  Majita,  at  a  population  of  28,696  and  the  smallest,  Buhemba,  at  a  population  of  1,505 
or  Nata  at  1,519.29  However,  the  "Tribal  Map  and  Classification  of  Tribes  of  Tanganyika 
Territory,"  also  of  1948,  listed  twelve  "tribes"  of  the  Musoma  District  (Jita  with  one  sub-tribe, 
Kwaya  with  one  sub-tribe,  Ngoreme,  Kuria  with  twelve  sub-tribes,  Zanaki  with  eight  sub-tribes, 
Ikizu,  Ikoma  with  three  sub-tribes,  Sizaki,  Kerewe,  Suba  with  five  sub-tribes,  Luo  with  eight  sub- 
tribes  and  Tatoga  now  being  recognized  as  Musoma  natives  rather  than  aliens.)30  [See  Figure  2-2: 
1948  Tribal  Map  of  the  Musoma  District.] 

This  constant  renegotiation  of  "tribal"  identity  would  not  have  been  possible  were  social 
identity  primarily  defined  by  firm  and  discrete  ethnic  units.  "Tribal"  boundaries  were  not  just  the 
imposition  of  the  whims  of  colonial  officers,  but  the  result  of  local  people  willing  to  name 
themselves  differently  depending  on  the  opportunities.  Local  chiefs  and  other  notables  found 


26  Musoma  District,  "Notes  from  the  Musoma  District  Books  on  Local  Tribe  and 
Chiefdoms  in  German,"  [c.  1912?],  CORY  #348,  EAF,  UDSM. 

27  Native  Affairs  Census  1 926- 1 929,  Chiefdom  Census  1 926,  246/P.C./3/2 1 ,  TNA.    On 
recount  the  final  census  figure  was  180,136  with  the  largest  being  Kuria  with  a  population  of 
50,632  and  the  smallest  being  Ikoma  with  a  population  of  6,454. 

28  E.  C.  Baker.  "System  of  Government,  Extracts  from  a  Report  by  R.  S.  W  Malcolm  " 
1937,  MDB. 

29  East  African  Statistical  Department,  Nairobi,  East  African  Population  Census,  1948, 
African  Population  of  the  Musoma  District,  Secretariat  Files,  40641,  TNA.    The  population  of  the 
sub-district  south  of  the  Mara  River  was  141,547. 

30  Tanganyika  Territory  Classification  of  Tribes  and  Tribal  Map,  Population  Census 
Secretariat  Files,  36816,  TNA. 


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72 
historical  precedent  for  moving  boundaries  and  redefining  the  boundaries  themselves  to  fit  their 
purposes,  with  the  implicit  consent  of  the  population.  All  of  this  evidence  from  colonial  sources 
presents  a  much  less  solid  image  of  ethnicity.  The  negotiable  quality  of  "tribal"  boundaries  that 
allowed  colonial  officers  to  move  from  separate  chieftaincies  to  federations,  to  paramount  chiefs 
and  back  to  chieftaincies  again,  indicates  a  different  kind  of  system  at  work.  Men  reworked 
disparate  kinds  of  knowledge  about  the  past  into  the  ethnic  histories  that  they  needed  to  maintain 
smaller  locally  controlled  units. 

Much  of  the  recent  work  on  ethnicity  in  Africa  has  stressed  the  "flexible"  nature  of  ethnic 
boundaries  before  colonialism.3'  However,  here,  the  social  boundaries  negotiated  within  the  system 
of  indirect  rule  were  not  so  much  flexible  as  they  were  multiple.  Elders  brought  different  kinds  of 
boundaries  besides  the  ethnic  into  play,  depending  on  the  situation.    Each  set  of  boundaries  was 
specifically  inscribed  on  the  landscape  and  related  to  a  particular  set  of  social  relationships.  Local 
people  did  not  make  up  new  identities  or  necessarily  change  preexisting  boundaries  as  much  as  they 
called  on  different  sets  of  boundaries,  related  to  other  kinds  of  social  identities  that  both  united  and 
divided  them  in  different  ways.  Ethnic  identity  of  a  certain  kind  may  have  existed  in  the 
precolonial  past  but  it  was  only  one  of  many  kinds  of  relational  boundaries  in  operation  and  only 
became  predominant  and  fixed  in  the  colonial  years. 
Literacy  and  Oralitv 

A  central  element  in  the  political  cultural  of  colonial  rule,  and  thus  of  men's  evolving 
concepts  of  legitimate  historical  narrative,  was  the  imposition  of  literacy.  More  than  any  other 
single  feature,  writing  or  the  pen  became  the  symbol  of  the  inherent  power  of  the  colonial  regime. 
Local  people  both  feared  it  and  sought  to  harness  its  power  for  themselves.  The  colonial  chiefs  at 


31  See  for  example,  Thomas  Spear  and  Richard  Waller,  eds.,  Being  Maasai:  Ethnicity  and 
Identity  in  East  Africa  (Athens:  Ohio  University  Press,  1993);  Vail,  The  Creation  of  Tribalism. 


73 
first  resisted  sending  their  sons  to  school  to  learn  to  read  and  write,  but  later  prohibited  any  but 
their  own  sons  from  attendance.  This  ambivalence  manifests  itself  in  their  attitude  toward  writing 
oral  tradition. 

Today's  elders  and  their  juniors  demonstrate  an  increasing  willingness  to  rely  on  written 
versions  of  the  past,  products  of  the  colonial  historical  imagination.  One  educated  elder  brought 
out  Moffet's  Handbook  of  Tanganyika  to  prove  his  migration  account  of  the  Ngoreme.32  Tatoga 
elders  insisted  that  I  read  Zamani  Mpaka  Siku  Hizi.  a  wide-ranging  account  of  precolonial 
Tanganyika,  uncritically  combining  historical  tradition  and  colonial  anthropology.33  Although  my 
whiteness  and  association  with  education  may  have  provoked  these  comments,  respect  for  the 
written  word  is  far  more  pervasive. 

Some  local  intellectuals  among  the  first  school  leavers  have  written  their  own  accounts  of 
"tribal"  history.  These  manuscripts  often  lie  buried  in  trunks,  moth-eaten,  with  pages  torn  out.  In 
Ikizu  a  committee,  formed  under  the  Ikizu  Development  Association,  wrote  a  book  of  history  that 
remains  unpublished.34  A  secretary  from  the  Catholic  mission  wrote  a  Ngoreme  history,  getting  it 
typed  and  stenciled  at  the  mission  office.35  Many  people  promised  me  manuscripts  and  then  could 
not  locate  them,  others  were  still  in  the  process  of  writing.  Many  Ishenyi  elders  told  me  I  should 
find  a  copy  of  their  manuscript  and  not  waste  my  time  doing  interviews.  There  was  rumored  to  be 


32  J.P.  Moffet,  Handbook  of  Tanganyika  (Dar  es  Salaam:  Government  of  Tanganyika, 
1958).  Interview  with  Judge  Frederick  Mochogu  Munyera,  Maji  Moto,  28  September  1995 
(Ngoreme  cf). 

33  Institute  for  Swahili  Research,  Zamani  Mpaka  Siku  Hizi  (Dar  es  Salaam:  East  African 
Literature  Bureau,  1 930,  revised  edition,  1962). 

34  P.  M.  Mturi  and  S.  Sasora,  "Historia  ya  Ikizu  na  Sizaki,"  1995,  unpublished  manuscript 
in  author's  possession. 

35  P.  Haimati  and  P.  Houle,  "Mila  na  Matendo  ya  Wangoreme,"  unpublished  mimeo, 
Iramba  Mission,  1969. 


74 

an  Ikizu  history  commissioned  by  Chief  Makongoro  in  the  1950s  hidden  because  of  the  secrets  it 

contained.  These  books  are  a  source  of  pride  because  they  legitimize  the  group  as  a  "tribe"  among 

"tribes."36  No  famous  spokesperson  has  arisen  from  among  these  authors,  like  Sir  Apolo  Kagwa 

for  the  Baganda  or  Samuel  Johnson  for  the  Yoruba,  as  elsewhere  in  Africa."  Yet  the  instability  of 

"tribal"  identity  in  this  area  has  produced  a  much  more  widespread,  grassroots  effort  to  record  the 

history  of  "tribes."38 

Writing  itself  is  an  instrument  of  power  clearly  recognized  by  the  generation  of  elders 

today.  The  Germans  gave  the  first  colonial  chiefs  a  book  and  a  pen  as  signs  of  their  authority.39 

Many  elders  told  me  that  my  own  use  of  pen  and  paper  was  a  source  of  anxiety  for  them  (the  tape 

recorder  was  not  usually  an  issue).  One  remarked. 

In  the  time  of  our  grandfathers  and  fathers  they  were  afraid  of  people  with  skin  like 
yours:  they  were  afraid  of  the  pen.   When  they  saw  someone  writing,  they  said  that  this 


36  See  Jan  Bender  Shetler,  "'A  Gift  for  Generations  to  Come':  A  Kiroba  Popular  History 
from  Tanzania  and  Identity  as  Social  Capital  in  the  1980s,"  The  International  Journal  of  African 
Historical  Studies  7.8.  1  (1995):  73-77. 

37  Sir  Apolo  Kagwa,  Basekabaka  be  B Uganda  [The  Kings  of  Uganda],  trans,  and  ed.  M.  S. 
M.  Kiwanuka  (Nairobi:  East  African  Publishing  House,  1971,  first  published  1906).  Samuel 
Johnson,  The  History  of  the  Yorubas  from  Earliest  Times  to  the  Beginning  of  the  British 
Protectorate,  ed.  0.  Johnson  (Lagos:  CMS  (Nigeria)  Bookshops,  1960.  first  published  1921, 
reprinted  1960).  There  are  few  academic  histories  of  the  Mara  Region  on  which  people  might  base 
their  oral  narratives.  One  popular  Kuria  history  in  Swahili  is  Gabriel  Chacha,  Historia  va 
Abakuria  na  Sheria  Zao  (Tim  es  Salaam-  East  African  Literature  Bureau,  1963). 

18  While  I  was  in  Tanzania  1  contacted  some  publishing  houses  on  behalf  of  the  authors  to 
investigate  the  possibility  of  publishing  some  of  these  manuscripts.  When  I  left  three  of  them  were 
being  reviewed  by  Ndanda  Press,  a  Catholic  publisher  in  Mtwara,  Tanzania.  Marwa  Kishamuri, 
"Historia  ya  Abakiroba:  Desturi  na  Mila  Zao,"  unpublished  manuscript  in  the  author's  collection 
1988. 

39  Interview  with  Mohere  Mogoye,  Bugerera,  25  March  1995  (Nata  <f),  mentions  this  in 
connection  to  the  story  of  how  Megasa  was  made  the  first  Nata  chief.  It  is  a  clear  motif  in  all  of 
the  chief-making  stories  throughout  the  region. 


75 


person  would  take  us  with  them  in  the  writing.  So  that  is  why  they  did  not  want  us  to  go 
to  school,  they  said  those  who  go  to  school  will  be  taken  away  by  the  white  people.40 

In  my  own  research,  when  we  visited  the  site  of  a  rainmaker  ancestor's  grave  the  elders  told  me  to 

put  the  pen  and  paper  away  because  the  spirit  of  Gitaraga  would  not  like  them.41 

The  power  of  the  colonial  officers  resided  in  their  ability  to  capture  words  and  then  control 
their  use  in  other  contexts.  Confronted  with  written  accounts  that  conflicted  with  their  own 
versions,  elders  would  often  accept  the  veracity  of  the  written  version.  Commitment  to  the  written 
word  automatically  legitimizes  a  particular  version  of  the  past.  Many  manuscripts  that  I  saw 
named  no  author  and  often  listed  their  sources  as  "the  elders  of  X."  Colonial  officers  seldom  cited 
sources  by  name  or  position  for  the  "tribal  legends"  they  collected.  In  the  tribal  paradigm,  only 
one  true  version  of  the  past  may  exist  if  the  "tribe"  is  organically  integrated.  Writing  constitutes  a 
powerful  instrument  of  control  because  it  fixes  knowledge,  and  at  the  same  time  dissociates  that 
knowledge  from  the  explicit  interests  of  individuals. 

Local  intellectuals  learned  how  to  use  this  power  in  their  letters  of  complaint  to  the  colonial 
government.  Those  who  wrote  these  letters  used  "tribal"  history  to  support  or  to  protest  against  a 
chief  and  his  claim  to  power.  A  1 949  letter  from  "the  people  of  Zanaki"  to  the  Honorable  Chief 
Secretary  in  Dar  es  Salaam  affirms  that  Ihunyo  is  the  legitimate  Chief  (Mwami)  of  Zanaki  because 
he  is  21st  in  the  line.  The  authors  cite  the  fact  that  even  the  District  Commissioner,  E.  C.  Baker,  in 
1 928.  investigated  these  claims  and  found  them  to  be  true,  while  they  suspect  that  "Bwana"  Cory's 
investigations  in  1 945  may  have  brought  on  the  present  movement  to  have  Ihunyo  removed.  The 
precolonial  Mwami  title  was  inherited  through  a  line  of  important  rainmakers  in  the  area,  though  in 
governance  each  territory  was  relatively  independent.  Lacking  any  traditional  Zanaki-wide 


40  Interview  with  Tetere  Tumbo,  Mbiso,  5  April  1995  (Nata  <f). 

41  Interview  with  Keneti  Mahembora,  Gitaraga  and  Mochuri,  9  February  1996  (Nata  a"). 


76 
authority,  the  written  word  gave  some  the  means  to  convert  the  Mwami  title  into  a  chiefly  claim 
over  a  much  wider  area.42 

In  Sizaki.  a  continual  barrage  of  letters  from  1927  to  the  1950's  that  railed  against  Chief 
Ruhaga,  claimed  he  was  the  son  of  a  Sukuma  dream-prophet,  welcomed  in  Sizaki  not  as  a  chief, 
but  thanks  to  his  medicine  to  catch  fish.  His  son  later  convinced  the  Germans  that  he  was  the  chief 
and  had  many  of  the  opposition  elders  killed.  The  protesters  established  their  claim  as  "original" 
inhabitants,  now  ruled  by  "alien"  Sukuma.  A  1944  petition,  written  by  soldiers  of  the  King's 
African  Rifles,  reminded  the  Governor  of  their  service  and  loyalty.  They  likened  the  Sukuma 
rulers  to  "Nazis"  and  themselves  to  "slaves,"  appealing  to  the  League  of  Nations  Charter.  The 
same  group  wrote  another  letter  speaking  for  the  Abanyase,  a  high  ranking  group  of  eldership  title 
holders,  whom  they  represented  as  "the  ruling  Sizaki  clan."  The  colonial  government  could  not 
entertain  these  claims  because  the  Sukuma  had  since  become  the  majority  in  Sizaki  and  the  Chief 
had  been  elected  by  popular  vote.  In  1 952  the  colonial  government  deported  the  author  of  some  of 
these  letters.*13  Because  of  the  high  potential  gain  or  loss  in  the  colonial  system  men  were 
encouraged  to  rethink  their  pasts  as  "tribal"  pasts  and  to  commit  them  to  writing  to  enter  the 
colonial  field  of  historical  debate. 
Men's  Extensive  Geographical  Knowledge 

Besides  their  participation  in  the  colonial  political  economy,  men  had  other  reasons  for 
possessing  historical  knowledge  that  was  more  extensive  geographically  than  that  of  women.  Men 


Letter  from  the  Zanaki  people  to  the  Chief  Secretary,  Dar  es  Salaam,  20  June  1949,  and 
letter  from  D.  Dowsett,  DC  Musoma  to  PC  Lake  Province,  21  August  1950,  1949-50,  Native 
Chiefs,  Musoma,  Secretariat  Files,  29626,  TNA. 

43  From  Soldiers  of  the  K.A.R.  to  the  Governor,  T.  T,  1  December  1944,  Petition  to  the 
Governor  from  the  Secretary  of  the  Abanyase,  Sizaki,  16  May  1945,  Native  Chiefs,  Musoma 
Secretariat  Files.  29626,  TNA.  P.C.  Lake  Province  to  Chief  Secretary,  Dar  es  Salaam,  1 
September  1952,  Complaints,  215/P.C./50/5.  TNA. 


77 
hunted,  raided  and  traded  in  the  domestic  economy,  activities  that  took  them  far  from  home 
seasonally  and  for  long  periods  of  time.  These  activities  required  an  expert  knowledge  of 
landscape,  terrain,  and  ecology.  Men  had  to  know  where  game  could  be  found  at  any  time  of  the 
year,  how  to  track  them  for  days  and  still  find  their  way  home.  They  relied  on  generational 
knowledge  for  the  location  of  the  best  hunting  camps,  water  holes,  shooting  blinds,  hunting  pit  sites 
and  arrow-poison  trees.  The  retired  generation  was  obligated  to  escort  the  new  generation  on  their 
first  hunting  or  arrow-poison  gathering  journeys.  The  youth  carried  the  elders'  packs  and  protected 
them  at  night  as  repayment  for  this  service.44  As  they  went,  elders  named  each  hill  and  rise,  and 
noted  each  river,  seasonal  water  source  and  pool.  The  names  of  these  places  often  corresponded  to 
people  who  lived  there  or  incidents  that  took  place  there.45  Walking  the  trail,  or  around  the  fire  at 
night  in  the  hunting  camp,  the  younger  generation  heard  the  stories  behind  these  place-names. 
Remembering  was  crucial  to  their  survival  in  the  wilderness  and  their  ability  to  bring  home  meat. 

When  men  followed  cattle  raiders  to  recover  their  loss,  they  would  often  cross  hundreds  of 
kilometers  of  bush  into  Maasailand  or  north  to  the  Kenya  border.  An  important  trade  route  of  the 
late  nineteenth  century  lay  toward  Sukuma,  where  western  Serengeti  men  traded  wildebeest  tails 
and  other  wild  animal  products  for  goats,  tobacco  and  salt.  An  even  earlier  trade  route  took  them 
to  Geita  in  Sukuma  for  iron  hoes.  On  the  routes  of  raid  and  trade,  local  men  found  hospitality  and 
formed  friendships  with  those  who  had  been  strangers.  Sometimes  they  sealed  these  friendships 
with  oaths  of  blood  brotherhood.  Men  maintained  their  friendships  by  visits  in  both  directions, 
providing  more  opportunities  for  trade.  Through  these  friendships  men  learned  the  stories  of  other 
peoples  and  had  to  modify  their  own  stories  to  account  for  historical  similarities  and  differences. 


44  Interview  with  Megasa  Mokiri,  Motokeri,  4  March  1 995  (Nata  a"). 

45  In  an  interview  with  Yohana  Kitena  Nyitanga,  Makondusi,  I  May  1995  (Nata  <f),  he 
named  1 13  such  places,  north,  south,  east  and  west  of  his  present  home. 


78 
Finding  that  other  peoples  used  the  same  praise  names,  cattle  brands  or  claimed  the  same  origin 
places  caused  them  to  rethink  their  own  stories  of  the  past  to  incorporate  lost  brothers  or  joking 
relations.  Men's  stories  ordered  and  maintained  wide-ranging  regional  relationships  by  solidifying 
reciprocal  obligation  and  responsibility. 
The  Spaces  of  Men's  Historical  Knowledge 

When  asked  where  they  learned  their  historical  knowledge  most  men  said  that  a  father, 
grandfather  or  uncle  taught  them.  One  man  told  me  that  the  ability  to  learn  history  is  a  gift  from 
God,  just  like  healing,  prophecy  or  wealth.  Like  these  other  gifts  it.  too,  runs  in  the  family.44 
Others  said  that  boys  learned  from  older  men  while  working  on  grain  storage  bins,  fixing  the 
corral,  building  a  house  or  herding.    Girls  were  not  usually  around  at  these  times.47    Fathers  had  a 
responsibility  to  teach  their  sons  specific  historical  information  that  affected  the  ongoing  survival 
of  the  lineage.  This  included  information  like  prohibitions  against  certain  marriage  partners  or 
food,  activities  required  by  the  ancestors,  the  location  of  grave  sites,  the  histories  of  important 
ancestors  for  propitiation,  and  unresolved  blood  feuds  with  other  families.  Without  this  kind  of 
historical  knowledge  a  son  might  bring  ruin  on  the  household. 

Many  elders  related  that  in  their  own  childhood  experience,  elderly  men  gathered  regularly 
in  local  courtyards  to  visit  and  play  bao  (a  board  game  common  throughout  Africa),  eating  their 
meals  together  there.  They  had  practically  no  work  responsibilities  at  their  homes.  Leisure  was 
the  reward  of  age.  Most  people  told  me  that  they  learned  stories  of  the  past  from  sitting  quietly  at 
the  feet  of  elders  when  they  were  children.48  The  elders  were  not  teaching  the  children  but  carrying 


46  Interview  with  Samweli  M.  Kiramanzera,  Kurusanda,  3  August  1995  (Ikizu  <f). 

"  Interview  with  Nyawagamba  Magoto  (Nata  <f),  Kinanda  Sigara  (Ikizu  rf)  Dhah 
tmara  (Nata  9),  Mugeta,  9  March  1996. 

48  There  were  almost  always  children  in  attendance  at  my  interviews. 


79 
on  their  own  conversations.  The  youngest  children  of  the  family  often  heard  the  discussions  of  old 
men,  since  they  were  more  likely  to  be  the  ones  left  in  the  compound  to  run  errands  for  the  elders 
when  the  older  children  and  wives  went  to  work  in  the  fields.  Young  men  could  also  listen  if  they 
did  not  interrupt.  There  is  a  saying  that,  'a  youth  who  does  not  sit  with  the  elders  is  like  a  wild 
animal,  running  here  and  there  with  no  home.""    Those  who  learned  history  had  both  the  natural 
inclination  and  proximity  to  these  groups  of  elders. 

Older  men  prefer  to  do  their  socializing  with  beer  and  so  try  to  arrange  as  many 
opportunities  for  this  as  possible.  While  today  this  is  often  done  at  "clubs"  where  they  sell  beer,  in 
the  past  other  occasions  facilitated  elders'  storytelling  over  pots  of  beer.  Within  one  neighborhood 
they  each  might  agree  to  contribute  a  certain  portion  of  the  required  grain  and  wives'  labor  for 
making  beer;  only  those  who  contributed  got  an  invitation  to  drink  (msororo).  A  man  might  also 
call  his  neighbors  to  help  him  weed  a  field;  in  return  he  gave  the  fathers  of  the  young  men  who 
worked  a  beer  party  (risaga).  In  the  past  only  the  elders  were  allowed  to  drink  beer  and  thus  to 
engage  in  the  protracted  discussion  of  social  relations  and  the  past.50 

Other  opportunities  for  men  to  gather  at  leisure  to  talk  were,  and  still  are,  the  formal 
celebrations  of  weddings,  funerals,  circumcisions  or  eldership  titles,  which  often  last  for  many  days 
at  a  time.  At  these  gatherings,  as  I  observed  them,  smaller  groups  eat  or  drink  separately, 
according  to  age  and  gender-old  men,  young  men,  old  women,  young  women,  and  children.  Most 
of  the  women  are  involved  with  preparing  food,  hauling  water  or  gathering  firewood.  Younger 
women  are  constantly  shuttling  back  to  their  own  homes  to  make  sure  that  the  children  they  left 


49  Interview  with  Tetere  Tumbo,  Mbiso,  5  April  1995  (Nata  tf). 

50  Interview  with  Mashauri  Ng'ana,  Issenye,  2  November  1995  (Ishenyi  a"). 


80 
behind  are  being  cared  for  and  have  food.  Even  the  oldest  women  hold  babies  or  sort  beans. 
Women  do  not  have  as  much  leisure  time  at  these  gatherings. 

Testimonies  of  elders  and  my  own  observations  concur  on  the  format  and  content  of 
discussions  about  the  past  at  these  gatherings  of  elders.51  At  a  beer  party  or  an  afternoon  bao 
game  the  conversation  usually  begins  with  the  news  of  the  day,  leading  in  turn  to  the  necessity  for 
action  by  the  community:  what  should  be  done  about  the  young  woman  who  ran  away  from  her 
husband,  the  approach  of  cattle  thieves,  a  suspected  case  of  witchcraft  or  the  lack  of  rain?  In  the 
discussion  of  these  events  elders  use  stories  of  the  past  to  explain  behavior  and  its  consequences,  to 
figure  out  relationships  between  those  involved  and  their  obligations  to  each  other,  or  to  cite 
precedent  for  the  required  action. 

People  highly  value  the  gift  of  speech  and  these  discussions  often  become  intense 
arguments  as  each  man  elaborates  his  point  by  invoking  stories  from  the  past.  Only  after  the  elders 
chew  over  these  problems  can  more  formally  constituted  authority  take  action.  Men  do  not  learn 
their  historical  knowledge  from  a  formal  cycle  of  fixed  narratives  but  from  the  bits  and  pieces  of 
the  past  that  they  deploy  to  debate  community  problems.  Because  these  are  cases  of  judgement, 
history  is  negotiable  and  used  to  support  a  particular  agenda.  The  frequency  with  which  elders  tell 
and  remember  any  particular  story  about  the  past  depends  on  its  power  to  explain  current 
relationships.  Few  occasions  exist  when  men  narrate  the  historical  corpus  for  its  own  sake. 

Many  rituals  that  people  rarely  perform  anymore,  such  as  eldership  initiation  ceremonies, 
circumcision  and  the  propitiation  of  spirits  at  sacred  places  included  the  recitation  of  historical 
traditions.  At  dances  (formerly,  but  no  longer,  held  every  full  moon)  youth  sang  songs  and  shouted 


51  As  a  young  woman  I  did  not  have  forma!  access  to  men's  beer  parties  but  did  overhear 
enough  of  their  conversation  or  was  told  enough  about  what  goes  on  in  them  to  make  these 
generalizations. 


81 
praise-names  that  told  about  the  past.  Historical  information  was  woven  in  and  out  of  all  these 
rituals  of  everyday  life.  The  stories  that  grandmothers  told  children  after  dark  included  historical 
characters  and  events.  Learning  history  was  not  the  memorization  of  a  corpus  of  oral  tradition  but 
was,  rather,  a  familiarity  with  "matters  of  the  past"  from  all  these  everyday  encounters.  Many  of 
these  occasions  no  longer  exist.  Elders  still  recount  historical  knowledge  as  a  matter  of  course  in 
preparation  for  weddings  (learning  about  the  background  of  the  intended)  and  at  funerals  (hearing 
about  the  life  of  the  deceased  and  dividing  the  inheritance). 

Elders  fear  that  they  no  longer  have  the  opportunity  to  pass  on  historical  knowledge  to 
young  people  who  do  not  care  about  these  "matters  of  the  past."  Old  men  still  have  beer  parties 
but  the  young  men  are  at  school,  in  the  cities  or  at  their  own  disco  parties.  One  of  the  few  ways 
that  a  youth  can  still  learn  history  is  by  asking  his  father,  very  much  in  the  way  of  an  interview, 
just  as  colonial  school  boys  did  when  their  teachers  sent  them  home  to  collect  historical  information 
from  their  fathers  for  composition  class.  In  each  research  area  I  found  young  men  with  a  deep  and 
intimate  knowledge  of  the  past,  committed  to  its  survival.  Still,  they  are  the  exceptions.  As  this 
generation  of  elders  fails  to  pass  on  its  knowledge  in  a  general  way  through  discourse,  historical 
knowledge  is  increasingly  becoming  the  property  of  ritual  experts.  The  common  perception  that 
historical  knowledge  will  be  forgotten  in  the  next  generation  is  more  a  result  of  its  changing  form, 
than  its  absolute  loss. 

Women's  Intimate  Community  Knowledge 

During  the  colonial  era,  when  belonging  to  a  "tribe"  with  a  specific  history  became 
imperative,  men  significantly  reshaped  their  historical  narratives.  It  was  in  walking  the  paths 
outside  their  home  communities  in  hunting,  cattle  raiding,  trading  and  migrant  labor  that  they 
formulated  their  account  of  a  "tribe"  among  a  nation  of  "tribes."  Women  did  not  participate 
directly  in  the  construction  of  these  narratives  of  ethnic  origin  and  migration,  settlement  and 


82 
conflict,  in  part  because  of  the  position  imposed  on  them  during  the  colonial  era.  While  women 
had  some  latitude  for  formal  influence  in  the  community  before  colonialism,  as  rainmakers, 
prophets  or  titled  elders,  the  colonial  administration  systematically  denied  them  a  voice  in  formal 
politics.52  Women  marrying  outside  their  homes  often  functioned  in  the  past  as  intermediaries 
between  clans  and  ethnic  groups.  When  the  emphasis  shifted  to  ethnic  unity  and  exclusivity  in  the 
colonial  era  women  became  outsiders  and  strangers,  rather  than  valued  links  to  others.  This 
structural  position  of  women,  as  outsiders  in  the  homes  of  their  husbands,  denied  them  a  formal 
role  in  the  creation  of  ethnic  histories. 

My  experience  living  as  a  woman  in  the  company  of  other  women  in  Nata  during  the  year 
and  a  half  of  research  allowed  me  to  observe  women's  daily  activities  and  exchange  of  information 
in  a  rural  setting.  1  describe  the  female  spaces  that  structure  the  kinds  of  information  that  women 
share  in  the  present,  as  I  observed  them.  However,  these  observations  are  also  consistent  with  the 
testimonies  of  elderly  women  about  their  youth  and  with  the  few  ethnographies  for  the  area  that  do 
exist.  This  leads  me  to  believe  that  what  I  describe  here  would  also  apply  to  the  colonial  period 
and  perhaps  into  the  late  nineteenth  century.  Shifts  in  gender  relations  that  affected  the 
transmission  of  knowledge  may  have  taken  place  during  the  disasters  when  the  dangers  of 
unsettled  times  increasingly  restricted  women's  movements  and  sphere  of  influence. 

My  experience  interviewing  women  demonstrates  the  differences  in  narrative  style  and 
setting  of  narration  between  men  and  women.  Older  women  found  the  interview  process  much 


52  This  is  another  story  to  be  told  elsewhere  but  concerns  the  1 )  the  colonial  refusal  to 
acknowledge  the  leadership  role  of  healers/prophets/rainmakers,  2)  the  denial  of  a  woman's  right  to 
have  an  independent  household  without  a  man  or  to  obtain  offspring  through  what  is  known 
elsewhere  as  "woman-to-woman"  marriage,  giving  woman  access  to  independent  wealth,  and  3)  the 
shifting  of  "traditional"  inheritance  and  marriage  laws  to  favor  men.  For  an  analysis  of  the 
changing  role  of  women  in  colonial  society  see  Steven  Feierman,  Peasant  Intellectuals- 
Anthropology  and  History  in  Tanzania  IMaHknn-  University  of  Wisconsin  Press   1990)  on   181- 
203. 


83 
more  intimidating  then  men,  particularly  when  many  men  were  listening.  I  had  the  best  interviews 
with  women  when  I  used  a  woman  assistant  and  no  men  were  present.  When  men  were  present,  the 
woman  would  defer  to  the  men,  or  the  men  themselves  would  correct  the  woman.  Areas  considered 
within  a  woman's  sphere,  such  as  women's  circumcision,  were  not  acceptable  topics  to  discuss  in 
mixed  company.  Older  women  were  less  likely  to  understand  Swahili  than  were  their  male 
counterparts.  While  men  easily  launched  into  long  uninterrupted  historical  narratives,  I  had  to  ply 
most  women  with  a  continual  barrage  of  questions  to  solicit  more  than  brief  answers.  Women 
preferred  a  dialogue  among  their  peers  rather  than  the  monologues  demanded  by  formal  interviews. 
Women  often  loosened  up  when  they  sang  songs,  told  a  story  about  one  of  their  grandparents,  a 
folktale,  or  reminisced  about  the  past  with  their  friends." 
The  Paths  of  Women's  Daily  Interactions 

Women  have  not  been  privy  to  ethnic  histories,  at  least  in  recent  times,  because  of  their 
interior  position  within  the  gendered  construction  of  space.  Women's  knowledge  of  the  past 
consists  of  the  details  of  family  genealogies,  family  histories  (both  natal  and  marital)  and 
community  stories-all  of  which  concern  how  everyone  is  related  to  everyone  else  inside  the 
community.54  When  I  questioned  one  male  elder  about  the  relationships  between  members  of 
households  in  his  village,  he  frequently  went  out  to  consult  his  wife,  who  would  not  budge  from  the 
kitchen  to  join  us.  Women  command  expertise  in  this  kind  of  knowledge  because  this  is  their 


53  For  an  analysis  of  the  interview  process  as  part  of  the  "male  sociocommunication 
subculture"  and  thus  intimidating  to  women  see,  Kristina  Minister,  "A  Feminist  Frame  for  the  Oral 
History  Interview,"  in  Women's  Words:  The  Feminist  Practice  of  Oral  History,  eds.  Sherna  Berger 
Gluck  and  Daphne  Patai  (New  York:  Routledge,  1 991 ),  p.  3 1 . 

54  This  has  been  observed  by  many  observers  in  Africa,  including  early  anthropologist, 
Lloyd  A.  Fallers,  Bantu  Bureaucracy:  A  Century  of  Political  Evolution  among  the  Basoga  of' 
Uganda  (Chicago:  University  of  Chicago  Press,  1965),  p.  90,  who  states  that  "lineage  males  must 
often  draw  upon  the  geneological  knowledge  of  wives  and  mothers....  women  often  remember 
genealogical  complexities  better  than  men." 


84 
source  of  power  and  prestige.  Women  are  responsible  for  feeding  their  households  and  raising  their 
children.  The  household  is  still  the  basic  unit  of  production  and  exchange,  and  women  carry  out 
their  tasks  by  relying  on  relations  formed  by  reciprocal  obligation  rather  than  cash.  In  this 
situation  the  better  a  woman  understands  relationships  within  the  community,  the  more  adept  she 
can  be  at  establishing  mutual  obligations  for  all  of  the  large  and  small  matters  of  daily  life. 

Women's  knowledge  grows  out  of  the  community  networks  of  reciprocal  exchange  that 
they  construct  to  ensure  survival  and  prestige  for  themselves  and  their  children.  A  new  bride 
begins  this  process  as  a  stranger  in  her  mother-in-law's  house.  Marriage  is  fundamentally  the 
transfer  of  a  woman  from  her  natal  home  to  that  of  her  husband's  family,  under  whom  the  new 
couple  must  live,  at  least  until  the  first  child  is  born."  The  new  bride  will  have  less  daily 
interaction  with  her  husband  than  with  her  mother-in-law,  on  whom  the  bride's  successful 
assimilation  into  a  new  set  of  relationships  depends.  A  mother-in-law  looks  forward  to  the  day 
when  her  daughter-in-law  comes  to  relieve  her  of  all  of  the  difficult  household  chores-farming, 
grinding,  hauling  water,  gathering  firewood  and  some  cooking. 

A  good  mother-in-law,  who  is  also  a  stranger  in  the  patrilineage  of  her  husband,  gives  her 
daughter-in-law  a  thorough  knowledge  of  everyone  in  the  family,  the  genealogical  tree  as  well  as 
individual  character  and  reliability.  This  often  happens  when  guests  come  and  news  of  the 
community  begins  to  circulate,  or  when  she  tells  stories  about  ancestors.  A  woman  gradually 
begins  to  form  her  own  relationships  in  the  community  and  among  her  husband's  kin,  while  still 


55  See  Huber,  Marriage  and  Family,  pp.  69-91;  and  Tobisson.  Family  Dynamics,  pp.  134- 
137;  for  the  relationship  of  a  woman  to  husband's  family  in  this  region. 


85 
under  the  tutelage  of  her  mother-in-law.  Families  entrust  continuity  of  the  most  intimate 
knowledge  about  insiders  to  those  in  the  family  who  are  structurally  outsiders.56 

A  woman  does  not,  however,  give  up  knowledge  of  her  natal  community,  which  is  crucial 
to  the  survival  of  herself  and  her  children.  A  married  woman  maintains  her  relationship  to  her 
parent's  home  and  kin  by  regular,  if  not  frequent,  visits  and  the  exchange  of  gifts.  Her  mother  is 
also  required  to  visit  on  specific  ritual  occasions."    These  exchanges  allow  a  woman  to  pass  on  the 
knowledge  of  these  relationships  to  her  children.  A  woman  depends  on  her  father  and  brothers,  or 
her  mother's  brothers,  to  be  her  advocates  if  something  goes  wrong  in  her  marriage.  Her  husband 
also  strives  to  maintain  a  good  relationship  with  his  father-in-law,  to  gain  sympathy  in  case  of  a 
conflict  (direct  contact  with  his  mother-in-law  is  prohibited).  A  woman  continues  to  play  a  critical 
ritual  role  in  her  natal  home  as  the  paternal  aunt  (mwisenge)  to  her  brother's  children.  Her  brother 
(mame)  has  special  responsibilities  to  her  children  and  in  some  Mara  societies  they  inherit  from 
him  rather  than  from  their  father.  Many  people  described  their  maternal  kin  as  a  place  of 
acceptance  and  refuge  in  times  of  trouble.  A  man  could  turn  to  his  mother's  family  to  pay  the 
blood  compensation  fine  if  he  were  charged  with  murder.58  Families  value  women  as  wives 


56  Interviews  with  Susana  Nyibikwabe  Mayani,  Bugerera,  1 0  February  1 996  (Nata  9 ); 
Kimori  Gamare,  Bugerera,  28  February  1996  (Nata/Ikoma  9);  and  Sumwa  Nyamutwe,  Muget'a,  9 
March  1 996  (Nata  ¥ ).  In  the  case  of  a  second  or  third  wife  the  role  of  the  mother-in-law  would  be 
taken  over  by  the  first  wife  and  is  more  tenuous.  Part  of  the  power  of  the  first  wife  is  this  position 
in  and  knowledge  of  her  husband's  family. 

57  Interview  with  Weigoro  Mincha,  Kemegesi,  29  March  1996  (Ngoreme  9). 

58  Many  of  the  Lakes  peoples  as  well  as  Zanaki  and  lkizu.    Interviews  with  Samweli  M. 
Kiramanzera,  Kurusanda,  3  August  1 995  (lkizu  cf );  Zabron  Kisubundo  Nyamamera  and 
Makang'a  Magigi,  Bisarye,  9  November  1995  (Zanaki  <?).  For  the  role  of  the  maternal  uncle  in 
Tatoga  Rotegenga  society  see,  Interview  with  Ghamarhizisiji  (Uyayehi)  Nuaasi  (Tatoga  9 )  and 
Gesura  Mwatagu  (Tatoga  a"),  Issenye,  8  May  1995. 


86 

mothers,  sisters  and  daughters  both  for  the  links  that  they  create  between  families  and  the  spheres 
of  knowledge  they  manage.59 

Women  also  specialize  in  knowledge  of  community  relations.  A  woman's  daily 
relationships  take  place  in  the  space  of  home  and  the  community,  revolving  around  the  exchange  of 
food,  household  implements  and  services.  Women  are  responsible  for  feeding  themselves  and  their 
children  through  control  over  their  own  fields,  storage  bins  and  tools.  To  do  this  they  constantly 
manage  an  intricate  set  of  reciprocal  relationships,  involving  an  ongoing  exchange  of  goods 
between  neighboring  homesteads.  When  a  woman  runs  out  of  millet  flour  for  the  staple  porridge 
she  goes  to  her  neighbor  to  ask  for  some,  who  in  turn  would  ask  her  when  she  ran  out  of  something 
else.  Women  understand  these  exchanges  as  "gifts"  and  do  not  repay  them  one  for  one.  A  woman 
does  not  return  borrowed  flour  until  the  neighbor  that  she  borrowed  it  from  runs  out  and  comes  to 
ask  for  it.  If  she  borrows  a  tool  not  constantly  used  by  her  neighbor  in  everyday  work,  that  item 
stays  at  her  house  until  the  owner  needs  it  and  comes  to  get  it.  Ideally,  a  woman  wants  to  have 
both  credits  and  debits  outstanding  at  any  one  time.  It  is  not  to  her  advantage  to  balance  all 
relationships.  People  who  owe  a  debt  represent  potential  sources  for  future  needs;  those  who  have 
credits  will  come  to  visit  when  they  collect.  Women  move  around  the  community  daily  as  they 
carry  these  things  from  house  to  house. 

Women  visit  each  other  most  often  as  a  result  of  maintaining  these  relationships  of 
exchange  (asire),  but  they  also  make  purely  social  visits  on  the  occasion  of  marriage,  death, 
illness,  ritual,  celebration,  or  friendship.  The  exchange  of  gifts,  most  often  food  (omotoro),  marks 
these  social  visits.  They  say  that,  'a  house  without  visitors  is  a  house  without  blessing.'  The  most 
obvious  sign  of  a  prestigious  woman  is  a  homestead  constantly  tilled  with  people.  Women  praise 


59  Interview  with  Machota  Sabuni,  Issenye,  14  March  1996  (Ikoma  cf). 


87 
and  seek  out  a  woman  known  for  her  generosity,  not  only  for  the  exchange  of  goods  but  also  for 
advice  and  good  conversation.  They  insult  the  greedy  woman,  saying  that  she  "does  not  like 
people,"  and  will  eventually  isolate  her.  However,  the  prestigious  woman  who  gives  away  a  lot 
must  also  ask  for  things  in  return.  Otherwise,  the  circulation  of  goods  and  visits  ends.  A  generous 
woman  calls  in  these  obligations  when  she  puts  on  a  large  feast  or  a  work  party.  Such  events  last 
for  days  and  require  a  lot  of  women's  labor,  both  before  and  after  the  feast,  in  cooking,  hauling 
water,  gathering  firewood,  making  beer  and  grinding  grain.  This  is  the  ultimate  test  of  how 
skillfully  a  woman  has  maintained  her  community  networks.  All  these  situations  bring  women  into 
daily  contact  with  each  other. 

A  woman's  main  source  of  information  about  the  community  and  respite  from  work  comes 
from  these  social  interactions  of  daily  exchange.  Women  acquire  certain  kinds  of  knowledge  in 
these  interactions  in  which  men  do  not  participate.  Women  know  the  news  of  the  community. 
Information  spreads  along  the  paths  of  women  going  to  each  other's  houses  to  exchange  favors. 
They  must  greet  everyone  they  meet  on  the  path  and  exchange  pleasantries. 

The  spatial  structure  of  the  community  facilitates  the  exchange  of  news.  Paths  usually 
pass  directly  through  a  household  courtyard  or  alongside  it,  so  that  someone  walking  by  must 
naturally  greet  the  people  working  there.  Houses  are  small,  mostly  used  for  sleeping  and  storage, 
and  the  daily  work  takes  place  outside  in  the  courtyard.  A  woman  on  her  way  to  get  some  flour 
from  her  friend  learns  who  is  going  to  town  that  day,  who  was  sick,  who  has  guests,  and  who  is 
harvesting  millet.  She  hears  news  from  the  next  village  and  political  discussions  from  the  national 
radio  station.  Men's  paths  run  in  direct,  rather  than  circuitous  routes,  and  men  seldom  visit  in 
courtyards  during  the  day  except  on  specific  business  or  social  occasions. 

Yet  men  seek  out  the  informal  community  knowledge  of  women  before  they  engage  in  their 
formal  negotiations  and  exchange  of  information.  They  value  the  wife  who  attracts  many  visitors, 


even  if  it  means  a  bigger  outlay  in  food.  The  networks  of  women  and  their  exchange  of  flour  and 
beans  inform  the  big  decision-making  in  the  community  that  men  do  over  pots  of  beer. 

One  of  the  few  formal  ways  in  which  women  pass  on  knowledge  to  future  generations  is  by 
storytelling.    Grandmothers  or  elderly  widowed  aunts  tell  stories  to  their  grandchildren  before  they 
sleep  at  night  or  as  they  do  some  time-consuming,  repetitive  work  like  sorting  cotton  or  beans  [See 
Figure  2-4:  Women's  Story  Telling,  p.  91].  The  stories  that  women  tell  to  children  include  the 
typical  African  animal  and  monster  (mwinani)  stories  as  well  as  the  adventure  stories  of  past 
ancestors.  [See  Figure  2-3:  Mwinani  by  local  artist  Deus  Nyahega  Tumbago,  1995.]  Only  girls 
hear  the  stories  that  grandmothers  must  tell  at  night.  When  girls  approach  puberty,  they  move  out 
of  their  mother's  house  and  into  another  house  with  other  girls  their  age  from  the  neighborhood, 
supervised  by  an  elderly  single  woman  of  the  family.    Young  boys  sleep  with  age  mates,  without 
supervision,  until  they  marry.    These  older  women  must  make  sure  that  the  girls  do  not  get 
pregnant  before  circumcision.  Because  these  women  are  in  an  alternate,  rather  than  an  adjacent, 
generation  to  the  girls  they  can  talk  to  them  frankly  and  openly  about  sexual  matters.  They  teach 
the  girls  about  sex,  the  duties  of  a  good  wife,  and  use  stories  from  the  past  to  illustrate  these 
lessons  of  morality.  Because  of  their  position  in  the  community,  these  single  women  often  know  a 
lot  about  the  past.60  Folktales  intersect  with  oral  traditions  of  a  historical  nature  by  providing  the 
moral  themes  that  recur  in  each.  As  more  families  live  in  urban  areas,  in  nuclear  family  units, 
within  a  common  house,  these  storytelling  spaces  are  disappearing.  Grandmothers  now  live  back 
in  the  village,  where  the  younger  generation  rarely  visits. 


60  Folktales  on  videotape,  Bugerera,  17  August  1995.  Interviews  with  Raheli  Wanchota 
Nyanchiwa,  Morotonga,  16  March  1996  (Ikoma  ?);  Weigoro  Mincha,  Kemegesi,  29  March  1996 
(Ngoreme  ¥).  See  also  David  William  Cohen,  "Doing  social  history  from  pirn's  doorway,"  in 
Olivier  Zunz,  ed.,  Reliving  the  Past:  The  Worlds  of  Social  History  (Chapel  Hill:  University  of 
North  Carolina  Pres,  1985),  pp.  191-235. 


Figure  2-3:  Mwinani  by  local  artist  Deus  Nyahega  Tumbago  ©1995 


90 

Men  fear  women's  knowledge  because  women  know  too  many  intimate  details  about  them. 
Men  often  ridicule  women's  knowledge  as  "foolish  gossip"  because  women  can  expose  their 
misadventures.  One  elderly  woman  said  that  her  husband  restricted  her  friendships  with  other 
women  so  that  she  would  not  gossip.  Women  are  often  accused  of  witchcraft  because  they  hold  so 
much  power  over  men  with  their  knowledge.61    In  the  past  women  openly  used  this  power  over  men 
in  their  grinding  and  hoeing  songs.  A  Ngoreme  woman  told  me  that  women  used  to  form  self-help 
groups  (chesiri)  to  weed  each  other's  fields.  As  they  worked,  they  would  sing  songs  to  make  fun  of 
someone  who  was  lazy  or  to  expose  another  fault.  Other  songs  would  tease  men  about  their  lovers 
and  chide  them  for  leaving  their  wives.  By  singling  out  a  particular  man  for  ridicule,  the  songs 
served  to  discipline  him  and  cause  change  in  his  actions.  Women,  singly  or  in  pairs,  ground  grain 
within  a  homestead  where  many  people  passed  by  or  worked  within  earshot.  A  woman  sang  a 
grinding  song  to  praise  or  ridicule  her  lover,  or  that  of  her  friend.  She  sang  out  the  attributes,  or 
abuses,  of  a  lover  in  explicit  detail,  much  to  the  embarrassment  of  the  man.    Thus  women  used  the 
power  of  their  intimate  community  knowledge  to  change  the  decisions  or  actions  of  men  whom  they 
could  not  influence  directly.62  Women  brought  to  the  attention  of  elders  the  men  who  needed  to  be 
disciplined  and  shame  forced  the  deviant  to  seek  correction.  [See  Figure  2-4:  Women's  Story 
Telling.] 

Women  also  have  some  knowledge  that  they  explicitly  keep  secret  from  men.  In 
interviews,  some  women  claimed  that  only  men  had  secrets  and  that  women's  eldership  titles 
involved  no  masubho  or  secret  initiation  knowledge.  Yet  women  do  have  secrets,  that  preserve  an 


61  Interview  with  Sumwa  Nyamutwe,  Dhahabu  Gambamara  (Nata  ?),  Nyawagamba 
Magoto(Nata  cf),  Kinanda  Sigara  (Ikizu  cf),  Mugeta,  9  March  1996.  Boddy,  Wombs  and  Alien 
Spirits,  p.  45,  discusses  the  relationship  between  women's  knowledge  and  "gossip." 

62  Interview  with  Weigoro  Mincha,  Kemegesi,  29  March  1996  (Ngoreme  ¥). 


Dhahabu  Gambamara  with  daughter  Kimori,  Bugerera, 
12  August  1995,  Pounding  Cassava 


Weigoro  Mincha  and  friends,  Kemgesi,  29  March  1996,  women's  songs. 
Figure  2-4:  Women's  Story  Telling 


92 
autonomous  sphere  of  female  authority  over  aspects  of  fertility  and  reproduction.  A  woman 
specialized  and  initiated  into  this  knowledge  (omwikarabutu)  directed  Nata  women's  circumcision 
ceremonies,  the  proper  disposal  of  flesh  after  the  ceremony,  and  the  critical  days  of  healing." 
Other  women  with  specialized  knowledge  supervised  the  rituals  for  a  young  woman's  first 
pregnancy  and  birth.  Women  maintained  this  ritual  knowledge  through  eldership  titles  that  ran 
parallel  to  and  separate  from  men's  eldership  titles.  During  the  ceremonies  of  first  pregnancy  men 
had  to  leave  the  homestead.    An  Ikizu  woman  could  rise  through  the  ranks  of  eldership  titles, 
which  involved  powerful  initiation  secrets,  despite  the  rank  of  her  husband."  Elderly  women 
expressed  the  most  concern  about  keeping  this  knowledge  secret  by  questioning  how  much  others 
had  told  me.  They  said  that  men  would  sell  this  information  for  their  own  benefit  rather  than  look 
out  for  the  good  of  the  community.  Women  maintain  autonomous  control  over  the  precious 
community  resource  of  fertility  and  reproduction  with  their  secrets. 
Extraordinary  Women  Privileged  to  Men's  Knowledpe 

Beyond  influencing  men's  historical  knowledge  and  actions,  women  also  found  ways  of 
crossing  the  gendered  boundaries  inscribed  in  the  social  spaces  of  the  community.  As  scholars 
have  argued  for  other  parts  of  Africa,  biological  sex  and  gender  are  not  necessarily  correlated.65  In 
the  western  Serengeti  categories  of  women  exist  with  access  to  men's  knowledge.  Because  of  their 
special  position  in  the  community  these  women  often  exceed  men  in  their  knowledge  of  the  past  as 
defined  by  men.  I  identified  these  categories  by  noting  what  kind  of  women  could  tell  me  the 


63  Interview  with  Sumwa  Nyamutwe,  Mugeta,  9  March  1996  (Nata  ¥). 

64  Interview  with  Baginyi  Mutani  and  Mayenye  Nyabunga,  Sanzate,  8  September  1995 
(Ikizu  ¥). 

"  Boddy.  Wombs  and  Alien  Spirits,  p.  56;  Ifi  Amadiume,  Male  Daughters.  Female 
Husbands:  Gender  and  Sex  in  an  African  Society  (London:  Zed  Books  Ltd,  1987),  p.  15. 


93 
commonly  recognized  historical  narratives.  Because  of  the  situational  nature  of  gender  identity, 
these  women  crossed  gender  boundaries  in  particular  contexts.  The  words  to  describe  these  women 
predate  the  colonial  period  and  are  used  across  the  region  in  various  ways,  making  it  reasonable  to 
assume  that  these  institutions  have  been  in  existence  at  least  since  the  last  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  changing  to  meet  new  circumstances  over  time. 

Perhaps  the  most  obvious  but  least  accessible  category  of  extraordinary  women  in  the 
western  Serengeti  is  that  of  dream-prophets,  healers  and  diviners,  who  used  historical  knowledge  to 
practice  their  art.  The  general  word  for  prophecy,  including  healing,  obugabho,  does  not  seem  to 
have  been  gendered.  Narratives  about  the  past  often  mention  women  as  rainmakers,  healers  and 
prophets,  including  the  eponymous  ancestresses  in  the  line  of  Ikizu  and  Zanaki  "chiefly" 
rainmakers.  A  woman  became  a  prophet,  not  from  her  own  volition,  but  because  an  ancestral  spirit 
chose  her.  When  clients  came  to  the  prophet  for  help  she  used  her  knowledge  of  past  relationships 
and  networks  to  interpret  the  problem.    The  prophet  might  advise  her  client  to  perform  a  ritual  for 
the  Maasai  or  Tatoga  ancestors  of  his  grandmother  or  to  sacrifice  a  goat  at  the  grave  of  another 
ancestor.  These  women  spoke  only  reluctantly,  if  at  all,  about  this  knowledge  in  interviews  because 
they  understood  it  as  part  of  the  secret  of  their  craft.  They  said  that  their  historical  knowledge 
came  from  the  ancestral  spirit  in  dreams. 

My  colleagues  often  recommended  to  me  elderly  childless  women  as  those  most 
knowledgeable  about  history.  A  childless  woman  (omogomba)  has  very  little  status  in  a  society 
that  emphasizes  growth  and  fertility.  Her  dependency  on  the  goodwill  of  kin  rather  than  the 
obligation  of  her  children  puts  her  in  a  particularly  vulnerable  position.66  I  heard  stories  of 


66  On  the  position  of  these  women  as  widows  more  widely  in  Africa  see,  Betty  Potash, 
Widows  in  African  Societies:  Choices  and  Constraints  (Stanford,  California:  Stanford  University 
Press,  1 986)  and  Michael  C.  Kirwen,  African  Widows  (Maryknoll,  New  York:  Orbis  Books 
1979). 


94 
husbands  who  drove  their  childless  wives  out  of  the  marriage  (although  bridewealth  is  not  returned 
because  of  infertility).  Others  allowed  them  to  stay  but  in  a  subordinate  position  to  their  co-wives 
who  gave  birth.  People  assume  that  childlessness  results  from  a  woman's  infertility,  because  if  a 
man  suffers  from  infertility  he  quietly  allows  his  wives  to  become  pregnant  through  relations  with 
other  men  in  order  to  extend  his  own  lineage. 

An  omogomba  does  not  have  the  labor  of  children  on  the  farm  or  in  the  house.  She  builds 
and  repairs  her  own  house  unless  someone  offers  to  help  (as  a  son  is  obligated  to  do).  She  has  no 
children  to  care  for  her  when  she  gets  too  old  to  farm.    Women  do  not  inherit  directly  from  their 
husbands  but  only  indirectly  through  their  sons,  who  are  bound  to  support  their  widowed  mothers. 
A  widowed  omogomba  formally  stands  at  the  mercy  of  her  brother-in-law,  appointed  by  the  family 
to  care  for  her.  If  she  does  well,  she  can  pay  bridewealth  for  a  mkamwana  (a  "daughter-in-law" 
under  the  institution  of  "woman/woman"  marriage)  who  will  provide  children  to  take  care  of  her. 
Most  elderly  women  without  children  live  out  their  lives  moving  from  relation  to  relation,  without  a 
home  or  security  beyond  tomorrow.67 

On  the  other  hand,  childless  women  possess  a  paradoxical  kind  of  power  in  the  community. 
They  are  female  and  yet  anomalous  because  they  are  not  mothers.  They  lack  fertility  and  yet  have 
access  to  the  source  of  community  fertility  through  the  tasks  often  assigned  to  childless  women  as 
midwives  and  caretakers  for  young  unmarried  women.  Because  they  do  not  care  for  their  own 
children  these  women  often  find  themselves  in  a  position  to  help  others  raise  children,  deliver 
babies  and  dispense  wisdom.  Nata  elders  propitiate  the  ancestral  spirits  at  a  place  called  Nyichoka 
(female  snake).  They  ask  for  rain  and  fertility  at  the  grave  of  a  childless  woman  who  despaired 
because  of  the  ostracism  she  felt  from  her  community  and  threw  herself  into  the  pool.  She  appears 


67  Interview  with  Mwenge  Magoto,  Bugerera,  5  November  1995  (Nata  ¥). 


95 
as  a  snake  and  her  hearthstones  lie  at  the  bottom  of  the  pool.  A  menstruating  woman  cannot  draw 
water  from  the  pool  or  the  water  becomes  churned  up  and  misfortune  comes  to  the  community. 
Women  dance  the  eghise  at  the  pool  to  make  her  happy.68  Throughout  the  Lakes  Region  people 
have  solved  the  problem  of  infertility  by  initiating  these  women  as  spirit  mediums,  who  then  beget 
spirit  children.69 

A  childless  woman  often  has  access  to  men's  knowledge,  in  part,  because  of  her  social 
position:  without  children  to  care  for  and  feed  she  can  move  beyond  her  household.  She  has  more 
time  to  go  to  the  fields  to  farm,  to  visit  friends  and  family,  and  to  circulate  around  the  village. 
Because  of  her  increased  availability,  a  man  often  chooses  the  childless  wife  to  carry  his  beer 
straws  and  stool  to  the  beer  parties  of  the  elders  as  a  sign  of  his  prestige.  When  he  gets  to  the  beer 
party  his  wife  sits  between  his  legs,  drinking  beer  with  them,  and  hears  men's  stories  about  the 
past.™  When  1  insisted  on  interviewing  women,  colleagues  often  took  me  to  meet  an  omogomba, 
though  they  never  consciously  recognized  this  as  a  reason  for  her  knowledge.  These  women  said 
that  they  learned  so  much  more  history  than  other  women  because  of  their  interest  and  the 
opportunity. 

An  independent  woman  without  a  husband,  managing  her  own  family  and  property,  called 
an  omosimbe,  also  has  no  man  to  tell  her  to  stay  in  the  homestead,  and  so  walks  about  the  village 
at  her  own  time  and  inclination.    In  the  past  a  woman  would  not  have  preferred  this  status;  it 


68  Interviews  with  Mokuru  Nyang'aka,  Nyichoka,  9  February  1996  (Nata  <?);  and  Mahiti 
Kwiro,  Mchang'oro,  19  January  1996  (Nata  <f). 

69  Renee  Louise  Tantala,  "The  early  history  of  Kitara  in  Western  Uganda:  Process  Models 
of  Religious  and  Political  Change"  (Ph.D.  Dissertation,  University  of  Wisconsin-Madison,  1989); 
Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  p.  438. 

70  Interviews  with  Nyangere  Faini,  Bugerera,  22  November  1995  (Nata  ?); 
Nyawagambwa  Magoto  (Nata  <f),  Dhahabu  Gambamara  (Nata  9),  Kinanda  Sigara  (Ikizu  <f), 
Mugeta9March  1996. 


96 

would  indicate  she  was  the  victim  of  some  unnatural  circumstances.  Nevertheless,  the  community 
respected  independent  women,  a  position  found  throughout  the  Lakes  Region."  A  woman  most 
often  becomes  an  omosimbe  if  her  father  either  has  no  sons  or  does  not  think  any  of  them  capable 
of  handling  his  property.  He  then  designates  a  daughter  to  take  over  for  him  when  he  dies.  She 
takes  on  a  man's  role  as  head  of  the  homestead,  having  children  fathered  by  a  casual  lover.72  A 
woman  specialized  as  a  healer  or  a  rainmaker  sometimes  assumes  the  role  of  an  omosimbe  because 
of  restrictions  against  marriage  imposed  on  her  by  her  erisambwa,  the  spirit  who  directs  her 
work.73 

One  woman  that  I  met  had  run  away  from  her  home  in  Kuria  when  her  marital  family 
accused  her  of  witchcraft  because  of  the  deaths  of  her  five  infants.  She  walked  to  Nata  and  found 
refuge  with  a  man  for  a  time.  Her  sister,  who  also  left  Kuria  because  she  could  bear  no  more 
children,  later  joined  her.  Together  they  set  up  their  own  homestead  in  another  village  and  two 
more  single  women,  one  from  Buhemba  and  another  from  Ikoma,  came  to  live  with  them.  Each 
sister  paid  bridewealth  for  a  mkamwana  ("daughter-in-law")  who  also  took  up  residence  with  them 
and  bore  them  children.74  Many  young  Nata  women  I  talked  to  preferred  the  life  of  an  omosimbe 
to  that  of  a  wife,  setting  up  independent  households,  often  with  small  businesses  in  the  towns. 
Betty  Potash  supplies  many  case  studies  of  East  African  widows  who  found  ways  of  avoiding 


71  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  pp.  238-247. 

72  Interviews  with  Nyamaganda  Magoto,  Bugerera,  2  October  1995  (Nata  cf); 
Nyawagamba  Magoto,  16  July  1995  (Nata  <?). 

73  "In  North  Forest  society,  patriarchal  and  lineal  idioms  of  inheritance  and  descent  politics 
gave  rise  to  an  institution  unique  in  Kivu  Rift  society,  the  spirit  wife  (kehanga,  creator's  wife). 
This  woman  was  consecrated  by  her  lineage  to  a  spirit  who  resided  either  on  one  of  the  many 
nearby  volcanoes  or  who  was  the  shade  of  a  departed  member  of  her  patriline.  As  such  she 
remained  in  her  natal  lineage."  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  p.  243. 

74  Interview  with  Paulina  Wambura,  Bugerera,  16  April  1995  (Kuria  ?). 


97 
levirate  marriages  to  remain  independent."  In  Ngoreme,  omosimbe  has  taken  the  connotation  of  a 
prostitute,  and  they  call  an  independent  woman  a  "widow"  (omosino).16 

An  omosimbe  assumes  many  of  the  characteristics  and  roles  of  a  man  in  her  relationships. 
She  goes  independently  to  men's  beer  parties  and  sits  with  them,  exchanging  stories.  In  the  past, 
men  did  not  allow  women  to  attend  these  parties  unless  specifically  brought  by  their  husbands.  An 
omosimbe  confers  as  a  man,  often  with  the  assistance  of  her  brother,  in  negotiations  over 
bridewealth  and  at  other  points  where  her  property  is  in  question.  One  man  told  me  that  men  often 
hold  their  secret  meetings  to  plan  for  age-set  rituals  or  other  important  community  matters  at  the 
home  of  an  omosimbe.  She  cooks  for  them  and  is  allowed  to  sit  in  on  their  council.  The  role  of  an 
independent  woman  obligates  her  to  make  beer  for  her  lover  and  his  friends,  who  help  her  to  farm 
or  herd,  but  also  allows  her  to  participate  in  their  conversation.  The  same  man  added  that  married 
men  prefer  to  drink  beer  at  the  home  of  an  omosimbe,  confiding  in  her  many  things  they  would 
never  think  to  tell  their  wives.77  Thus  abasimbe  and  abagomba,  acting  in  men's  roles  or  outside 
women's  roles,  participate  in  discussions  that  most  women  do  not  hear. 

Elderly,  post-menopausal  women  have  considerable  power  and  respect  in  their 
communities,  particularly  if  they  have  a  lot  children,  and  also  mediate  the  boundaries  of  gender  in 
particular  circumstances.  The  word  for  "old  woman"  in  Nata  is  omokuungu,  derived  from  a  Lakes 
Bantu  root  meaning  a  "rich  person,"  itself  derived  from  the  proto-Bantu  verb  -kung,  "to  gather,  to 
assemble."  In  other  places  around  the  lake  the  word  refers  to  rich  men  with  land  and  followers  or 


75  Potash,  Widows  in  Africa,  pp.  1-43. 

76  Interviews  with  Baginyi  Mutani,  Mayenye  Nyabunga,  Stella  D.  Katani,  Sanzate,  8 
September  1995  (Ikizu  ¥);  Alphaxad  Magocha  Matokore,  Kemegesi,  29  September  1995 
(Ngoreme  cc).  Ngoreme-F.nelish  Dictionary.  Parish  Office.  Iramba,  n.d. 

77  Interview  with  Nyawagambwa  Magoto  (Nata  <r),  Dhahabu  Gambamara  (Nata  ?), 
Kinanda  Sigara,  Mugeta  9  March  1996  (Ikizu  <?). 


98 
the  clients  of  the  king.  Uniquely  in  Mara  languages  it  refers  to  elderly  women  and  their  wealth  in 
children.  The  verb  "to  grow  old"  in  Mara  languages,  -kunguha,  is  also  derived  from  this  root  but 
the  noun  form  refers  only  to  older  women.78    Sarah  Le Vine's  study  of  Gusii  women  (also  Mara 
speakers)  notes  that  elderly  women  enjoyed  the  freedom  to  talk  in  public,  even  appearing  "raucous 
and  openly  aggressive"  and  drinking  beer  at  parties.  Women  achieved  status  as  elders  with  others 
to  help  them,  some  leisure  and  a  say  in  family  and  community  affairs.™ 
Concepts  of  Gender  Identity: 

The  discussion  of  extraordinary  women  and  their  access  to  men's  knowledge  brings  us 
finally  to  a  consideration  of  concepts  of  gender.  Are  these  extraordinary  women  then  male?  Janice 
Boddy  reminds  us  in  Wombs  and  Alien  Spirits,  that  gender  is  a  "symbolic  construct,"  varying  over 
time  and  from  one  society  to  the  next.  As  women  researchers  interviewing  women  in  other  places 
we  may  share  the  same  biology  but  we  cannot  assume  that  we  share  the  same  gender.80    In  her 
book,  Male  Daughters.  Female  Husbands,  [fi  Amadiume  notes  how  Nigerian  Igbo  daughters  could 
become  sons  (male)  and  women  could  become  husbands  (male). 

While  the  Igbo  institution  of  daughters  becoming  sons  appears  similar  to  the  omosimbe  of 
the  western  Serengeti  described  above,  the  practice  of  "female  husbands"  (often  known  in  the 
literature  as  "woman/woman  marriage")  also  occurs  as  a  Mara  institution  which  sheds  further  light 
on  local  concepts  of  gender.  Amadiume  postulates  that  this  separation  of  gender  from  sex  is 
necessary  in  a  society  where  women's  worlds  operate  separately  from  men's.  The  ability  for 


78  Schoenbrun,  Etymologies.  #  209  and  #2 1 0.  For  a  discussion  of  these  terms  see, 
Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  pp.  185-187. 

79  Sarah  LeVine  and  Robert  LeVine,  Mothers  and  Wives:  Gusii  Women  of  East  Africa 
(Chicago:  University  of  Chicago  Press,  1979),  pp.  12-14  and  Conclusion. 


99 
women  to  take  on  men's  gendered  roles  and  authority  in  certain  situations  mediates  these  gendered 
barriers.81  Regina  Smith  Oboler's  study  of  "woman/woman  marriage"  shows  that  theNandi,  in 
western  Kenya,  classify  a  childless  woman  who  pays  bridewealth  for  another  woman  to  bear  her 
children  as  male,  in  specified  socio-cultural  domains.  She  becomes  the  social  and  legal  father  of 
the  children  and  plays  a  male  role  in  all  negotiations  over  the  property  rights  involving  the  children. 
In  other  areas  of  life  not  involving  property,  people  continue  to  recognize  her  in  a  female  role.82 

All  languages  in  the  Mara  Region  use  the  term  ukamwana  (the  institution  of  "daughter-in- 
law")  to  designate  "woman/woman  marriage."  Here  they  conceptualize  the  "female  husband"  as 
the  "mother-in-law"  who  pays  bridewealth  for  the  marriage  of  her  dead  or  fictional  son.  Because 
of  the  functioning  of  the  "house-property"  system,  sons  inherit  through  the  "house"  of  their  mother. 
The  "mother-in-law"  or  "female  husband"  has  control  over  the  dispersal  of  the  property  from  her 
"house,"  although  her  husband  has  overall  control  of  the  joint  property  of  the  homestead.  Thus 
"woman/woman  marriage"  constituted  one  way  of  assuring  that  'the  house  would  not  die.'  People 
said  that  the  bride  in  a  ukamwana  arrangement  'married  the  house.'83 

The  "female  husband"  represents  another  category  of  extraordinary  women  who  occupy  a 
liminal  position,  mediating  between  male  and  female  roles  in  different  domains  of  life.  Recent 


81  Amadiume,  Male  Daughters.  Female  Husbands,  p.  89. 

82  Regina  Smith  Oboler,  "Is  the  Female  Husband  a  Man?  Woman/Woman  Marriage 
among  the  Nandi  of  Kenya,"  Ethnology  19(1)  (January  1 980):  69-88. 

83  Hugo  Huber,  "'Woman-Marriage'  in  Some  East  African  Societies,"  Anthropos  63/64 
(1968/69):  745-752.  Fieldwork  for  this  article  was  done  among  the  Simbete,  Iregi  and  Kenye  of 
the  northwest  portion  of  the  Mara  Region.  With  little  variation  the  practices  are  similar  to  what  I 
found  operating  in  the  Serengeti  district  in  the  southeast  of  the  region.  See  also  Denise  O'Brien, 
"Female  Husbands  in  Southern  Bantu  Societies,"in  Sexual  Stratification:  A  Cross-Cultural  View 
ed.  Alice  Schlegel  (New  York:  Columbia  University  Press,  1977),  pp.  109-126.  Eileen  Jensen 
Krige,  "Woman-Marriage,  with  Special  Reference  to  the  Lovedu  —  Its  Significance  for  the 
Definition  of  Marriage."  Africa  44.  1  (1974):  11-36. 


100 
literature  on  ethnicity  and  social  identity  in  Africa  has  shown  that  ethnic,  clan,  lineage,  or  age-set 
identities  are  situational  and  relational  rather  than  immutable  biological  fact.84  In  the  same  way, 
gender  identity  in  these  societies  is  variable  in  particular  contexts  and  for  particular  people.8'  The 
structured  mediation  of  gender  boundaries  allows  certain  women  access  to  men's  knowledge. 
While  I  found  little  evidence  that  these  women  shared  this  knowledge  with  other  women  in  their 
female  roles,  they  did  seem  to  bring  their  female  knowledge  to  bear  on  men's  discussions  of  the 
past.  They  failed  to  share  this  knowledge  with  women,  in  large  part,  because  the  spaces  that 
women  occupied  and  the  forms  of  narrative  in  which  they  engaged,  did  not  present  the  opportunity 
for  telling  ethnic  histories  among  women.  These  extraordinary  women  thus  acted  as  the  tributaries 
that  flowed  in  one  direction  between  these  streams  of  knowledge. 

Secret  Knowledge 

Besides  the  public  historical  narratives  told  by  men  in  their  gatherings  over  beer,  the 
family  histories  passed  on  to  children  and  daughters-in-law,  the  place-specific  knowledge  given  to 
young  men  on  hunting  and  raiding  trips,  and  the  bits  of  historical  knowledge  shared  at  funerals  or 
in  the  preparation  for  weddings,  a  realm  of  crucial  historical  knowledge  remains  that  people  cannot 
share  publicly.  This  knowledge,  specific  to  the  functioning  of  particular  social  groups,  must  be 
kept  within  those  channels  or  bring  risks  to  the  entire  group. 

For  example,  in  the  system  of  eldership  titles,  initiates  learn  masubho  or  "medicines" 
during  the  ceremony  to  join  the  rank.86  They  must  not  tell  these  secrets  to  anyone  outside  those 


84  For  Africa  for  example  see:  Vail,  The  Creation  of  Tribalism:  David  Newbury,  Kings 
and  Clans:  liwi  Island  and  the  Lake  Kivu  Rift.  1780-1840  (Madison:  University  of  Wisconsin 
Press,  1991);  and  Spear  and  Waller,  Being  Maasai. 

85  Oboler,  "Is  the  Female  Husband  a  Man?,"  pp.  69-88. 

86  See  Chapter  10  for  a  discussion  of  the  nyangi  system  of  eldership  ranks.  One  of  the  top 
ranking  elders  in  Nata  decided  that  the  heart  of  Nata  was  contained  in  those  secrets  and  that  unless 


101 
initiated  on  threat  of  death,  through  an  oath.  Women  go  through  initiation  separately  from  men 
and  learn  different  masubho.    Although  I  did  not  learn  these  secrets,  elders  told  me  that  they 
include  a  recitation  of  historical  information.  Whether  in  the  form  of  historical  chronicles  or  not, 
the  secrets  of  these  ranks  represent  important  sources  for  understanding  the  historical  development 
of  eldership  titles.87 

As  young  people  leave  the  villages  for  school  and  jobs  in  the  city  fewer  pursue  initiation 
into  these  titles.  Young  people  also  complain  that  the  feasts  required  for  taking  a  rank  cost  too 
much.  The  highest  ranking  elders  face  a  serious  crisis  in  which  they  cannot  pass  on  their 
knowledge  to  a  new  generation  because  no  has  the  means  to  be  initiated.  This  information  may  die 
with  the  present  generation  of  elders.  Concern  about  this  has  resulted  in  attempts  to  lower  the 
feasting  requirements  to  encourage  young  people  to  join.  No  movement  has  arisen  to  write  down 
these  secrets  to  preserve  this  information  for  future  generations. 

Elders  cannot  write  down  the  secrets  of  the  past  or  they  would  lose  their  efficacy.  The 
written  histories  that  educated  elders  have  produced  do  not  contain  this  kind  of  information.  Elders 
keep  these  "books"  as  personal  property,  rather  than  get  them  published  or  make  them  available  for 
public  consumption.88    The  books  most  often  contain  fairly  superficial  and  basic  narratives, 
including  almost  none  of  the  crucial  historical  information  concerning  specific  social  institutions 


1  learned  those  1  would  not  understand  Nata.  He  wanted  to  initiate  me,  which  would  involve  me 
giving  a  feast  for  the  elders.  We  had  already  planned  a  feast  at  which  time  the  Nata  elders  would 
tell  Nata  history  together  to  preserve  on  videotape.  At  that  meeting  his  ranking  counterparts 
decided  that  1  could  not  be  initiated  because  I  would  have  to  swear  an  oath  never  to  leave  Nata.  I 
suspect  that  a  reason  for  initiating  me  would  have  been  the  fear  that  I  already  knew  too  many 
secrets  and  that  the  oath,  and  my  lack  of  mobility,  would  keep  me  silent. 

87  Interview  Gabuso  Shoka,  Mbiso,  30  April  1995  (Nata  <?)  on  the  nyangi  system. 

88  The  elders  in  the  village  where  I  lived  requested  help  in  building  a  museum  for  the 
preservation  of  history  at  my  farewell  feast.  Yet  it  seemed  that  most  were  more  interested  in  the 
material  infrastructure  and  access  to  tourist  dollars  than  in  preserving  their  own  past. 


102 
such  as  eldership  titles.  I  pursued  a  highly  recommended  Ishenyi  written  history  for  months  before 
those  involved  finally  gave  me  access.  It  turned  out  to  be  five  short  pages  of  elementary  Ishenyi 
historical  knowledge.  Clearly,  having  the  "book"  itself  was  more  important  than  what  it  actually 
said.  The  content  of  these  written  histories  usually  consisted  of  a  predictable  and  pleasing  "tribal" 
narrative,  calculated  to  secure  status  among  other  "tribes"  rather  than  to  pass  on  the  secrets  of 
power. 

One  can  only  interpret  this  situation  within  a  wider  understanding  of  local  concepts  of 
knowledge.  Much  of  what  I  observed  in  the  western  Serengeti  corresponds  to  Guyer  and  Belinga's 
descriptions  of  Equatorial  Africa  where  knowledge  is  "particularly  highly  valued  and  complexly 
organized."  They  noted  that,  "knowledge  was  a  primary  resource  that  was  elaborated, 
differentiated  and  cultivated  far  beyond  levels  that  can  be  explained  by  the  mundane  adaptive  need 
to  exploit  land,  labor,  capital  or  any  other  material  or  social  resource."8'    Knowledge  was  multiple, 
diverse  and  ever  expanding,  not  contained  within  one  coherent  body  of  truth.  Individual  specialists 
controlled  their  own  personalistic  knowledge  acquired  by  birth,  sale,  capture  or  initiation. 

A  person's  knowledge  can  be  embodied  in  medicines  that  take  on  the  identity  of  the  person, 
as  well  as  a  power  of  their  own.  People  acquire  these  medicines  of  personal  knowledge  at  a  cost. 
In  the  western  Serengeti,  after  someone  joins  an  eldership  rank,  he  or  she  may  add  to  his  or  her 
secret  knowledge  by  going  to  a  more  experienced  member  and  giving  "tobacco"  in  return  for 
knowledge.  In  the  same  way,  elders  often  asked  me  for  "tobacco"  in  return  for  an  interview."1 


89  Guyer  and  Belinga,  "Wealth  in  People,"  pp.  93,  117. 

"  I  had  no  clear  policy  on  offering  gifts  or  money  to  informants.  I  followed  the  lead  of  my 
assistant.  Sometimes  when  we  left  I  gave  the  man  the  equivalent  of  about  1  US  dollar  for 
"tobacco."  Cues  on  whether  to  give  or  not  from  my  assistants  seemed  to  depend  on  a  number  of 
factors-how  well  they  knew  the  man,  what  their  relationship  to  him  was,  whether  he  was  poor, 
what  his  position  was,  how  long  we  had  stayed,  how  helpful  he  had  been,  or  whether  he  asked  for 
it. 


103 
Guyer  and  Belinga  report  that  knowledge  or  medicines  that  were  not  "purchased"  lost  their 
power." 

Western  Serengeti  people  also  commonly  condense  powerful  knowledge  about  the  past  in 
objects  such  as  medicine  bundles  that  they  pass  on  to  the  next  generation.  The  lineage  of  the 
person  who  made  the  medicine  bundle  chooses  an  individual  whom  they  entrust  with  the  secret  of 
its  composition.  The  entire  lineage  faces  severe  consequences  if  they  neglect  the  medicine  bundle. 
Guyer  and  Belinga  note  the  equivalence  of  people  and  things  as  repositories  of  knowledge  as  an 
important  aspect  of  Equatorial  society.92  Similarly,  in  the  western  Serengeti,  the  ancestors  guard 
and  ensure  continuity  of  the  most  important  knowledge  about  the  past,  whether  embodied  in 
medicine  bundles  or  at  the  sites  of  their  graves,  through  which  the  living  communicate  with  the 
dead. 

Local  history  books,  analogous  to  medicine  bundles,  represent  knowledge  embodied  in 
things.  Elders  passed  on  and  preserved  the  books  within  the  lineage  like  medicine  bundles.  People 
assumed  that  these  history  books  contained  more  knowledge  than  what  appeared  in  writing.  Elders 
often  asked  me  to  pay  for  the  privilege  of  reading  locally  produced  manuscripts.  Although  many  of 
these  groups  of  elders  wanted  to  have  their  books  published,  they  did  little  to  pursue  this  objective. 
If  they  published  the  books,  the  authors  would  lose  personal  control  over  these  "medicines."  The 
mass  production  of  medicine  bundles  or  books  of  knowledge  is  antithetical  to  the  concept  of  the 
singularity  of  knowledge  situated  within  particular  social  channels. 

Written  knowledge  bypasses  the  necessity  for  a  personal  relationship  and  reciprocal 
exchange.  In  village  primary  schools  today  teachers  complain  about  the  lack  of  textbooks,  but 


1  Guyer  and  Belinga,  "Wealth  in  People,"  pp.  111-1 12. 
!  Ibid. 


104 

many  prefer  to  be  the  only  one  with  a  book  to  dispense  the  knowledge  at  their  discretion.  Some  say 
that  storerooms  are  full  of  unused  textbooks.    Secrecy  and  orality  render  knowledge  a  scarce 
commodity  that  is  accessible  only  through  personalized  reciprocity.  Secrecy  is  a  general  principle 
used  in  many  social  interactions  to  gain  power  in  that  relationship.  The  concept  of  knowledge  as  a 
freely  accessible  resource  open  to  all  is  foreign  and  threatening  to  this  system  of  exchange. 

Even  if  groups  could  control  written  secrets,  this  knowledge  might  then  lose  its  most 
important  attribute,  its  flexibility.93  In  the  case  of  the  eldership  titles,  writing  this  knowledge  would 
ossify  ritual  and  prevent  its  elaboration  and  development  by  individual  adepts.  It  would  cease  to  be 
a  living  tradition.94  Written  knowledge  does  away  with  the  need  for  elders  to  imagine  and  shape 
the  past  as  they  discuss  the  case  at  hand  over  beer.  It  destroys  the  context  in  which  oral  tradition  is 
preserved.    Written  histories  demand  conformity  to  one  "true"  history  rather  than  a  host  of 
different  kinds  of  histories  told  differently  in  different  contexts,  especially  here,  where  publication 
is  too  expensive  and  rare  for  democratic  use. 

Another  example  of  secret  knowledge  is  the  rituals  of  the  "ruling"  generation-set  for 
healing  and  protecting,  or  "cooling"  the  land  and  its  people.  Every  eight  years  the  generation-set 
distributed  medicine  around  the  community's  boundaries  in  a  way  prescribed  by  a  prophet. 
Knowledge  of  the  generation-set  secrets  by  outsiders  would  render  the  group  vulnerable  to  enemy 
attack,  disease  and  witchcraft.    Elders  were  reluctant  to  divulge  details  about  the  work  of  the 


93  This  is  a  classic  anthropological  insight,  see  for  example,  Laura  Bohannan,  "A 
Geneological  Charter,"  Africa  22,  4  (October  1 952):  30 1  -3 1 5,  discusses  the  Tiv  genealogies  as  a 
validation  of  present  relationships,  the  genealogies  must  change  over  time  and  in  different 
situations  to  be  consistent  with  present  social  relationships.  She  argues  that  writing  down  these 
genealogies  would  make  them  rigid  and  this  incompatible  with  their  usefulness  as  social  charter. 

"This  was  the  case  in  the  1993  coronation  of  the  Kabaka  Ronald  Mutebi  II  in  Buganda 
where  some  of  those  officiating  referred  to  the  missionary/anthropologist  John  Roscoe's  account  of 
the  ceremony.  John  Roscoe,  The  Baganda:  An  Account  of  their  Native  Customs  and  Beliefs.  2nd 
ed.  (London:  Cass,  1965). 


105 
generation-set  in  protecting  the  land  and  often  avoided  my  questions  or  generalized  their  answers. 
In  Nata,  elders  told  me  repeatedly  that  the  ruling  generation-set's  only  task  was  to  walk  together 
across  the  land  every  eight  years  and  feast  at  different  people's  houses-like  a  solidarity  walk." 
Just  understanding  how  this  ritual  functioned  in  each  ethnic  group,  apart  from  the  particular 
medicines,  required  patient  piecing  together  of  this  cryptic  information.  Although  generation-sets 
figure  prominently  in  colonial  ethnographies  of  the  region,  I  have  found  in  them  no  discussion  of 
the  generation-set  function  in  protecting  the  land." 

Elders  consider  it  crucially  important  that  the  knowledge  of  medicines  to  protect  the  land 
and  the  people  not  fall  into  the  hands  of  those  with  malevolent  intent  toward  the  community. 
Those  who  possess  knowledge  give  it  to  those  who  deserve  to  know.  If  anyone  can  gain  knowledge 
in  a  book,  the  elders  cannot  regulate  the  integrity  of  those  who  have  access  to  this  knowledge.  In 
my  own  research,  much  of  the  talk  and  visiting  before  interviews  involved  an  appraisal  by  the 
elders  of  whether  1  was  worthy  to  deal  with  the  knowledge  they  held.    They  considered  some  kinds 
of  information  better  lost  than  to  be  made  available  to  those  who  would  misuse  it.  Greet 
Kershaw's  study  of  Kikuyu  oral  traditions  about  land  demonstrates  that  the  elders  intentionally 
allow  some  kinds  of  knowledge  to  be  forgotten.  Only  the  most  senior  Kikuyu  elders  know  about 
events  of  the  past  which  brought  evil.  They  decide  whether  this  knowledge  should  be  passed  on  or 
not.96 

People  understand  the  giving  and  receiving  of  historical  information  not  as  a  quaint 
antiquarian  hobby  but  rather  as  a  tremendous  source  of  power.  This  was  made  abundantly  clear  to 
me  during  my  research.  The  people  in  Robanda,  only  a  few  kilometers  from  the  Serengeti  National 


"  Malcolm  Ruel,  "Kuria  Generation  Classes,"  Africa  32  (1962):  14-36,  Bischofberger, 
The  Generation  Classes. 

96  Greet  Kershaw,  Mau  Mau  From  Below  (Athens:  Ohio  University  Press,  1997),  p.  16. 


106 
Park,  Ikoma  Gate,  feared  to  tell  me  about  their  origins  in  Sonjo,  because  general  knowledge  of  this 
might  lessen  their  claim  to  land  that  the  Park  wanted  for  expansion  and  the  Park  might  send  them 
back  to  Sonjo."    In  Ikizu  a  noticeable  rift  exists  between  two  factions  of  the  ethnic  group,  each 
with  its  roots  in  the  stories  of  origin.  The  Ikizu  fight  out  this  conflict  in  the  political  and  economic 
arena,  with  each  side  appealing  to  history  for  its  legitimacy.  Both  sides  insisted  that  I  write  the 
"true"  story  of  Ikizu,  the  "full"  story  of  Ikizu,  not  the  lies  of  the  other  side.  In  each  interview  a 
different  set  of  political  issues  subtly  intruded  as  elders  spoke  about  the  past. 

Knowledge  vested  in  places  such  as  springs,  hills  or  rocks,  called  emisambwa,  comprises 
another  kind  of  knowledge  about  the  past  outside  the  recognized  ethnic  narratives.  These  sacred 
places  for  ritual  and  sacrifice,  appear  most  often  in  connection  with  the  grave  of  an  ancestor.  The 
stories  of  these  ancestors  as  great  prophets  or  rainmakers  provide  important  information  about  past 
events  as  well  as  social  organization.  The  landscape  can  be  "read"  like  a  "book"  by  walking  over  it 
and  hearing  the  stories  connected  with  each  site.  Only  those  in  the  lineage  of  the  ancestor  buried 
there  have  access  to  the  secrets  of  the  emisambwa,  the  rituals  used  to  propitiate  the  ancestral 
spirits. 

The  ancestors  themselves,  whose  spirits  reside  at  those  places,  preserve  the  historical 
knowledge  embodied  in  these  sites.  Elders  often  related  stories  about  serious  misfortune  visited  on 
a  community  when  its  people  forgot  the  grave  sites  of  ancestors,  the  rituals  of  propitiation,  or  the 
meaning  of  past  events.  The  elders  of  the  community  would  then  consult  a  dream-prophet 
(omugabho)  who  got  in  touch  with  the  ancestor  involved  and  told  the  people  what  was  needed  to 
make  things  right  again.  A  few  generations  back,  a  prophet  told  the  Nata  lineage  (who  went  to  ask 
for  rain  at  the  grave-site  of  Gitaraga)  that  Gitaraga  wanted  them  to  make  an  offering  first  at  the 


"  They  had  good  reasons  for  these  fears  from  past  interactions  with  the  Park  and  it  did  not 
help  that  my  husband  was  doing  his  research  with  Serengeti  National  Park  at  the  same  time. 


107 
grave  of  his  wife  before  they  visited  him.  Through  this  experience,  elders  learned  the  story  of 
Nyaheri  and  her  grave  site.98  People  gain  crucial  historical  knowledge  through  the  dead,  even  if  the 
living  forget. 

Elders  continue  to  keep  a  certain  kind  of  knowledge  secret  precisely  because  they  highly 
value  it  and  treat  it  with  caution,  either  to  maintain  its  efficacy  or  to  prevent  disaster.  Knowledge 
about  the  past  cannot  be  divorced  from  its  connection  to  relationships  that  have  ongoing  meaning. 
People  remember  and  pass  on  stories  about  the  past  because  this  knowledge  is  part  of  the  social 
landscape  of  particular  groups  of  people.  Secret  knowledge,  like  gendered  knowledge,  is 
maintained  by  the  organization  of  social  space.  Only  titled  elders  can  enter  the  house  where  the 
secrets  are  told  to  a  new  initiate  taking  the  rank.  Only  those  in  a  certain  lineage  can  approach  the 
sacred  places  with  ritual  sacrifices.  Only  those  of  the  generation-set  in  power  can  walk  the 
boundaries  of  the  land  to  spread  the  medicines  of  protection.  Knowledge  about  the  past  flows  in 
these  particular  channels,  kept  within  its  banks  by  the  social  organization  of  space. 

Conclusion 

This  chapter  has  demonstrated  that  different  kinds  of  historical  knowledge  are  confined  to 
the  social  spaces  of  those  who  transmit  them,  to  the  extent  that  women  and  men  sharing  the  same 
household  do  not  share  the  same  stories  about  the  past.    Over  the  past  two  decades,  much  of  the 
debate  among  historians  of  oral  tradition  has  centered  on  a  critique  of  Jan  Vansina's  early  work, 
where  he  postulated  "chains  of  transmission"  for  oral  traditions,  making  it  possible  for  the  historian 
to  compare  separate  versions.  David  W.  Cohen,  and  others,  made  a  case  for  the  flow  of  historical 
information  in  all  kinds  of  informal  channels,  an  argument  that  destroyed  any  hope  of  establishing 


98  Interview  with  Keneti  Mahembora,  Sangang'a,  17  February,  1996  (Nata  d1). 


108 

separate  and  "uncontaminated"  sources."  Yet  this  literature  has  failed  to  note  that  most  historical 
knowledge  is  not  randomly  shared.100  This  chapter  has  demonstrated  the  social  spaces  of 
knowledge  in  the  case  of  gendered  knowledge  and  the  secret  knowledge  of  particular  social  groups 
such  as  the  medicines  of  eldership  ranks,  the  rituals  of  generation-sets  and  the  sacred  sites  of 
lineages.  This  evidence  returns  the  flow  of  historical  tradition,  as  opposed  to  more  ubiquitous 
stories  about  the  past  in  popular  culture,  to  particular  channels,  given  the  inevitable  floods  and 
tributaries  that  establish  linkages  with  other  streams.  Historical  knowledge  follows  the  channels 
and  direction  established  by  social  practice. 

On  the  other  hand,  1  have  also  shown  that  institutionalized  means  for  bridging  these 
channels  also  exist.  Women,  acting  in  men's  roles  as  prophets,  childless  women,  independent 
women  and  post-menopausal  women  learn  men's  knowledge  and  participate  in  both  men's  and 
women's  storytelling  experiences.  Whether  these  women  tell  men's  ethnic  narratives  or  not,  they 
must  use  this  knowledge  in  their  telling  of  women's  narrative  genres.  Everyone  knows  the  basic 
outline  of  the  ethnic  origin  story,  although  few  have  opportunity  or  the  expertise  to  tell  it.  Men 
know  the  fundamentals  of  family  and  genealogical  history  but  do  not  have  the  personal  stake  in 
memorizing  its  details.  The  same  men  who  take  eldership  titles  are  also  members  of  the  generation- 
set  and  of  a  lineage  with  responsibility  to  maintain  ancestral  sites  or  medicine  bundles.  The  secrets 


99  This  insight  thanks  to  personal  communication  with  Steven  Feierman.  The  debate  over 
chains  of  transmission  is  summarized  by  Hamilton,  '"Living  with  Fluidity,'"  in  papers  from  the 
International  Conference,  "Words  and  Voices."  See  also  David  Newbury's  paper  in  the  same 
collection.  Cohen,  Womunafu's  Bunafu.  p.  8-9.  J.  Vansina,  "Some  Perceptions  on  the  Writing  of 
African  History:  1948-1992."  Itinerario  (1995):  77-91.  Cohen's  critique  is  most  fully  developed  in 
David  W.  Cohen,  The  Combing  of  History  (Chicago:  Chicago  University  Press,  1994)  and  Cohen, 
"The  Undefining.". 

100  Even  though  Cohen  argued  this  in  the  case  of  Luo  women  taking  care  of  young  women, 
see  Cohen,  "Pirn's  doorway,"  pp.  191-235. 


109 
of  historical  knowledge  controlled  by  each  of  these  social  groups  influence  the  secrets  of  the  others 
because  they  are  stored  as  one  man's  memories. 

I  have  explored  the  "lived  circumstances"  of  men  and  women  in  the  western  Serengeti  to 
understand  how  different  realms  of  historical  knowledge  develop  and  are  transmitted.    People 
transmit  and  maintain  this  knowledge  by  the  ways  in  which  they  imagine  and  organize  social  space 
in  daily  practice.  Similarly,  in  Purity  and  Exile  Malkki  demonstrates  how  "historical 
consciousness  is  embedded  in  and  emerges  from  particular,  local,  lived  circumstances."  She  traces 
the  construction  of  a  Hutu  identity  and  national  history  in  the  refugee  camps  as  opposed  to  the 
cosmopolitan  identity  and  denial  of  history  among  town  refugees.101  The  lived  circumstances  of 
different  social  groups  confine  particular  domains  of  knowledge  to  the  memories  of  individual 
members  of  that  group.  Yet  their  knowledge  is  influenced  by  other  realms  of  knowledge  because 
individuals  frequently  cross  social  boundaries  and  are  simultaneously  members  of  various  social 
groups. 

The  channeling  of  historical  knowledge  in  the  spaces  of  social  practice  does  not  mean  that 
oral  historians  can  return  to  the  easy  assumption  of  discrete  "chains  of  transmission."  The  banks 
of  those  streams  of  knowledge  are  often  breeched  and  numerous  tributaries  connect  one  with 
another.  Nevertheless,  because  knowledge  crosses  the  boundaries  of  social  space  in  structured, 
rather  than  random  ways,  the  historian  can  develop  tools  for  interpreting  these  various 
representations  of  the  past  in  relation  to  each  other. 

The  understanding  of  historical  narrators  and  their  narrations  within  particular  social 
spaces  built  in  this  chapter  must  be  kept  in  mind  when  specific  sets  of  oral  tradition  are  explored  in 
the  remainder  of  the  dissertation.  The  social  organization  of  knowledge  provides  key  insights  for 


101  Liisa  Malkki,  Purity  and  Exile:  Violence.  Memory,  and  National  Cosmology  Among 
Hutu  Refugees  in  Tanzania  (Chicago:  University  of  Chicago  Press,  1995),  p.  241. 


110 
the  interpretation  of  oral  tradition.  Nevertheless,  before  the  oral  traditions  of  origin  are  presented, 
in  Chapter  4,  it  is  necessary  to  look  more  specifically  at  the  form  of  historical  consciousness  in  the 
western  Serengeti  that  divides  history  into  two  major  periods,  before  and  after  the  disasters  of  the 
late  nineteenth  century. 


CHAPTER  THREE 

HISTORICAL  CONSCIOUSNESS: 

THE  DISASTERS  OF  THE  LATE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  AS  RUPTURE 

The  previous  chapter  demonstrated  how  men  reworked  oral  traditions  into  unique  "tribal" 
histories,  during  the  colonial  period.  The  lens  of  the  "tribe"  filters  much  of  what  we  know  about 
past  forms  of  social  identity,  while  the  social  spaces  of  gendered  discourse  and  secret  knowledges 
structure  the  transmission  and  maintenance  of  knowledge  about  the  past. 

This  chapter  argues,  however,  that  events  of  the  period  immediately  preceding  colonial  rule 
in  this  region,  1870-1900,  also  influenced  oral  traditions  in  a  fundamental  way.  The  disasters  of 
the  late  nineteenth  century  precipitated  radical  social  transformations  that  fragmented  continuity 
with  the  past  and  altered  historical  consciousness.  Although  elders  remember  these  disasters  as  a 
horrible  experience,  the  transformations  that  resulted  constitute  a  tribute  to  the  creative  and 
indomitable  spirit  of  the  peoples  of  the  western  Serengeti,  who  not  only  survived  the  disasters  but 
found  in  those  experiences  new  ways  to  prosper. ' 

History,  from  the  perspective  of  oral  traditions,  in  some  sense  begins  with  the  disasters. 
The  oral  traditions  concerning  earlier  times  take  the  form  of  either  mythical  and  abbreviated  stories 
of  origin  and  migration  or  cryptic  lists  of  settlement  sites  and  clan  names.  They  provide  no 
coherent  account  of  events  or  personalities  of  the  earlier  period.  By  contrast,  elders  narrate  the 


1  For  others  accounts  of  social  transformation  during  period  of  disaster  see,  James  L. 
Giblin,  "Famine,  Political  Authority  and  Foreign  Capital  in  Northeastern  Tanzania,  1840-1940" 
(Ph.D.  Dissertation,  University  of  Wisconsin-Madison,  1991);  Ambler,  Kenyan  Communities,  and 
Gregory  H.  Maddox,  "Leave  Wagogo,  You  have  no  Food:  Famine  and  Survival  in  Ugogo, 
Tanzania,  1916-1961"  (Ph.D.  Dissertation,  Northwestern  University,  1988). 

Ill 


112 
stories  of  battles  with  Maasai,  suffering  during  famines,  and  the  walk  to  Sukuma  with  elaborate 
precision. 

Although  a  middle  period  of  vague  and  timeless  traditions  appears  as  a  structural  feature 
of  oral  narrative  throughout  Africa,  the  moment  at  which  traditions  become  historically  grounded 
in  verifiable  events  seems  to  represent  a  point  of  transition  in  social  identity.  Among  societies  with 
centralized  states,  the  traditions  of  historical  time  often  begin  with  the  consolidation  of  the  kingdom 
under  a  known  king,  even  if  the  antiquity  of  the  kingdom  is  extended  by  reconfigured  genealogies.2 
In  the  oral  traditions  of  the  Maasai  historical  time  begins  with  the  leadership  of  prophets  in  the  late 
eighteenth  century.3    In  comparison  to  these  examples,  historical  time  in  the  western  Serengeti 
begins  relatively  late  and,  significantly,  with  the  events  of  the  disasters.  From  the  perspective  of 
oral  tradition  this  period  represents  a  rupture  in  social  time.4 

In  the  western  Serengeti  this  era  initiated  not  only  a  break  in  time  but  the  introduction  of 
new  concepts  of  time  altogether.    A  new  way  of  calculating  social  time,  embodied  in  the 
succession  of  cycling  age-sets,  emerged  during  this  period  of  disasters.  Because  the  age-set  names 
cycled  after  every  three  generations,  this  way  of  calculating  time  could  be,  anachronistically, 


2  For  kingdoms  in  Eastern  African  see  Feierman,  The  Shambaa  Kingdom:  Newbury, 
Kings  and  Clans:  Randall  Packard,  Chiefship  and  Cosmology:  An  Historical  Study  of  Political 
Competition  (Bloomington:  Indiana  University  Press,  1 981 );  Wrigley,  Kingship  and  State. 

3  John  Lawrence  Berntsen,  "Pastoralism,  Raiding  and  Prophets:  Maasailand  in  the 
Nineteenth  Century"  (Ph.D.  Dissertation,  University  of  Wisconsin-Madison,  1979),  p.  112. 

Rosaldo  describes  a  similar  phenomenon  in  his  study  of  Illongot  society  in  the 
Philippines.  He  found  that  history  was  divided  into  two  major  periods-before  and  after  the 
Japanese  invasion  of  1 945.  Rosaldo  wrote:  "The  stories  of  1 945  were  so  numerous,  so  vivid,  so 
detailed,  so  often  told  that  it  took  me  over  a  year  to  realize  that  they  represented  but  a  narrow  strip 
in  time."  This  amplified  moment  in  the  historical  imagination  became  "the  great  divide  that 
separated  a  bygone  past  from  one  that  merged  into  the  present."  Rosaldo's  interpretation  of 
various  oral  narratives  had  to  take  into  consideration  that  this  brief  period  had  been  generalized  to 
represent  the  whole  period  before  1945.  Rosaldo,  Ilongot  Headhunting,  pp.  38-54. 


113 
projected  back  to  represent  the  passage  of  time  before  the  disasters.  With  this  device  people  could 
maintain  continuity  with  the  past  in  extremely  uncertain  times.  The  process  of  reformulating  age- 
sets  is  discussed  in  Chapter  9.  Here,  1  use  these  transformations  in  concepts  of  time  as  evidence 
for  discontinuity  in  social  time  and  the  radical  reformulation  of  identity  during  the  period  of 
disasters. 

The  rupture  in  historical  consciousness  indicates  that  fundamental  changes  in  social 
identity  took  place  during  the  period  of  disasters.  As  has  already  been  shown,  particular  social 
groups  maintain  and  transmit  knowledge  that  has  no  independent  existence  outside  that  group. 
People  cannot  integrally  maintain  and  transmit  historical  knowledge  if  the  social  group  in  which 
that  knowledge  is  based  radically  reconfigures  itself.  The  emerging  stories  of  new  groups,  which 
take  their  heritage  from  a  variety  of  former  identities,  incorporate  bits  of  knowledge  from  older 
traditions. 

Scholars  have  made  a  similar  case  to  explain  why  Maasai  oral  tradition  begins  at  the  end 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  it  is  clear  from  other  evidence  that  Maa-speakers  were  present  in 
the  Rift  Valley  beginning  around  1600.  Lamprey  and  Waller  propose  that,  "traditions  cannot 
survive  the  communities  that  produce  them  and  for  which  they  have  meaning."  They  suggest  that 
if  the  identity  and  composition  of  a  community  changes  dramatically  during  a  period  of  stress,  "it  is 
unlikely  that  the  emergent  community  will  assimilate  the  old  corpus  of  tradition,  except  in 
fragmented  form,  since  these  traditions  again  refer  to  events  and  processes  in  which  the  community 
now  has  no  collective  part."s 


'  Richard  Lamprey  and  Richard  Waller,  "The  Loita-Mara  Region  in  Historical  Times: 
Patterns  of  Subsistence,  Settlement  and  Ecological  Change,"  in  Early  Pastoralists  of  South-western 
Kenya,  ed.  Peter  Robertshaw  (Nairobi:  British  Institute  in  East  Africa,  1990),  p.  19. 


114 

For  the  historian  it  becomes  problematic  to  interpret  the  meaning  of  these  dramatic  social 
transformations  without  access  to  evidence  that  is  not  itself  a  product  of  these  changes.  The  way  in 
which  western  Serengeti  people  reconfigured  social  identity  during  the  period  of  disasters  is  the 
product  of  much  longer-term  social  processes.  Yet  knowledge  of  times  before  the  disasters  is  only 
accessible  to  the  historian  through  oral  traditions,  which  the  new  communities  that  survived  the 
disasters  and  established  new  identities  to  deal  with  the  changing  situation  have  fragmented  and 
reworked.  The  fragments  of  oral  tradition  that  survived  have  been  taken  out  of  context  and  given 
new  meaning. 

The  historian  must  interpret  the  traditions  of  the  earlier  period  with  knowledge  of  how 
people  transformed  social  identities  during  the  disasters.    Yet  the  historian  cannot  understand  these 
transformations  without  knowledge  of  social  process  in  the  earlier  period.  To  understand  the 
historical  development  of  this  region  from  earliest  times  on,  through  the  interpretation  of  oral 
traditions,  a  basic  knowledge  of  the  events  of  the  late  nineteenth  century  disasters  and  the 
subsequent  changes  in  social  identity  is  necessary.  The  changes  of  this  period  provide  the  context 
in  which  I  interpret  oral  traditions  throughout  the  dissertation. 

The  experiences  of  ecological  breakdown,  indirect  contact  with  the  Swahili  caravan  trade 
and  Maasai  raids  each  caused  specific  social  transformations  that  were  in  turn  reflected  in  oral 
traditions  about  earlier  periods.  The  historical  interpretation  of  pre-disaster  traditions  depends 
upon  an  awareness  of  these  changes  in  the  oral  traditions.  The  ecological  breakdown,  which 
resulted  from  famine  and  disease,  demanded  the  reformulation  of  the  networks  of  security 
previously  provided,  in  part,  by  the  interdependent  regional  economies  of  hunters,  herders  and 
farmers.  Western  Serengeti  farmers  did  this  by  developing  their  own  interdependent  relations 
between  kin  living  in  different  ecological  niches  and  practicing  slightly  different  economic 
strategies.  Because  of  this  change  oral  traditions  now  obscure  this  earlier  reliance  on  hunters  and 


115 
herders,  making  it  extremely  difficult  to  reconstruct  the  earlier  regional  system.  The  ecological 
disasters  also  required  changes  in  settlement  structures.  People  now  understand  the  new  patterns 
as  "traditional"  and  forget  what  came  before. 

The  caravan  trade,  which  introduced  new  diseases  and  increased  trade  of  wild  animal 
products,  resulted  primarily  in  ties  of  dependency  to  Sukuma  and  the  commercialization  of  hunting. 
The  origin  traditions  of  Ikizu,  Nata  and  Sizaki  claim  a  connection  to  Sukuma,  which  we  can  date  to 
this  period.  People  have  also  accepted  forms  of  eldership  titles  borrowed  from  Sukuma  during  the 
time  of  disasters  and  grafted  onto  the  older  system  as  "traditional"  ranks.  Oral  traditions  may  also 
distort  the  past  significance  of  hunting,  due  to  the  identification  of  forest  products  as  a  source  of 
cattle  wealth  during  this  period. 

Finally,  the  experience  of  intensive  Maasai  raiding  had  far  reaching  effects  on  historical 
consciousness.  Although  contact  with  the  Maasai  probably  began  gradually  and  peacefully  around 
mid-nineteenth  century,  oral  tradition  tells  us  that  this  enmity  dates  from  the  beginning  of  time. 
Although  other  evidence  tells  us  that  the  period  of  most  intense  raiding  took  place  after  the 
intrusion  of  colonial  rule,  oral  tradition  dates  the  most  severe  raiding  to  an  unspecified  earlier 
period  and  attributes  all  of  the  disasters  that  later  took  place  to  the  effects  of  Maasai  raiding.  In 
this  period,  western  Serengeti  communities  drew  on  Maasai  culture  to  reorder  their  age-sets.  In 
doing  so,  they  revised  their  concept  of  time. 

All  these  changes  dating  to  the  period  of  disasters  have  fundamentally  affected  the  way 
that  people  understand  their  past  and  what  they  consider  to  be  "traditional."  The  historian  cannot 
interpret  oral  traditions  of  earlier  periods  without  understanding  this  period.  The  story  of  how 
people  coped  with  these  disasters  and  the  social  transformations  that  resulted  are  the  subject  of  the 
last  two  chapters  in  this  dissertation.  This  chapter  acquaints  the  reader  with  the  major  events  and 
material  conditions  based  on  oral  and  written  sources  from  this  period.  It  describes  the  cycle  of 


116 
disease,  famine,  raids,  ecological  disaster,  and  eventual  social  collapse  in  which  many  people 
moved  to  Sukuma  or  to  other  places  of  refuge.  The  effects  of  the  caravan  trade  and  the  increased 
pressure  of  Maasai  raiding  contributed  to  the  cycle  of  crisis.  Oral  traditions  represent  the  disasters 
as  the  turning  point  between  distant  and  recent  history. 

Rupture  in  Social  Identity  at  the  Time  of  Crisis 

Oral  traditions  about  the  period  of  disasters  provide  the  core  images  for  understanding 
what  this  rupture  meant  for  historical  consciousness.  The  Ishenyi  story  of  disaster  is  perhaps  the 
most  extreme  case  of  rupture  in  social  identity.  Its  content  reveals  local  interpretations  of  many 
aspects  of  the  disastrous  events  of  the  late  nineteenth  century. 

The  following  story  comes  from  the  Ishenyi  people,  who  now  live  between  Nata  and  the 

Ikizu.  Nyeberekera,  where  the  story  begins,  is  located  on  the  western  edge  of  the  Serengeti 

National  Park  today  [For  map  see  Figure  3-1 :  Ishenyi  Dispersal  from  Nyeberekera.].  The  Ishenyi 

need  special  permission  from  the  park  to  revisit  this  site  for  propitiation  of  ancestral  spirits  who 

still  reside  there.  The  landmark  for  Nyeberekera  is  a  tall  rock  outcropping,  Bwinamoki,  which  one 

can  see  for  miles  away  over  the  plains  and  which  functioned  as  a  lookout  for  Maasai  raids  [  See 

Figure  3-2:  The  Ishenyi  Story  of  Nyeberekera.].  Nyeberekera  refers  to  a  general  area  of  settlement 

and  to  a  pool  on  the  Grumeti  River  that  is  an  ancient  site  of  ancestral  spirits.6  Mikael  Magessa 

Sarota,  the  son  of  one  colonial  Ishenyi  chief,  told  this  version  of  the  story: 

Long  ago  the  Ishenyi  lived  at  Nyeberekera,  over  to  the  east  ofMugumu,  inside  the  park. 
There  are  hills  there,  a  fertile  land  that  cries  buubuubuu . .  .  when  you  walk  on  it.   The 
land  was  called  Nyeberekera.   This  is  where  we  came  from.    When  we  left  there,  we  came 
to  Nyigoti.   The  Maasai  drove  us  out  in  the  time  before  my  grandfather.   The  Maasai 
raided  us.   We  were  farmers  and  they  were  herders.   The  Maasai  came  to  steal  the  few 
cattle  that  the  Ishenyi  kept.   The  Ishenyi  had  a  dream  prophet  at  that  time  named 


6  Interview  with  Mashauri  Ng'ana,  Issenye,  2  November  1995  (Ishenyi  d").  He  says  this  is 
where  people  went  to  fish  and  got  swallowed  up,  the  clan  of  Abang'ohe  from  Bene  Okinyonyi,  but 
all  Ishenyi  go  there  to  propitiate  the  spirit.    This  is  not  the  site  where  Shanyangi  is  propitiated. 


117 

Shanyangi.   When  the  Maasai  would  come,  just  enter  their  land,  Shanyangi  would  make 
biting  ants  appear  which  would/ill  the  river  and  prevent  them  from  crossing.   Then  he 
would  make  bees  that  would  swarm  all  over  and  drive  them  back.   They  would  be  unable 
to  raid  the  lshenyi.   Then  one  day  the  Maasai  sal  together  to  decide  how  to  defeat  this 
Ishenyi  prophet  who  sent  ants  and  bees  against  them.   They  went  to  their  own  prophet 
who  could  stop  the  rain  from  coming.  This  prophet  stopped  the  rain  from  falling  on 
Nyeberekera.  At  this  time  the  Ishenyi  were  farming  with  wooden  hoes  because  the  soil 
was  so  fertile  and  loose.  They  had  ample  food  and  there  was  no  hunger.  This  Maasai 
prophet  stopped  the  rain  from  falling  for  eight  years.  All  of  the  food  stores  were 
exhausted.   When  this  happened,  the  Ishenyi  went  to  their  prophet  Shanyangi  and  asked 
him  to  send  rain.  He  said  that  he  was  not  a  rainmaker  and  only  knew  the  medicine  of 
war  against  the  Maasai.  Nevertheless,  they  would  not  listen  and  sat  in  their  meetings 
over  and  over  again,  asking  him  to  make  rain.  Finally  they  decided  that  Shanyangi 
must  be  lying  to  them  —  how  could  he  be  such  a  powerful  prophet  and  not  know  how  to 
make  rain?  Surely  it  was  not  true!  When  the  drought  continued,  they  decided  to  kill 
Shanyangi.   They  tied  him  up  on  a  tree  and  chopped  down  the  tree,  which  fell  and  killed 
him.  Yet  of  course  once  he  died  there  was  no  one  to  protect  them  and  they  were  driven 
out,  dispersed  here  and  there  by  the  Maasai  raiders.  Some  came  to  Nyigoti,  near  to 
where  the  Nata  were  living.  Others  refused  to  come  to  Nata  because  the  Nata  were  sick 
with  kaswende  (syphilis).  Many  Ishenyi  warriors  impaled  themselves  on  their  own 
spears  rather  than  go  to  Nata  and  suffer  the  slow  death  o/kaswende.  Others  went  to 
Kuria  where  they  became  the  Iregi  of  today,  those  of  the  clan  ofSarega.   The  Iregi  are 
really  Ishenyi  people.   Those  who  moved  near  to  the  Nata  settled  and  began  living  there. 
Then  another  famine  came  and  they  were  forced  to  go  to  Sukuma  to  beg  for  food.  After 
the  drought  lifted,  they  returned  from  Sukuma  and  came  to  live  where  they  are  today  at 
Nagusi.   They  did  not  return  to  Nyigoti.   This  terrible  famine  was  called  the  "Hunger  of 
the  Feet. "  It  was  called  that  because  of  the  sores  people  got  in  their  feet  as  they  walked 
to  Sukuma  in  the  dust.  7 

All  of  the  elements  of  the  disaster  appear  in  this  story-pressure  from  the  Maasai,  drought,  famine 

and  new  epidemic  diseases.  These  events  result  in  dispersal  and  regrouping  in  a  new  place  with  a 

new  identity.  Famines  bracket  this  story,  beginning  with  the  "Hunger  that  Finished  the  Cattle"  and 

ending  with  the  "Hunger  of  the  Feet." 

Some  hint  of  former  identities  is  evident  in  this  story.  Although  elders  tell  this  account  as 

an  "Ishenyi"  story,  many  elders  agreed  that  those  who  lived  at  Nyeberekera  called  themselves 

"Regata"  and  those  who  went  to  Kuria  at  the  dispersal  were  known  as  "Iregi."  In  Sonjo  today  the 

inhabitants  of  a  village  named  "Regata"  tell  the  same  story  of  dispersal.  The  Maasai  Loitai  of  the 


7  Interview  with  Mikael  Magessa  Sarota,  Issenye,  25  August  1995  (Ishenyi  <?). 


118 


Ishenyi  Dispersal  from  Nyeberekera 

c.1870-1895 

The  Generation  of  Disasters 


ONata 

9  Ikoma 

O  Ishenyi 

•  Ngoreme 

Seregeti  N.P. 

Ikorongo    •!tununu 


to  Kcjria 
Iregi  , 


mate 


iNyamatoke 


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Figure  3-1 :  Ishenyi  Dispersal  from  Nyeberekera 


Bwinamoki  Rocks  at  Nyeberekera,  16  February  1996 


Mikael  Magessa  Sarota,  Issenye,  25  August 
1995,  narrator  of  the  Nyeberekera  Story. 


Figure  3-2:  The  Ishenyi  Story  of  Nyeberekera 


120 
Loliondo  highlands,  whose  territory  extended  north  into  Kenya  and  east  to  Lake  Natron,  reported 
to  colonial  anthropologist  Henry  Fosbrooke  that  the  original  inhabitants  of  this  area  were  the 
"Ilmarau,"  the  Maasai  name  for  the  Ikoma  or  Bantu-speaking  peoples  of  the  western  Serengeti  in 
general.8  Collectively  these  narratives  point  to  a  previous  community  that  straddled  what  is  now 
the  Serengeti  National  Park,  dispersed  and  divided  by  this  series  of  disasters.'    This  older 
community  may  have  called  themselves  the  Regata  or  in  Ngoreme  traditions  they  are  referred  to  as 
Masabha  or  "the  people  of  the  north."10 

During  this  period  of  stress,  people  determined  what  it  meant  to  be  "Ishenyi."  They 
connected  their  identity  as  a  people  to  their  relationship  with  the  land.  Therefore,  moving 
demanded  a  reformulation  of  identity.  The  murder  of  the  Ishenyi  prophet  Shanyangi  by  his  own 
people  symbolizes  this  change  of  identity.  Although  some  Ishenyi  now  return  to  Nyeberekera  to 
propitiate  his  spirit,  this  is  an  innovation  of  recent  years.  Why  would  Shanyangi  choose  to  help 
those  who  killed  him?  Shanyangi's  murder  was  the  final  break  with  Nyeberekera  and  their  identity 
as  a  people  under  his  leadership.  The  Ikoma  also  have  a  story  in  which  a  prophet  forbade  them  to 
return  to  Sonjo,  forcing  them  out  to  new  lands  and  the  formation  of  new  communities." 


8  Henry  A.  Fosbrooke,  "Sections  of  the  Masai  in  Loliondo  Area,"  1 953,  (typescript)  CORY 
#259,  EAF,  UDSM. 

9  This  community  was  perhaps  linked  to  the  deserted  irrigation  villages  of  Engaruka.  J.  E. 
G.  Sutton,  "Becoming  Maasailand,"  in  Being  Maasai:  Ethnicity  and  Identity  in  East  Africa,  eds. 
Thomas  Spear  and  Richard  Waller  (Athens:  Ohio  University  Press,  1993),  p.  54;  and  J.  E.  G. 
Sutton,  "Engaruka  etc...,"  Tanzania  Zamani   10  (January  1972):  7-10;  Louis  Leakey,  "Preliminary 
Report  on  Examination  of  the  Engaruka  Ruins,"  Tanganyika  Notes  and  Records  1  (March  1936V 
57-60. 

10  P.  Haimati  and  P.  Houle,  "Mila  na  Matendo  ya  Wangoreme,"  unpublished  mimeo, 
Iramba  Mission,  1969. 

"  Interview  with  Machota  Sabuni,  Issenye,  14  March  1996  (Ikoma  if). 


121 

So  powerful  was  this  period  of  disaster  for  identity  formation  that  the  core  images  of  these 
stories  are  of  new  beginning  and  decisive  break  with  the  past.  The  present  generation  of  Ishenyi 
elders  seems  to  have  forgotten  the  entire  origin  story  except  the  names  of  the  ancestral  parents  and 
the  place  where  they  lived.12  Mikael's  description  of  Nyeberekera  as  the  place  "where  we  came 
from"  reconfigures  it  as  an  origin  story.  The  versions  of  this  story  that  emphasize  the  pre-dispersal 
paradise  of  Nyeberekera  tell  that  the  people  produced  so  much  milk  there  that  the  Ishenyi  dumped  it 
into  the  river  and  so  attracted  the  Maasai.  The  consequences  for  the  Ishenyi  were  not  only 
dispersal  and  famine  but  the  curse  of  the  prophet  Shanyangi  that  denied  them  another  Ishenyi 
prophet.13  The  Ikoma  also  experienced  a  prophetic  curse  during  this  time  that  kept  the  hunters 
from  returning  to  Sonjo.14  Elders  point  to  some  rocks  near  Ikoma  Robanda  where  witches  were 
pushed  off  to  their  death  during  this  generation.  That  elders  would  remember  this  period  as  a  time 
of  witchcraft  is  one  indication  of  extreme  societal  stress." 

Dating  the  Nyeberekera  dispersal  by  oral  accounts  is  difficult  because  of  the  present  value 
placed  on  histories  that  are  very  old.  Elders  tend  to  exaggerate  the  time  depth  to  make  ancient 
territorial  claims.  Many  elders,  however,  agree  that  the  prophet  Shanyangi  belonged  to  the 
generation  of  Maina  (C.  1 840)  and  that  the  Ishenyi  left  Nyeberekera  during  the  time  of  the  Saai 
and  Chuma  (C.  1 860-1880).  This  matches  Mikael's  assertion  that  the  dispersal  from  Nyeberekera 


12  Guka,  on  the  eastern  side  of  what  is  now  the  northern  extension  of  the  Park.  Mugunyi 
and  Iyancha  are  the  ancestral  parents. 

13  Anacleti,  "Pastoralism  and  Development,"  pp.  182-184. 

14  Interview  with  Machota  Sabuni,  Issenye,  14  March  1996  (Ikoma  <f). 

15  Interview  with  Moremi  Mwikicho,  Sagochi  Nyekipegete  and  Kenyatta  Mosoka, 
Robanda,  12  July  1995  (Ikoma  cc).  See  Hartwig's  analysis  of  this  period  on  the  Lake  Victoria 
Island  of  Kerewe  and  the  witchcraft  accusations  as  a  result  of  social  stress,  Hartwig,  The  Art  of 
Survival,  p.  121. 


122 
happened  in  the  time  before  his  grandfather.  The  Ishenyi  lived  at  Nyigoti  during  the  generation  of 
the  Saai  and  the  Nyambureti  (C.  1 870-90).  Ishenyi  elders  further  agree  that  the  "Hunger  of  the 
Feet"  and  the  eventual  move  to  Nagusi  took  place  during  the  Kihocha  age-set,  just  before  the  turn 
of  the  century.16  Traditions  of  other  ethnic  groups  in  this  area  relate  similar  tales  of  disaster  during 
these  age-sets. 

This  correlation  of  generation  and  age-sets  with  events  of  the  time  further  shows  a  break  in 
social  time  with  the  reformulation  of  identity.  Note  that  in  the  above  testimonies  the  narrators 
marked  earlier  events  by  association  with  generation-sets,  and  the  later  events  by  association  with 
age-sets.  One  Nata  elder  said  that  they  formed  the  first  saiga  or  age-sets  during  the  generation  of 
the  Maina,  living  at  Site,  where  they  divided  that  generation  into  the  three  age-set  cycles  of 
Bongirate,  Busaai  and  Borumarancha.17  An  Ishenyi  elder  confirmed  that  they  divided  the  cycling 
age-sets  or  saiga  when  they  left  Nyeberekera,  during  the  generation  of  the  Maina.18  These  cycling 
age-sets  replaced  the  generation-set  as  the  way  of  reckoning  time. 

Age-sets  were  not  new  to  the  western  Serengeti.  What  was  new  was  the  switch  from  a 
system  in  which  linear  age-sets  functioned  parallel  to  the  more  dominant  generation-sets,  to  a 
system  in  which  territorially-based  cycling  age-sets  were  incorporated  into  the  patterns  of 
generational  succession.  These  complex  transformations  are  explored  in  more  detail  in  Chapter  9. 
Here  it  is  only  important  to  note  how  elders  reconciled  these  two  systems  in  historical  memory. 
Since  each  of  the  cycling  age-sets  would  ideally  rule  for  eight  years,  elders  often  produced  age-set 


16  Interviews  with  Rugayonga  Nyamohega,  Mugeta,  27  October  1995;  Mashauri  Ng'ana, 
Issenye,  2  November  1995;  Morigo  Mchombocho  Nyarobi,  Issenye,  28  September  1995  (Ishenyi 
#). 

17  Interview  with  Kirigiti  Ng'orita,  Mbiso,  8  June  1 995  (Nata  cf),  Kirigiti  is  the  last 
surviving  Nata  generation-set  leader  of  his  section. 

18  Interview  with  Morigo  Mchombocho  Nyarobi,  Issenye,  28  September  1995  (Ishenyi  <?). 


123 
lists  with  cycling  names  that  extended  back  two  hundred  years."  Although  the  memory  of  the 
change  to  cycling  age-sets  still  exists,  the  projection  of  cycling  age-set  time  onto  earlier  history  is 
increasingly  erasing  that  memory. 

For  the  historian,  this  makes  dating  by  age-set  chronology  particularly  difficult. 
Historians  of  East  Africa  have  long  recognized  that  age-sets  provide  the  possibility  for  constructing 
relative  chronologies  that  correspond  to  calendar  dates.20  Scholars  have  rightly  criticized  these 
methods  for  presuming  to  establish  precise  dates  by  projecting  average  age-set  intervals  back  in 
time  and  assuming  that  the  age-set  rituals  that  promoted  the  new  set  would  remain  constant  through 
time.21  For  the  western  Serengeti,  the  introduction  of  a  whole  new  system  of  dating  past  events  in 
the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  destroys  the  historian's  hope  of  establishing  accurate 
dating  before  this  point,  except  through  the  relative  succession  of  named  generations.  Clearly,  we 
should  read  these  age-set  lists  primarily  as  ideological  statements  rather  than  chronological  records. 
They  establish  a  continuity  with  the  past  and  the  orderly  succession  of  time  through  the  cycling 
death  and  rebirth  of  the  generations. 


"  Anacleti  reproduced  this  pattern  back  to  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
sometimes  using  age-set  praise  names  which  referred  specifically  to  the  events  of  the  19th  century 
as  cycling  names,  for  example,  abaSanduka,  those  who  carried  boxes  as  porters.  Anacleti, 
"Pastoralism  and  Development,"  pp.  14-15. 

20  See  Alan  H.  Jacobs,  "A  Chronology  of  the  Pastoral  Maasai,"  in  Hadith  1 :  Proceedings 
of  the  Annual  Conference  of  the  Historical  Association  of  Kenya,  ed.  Bethwell  Ogot  (Nairobi:  East 
African  Publishing  House,  1968),  pp.  10-31;  H.  A.  Fosbrooke,  "An  Administrative  Survey  of  the 
Maasai  Social  System,"  Tanganyika  Notes  and  Records  26  (December  1948):  1 1 ;  and  H.  A. 
Fosbrooke,  "The  Maasai  Age-group  System  as  a  Guide  to  Tribal  Chronology,"  African  Studies  15 
4(1956):  194-195. 

21  SeeBerntsen,  "Pastoralism,  Raiding  and  Prophets,"  pp.  83-93. 


124 
Ecological  Breakdown 

By  all  accounts  "the  generation  of  disasters,"  across  the  western  Serengeti,  experienced  a 
series  of  devastating  epidemics  combined  with  drought  and  subsequent  famine  that  eventually  led 
to  ecological  collapse.22  One  Ishenyi  elder  said  that  they  called  the  famine  at  Nyeberekera  the 
"Hunger  that  Finished  the  Cattle"  in  which  the  Sonjo  or  Regata  peoples  also  left  Nyeberekera  and 
went  to  their  present  homes  in  Sonjo.23  This  may  have  been  the  rinderpest  panzootic  of  1 880- 1 890 
that  killed  up  to  90%  of  the  cattle  in  East  Africa.  After  this,  pastoralist  peoples  such  as  the  Maasai 
were  reduced  to  "walking  skeletons,"  as  the  German  traveler,  Baumann,  described  the  starving 
Serenget  Maasai  who  had  taken  refuge  in  Ngorongoro  Crater  highlands  in  1892.  He  also  found 
Maasai  sick  and  dying  on  the  Lake  Victoria  coast.24 

More  likely  the  Nyeberekera  story  refers  to  a  series  of  cattle  diseases  before  the  rinderpest. 
Ikoma  and  Nata  elders  also  refer  to  the  "Hunger  that  Finished  the  Cattle"  (rimara  n'gombe)  as 
rihaha  (rinderpest),  while  others  confirm  them  to  be  different  diseases  at  different  times.25  Other 


22  For  an  account  of  the  environmental  disasters  in  Tanzania  see:  lliffe,  A  Modern  History. 
Chapter  5;  Helge  Kjekshus,  Ecology  Control  and  Economic  Development  in  East  Africa  History. 
The  Case  of  Tanganyika  1850-1950  (Athens:  Ohio  University  Press,  1 977);  and  James  Leonard 
Giblin,  The  Politics  of  Environmental  Control  in  Northeastern  Tanzania.  1 840- 1 940  (Philadelphia, 
University  of  Pennsylvania  Press,  1992).  For  a  critique  of  the  "degradation  narrative"  see  James 
McCann,  introduction,  An  Environmental  History  of  Africa.  1800-1996,  forthcoming;  and  Melissa 
Leach  and  Robin  Mearns,  The  Lie  of  the  Land:  Challenging  Received  Wisdom  on  the  African 
Environment  (Portsmouth:  Heinemann,  1 996). 

23  Interview  with  Mang'ombe  Morimi,  Issenye  Iharara,  26  August  1995  (Ishenyi  <?). 

24  The  section  on  the  Maasai  at  the  lake  in  Baumann,  Durch  Massailand.  pp.  44-46;  the 
section  on  Ngorongoro  crater  is  available  in  English  translation,  H.  A.  Fosbrooke,  Ngorongoro's 
First  Visitor,  by  Dr.  O.  Baumann's  Journal  of  1892.  trans.  G.  E.  Organ  (Dar  es  Salaam:  East 
African  Literature  Bureau,  1963),  pp.  12-14. 

25  Interview  with  Tirani  Wankunyi,  Issenye,  7  July  1995  (Nata  o").  Kjerland  cites  evidence 
from  the  Kenya  District  Books  that  rihaha  was  a  different  cattle  disease  which  preceded  rinderpest 
by  a  considerable  period.  Kjerland,  "Cattle  Breed,"  pp.  134-5.  Among  my  informants  rihaha  was 
also  used  to  describe  the  cattle  diseases  of  the  colonial  period  including  rinderpest  and  East  Coast 


125 
sources  in  East  Africa  provide  evidence  for  an  epidemic  of  cattle  lung  disease  (C.  1880)  which 
swept  through  before  the  rinderpest.26  The  Maasai  in  the  Nyeberekera  story  are  clearly  ascendant 
and  not  suffering  from  the  rinderpest  or  cattle  lung  disease.  Because  age-set  chronologies  also  date 
the  Nyeberekera  story  to  the  years  between  1 860  and  1 880,  this  famine  was  most  likely  a  localized 
hunger  (C.  1 870),  occurring  before  the  rinderpest  panzootic. 

The  Nyeberekera  famine  illustrates  the  interdependence  of  pastoralists,  farmers  and 
hunter/gatherers  in  a  regional  economy  that  eventually  broke  down  because  of  the  disasters.27 
Drought  and  disease  affected  each  community  differently  because  of  their  specialized  micro- 
ecologies  and  economic  strategies.  The  Ishenyi  describe  themselves  as  farmers  and  thus  often  in 
the  position  of  giving  out  food  when  pastoralists  or  hunter/gatherers  suffered,  as  the  description  of 
bountiful  food  at  Nyeberekera  attests.  The  Ishenyi  avoided  a  localized  drought,  as  severe  as  it 
was,  by  moving  a  day's  walk  away,  to  Nata  for  example,  to  find  food.  Maasai  and  Tatoga  herders 
settled  near  the  western  Serengeti  farmers  after  the  rinderpest  panzootic  and  traded  their  children  or 
worked  as  herders  for  food.  Baumann  went  through  Ikoma  in  1 892,  just  before  the  "Hunger  of  the 
Feet,"  and  described  the  surplus  of  grain  brought  for  trade  by  the  "peaceful  inhabitants,"  enough 


fever,  incidence  of  these  diseases  confirmed  in  a  report  by  District  Veterinary  Officer,  Musoma,  to 
the  D.O.  Musoma,  Annual  Report  1927,  January  1928,  Mwanza  Province  1927-28,  Provincial 
Administration,  Annual  Report,  246  P.C./1/30,  TNA.  Cattle  lung  disease  said  to  have  been 
introduced  only  after  1916  by  Maasai  stock  crossing  the  Kenya  border.  F.G.  (?)  Mc  Call,  Chief 
Veterinary  Officer,  Annual  Report  of  the  Department  of  Veterinary  Science  and  Animal 
Husbandry,  Tanganyika,  1921,  Veterinary  Department  Annual  Reports,  1921,  3046/22,  TNA. 

26  Richard  Waller,  "The  Maasai  and  the  British,  1 895- 1 905 :  The  Origins  of  an  Alliance," 
Journal  of  African  History  17  (1976):  530-32;  Berntsen,  "Pastoralism,  Raiding  and  Prophets,"  pp. 
276-79,  83;  and  A.  H.  Jacobs,  "The  Traditional  Political  Organization  of  the  Pastoral  Maasai" 
(Ph.D.  dissertation,  Oxford  University,  1965),  pp.  95-99;  show  that  the  rinderpest  followed  nearly 
three  decades  of  livestock  diseases  and  just  previous  to  it  an  epidemic  of  livestock  pleuro- 
pneumonia. 

27  For  a  description  of  this  regional  economy  see:  Spear  and  Waller,  Being  Maasai.  p.  2. 
Waller,  "Ecology,  Migration  and  Expansion,"  pp.  347-370. 


126 

"to  pass  through  Masailand  again  if  we  wished."  Kollmann,  some  years  later,  also  reported  full 
granaries  and  fat  cattle.28  This  period  began  with  a  series  of  smaller  localized  famines,  which 
could  be  overcome  by  dependence  on  connections  in  neighboring  ecologies/economies,  developing 
into  a  generalized  disaster  by  the  1 890s. 

The  "Hunger  of  the  Feet"  (agechaya  maghoro)  which  closes  this  generation,  was  a  new 
kind  of  famine  because  of  its  regional  scope,  a  result  of  the  cumulation  of  disasters  rather  than  a 
simple  lack  of  rain.  Confirmation  of  the  extent  of  this  famine  comes  from  the  White  Fathers  who 
established  themselves  by  1893  on  Kerewe  Island.  They  date  the  "Great  Famine"  (presumably  the 
"Hunger  of  the  Feet")  on  the  mainland  to  1 894.2'    During  this  period  many  people  from  the 
mainland  came  to  Kerewe  Island  in  search  of  food.  The  Kerewe  station  reported  that  a  small 
village  of  Christians  had  grown  up  around  the  mission  station,  most  of  whom  were  former  slaves 
and  famine  victims  from  Maasai  raiding  in  the  interior,  particularly  Ngoreme.30  As  the  famine 
abated  these  converts  returned  home  and  the  White  Fathers  made  journeys  in  1902  and  1904  to 
maintain  contact  with  them  and  also  to  establish  the  mainland  station  of  Nyegina,  with  the  specific 
purpose  of  reaching  their  converts  in  Ikizu,  Ngoreme,  Zanaki,  Majita  and  Ruri.31  By  1919  most  of 
the  famine  victims  had  gone  home,  leaving  the  mission  practically  deserted.  The  White  Fathers 


28  Baumann,  Durch  Massailand.  pp.  38-42;  Kollmann,  The  Victoria  Nvanza.  p.  176. 

25  Visitations  Book,  Nyegina,  Mwanza  I,  1931-1932,  pp.  67-69,  White  Fathers  Regionals' 
House,  Nyegezi. 

30  Societe  des  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres-Blancs),  "Ukerewe,"  Chronique  Trimestrielle 
de  la  Societe  de  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres  Blancs)  27me  Annee,  1905,  p.  133. 

31  Societe  des  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres-Blancs),  Rapports  Annuels.  Sixieme  Annee 
(1910-191 1),  p.  383;  and  L.  Bourget,  Trip  Diary,  1904,  White  Fathers  Regionals'  House, 
Nyegezi. 


127 
referred  to  this  far-flung  group  of  converts  as,  "our  Christians  of  the  diaspora."32  [See  Figure  3-3: 
White  Fathers'  Mission,  Nyegina,  Musoma,  Founded  191 1.] 

Ngoreme  elders  confirm  the  exodus  to  Kerewe  while  Ikoma,  Ishenyi  and  Nata  drought 
victims  were  more  likely  to  go  to  Sukuma  seeking  food.  All  tell  tales  of  being  forced  to  sell  their 
children  for  food  to  stay  alive.  Elders  remembered  their  grandparents,  who  would  have  been 
children  during  the  famine,  telling  the  stories  of  lost  siblings.  Parents  found  it  more  advantageous 
to  "sell"  girls  or  to  dress  their  boys  as  girls,  with  the  understanding  that  the  price  was  an  early 
bridewealth  payment.33  The  White  Fathers  also  describe  refugees  selling  their  children  into  slavery 
on  Kerewe  to  get  food.34  Gerald  Hartwig's  reconstruction  of  Kerewe  history  shows  that  from 
1850-1870  the  mainland  "Ruri"  people  brought  children,  probably  kidnaped  from  neighboring 
peoples,  to  Kerewe  to  sell  for  food.  Then  from  about  1 875  on  the  Kerewe  themselves  actively 
searched  for  children  to  buy  for  slaves  during  the  famines  by  taking  boats  along  the  lakeshore  and 
up  the  Mara  River.35  Although  these  children  were  not  heard  of  again,  it  seems  likely  that  some  of 
them  would  have  made  it  into  the  wider  slave  trade,  ending  up  on  the  clove  plantations  of  Zanzibar. 


32  Societe  des  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres-Blancs),  "Nyegina,"  Rapports  Annuels.  No. 
1 1,  1915-16,  p.  328-330;  and  in  Rapports  Annuels  see  "Nyegina,"  No.  13  (1919-20),  p.  354; 
"Nyegina,"  No.  17,  1921-1922,  p.  520.  For  background  on  the  White  Fathers  Mission  see,  J. 
Bouniol.  The  White  Fathers  and  their  Missions  (London:  Sands  and  Co.,  1929). 

33  Interview  with  Mashauri  Ng'ana,  lssenye,  2  November  1995  (Ishenyi  <?). 

34  Visitations  Book,  Nyegina,  Mwanza  I,  1931-1932,  White  Fathers  Regionals'  House, 
Nyegezi,  pp.  67-69. 

35  Kjerland,  "Cattle  Breed,"  p.  135,  cites  the  Mwanza  District  Books,  and  Hartwig,  The 
Art  of  Survival,  p.  127-128.  Hartwig  also  states  that  there  were  a  lot  of  Luo,  "Gaya"  slaves  on 
Kerewe,  p.  125-6,  for  an  assessement  of  Ukerewe  slavery,  1 14-128;  Confirmed  by  Kuria 
informants  in,  Tobisson,  Family  Dynamics,  pp.  12-13. 


128 


Ruins  of  Original  White  Fathers'  Mission  Chapel,  Nyegina 


White  Fathers'  Mission  House,  Nyegina 


Figure  3-3:  White  Fathers'  Mission,  Nyegina,  Musoma,  Founded  1911 


129 

Most  would  have  been  incorporated  into  Sukuma  families  as  sons  and  daughters,  and  into  Kerewe 

families  as  slaves. 

Elders  described  the  stay  in  Sukuma  lasting  for  a  number  of  years,  during  which  time  they 
found  Sukuma  patrons  who  provided  support  and  protection.  Western  Serengeti  people  established 
these  ties  of  friendship  before  the  drought  through  a  trade  of  wildebeest  tails,  wild  animal  skins  and 
arrow  poison  brought  to  Sukuma  in  exchange  for  tobacco,  salt,  iron  hoes  and  livestock.36  Sukuma 
hosts  provided  the  refugees  with  a  plot  of  land  to  farm  and  a  place  to  build  their  house  in  return  for 
clearing  the  land  and  labor  on  the  host's  farm.3'  When  the  drought  was  over  western  Serengeti 
peoples,  began  moving  back,  settling  for  a  growing  season  or  two  at  a  time  along  the  way.  One  of 
the  best  remembered  of  these  way-posts  was  the  settlement  of  Hantachega,  now  in  the  western 
corridor  of  the  Serengeti  National  Park.  There,  Nata,  Ishenyi,  Ikoma  and  Sukuma  all  built 
together,  according  to  age-set  organization. 

The  Ishenyi  tradition  told  above  mentions  kaswende  or  syphilis  in  Nata.  That  young  men 
would  consider  suicide  preferable  to  exposure  means  that  they  had  some  knowledge  of  the  disease. 
Scholars  have  assumed  that  the  nineteenth  century  caravan  trade  introduced  sexually  transmitted 
diseases  (S.T.D.s)  such  as  syphilis.38  Nata  people  must  have  been  in  at  least  indirect  contact  with 


36  Interview  with  Mashauri  Ng'ana,  Issenye,  2  November  1995  (Ishenyi  tf). 

37  See  description  of  a  similar  process  during  a  famine  in  central  Kenya,  Ambler,  Kenya 
Communities,  pp.  134-135. 

38  The  epidemiology  on  syphilis  is  not  well  understood.  By  the  1870s  syphilis  is  assumed 
to  be  rapidly  rising  along  trade  routes.  The  problem  is  that  this  may  also  have  been  yaws,  which 
appears  with  similar  symptoms.  The  vast  majority  of  childhood  complaints  were  yaws,  not 
syphilis  while,  lesions  developing  in  adults  after  the  turn  of  the  century  were  probably  syphilis. 
Yet  with  the  800  years  or  more  of  precolonial  contact  on  the  coast  with  Arabs  and  300  years  of 
contact  with  Portuguese,  it  is  difficult  to  say  when  and  where  it  was  introduced.  It  is  improbable 
that  yaws  mutated  into  syphilis  so  we  can  assume  that  it  was  introduced.  Personal  communication 
with  Anne  Stacie  Canning  Colwell,  M.D.,  5  February  1998. 


130 
the  caravan  trade  through  their  friendships  in  Sukuma.  Another  indication  of  the  prevalence  of 
S.T.D.s  at  this  time  is  an  Ishenyi  and  Ikoma  story  about  going  to  a  Tatoga  prophet  in  the 
Ngorongoro  crater  because  of  general  fertility  problems.39    Many  elders  said  that  infertility, 
probably  related  to  S.T.D.s,  was  a  significant  problem  during  the  early  colonial  period.  In  one 
area,  intercourse  with  a  barren  woman  became  taboo  for  fear  of  the  transmission  of  disease.™ 

Other  "foreign"  diseases  mentioned  in  narratives  about  this  period  may  have  been  small 
pox,  cholera  and  measles,  collectively  associated  with  dysentery  and  dehydration.41  One  Ikoma 
elder  described  a  disease  called  nyekekundi,  where  everyone  in  one  homestead  would  all  die 
suddenly,  during  the  age-set  of  the  Rumarancha  (C.  1 890).  They  went  to  see  a  Tatoga  prophet, 
Gamurayi,  for  a  cure  but  he  was  afraid  of  exposure  and  would  not  open  the  door.  Gifts  of  cattle 
finally  induced  his  wife  to  open  the  door.42  The  Ishenyi  story  mentions  the  foot  sores  that  gave  the 
famine  its  name,  most  likely  chiggers  from  the  dusty  ground  on  the  path  to  Sukuma. 

When  the  Germans  began  to  administer  this  area  from  their  base  at  Schirati  on  the  lake, 
near  the  Kenya  border,  they  quickly  identified  an  epidemic  of  sleeping  sickness  in  1 902,  that  had 
killed  2,000  people  by  1 905.  This  was  one  of  the  first  areas  in  East  Africa  where  they  identified 
sleeping  sickness  and  the  site  where  Robert  Koch  and  F.  K.  Kleine  did  much  of  the  pioneering  work 
on  the  disease.  They  postulated  that  sleeping  sickness  had  spread  from  the  west  lake,  ultimately 


39  Interview  with  Morigo  Mchombocho  Nyarobi,  Issenye,  28  September  1995  (Ishenyi  <f). 
Dating  of  the  Tatoga  leaving  the  Crater  due  to  Maasai  pressure  around  mid-century  according  to 
Maasai  age-set  chronology. 

40  Interview  with  Masosota  Igonga,  Ring'wani,  6  October  1995  (Ngoreme  J);  Sira 
Masiyora,  Nyerero,  17  November  1995  (Kuria  J). 

41  Interviews  with  Mariko  Romara  Kisigiro,  Burunga,  31  March  1995  (Nata  cf);  Maarimo 
Nyamakena  and  Katani  Magori  Nyabunga,  Sanzate,  10  June  1995  (Ikizu  cf).  These  diseases  are 
known  locally  as  kyamunda  in  Nata  or  nyamugwa  in  Ikizu,  also  oborondo,  egesaho,  etc. 

42  Interviews  with  Machota  Sabuni,  Issenye,  14  March  1996  (Ikoma  <f). 


131 
from  West  Africa  and  the  Congo,  by  the  canoe  trade  and  then  to  the  eastern  mainland.  That  the 
disease  vector,  the  tsetses  fly,  was  indigenous  to  the  area  was  clear,  but  deciding  whether  sleeping 
sickness  was  also  indigenous  proved  harder  for  early  researchers.  Researchers  gathered  local 
traditions  as  evidence  that  sleeping  sickness  existed  before  the  colonial  period.43 

More  recent  analyses  of  sleeping  sickness  in  East  Africa  link  the  outbreak  of  the  disease 
with  the  environmental  catastrophes  of  the  1 890s,  rather  than  with  the  introduction  of  the  disease 
by  human  hosts  from  the  Congo.  They  propose  that  sleeping  sickness  had  been  endemic  in  East 
Africa,  kept  at  bay  rather  than  eradicated,  by  local  patterns  of  bush  clearing,  cattle  grazing  and 
farming.4,1  Colonial  officers  in  this  district  correlated  the  spread  of  sleeping  sickness  to  times  of 
drought  when  men  increasingly  sought  scarce  grazing  for  livestock  in  the  tsetse  infected  bush 
areas.  Though  the  government  resented  the  "illegal  burning"  of  bush,  this  was  probably  one  local 
measure  that  kept  the  disease  in  check.45  Just  as  the  colonial  officers  feared,  men  may  have  spread 
sleeping  sickness  during  this  period  of  disasters  because  of  their  increasing  mobility  across  the 
region  in  search  of  food,  trade  or  hunting  grounds  to  cope  with  the  drought. 


43  David  F.  Clyde,  History  of  the  Medical  Services  of  Tanganyika  (Government  Press: 
Dar  es  Salaam,  1962),  pp.  28-29.  Clyde  cited  traditions  from  Kerewe  Island  and  Ikoma  describing 
a  disease  which  resembled  the  symptoms  of  sleeping  sickness  as  evidence  of  sleeping  sickness  as  an 
ancient  disease.  In  Ikizu  and  Ikoma  this  disease  was  said  to  have  almost  depopulated  the  province 
over  the  last  one  hundred  years.  Local  informants  said  that  the  disease  was  contracted  by  the  bite 
of  the  fly,  beginning  when  the  Ruwana  and  Mbalangeti  rivers  were  in  flood.  There  was  a  great 
deal  of  confusion  as  to  whether  this  was  sleeping  sickness  or  severe  hookworm  disease  in  man 
coincident  with  animal  trypanosomiasis. 

44  Juhani  Koponen,  Development  for  Exploitation:  German  Colonial  Policies  in  Mainland 
Tanzania.  1884-1914  (Finnish  Historical  Society,  Studia  Historica  49:  Helsinki/Hamburg,  1994), 
pp.  475-84;  John  Ford,  The  Role  of  Trypanosomiases  in  African  Ecology:  A  Study  of  the  Tsetse 
Fly  Problem  (Oxford:  Clarendon  Press,  1 97 1 );  Kjekshus,  Ecology  Control. 

45  District  Veterinary  Officer,  Musoma  to  the  D.O.  Musoma,  19  January  1928,  Annual 
Report  1927,  19  January  1928,  Mwanza  Province  1927-28,  Provincial  Administration,  246/ 
P.C/1/30,  TNA. 


132 

The  outbreak  of  sleeping  sickness  in  the  early  colonial  years  indicates  that  the  cycle  of 
disasters  had,  by  the  turn  of  the  century,  resulted  in  loss  of  control  over  the  environment. 
Depopulation  had  reduced  the  number  of  settlements  and  farms,  as  well  as  the  ability  to  burn  the 
old  grass,  thus  allowing  for  the  encroachment  of  bush  as  a  habitat  for  tsetse  flies.  The  landscapes 
of  the  western  Serengeti  have  changed  significantly  in  the  past  one  hundred  years.  Many  areas  that 
were  once  open  plains  have  been  replaced  by  bush  within  the  lifetime  of  elders  today.  Though 
people  did  not  recognize  the  relationship  between  tsetse  fly,  sleeping  sickness  and  bush 
encroachment,  they  saw  the  replacement  of  open  plains  areas  with  impenetrable  bush  as  alarming 
and  unhealthy.  Western  Serengeti  people  began  to  rework  important  social  relations  during  this 
period  in  order  regain  their  own  health  and  the  health  of  the  land. 

Ecological  collapse  brought  an  end  to  the  interdependent  regional  economy  of  hunters, 
herders  and  farmers  as  it  had  existed  before  the  disasters.  Tatoga  herders,  defeated  by  the  Maasai, 
moved  south,  following  their  prophet  Saigilo.  Bush  encroachment  also  squeezed  them  out  as  it 
rendered  formerly  productive  pastures  unusable  and  dangerous  for  cattle.46  Asi  hunters 
increasingly  moved  east,  as  they  accepted  the  patronage  of  the  ascendant  Maasai,  and  Bantu- 
speaking  farmers  moved  west,  further  into  the  hills,  to  avoid  raids.  Little  evidence  of  the  former 
relationships  between  these  three  groups  remains  in  oral  tradition,  which  now  focuses  on  the 
opposition  between  Bantu-speaking  ethnic  groups,  rather  than  relations  between  peoples  practicing 
other  subsistence  economies.  Settlement  and  subsistence  patterns  of  Bantu-speaking  farmers 
before  the  disasters  are  also  difficult  to  reconstruct  because  ecological  collapse  demanded  new 
coping  strategies,  later  understood  as  "traditional." 


44  H.  A.  Fosbrooke,  Senior  Sociologist,  Tanganyika,  "Masai  History  in  Relation  to  Tsetse 
Encroachment,"  Arusha,  1954,  CORY  #254,  EAF,  UDSM. 


133 

Indirect  Effects  of  the  Caravan  Trade 

The  influence  of  the  caravan  trade  brought  about  many  of  these  disasters  and  yet  little  oral 
evidence  exists  for  the  direct  presence  of  caravans  in  the  western  Serengeti.  Few  elders  had  heard 
anything  about  caravan  traders  in  the  region  except  in  Ngoreme,  just  south  of  the  Mara  River. 
Wakefield's  publication  of  "routes  of  native  caravans  from  the  coast  to  the  interior  of  Eastern 
Africa,"  based  on  Arab  testimony,  attests  to  a  route  from  Sonjo,  through  Ngoreme,  to  the  coast  of 
"Ukara,"  north  of  what  is  now  Musoma.  Otherwise,  the  western  Serengeti  remained  a  blank  space 
on  the  map  until  almost  the  turn  of  the  century.  The  "native"  routes  across  the  plains  from 
Maasailand  usually  ended  in  Kavirondo  among  the  Luo,  in  what  is  now  western  Kenya,  near 
Kisumu.47  However  when  coming  into  Ikoma  in  1 892  the  German  explorer,  Baumann,  noted  that 
local  people  immediately  recognized  his  party  as  a  coastal  caravan  and  greeted  him  in  a 
"Kinyamwezi  dialect."  Some  of  Baumann's  porters  deserted  in  Ikoma,  hoping  to  stay  "as  slaves  to 
the  natives  until  another  caravan  passes."  Baumann  thought  this  foolish  since  many  years  could 
pass  between  caravans  in  Ikoma.48  "Native"  caravans,  though  scarce,  were  not  unknown  in  the 
region. 

Swahili  caravans  were  afraid  of  following  the  Maasai  route  from  Kilimanjaro  to  the  Lake 
and  consequently  did  not  often  attempt  it.  Europeans  did  not  find  a  way  through  until  Thomson's 
expedition  in  1883-4,  which  went  considerably  north  of  the  Mara  Region.49    The  peoples  of  the 


47  T.  Wakefield,  "Wakefield's  Notes  on  the  Geography  of  Eastern  Africa,  Routes  of  Native 
Caravans  from  the  Coast ...."  Journal  of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society  40  fl  870V  303-339.  T. 
Wakefield,  "Native  Routes  through  the  Masai  Country,"  Proceedings  of  the  Roval  Geographical 
Society,  n.s„  4(1882):  742-747.  Hartwig.  The  Art  of  Survival,  p.  78 

48  Baumann,  Durch  Massailand.  pp.  38  -  4.  The  coast  was  in  a  state  of  upheaval  in  1892 
and  Ikoma  may  have  looked  good  by  comparison  to  coastal  porters. 

49  Joseph  Thomson,  Through  Masai  Land:  A  Journey  of  Exploration  Among  the  SnowclaH 
Volcanic  Mountains  and  Strange  Tribes  of  Eastern  Equatorial  Africa...  (London:  Sampson  Low, 


134 
eastern  lake  had  a  reputation  for  being  "warlike"  and  "inhospitable  to  travellers."  Kallmann 
reported  that  they  "massacred  whole  caravans  that  were  merely  crossing  the  country  to  purchase 
ivory  in  Ugaya"  (Luo).50  Jacobs,  however,  cites  evidence  that  the  Arab  and  Swahili  traders  had 
exaggerated  the  dangers  of  entering  Maasailand  to  "keep  the  door  to  the  interior  closed  to  European 
exploration  as  long  as  possible."" 

The  main  caravan  route  went  to  the  south  in  Sukuma  and  then  across  the  Lake  to 
Buganda.  Hartwig  claims  that  the  Lake  Victoria  island  of  Kerewe  was  involved  in  long-distance 
trade  from  the  rule  of  Chief  (Omukama)  Mihigo  11  (1780-1840).  Migrants  fromKanadi  in 
Sukuma  formed  the  nucleus  of  elephant  hunting  associations,  who  sent  ivory  south  to  the  caravan 
trade  by  way  of  the  chief.  As  early  as  the  1850s,  coastal  traders  dealt  directly  with  Kerewe,  whose 
chief,  in  turn,  obtained  ivory  from  the  mainland.  In  the  next  decades  Kerewe  fell  increasingly 
under  the  influence  of  the  Ganda  kingdom  across  the  lake,  as  its  intermediary  to  the  coast. 
Western  Serengeti  peoples  would  have  had  contact  with  Kerewe  as  a  source  of  famine  food 
because  of  its  higher  and  more  reliable  rainfall  patterns.'2 


Marston,  Searle  and  Rivington,  1 887;  reprint  ed.,  Frank  Cass  and  Co.,  1 968).  Thomson  states  that 
whatever  is  known  about  the  land  beyond  Kilimanjaro  is  from  the  Wakefield  accounts,  either 
because  the  risks  were  too  great  or  the  cost  too  high.  He  was  commissioned  specifically  to  find  a 
way  through  Maasailand  to  the  Lake  by  the  Royal  Geographical  Society. 

50  Hartwig,  The  Art  of  Survival,  p.  541 ;  Kollmann,  The  Victoria  Nvanza.  p.  177;  See  also 
Von  Hauptmann  Schlobach,  "Die  Volksstamme  der  deutschen  Ostkuste  des  Victoria-Nyansa," 
Mittteiluneen  aus  den  deutschen  Schutzgebieten  (Berlin:  U.  Usher,  1901):  183. 

51  Jacobs,  "A  Chronology,"  p.  28. 

52  Hartwig,  The  Art  of  Survival,  pp.  66-71,  80-81,  116;  Itandala,  "A  History  of  the 
Babinza,"  pp.  213-218;  E.  A.  Chacker,  "Early  Arab  and  European  Contacts  with  Ukerewe," 
Tanzania  Notes  and  Records  68  (1968):  75-86;  C.  F.  Holmes,  "Zanzibar  Influence  at  the  Southern 
End  of  Lake  Victoria:  The  Lake  Route,"  African  Historical  Studies  4,  3  ( 1 97 1 ):  479-503. 


135 

The  main  items  sought  by  caravan  traders  were  ivory  and  slaves.  Western  Serengeti 
people  used  ivory  locally  only  for  bracelets,  which  were  an  emblem  in  the  eldership  title  system. 
However,  evidence  exists  that  elephant  hunting  societies  appeared  as  a  new  phenomenon  during  this 
period,  in  spite  of  a  traditional  taboo  against  killing  elephants.53  Ikoma  elders  said  that  their  fathers 
obtained  ivory  through  friendships  with  local  Asi  hunter/gatherers.  No  local  institution  of  slavery 
existed  in  the  western  Serengeti.  Families  adopted  and  incorporated  strangers  (abasimano)  who 
came  on  their  own  or  were  sold  for  food  during  times  of  famine.  They  treated  these  strangers  as 
members  of  the  family,  whose  children  would  have  the  same  rights  as  anyone  native  born.  It  is 
only  toward  the  lake  that  the  word  for  strangers  translates  as  "slaves"  or  "dogs"  (seese)  and  a 
stranger's  children  were  denied  the  rights  of  the  native  born.54  I  found  no  oral  evidence  that 
western  Serengeti  peoples  engaged  in  slave  raiding  to  supply  the  caravans. 

The  devastating  effects  of  the  caravan  trade  on  local  society  are  well  documented 
elsewhere.55  The  case  of  the  western  Serengeti  is  important  because  it  demonstrates  that  even  with 
the  most  insubstantial  contact  the  caravan  trade  had  long-term  effects.  One  of  the  first 
missionaries  in  the  region  soon  after  the  turn  of  the  century  reported  that  his  student  told  him  that 
the  porters,"whispered  around  the  campfire  in  the  evening"  that  "there  is  a  famine  in  their  country 
and  they  are  going  to  take  our  cattle  and  children  to  salt  them  down  for  shipment  to  Europe."56 
Given  the  nature  of  the  evidence,  knowing  the  more  ephemeral  consequences  of  these  contacts  on 
the  ways  in  which  people  imagined  or  re-imagined  social  relations  during  this  time  is  impossible. 


See  Chapter  10  on  Sarabarando  hunting  associations;  for  elephant  associations  related  to 
Ukerewe  see  Hartwig,  The  Art  of  Survival,  pp.  66-67. 

54  See  Chapter  7  on  the  incorporation  of  strangers,  abasimano. 

55  For  an  overview  see  lliffe,  A  Modern  History,  pp.  40-77. 

56  Toppenberg,  Africa  Has  My  Heart,  p.  45. 


136 
Observing  the  disasters  around  them  and  knowing  of  the  new  power  arising  through  traders  on  the 
coast,  did  local  people  begin  to  imagine  themselves  as  part  of  larger  associations  of  communities, 
opposed  to  a  much  more  distant  "other?" 

One  obvious  effect  of  the  caravan  trade  was  the  increasing  trade  of  forest  products  to 
Sukuma.  Sukuma  people  lived  at  the  terminus  of  the  overland  route  at  Lake  Victoria.  They  were 
directly  involved  in  trade  and  worked  as  porters  for  the  caravans."  The  Sukuma  used  their  new- 
found wealth  from  the  caravans,  in  part,  for  expanded  ritual  and  prestige  activities.  The  demand 
for  ivory  bracelets,  wildebeest  tail  fly  whisks  and  bracelets,  ostrich  feathers  and  eggs,  wild  animal 
skins  and  lions'  manes  increased  rapidly  in  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Western 
Serengeti  peoples  supplied  these  products  in  return  for  iron,  salt  or  livestock.  Hunting  became 
much  more  commercialized  during  this  period,  far  beyond  the  immediate  need  for  meat. 

Because  of  their  connection  to  the  caravans  Sukuma  people  held  the  advantage  in  trade 
relations  and  western  Serengeti  people  sought  them  as  patrons.  This  may  be  the  material 
explanation  for  western  Serengeti  oral  traditions,  dating  from  this  period,  which  establish  ritual  and 
kin  relations  with  the  Sukuma.  The  disorder  of  this  period  seems  to  have  provided  the  opportunity 
for  a  Sukuma  rainmaker  to  unite  diverse  clan  territories  into  the  Ikizu  chiefdom  of  western 
Serengeti.  Oral  traditions  then  projected  these  connections  to  Sukuma  rainmakers  back  to  the  time 
of  origins.  The  oral  traditions  concerning  hunting  and  Sukuma  origins  in  earlier  times  may,  in  fact, 
reflect  more  closely  this  later  period  of  commercialized  hunting.  Because  the  caravans  themselves 
were  rarely  encountered  in  the  western  Serengeti,  the  changes  precipitated  by  contact  through  trade 
in  Sukuma  were  not  often  recognized  as  such  in  oral  tradition. 


"  Baumann,  Durch  Massailand.  p.  67,  when  Baumann  reached  the  area  of  Magu,  just 
south  of  the  Mara  Region  in  Sukuma,  he  observed  that,  "the  natives  are  great  travelers,  almost  all 
of  them  were  young  people  who  had  been  to  the  coast." 


137 
Maasai  Raids 

Oral  testimonies  of  the  western  Serengeti  express  most  directly  and  keenly  the  devastating 
effects  of  the  disasters  through  the  experience  of  Maasai  raids.  That  Maasai  raids  took  place 
during  this  era  is  certain,  but  the  relationship  western  Serengeti  peoples  had  with  the  Maasai  is 
much  more  complex.  Research  on  the  Maasai  demonstrates  with  a  fair  degree  of  certainty  that  the 
Maasai  did  not  move  into  the  Serengeti  region  until  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and 
probably  not  before  mid-century.58  The  Maasai  entered  this  region  gradually,  in  search  of  new 
grazing  areas."  They  did  not  automatically  displace  others  who  preceded  them,  nor  were  they  at 
first  the  dominant  "Lords  of  East  Africa,"  which  they  became  by  the  last  half  of  the  century.  The 
Maasai  pastoral  lifestyle  depended  upon  symbiotic  interaction  with  farmers  and  hunter/gatherers 
within  a  regional  system.    At  first,  western  Serengeti  peoples  seem  to  have  accommodated  and 
admired  the  Maasai.  taking  on  many  Maasai  cultural  innovations  as  their  own.60 

The  Maasai  gained  dominance  by  developing  a  highly  specialized  form  of  pastoralism  that 
swept  the  plains  in  the  nineteenth  century,  rapidly  replacing  the  older  regional  system  where 
farmers  also  hunted  and  herded  and  the  preexisting  Tatoga  pastoralists  also  farmed  a  little. 


58  In  the  age  of  Merishari  (c.  1806-1826)  they  took  the  Lake  Manyara  area  from  the  Tatoga 
and  in  subsequent  ages,  perhaps  as  late  as  the  1 840's  the  Maasai  forced  the  Tatoga  to  withdraw 
from  the  Ngorongoro  Crater  and  Engaruka  area.  John  G.  Galaty,  "Maasai  Expansion  and  the 
New  East  African  Pastoralism,"  in  Being  Maasai:  Ethnicity  and  Identity  in  East  Africa,  eds. 
Thomas  Spear  and  Richard  Waller  (Athens:  Ohio  University  Press,  1993),  p.  74.  Berntsen, 
"Pastoralism,  Raiding  and  Prophets,"  p.  31. 

59  See  Berntsen,  "Pastoralism,  Raiding  and  Prophets,"  p.  40,  on  the  process  of  migrational 
drift. 

60  "The  Lords  of  the  East  Africa"  is  the  expression  used  by  Richard  Waller  in  his  thesis, 
"The  Lords  of  East  Africa:  the  Maasai  in  the  mid-nineteenth  century  (c.  1840-c.  1885)"  (Ph.D. 
dissertation,  University  of  Cambridge,  1979),  to  indicate  the  dominance  and  status  of  the  Maasai  at 
this  time  period.  John  Lawrence  Berntsen,  "Pastoralism,  Raiding  and  Prophets,"  p.  32.  Also  Spear 
and  Waller,  Being  Maasai.  on  economic  symbiosis.  "Introduction,"  p.  2-4. 


138 
Through  control  of  access  to  cattle  as  a  store  of  wealth  and  limited  pastoral  resources,  they  began 
to  impose  economic  specialization  on  everyone  else  in  the  region,  creating  the  non-cattle  owning 
categories  of  "farmer"  and  "hunter"  from  peoples  who  had  practiced  both.  The  pre-Ishenyi 
community  at  Nyeberekera  was  one  victim  of  this  increasing  competition  for  dry-season  grazing 
grounds  and  water  points,  located  as  it  was  on  the  edge  of  the  Serengeti  plains.  The  Maasai  forced 
the  agro-pastoral  community  that  once  straddled  the  Serengeti  plains  back  to  the  hills  on  its 
margins,  both  east  (Sonjo)  and  west  (Ikoma).  A  regional  economy  developed  with  the  Maasai  at 
the  center,  as  the  main  beneficiaries  of  the  system.  As  is  clear  from  the  experience  of  the  western 
Serengeti,  Maasai  power  lay  in  both  military  and  cultural  domination.  We  cannot  understand 
western  Serengeti  creativity  during  this  period  outside  its  subordinate  and  peripheral  position 
within  this  hegemonic  system,  both  in  terms  of  its  acquiescence  and  its  resistance.61 

It  seems  likely  that  the  most  intense  Maasai  raiding  in  the  western  Serengeti  actually  took 
place  after  the  rinderpest  panzootic,  as  a  strategy  to  recover  stock.  Before  the  rinderpest  western 
Serengeti  peoples  kept  very  little  livestock  and  only  began  to  build  up  large  cattle  herds  after  the 
"Hunger  of  the  Feet,"  which  accelerated  the  trade  of  forest  products  to  Sukuma  for  livestock.62 
During  the  generation  of  disasters  a  wealthy  man  owned  four  head  of  cattle  and  most  were  lucky  to 
have  one  or  two,  mainly  counting  their  livestock  in  sheep  and  goats.  The  Nata  paid  bridewealth  in 
wild  animals  skins  until  the  turn  of  the  century.  This  later  period  of  intense  raiding  went  on  up  to 
the  beginning  of  British  rule.  In  191 1  the  White  Fathers  reported  that  many  refugees  that  had 
come  to  them  were  still  victims  of  Maasai  raids.63  The  Maasai  may  have  raided  the  lakeshore  even 


61  Spear  and  Waller,  Being  Maasai.  "Introduction." 

62  This  is  more  completely  developed  in  Chapter  10. 

63  Societe  de  Missionnaires  d'Afrique,  "Nyegina  (Notre-Dame  de  Consolation),"  Rapports 
Annuels  191 1-1912,  p.  392;  Societe  de  Missionnaires  d'Afrique,  Chronique  Trimestrielle  de  la 


139 
more  intensively  than  the  western  Serengeti.  During  the  World  War  One  Kenyan  Maasai  took 
advantage  of  chaos  on  the  border  and  made  raids  into  the  German  colony.64  This  later  period  of 
raiding  was  used  as  a  template  in  the  historical  imagination  to  understand  the  dispersal  of  the 
previous  generation.  Oral  traditions  blame  raiding  for  the  most  grievous  effects  of  the  disasters.65 

Raids  were  only  the  most  obvious  and  resented  symbol  of  Maasai  domination  that  reached 
into  all  aspects  of  life.  Raids  took  place  mainly  during  the  dry  season.  They  often  came  in  the 
predawn  hours,  surprising  the  village,  stampeding  the  cattle,  burning  the  houses  and  sometimes 
killing  men  or  taking  captive  the  women  and  children.  The  Maasai  fought  with  spears  and  shields, 
while  the  western  Serengeti  peoples  mainly  used  bows  and  arrows.  If  the  Maasai  came  by 
surprise,  they  had  the  advantage  in  close  combat.  Sutton  attributed  Maasai  military  superiority  to 
the  use  of  larger,  socketed,  spear  blades  along  with  novel  forms  of  military  organization  and  tactics 
(which  western  Serengeti  people  later  adopted).66  The  White  Fathers  reported  in  1904,  when  they 
took  a  trip  to  the  interior  of  the  country,  that  all  along  the  lake  people  lived  in  fear  of  Maasai  raids 
from  the  plains.  They  would  not  only  raid  cattle  but  burn  houses  and  fields,  leaving  devastation 
behind  them.67  In  1 902  the  Germans  built  Fort  Ikoma  in  the  western  Serengeti  specifically  to 
control  Maasai  raiding. 

Societe  de  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres  Blancs)  24me  Annee,  No.  94,  Avril  1 902,  p.  94. 

64  Toppenberg,  Africa  Has  Mv  Heart,  p.  63 

65  This  insight  thanks  to  on-going  conversations  with  Richard  Waller. 

66  J.  E.  G.  Sutton,  "Becoming  Maasailand,"  in  Being  Maasai.  p.  42. 

67  L.  Bourget,  Trip  Diary,  1904,  "Report  of  a  Trip  in  1904  from  Bukumbi  to  Mwanza, 
Kome?  Ukerewe.  Kibara,  Ikoma-Mara  Region,  together  with  some  stories,"  N.p.  n.d.  M-SRC54, 
Sukuma  Archives,  Bujora,  Mwanza;  See  also  Societe  de  Missionnaires  d'Afrique,  Chronique 
Trimestrielle  de  la  Societe  de  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres  Blancs)  24me  Annee.  No.  94,  Avril 
1902,  p.  94. 


140 

People  throughout  the  Mara  Region  know  all  Maasai  (and  Maasai-like  peoples)  as 
"Kwabhe,"  but  more  specifically  those  raiding  in  Ikoma  and  Nata  were  the  Serenget  of  the  present 
Loliondo  area  while  those  raiding  in  Kuria,  and  perhaps  Ngoreme,  were  the  Siria  of  the  present 
Narok  area.  Fosbrooke  reported  that  the  Serenget  Maasai  section  was  strong  throughout  what  is 
now  Serengeti  National  Park  until  1890  when  the  Loitai  Maasai  absorbed  them.  In  the  intense 
debates  surrounding  establishment  of  the  Serengeti  National  Park  boundaries  in  the  1930s 
Fosbrooke  and  others  claimed  that  the  Serenget  Maasai  had  for  the  past  century  used  the  western 
Serengeti  as  fall-back  grazing  in  times  of  drought.68  The  Loitai  expansion  was  also  responsible  for 
pushing  the  Siria  back  from  the  Loita  Plains  to  the  Mara  River  and  into  competition  with  the  Kuria 
for  grazing  land.69 

Because  of  the  highly  emotional  history  of  relationships  with  the  Maasai,  the  historian 
must  treat  stories  about  the  interaction  of  western  Serengeti  peoples  and  the  Maasai  carefully.  We 
can  also  recover  relations  of  cooperation,  blood-brotherhood,  marriage  and  kinship  from  this 
period.  The  interaction  of  western  Serengeti  peoples  with  the  Maasai  during  this  era  is  explored  in 
more  detail  in  Chapter  9.  This  brief  summary  alerts  the  reader  to  the  context  surrounding 
references  to  Maasai  and  cattle  raiding  that  appear  throughout  the  dissertation.  This  is  a  further 
part  of  the  puzzle  in  understanding  relations  between  herders,  hunters  and  farmers  before  the 
disasters.  Many  innovations  of  the  late  nineteenth  century  bear  the  mark  of  Maasai  influence,  if 


68  Fosbrooke,  "Sections  of  the  Masai  in  Loliondo  Area."  For  the  entire  debate  see  National 
Game  Parks  files,  21 5/350/vols.  I-IV,  TNA. 

65  Galaty,  "Maasai  Expansion,"  p.  72.  The  Loitai  confederation  included  the  Siria, 
Laitayok,  Salei,  Serengeti  and  Loitai. 


141 

not  direct  borrowing,  to  the  point  where  many  observers  of  the  time  concluded  that  western 
Serengeti  peoples  must  be  "of  Maasai  blood."'0 

Conclusion 

This  basic  outline  of  the  late  nineteenth  century  events  demonstrates  the  scope  and 
intensity  of  the  disasters.  Societal  stress  does  not  necessarily  result  in  the  transformation  of 
identity.  However,  in  this  case,  the  movement  of  large  numbers  of  people  out  of  the  region  to 
Sukuma  or  Kerewe  and  into  the  region,  from  Maasai,  seriously  disrupted  the  cohesion  of 
territorially  based  communities.  To  gain  protection  from  raids  and  access  to  a  wider  range  of 
resources,  local  communities  changed  the  social  basis  for  organizing  themselves.  They  emphasized 
the  importance  of  age-sets  in  creating  social  unity  where,  formerly,  clans  had  been  made  to  do  that 
work.    Beginning  with  the  next  chapter,  the  traditions  containing  evidence  of  social  process  over 
the  longue  duree  are  analyzed.  However,  we  cannot  build  a  picture  of  this  earlier  time  frame 
without  reference  to  the  ways  in  which  historical  consciousness  was  transformed  during  the 
disasters. 

The  historian  must  constantly  keep  in  mind  the  possible  effects  on  oral  tradition  of  these 
radical  changes  in  social  identity.  For  example,  1  interpret  the  oral  traditions  about  early  relations 
between  herder,  hunters  and  farmers  in  light  of  the  later  breakdown  of  a  regional  economy  of 
interdependence  and  the  enmity  toward  Maasai  herders.  The  later  commercialization  of  hunting  to 
gain  wild  animal  products  to  sell  in  Sukuma  must  inform  one's  reading  of  oral  traditions  about  the 
early  hunting  economy.  Finally,  knowledge  of  the  influential  position  of  the  Sukuma  in  the 
caravan  trade  networks  must  be  brought  to  bear  on  traditions  of  origin  in  Sukuma.  Above  all,  the 


70  Schnee,  Deutsches  Kolonial  Lexikon..  pp.  121,  679-81;  Weiss,  Die  Volkerstamme  nn 
244-245. 


142 

new  identities  that  emerged  during  this  period  of  age-set  cycle  territorial  membership  and  ethnicity 
cannot  be  projected  back  onto  a  "traditional"  and  timeless  past. 


PART  TWO: 
LONG-TERM  PATTERNS  IN  THE  SOCIAL  ORGANIZATION  OF  SPACE 


143 


CHAPTER  FOUR 

ASIMOKA,  EMERGENCE: 

BUILDING  HOMESTEADS  ON  AN  INTER-CULTURAL  FRONTIER 

This  chapter  explores  the  socially  occupied  landscapes  of  the  distant  past  through  the 
interpretation  of  oral  traditions  of  origin  or  emergence.  I  investigate  the  different  layers  of  meaning 
in  the  emergence  stories  to  present  a  culturally  nuanced  understanding  of  long-term  regional 
developments.  Although  elders  tell  these  narratives  as  the  origin  stories  of  present  day  ethnic 
groups,  the  core  spatial  images  are  those  of  the  male  and  female  spaces  of  the  homestead  and  the 
ecological  landscapes  of  hunters,  farmers  and  herders.  They  refer  to  the  long-term  ongoing 
generative  principles  relating  to  production  and  reproduction.  The  emergence  stories  suggest  the 
frontier  processes  by  which  settlers,  forging  new  economic  strategies  among  neighbors  of  diverse 
cultural  backgrounds,  developed  a  new  cultural  synthesis  as  the  basis  for  economic  prosperity  over 
the  next  millennium. 

Different  versions  of  the  emergence  stories  enrich  historical  analysis  based  on  other 
sources  of  evidence  such  as  historical  linguistics,  archaeology  or  comparative  ethnography.  An 
amazing  congruence  exists  between  the  seemingly  "mythical"  narratives  and  historical 
reconstructions  based  on  other  kinds  of  evidence,  about  which  the  narrators  of  these  tales  could  not 
have  known.  Historical  linguistics  tells  us  that  Bantu-speaking  farmers  entered  and  eventually 
came  to  dominate  a  region  where  herders  and  hunter/gatherers  of  other  language  groups  already 
lived.    The  Nata  emergence  story  suggests  how  new  social  identities  might  have  developed  as 
Bantu-speakers  incorporated  hunters  and  hunting  knowledge  into  their  farming  settlements  on  the 
frontier.  The  lkizu  emergence  story  illustrates  a  pattern  of  the  gendered  division  of  labor  within 

144 


145 
autonomous  but  interdependent  spheres  of  authority,  which  settlers  on  the  frontier  may  have 
deployed  to  structure  relations  within  the  homestead  and  to  others  beyond.  The  next  chapter 
continues  the  investigation  of  emergence  stories  by  looking  at  the  Ikoma  and  Ngoreme  accounts 
that  primarily  concern  the  ecological  spaces  of  interaction  between  hill  farmers,  woodland  hunters 
and  grassland  herders  on  an  inter-cultural  frontier. 

In  my  collection  of  oral  traditions,  elders  most  often  wanted  to  begin  with  the  asimoka 
stories-the  origin  or  emergence  narratives  of  first  man  and  first  woman.  They  considered  these 
stories  the  foundational  historical  narratives,  necessary  in  any  account  of  the  past.  Local  educated 
men  translated  asimoka  as  "origins,"  and  more  specifically  as  ethnic  origins.    The  Musoma 
District  officers  used  the  asimoka  stories  that  they  collected  to  define  "tribes"  by  reconstructing 
their  origins  and  migrations  in  the  "tribal"  model.1  The  way  these  reports  used  the  term  then,  and 
the  way  elders  still  use  it  today,  seems  to  imply  that  each  ethnic  group  can  be  traced  back  to  one 
root,  with  many  branchings  along  the  way. 

Asimoka,  however,  has  a  linguistic  derivation  whose  meaning  may  provide  alternate,  and 
less  unitary,  models  for  understanding  the  past.  In  Nata,  the  verb  -sisimoka  means  "to  spring  up," 
as  in  waking  up  from  a  sleep  or  small  sprouts  popping  up  out  of  the  ground.2  In  the  related 
language  of  Kuria  the  root  word  is  -semoka,  meaning  "to  originate  from  or  the  rise  (of  a  river)."3 
Social  theorists  have  suggested  a  similar  image  of  a  rhizome,  instead  of  a  tree,  for  understanding 
the  historical  development  of  different  groups  of  people.  A  rhizome  describes  a  kind  of 
subterranean  plant  stem  that  grows  horizontally,  producing  shoots  above  and  roots  below.  Many 


1  See  a  discussion  of  the  "tribal  model"  in  Chapter  2. 

2  Augustino  Mokwe  Kisigiro,  "Nata-Swahili  Dictionary,"  unpublished,  n.d. 
1  Muniko  et  al.,  Kuria-English  Dictionary,  p.  32,  1 1 5. 


146 
plants  that  appear  distinct  on  the  surface  develop  from  the  same  network  of  rhizomes,  which  can 
cover  a  large  area  without  a  distinct  beginning  or  end.  A  rhizome  is  a  metaphor  of  alliance  rather 
than  filiation,  of  coming  and  going  rather  than  starting  and  finishing.  It  is  a  way  of  understanding 
multiplicity  without  the  need  for  reduction  to  a  single  beginning.4 

Rhizomatous  grasses  in  the  Serengeti  have  networks  of  connected  underground  stems  that 
may  sprout  up  in  many  places  at  once.  Because  the  rhizomes  lie  beneath  the  ground,  all  the 
surface  growth  may  be  burned  off,  only  to  sprout  up  again  in  different  places.  This  model 
recognizes  the  interconnected  network  of  rhizomes  that  recombine  and  sprout  up  in  new  ways 
rather  than  deriving  all  things  from  a  single  original  stock.  I  will  translate  asimoka,  in  this  sense, 
as  "emergence,"  the  emergence  of  new  identities  out  of  the  old  tangled  underground  network  of 
rhizomes,  without  simple  and  primordial  origins.5    Tracing  cultural  origins  back  to  a  single  source 
is  not  possible,  but  like  the  rhizomatous  network  of  Serengeti  grasses  or  the  underground 
connection  of  water  courses,  cultural  change  appears  as  new  growth,  or  new  springs,  and  presents 
creative  new  options. 

The  Development  of  a  Regional  Culture  from  Diverse  Interactions  in  the  Distant  Past 

Through  the  evidence  of  historical  linguistics  and  archaeology,  we  know  that  the  peoples  of 
the  western  Serengeti,  have  developed  in  a  rhizomatous  pattern,  from  multiple  and  interconnected 
stems  in  the  distant  past.  As  early  as  500  A.D.  peoples  speaking  languages  from  four  major 
language  groups,  with  diverse  economic  and  cultural  practices,  each  occupying  a  separate 
community  corresponding  to  a  different  ecological  niche,  inhabited  what  is  now  the  Mara  Region. 


4  Gilles  Deleuze  and  Felix  Guattari,  "Rhizome:  Introduction,"  A  Thousand  Plateaus 
(Minneapolis:  University  of  Minnesota  Press,  1986),  pp.  1-19.  Thanks  to  Patrick  Malloy  for  this 
reference  and  insight. 

5  For  the  idea  of  "emergence"  instead  of  "origin"  see,  Tedlock  and  Mannheim,  The 
Dialogic  Emergence,  pp.  8-15. 


147 
Western  Serengeti  culture,  as  a  regional  set  of  common  cultural  assumptions,  emerged  out  of  the 
interactions  of  these  diverse  peoples  in  the  distant  past.  Archaeologists  and  historical  linguists 
working  with  a  broad  brush,  have  produced  an  overview  of  the  Neolithic  and  Early  Iron-age 
periods  the  Rift  Valley  region  of  East  Africa. 
The  Evidence  of  Archaeology 

Archaeologists  investigating  the  origins  of  food  production  in  East  Africa  date  the 
development  of  the  Pastoral  Neolithic  period  to  between  1000  B.C.  and  700  A.D.  During  this  time 
local  hunter/gatherers  in  East  Africa  adopted  livestock  that  had  been  domesticated  in  the  Sahara. 
The  continuity  in  lithic  and  ceramic  wares  between  Neolithic  and  pre-Neolithic  sites  supports  this 
supposition.  Some  archaeologists  hypothesize  that  small  groups  of  herders,  escaping  drought  in  the 
north,  brought  the  livestock.  Pastoralism  gradually  came  to  occupy  a  more  important  place  in  local 
economies  due  to  the  late  Holocene  drying  trend,  the  introduction  of  better  adapted  cattle  breeds 
and  the  establishment  of  annual  wet  and  dry  seasons.  During  the  next  stage  of  development 
discontinuities  in  the  material  artifacts  do  occur,  suggesting  increased  immigration  of,  or  influence 
from,  herders  originating  in  the  north.  Archaeologists  find  no  evidence  for  large-scale  immigration 
in  the  later  stages  of  the  Pastoral  Neolithic  and  economic  strategies  seem  to  have  shifted  slightly 
toward  more  reliance  on  hunting  and  gathering.6 

Stanley  Ambrose  further  refines  this  reconstruction  of  Neolithic  history  by  identifying  the 
coexistence  of  three  distinct  sets  of  material  artifacts  in  close  proximity,  corresponding  to  the 
diverse  ecological  habitats  of  the  Rift  Valley-Eburran  Industry  representing  a  hunter/gatherer 
lifestyle  eventually  confined  to  the  montane  forests,  the  Elementaitan  Industry  representing  an 
agro-pastoral  lifestyle  in  the  forest/savanna  ecotone,  Highland  Savanna  Neolithic  Industry 


6  Bower,  "The  Pastoral  Neolithic  of  East  Africa,"  pp.  74-76 


148 

representing  a  pastoral  lifestyle  in  the  open  lightly  wooded  savanna  grasslands.  No  material 
evidence  for  agriculture  at  this  time  yet  exists.  Ambrose's  research  shows  that  about  1 ,300  B.C. 
the  material  remains  of  Highland  Savanna  Pastoral  Neolithic  communities  appear  abruptly  in  the 
archaeological  record  and  continue  to  coexist  with  evidence  for  small  groups  of  Eburran 
hunter/gatherers  (who  also  took  up  pottery  and  small  stock-raising).  Further  evidence  shows  that 
distinctive  Elmentaitan  material  remains  appear  in  the  region  about  500  B.C.,  presumably  brought 
by  peoples  from  the  northwest.  Competition  among  these  three  groups  must  have  been  minimal 
because  each  had  adapted  to  a  different  ecological  zone.7 

Ambrose  further  proposes  a  continuity  between  the  Neolithic  Eburran  hunter/gatherers  in 
the  highlands  and  Rift  Valley  of  East  Africa,  identified  in  the  archaeological  record,  and  present 
day  hunter/gatherer  populations  throughout  East  Africa.  The  continuity  in  space  and  time  of  the 
hunter/gatherer  way  of  life  is  remarkable.  Both  from  the  archaeological  record  and  from 
ethnographic  description  in  the  last  century  Ambrose  shows  that  over  this  long  period 
hunter/gatherers  have  shown  an  unusually  high  dependence  on  meat,  making  up  80%  of  their  diet, 
in  contrast  to  plant  foods.  They  supplemented  this  high  protein  diet  with  honey  and  fat. 
Hunter/gatherer  populations  of  the  past  seem  to  have  been  fairly  sedentary,  occupying  the  eco-tone 
between  savanna  and  forest  to  exploit  both  regions.  The  archaeological  remains  show  that  Eburran 
hunter/gatherers  mainly  hunted  resident  ungulates  of  the  woodlands,  with  traps  and  snares,  rather 
than  the  larger  species  of  the  open  plains,  and  also  kept  some  small  stock.* 


7  Stanley  H.  Ambrose,  "The  Introduction  of  Pastoral  Adaptations  to  the  Highlands  of  East 
Africa,"  in  From  Hunters  to  Farmers:  The  Causes  and  Consequences  of  Food  Production  in 
Africa,  eds.  J.  Desmond  Clark  and  Steven  A.  (  Berkeley:  University  of  California  Press   1984) 
pp.  222-  33. 

8  Stanley  H.  Ambrose,  "Hunter-Gatherer  Adaptations  to  Non-Marginal  Environments:  An 
Ecological  and  Archaeological  Assessment  of  the  Dorobo  Model,"  Sprache  und  Geschichte  in 
Afrika  7.2  (1986):  11-42. 


149 

In  historic  times  hunter/gatherers  in  East  Africa  nearly  always  lived  in  close  interdependent 
relationship  with  agriculturalists  and  pastoralists.  The  evidence  from  archaeology  shows  that 
incoming  Savanna  Pastoral  Neolithic  communities,  and  later  Elmenteitan  communities,  severely 
restricted  the  ecological  niche  occupied  by  Eburran  hunter/gatherers.  This  may  have  forced  the 
hunter/gatherers  to  compensate  for  their  loss  of  resources  by  developing  relations  of 
interdependence  with  the  incoming  populations.  In  the  western  Serengeti  context  they  may  have 
also  moved  farther  into  the  woodlands.9    Present-day  hunter/gatherers  have  established 
interdependent  relations  with  many  different  groups,  speaking  Maa,  Kalenjin,  or  Cushitic 
languages,  which  may  retain  traces  of  a  Khoisan  language.10 
The  Evidence  of  Historical  Linguistics 

Linguistically  inclined  historians  reconstruct  the  history  of  food  systems  in  the  Neolithic 
and  Early  Iron-Age  periods  from  different  kinds  of  evidence.  They  use  the  concept  of  the  speech 
community  rather  than  the  concept  of  material  cultural  traditions  to  think  about  the  history  of  these 
early  periods.  They  postulate  that  the  two  earliest  peoples  in  what  is  now  the  Mara  Region  of 
Tanzania  spoke  either  a  Southern  Cushitic  language  and  practiced  a  pastoral  economy,  or  a  Rub 
Eastern  Sahelian  language  and  practiced  a  mixed  pastoral  and  farming  economy.    Linguistic 
evidence  also  exists  for  the  presence  of  hunter/gatherers  who  become  associated  with  pastoralist 
and  agro-pastoralist  communities  in  the  greater  Rift  Valley." 


9  Ibid,  p.  30;  Ambrose,  "The  Introduction  of  Pastoral  Adaptations,"  p.  238. 

10  Michael  G.  Kenny,  "Mirror  in  the  Forest:  The  Dorobo  Hunter-Gatherers  as  an  Image  of 
the  Other,"  Africa  51,  1  (1981):  479;  Ehret,  Southern  Nilotic  History  p  73-  Magnir,.  „  cobmel 
officer  in  Maasailand  during  the  1920s,  named  eight  different  "Dorobo"  groups,  each  speaking 
different  languages  with  different  levels  of  integration  with  other  peoples.  R.  A.  J.  Maguire,  "11- 
Torobo."  Tanganyika  Notes  and  Records  25  (June  1948):  1-26. 

"  Christopher  Ehret,  The  Classical  Age  of  Eastern  and  Southern  Africa:  A  History.  1000 
B.C.  to  A.D.  300  (Charlottesville:  University  Press  of  Virginia,  forthcoming). 


150 

Bantu-speakers  began  moving  into  this  area  from  their  older  settlements  around  the  Lake 
Victoria  shoreland  by  or  before  300-400  A.D.  As  these  immigrants  became  separated  from  their 
Great  Lakes  Bantu  ancestral  speech  communities,  they  began  speaking  distinct  languages,  that 
historical  linguists  now  call  the  East  Nyanza  group.  At  about  the  same  time,  but  probably  a  little 
later,  agro-pastoralists  speaking  a  language  known  as  Mara  Southern  Nilotic  began  moving  from 
the  north  into  the  interior  of  what  is  now  the  Mara  Region,12 

These  newcomers  moved  into  the  ecological  zones  formerly  occupied  by  the  previous 
inhabitants  of  the  region  and  broke  down  the  agro-ecological  boundaries  that  had  confined  different 
speech  communities  to  the  ecological  niches  best  suited  to  their  agricultural  expertises.  East 
Nyanza  Bantu-speakers  who  had  practiced  a  root-crop  and  fishing  economy  with  small  stock  and 
some  reliance  on  hunting,  along  the  lakeshore,  now  began  to  expand  their  food  producing 
possibilities  by  adopting  grain-crop  (eleusine  millet  and  sorghum)  farming,  and  increasing  their 
hunting  and  herding  expertise  as  they  moved  into  the  drier  interior.  They  learned  these  new  skills 
from  their  neighbors  who  had  adapted  to  this  environment.  Evidence  for  this  is  found  in  the  loan 
words  relating  to  herding,  grain  farming  and  hunting  adopted  during  this  time  by  East  Nyanza 
speakers.  '3 

Gradually  the  Southern  Cushitic-  and  Eastern  Sahelian-speakers  disappeared  from  the 
historical  record.  Based  on  historical  linguistics  we  cannot  tell  whether  they  left,  died  off  or 
whether  they  integrated  themselves  into  the  growing  community  of  Mara-speakers.  In  the  western 
Serengeti,  Mara  Southern  Nilotic-speakers,  who  would  have  occupied  approximately  the  same 


12  Schoenbrun,  "Early  History,"  pp.  156-7,  182-204 

13  Ibid;  David  L.  Schoenbrun,  "We  are  what  we  eat:  Ancient  agriculture  between  the 
Great  Lakes,"  Journal  of  African  History  34  (1993):  1-31 ;  Ehret,  Southern  Nilotic  Historv.pp  40- 

43. 


151 
ecological  niche  as  these  two  former  pastoral  groups,  seem  to  have  succeeded  them.14    [See  Figure 
4-1 :  Linguistic  Maps  of  the  Lakes  Region  Over  Time.] 

Both  historical  linguists  and  archaeologists  have  noted  that  the  geographic  distribution, 
time  frame  and  sequence  of  events  suggested  for  these  different  communities  of  East  African 
peoples  in  these  two  sets  of  evidence  roughly  correspond.  To  make  inferences  from  this  data  one 
would  have  to  assume  that  a  correlation  does  exist  between  a  linguistic  group  and  its  material 
culture.  On  this  basis,  some  have  suggested  that  the  past  distribution  of  Southern  Cushitic- 
speakers  corresponds  with  Savanna  Pastoral  Neolithic  Industry  sites  and  that  the  past  distribution 
of  Southern  Nilotic-speakers  corresponds  with  Elmenteitan  Industry  sites.  The  relative  sequence 
and  dating  for  Southern  Cushitic-speakers  entering  the  region  before  Southern  Nilotic-speakers 
also  correspond.15  Historical  linguists  and  archaeologists  thus  may  be  looking  at  the  same 
historical  processes  using  different  kinds  of  evidence  and  historical  reasoning.  After  1000  A.D. 
historians  must  rely  on  the  evidence  of  historical  linguistics,  since  little  archaeological  work  in  the 
Mara  Region  covers  this  period. 

Bantu  languages  became  dominant  throughout  what  is  now  the  Mara  Region  by  or  before 
1000  A.D.,  but  not  without  considerable  influence  from  the  earlier  period  of  diverse  interactions. 
Ehret  argues  that  during  the  second  half  of  the  first  millennium  A.D.,  when  Bantu-speaking 
agriculturalists  settled  among  the  more  mobile  Mara  Southern  Nilotic-speaking  agro-pastoralists, 
they  developed  an  interdependent  relationship.  East  Nyanza  speakers  adopted,  as  loan  words  from 
Mara  Southern  Nilotic-speakers,  the  cycling  age-set  names  used  today  by  western  Serengeti 
people,  which  dates  this  innovation  to  the  period  between  500  and  1000  A.D.  Other  Southern 


14  Ibid. 

15  Ambrose,  "The  Introduction  of  Pastoral  Adaptations,"  pp.  233-234. 


152 


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153 
Nilotic  loan  words  in  East  Nyanza  languages  dating  from  this  period  of  early  contact  include 
vocabulary  connected  to  livestock  (sheepskin,  Iamb,  he-goat),  stages  of  the  life  cycle  and  non-kin 
relations  (young  man,  young  woman,  friend,  oath,  age-set),  and  a  new  word  for  the  homestead  or 
cattle  corral,  aka."'  This  evidence  may  suggest  that  East  Nyanza-speakers,  moving  into  the 
unfamiliar  environment  of  the  interior,  used  common  age-sets  and  the  comradeship  of  peers  to  gain 
access  to  livestock  expertise  and  to  develop  new  kinds  of  homesteads  built  around  the  livestock 
corral. 

Whatever  the  historical  process,  today  no  speakers  of  the  Mara  Southern  Nilotic  language 
remain  in  the  Mara  Region.  One  possibility  is  that  as  East  Nyanza  Bantu-speakers  adapted  to  new 
ecological  zones  they  gradually  absorbed  Mara  Southern  Nilotic-speakers  into  their  own 
communities.1''    Another  possibility  is  that  the  descendants  of  the  Mara  Southern  Nilotic  speakers 
today  are  the  Southern  Nilotic  Dadog-speakers,  the  Tatoga  Rotigenga  and  lsimajek,  who  now 
occupy  the  plains  of  western  Serengeti  best  suited  for  pastoralism.  I  favor  the  latter  explanation, 
although  individual  Mara  Southern  Nilotic-speakers  surely  crossed  linguistic  boundaries  to  become 
East  Nyanza  Bantu-speakers.  It  seems  more  likely  that  most  of  these  pastoralists  adopted  the 
language  and  lifestyle  of  another  incoming  pastoralist  group,  rather  than  that  of  their  agriculturalist 
Bantu-speaking  neighbors. Is 


"  Ehret,  Southern  Nilotic  History,  pp.  130-132,  Tables  D.l  and  D.2. 

"  Ibid,  p.  40-42.  Their  presence  in  the  past  is  deduced  by  Ehret  in  his  reconstruction  of 
Southern  Nilotic  loanwords  in  East  Nyanza  languages,  containing  sounds  which  were  not  part  of 
Kalenjin  or  Dadog  languages,  and  which  pre-date  the  split  of  East  Nyanza  languages  into  Suguti 
and  Mara  branches. 

18  More  linguistic  investigation  would  be  necessary  to  determine  whether  there  are 
phonological  and  lexical  transfers  from  Mara  Southern  Nilotic  to  Dadog.  There  are  numerous  loan 
words  from  Mara  Southern  Nilotic  in  East  Nyanza  languages. 


154 

It  is  not  clear  from  historical  linguistics  when  the  Dadog-speakers  came  to  the  western 
Serengeti.  What  we  do  know  from  the  evidence  of  loan  words  in  present-day  languages  of  the 
region  is  that  Dadog-speakers  were  in  northern  Tanzania,  what  is  now  Maasailand,  perhaps  as  far 
west  as  the  Mara,  from  the  first  millennium  A.D.  They  spread  south  into  what  is  now  the  Maasai 
Steppe  and  southwest  into  parts  of  Kondoa,  Mbulu  and  Singida  after  1000  A.D.  About  the  same 
time,  incoming  South  Kalenjin-  speaking  peoples  assimilated  the  northern  Dadog-speaking 
settlements."  If  the  lifestyle  practiced  by  Dadog-speakers  presented  clear  advantages  for  other 
pastoralists  such  as  the  Mara  Southern  Nilotic-speakers,  Dadog-speakers  (rather  than  East 
Nyanza-  speakers)  could  have  completely  absorbed  Mara  Southern  Nilotic-speaking  communities 
by  around  1000  A.D. 

The  name  from  which  "Tatoga"  (for  Dadog-speaking  people)  is  derived  seems  to  date  from 
the  first  millennium  A.D.  in  northern  Tanzania,  suggesting  long-term  continuity  in  their  sense  of 
identity  as  a  people.  The  characteristic  features  of  Dadog-  speaking  culture  have  also  remained 
constant  over  the  millennium-as  herders  of  cattle,  sheep  and  goats,  who  drink  milk,  bleed  cattle 
and  pay  bridewealth  in  livestock,  cultivate  some  grain  and  hunt.  They  did,  however,  drop  the 
Southern  Nilotic  cycling  age-set  system  of  eight  names  and  adopt  a  non-cycling  linear  generation- 
set  system,  in  distinction  to  their  Bantu-speaking  neighbors  who  kept  the  old  Southern  Nilotic 
cycling  names.20 

This  dramatic  change  in  age-set  organization  may  indicate  a  period  of  increased 
differentiation  and  separation  between  agriculturalist  and  pastoralist  communities  after  1000  A.D. 
By  this  time,  East  Nyanza  Bantu-speaking  communities  had  already  gained  herding  expertise  from 


19  Ibid,  pp.  55-62. 

20  Ibid.  Loanwords  from  Dadog  appear  in  Sonjo,  Iraqw  and  Aramanik.  The  impact  of 
Dadog  on  the  ancestors  of  the  Sonjo  was  particularly  significant. 


155 
their  Mara  Southern  Nilotic-speaking  neighbors  and  had  developed  a  lifestyle  that  exploited  each  of 
the  other  economic  subsistence  patterns  (farming,  herding,  and  hunting).    Through  this  strategy 
East  Nyanza-speakers  gained  dominance  in  the  region,  perhaps  requiring  Dadog-speaking 
pastoralists  to  move  farther  out  on  the  plains  and  away  from  the  eco-tones  where  a  combined 
herding,  hunting  and  farming  economy  was  possible.  The  identity  of  Dadog-speakers  who 
absorbed  Mara  Southern  Nilotic-speakers  may  also  have  been  more  exclusively  pastoralist, 
demanding  clearer  distinctions  (within  a  system  of  economic  interdependence)  from  their 
agriculturalist  neighbors. 

Bantu-speakers  and  Dadog-speakers  also  continued  to  coexist  with  hunter/gatherers.  The 
hunter/gatherer  people  who  appear  in  oral  traditions  of  the  western  Serengeti  are  called  the  Asi.  1 
could  identify  no  Asi  communities  in  the  region  during  my  fieldwork,  although  western  Serengeti 
people  living  today  can  remember  interacting  with  Asi  hunter/gatherers  in  their  youth.  I  can  only 
speculate  that  either  they  moved  into  Maasailand,  where  Maasai  call  them  the  Ndorobo  or  Okiek, 
or  Bantu-speaking  communities  absorbed  them,  leaving  little  memory  of  Asi  tradition.21  Because  I 
identified  no  descendants  of  this  tradition,  1  had  no  way  of  finally  knowing  what  language  they 
spoke,  whether  Southern  Nilotic,  Cushitic  or  Khoisan.22  Asi  seems  to  be  a  categorical  rather  than 


21  This  speculation  is  based  on  the  evidence  of  oral  traditions  of  the  late  nineteenth  century 
and  early  colonial  reports,  see  next  chapter  on  the  relation  of  more  recent  Asi  to  western  Serengeti 
peoples. 

22  Numerous  academic  arguments  exist  for  the  ancestors  of  most  Okiek  hunter/gatherer 
communities  of  East  Africa  being  Kalenjin;  see  John  Distefano,"Pre-Colonial  History  of  the 
Kalenjin"  (Ph.D.  Dissertation,  U.  C.  L.  A.,  1985);  and  Corinne  A.  Kratz,  "Are  the  Okiek  really 
Masai?  or  Kipsigis?  or  Kikuyu?,"  Cahiers  d'Etudes  africaines  20,  3  (1980):  360,  who  draws  on 
the  evidence  of  historical  linguistics  and  oral  history  to  postulate  that  all  of  the  Okiek  related 
hunter/gatherers  once  lived  together  before  1000  A.D.,  probably  in  Northwestern  Kenya,  and 
speaking  a  Southern  Nilotic  language  related  to  present  day  Kalenjin.  Ehret  demonstrates  that  the 
distinction  of  hunter/gatherers  as  a  separate  conceptual  category  was  a  proto-Southern  Nilotic 
innovation,  see  Ehret,  Southern  Nilotic  History,  pp.  79-80.  Cushitic  speaking  hunter/gatherers  in 
the  greater  Rift  valley  are  known  by  names  close  to  "Asi,"  which  may  simply  be  the  word  for  "bush 


156 
an  ethnic  name,  referring  to  people  who  live  in  the  bush,  or  people  of  the  land,  taken  from  the  root  - 
Si,  meaning  "dirt,  soil,  land,  ground,  place."23    Kratz  points  out  that  at  the  heart  of  Okiek 
(Ndorobo,  Asi)  identity  is  their  ability  to  cross  boundaries;  "a  sense  of  being  mediator,  code- 
switcher,  interstitial."  The  space  of  the  hunter/gatherer  is  that  of  "inhabiting  cultural  boundary 
areas  as  their  own."24  They  have  lived  on  the  boundaries  of  many  different  communities  (Kalenjin, 
Maasai  and  Kikuyu),  accepting  much  of  the  language  and  culture  of  others  while  maintaining  a 
sense  of  their  own  identity. 

People  speaking  East  Nyanza  Bantu  languages,  and  living  among  people  speaking  other 
languages,  diversified  over  time  as  they  became  separated  from  each  other.  The  diagram  of  the 
family  tree  of  Great  Lakes  Bantu  languages  illustrates  the  relationships  among  these  languages 
over  time  [See  Figure  4-2:  Great  Lakes  Bantu  Linguistic  Tree.].  Those  who  stayed  near  the 
lakeshore  came  to  speak  Suguti  languages  (Jita,  Ruri,  Regi,  Kwaya)  and  those  who  went  inland 
came  to  speak  the  Mara  languages.  Through  the  method  of  glottochronology  described  in  the 
Chapter  1  we  know  that  these  two  communities  grew  distinct  from  each  other  about  1 500  years 
ago.  As  the  Mara-speaking  communities  spread  into  new  lands,  those  who  crossed  the  Mara  river 


dwellers"  in  general.  See  Kenny,  "Mirror  in  the  Forest,"  p.  481 ;  Itandala,  "A  History  of  the 
Babinza,"  pp.  24-27;  Pare  oral  traditions  also  name  the  original  hunter/gatherer  populations  as 
Asa  or  Asi,  Kimambo,  A  Political  History  of  the  Pare,  pp.  14,27;  D.  F.  Bleek,  "The  Hadzapi  or 
Watindega  of  Tanganyika  Territory,"  Africa  4,  3  (July  1 93 1 );  273-286.  Colonial  anthropologist 
Henry  Fosbrooke  reported  that  the  Lake  Eyasi  hunter/gathers  called  themselves  "Hesabet"  and 
were  called  "Ngabobwo"  (rather  than  Ndorobo)  by  the  Maasai,  and  Batandigo  or  Bahe  by  the 
Sukuma.  Henry  A.  Fosbrooke,  "Sections  of  the  Masai  in  Loliondo  Area"  (typescript)  1953,  CORY 
#259,  EAF  UDSM;  Sutton,  "Becoming  Maasailand,"  pp.  50-5 1 .    Depicting  a  key  element  in  the 
hunter/gatherer  economy,  the  word  for  "beehive,"  omutana  (in  Nata),  is  a  Southern  Cushitic 
loanword  in  East  Nyanza  languages  (-tana),  see  Christopher  Ehret,  Ethiopians  and  East  Africans: 
The  Problem  of  Contacts  (Nairobi:  East  African  Publishing  House,  1974),  p.  82,  Table  5-2, 
Nyanza  Southern  Cushitic  loanwords  in  East  Victoria  and  Southeast  Victoria  Bantu. 


23  Schoenbrun,  personal  communication. 

24  Kratz,  "Are  the  Okiek  really  Masai?,"  pp.  359-360. 


157 


Tree  Diagram!. 2.  Croup  Average    -  Great    Lakes   Bantu. 

Percent  congation  out  of  a  100-word  list. 

90    85    80    75    70    65    60    55    50    45 

5 S.Luhyia 


40 


-N.Luhyit 


-Cen 
Luhyi 


tral 1 


LUHYIA-, 


31-RUGUNGU- 
6 


VortA— i 
Nyama 


10 1  Nort 

11 1-Ruta 


Rutara— 


-WEST- 
NYANZA 


16- 

17- 

18- 

19- 

20- 

21- 

22 

23 


-Rwenzori- 


T 


Forest 


25- 
2  8- 
30- 


West  Highlands—' 


Kivu 


24-KABUARI 

"~~ 1 

3  3 \-Suguti- 

34 

3  5 1 

39- 

40- 

36- 

37- 

38- 

41- 

42- 

90 


-WESTERN- 
LAKES 


-South  Mara- 


—Hara 


-EAST 

NY  AN  Z  A 


85 


80 


— r—North—1 
— '  Mara 
75    70 
1000BP 


65    60    55    50    45    40 

1500BP       2000BP      2  500BP 

Glottochronology  at  shared  retention  rate  of  73-74X  per 
thousand  years.   Note:   The  nuabers  at  the  left  margin 
correspond  to  nuabered  languages  in  the  Outline 
Classification  above. 


Figure  4-2:  Great  Lakes  Bantu  Linguistic  Tree.  [David  Lee  Schoenbrun,  "Early  History  in 
Eastern  Africa's  Great  Lakes  Region:  Linguistic,  Ecological,  and  Archaeological  Approaches,  ca. 
500  B.C.  to  ca  A.D.  1000,"  (Ph.D.  dissertation,  UCLA,  1990),  p  362,  with  permission.] 


158 
formed  the  language  communities  of  North  Mara-Kuria  and  Gusii.  In  South  Mara  they 
differentiated  themselves  into  three  groups,  probably  becoming  distinct  about  500-300  years  ago- 
Ngoreme,  eastern  South  Mara  (Nata,  Ikoma,  Ishenyi)  and  western  South  Mara  (Ikizu,  Zanaki, 
Shashi  or  Sizaki). 

Although  local  convention  recognizes  each  of  the  western  Serengeti  languages  (South 
Mara)  as  a  separate  language  today,  they  are  all  closely  related  and,  thus  linguistically,  represent 
one  group  of  people  with  a  common  heritage  in  the  past.  The  dialect  chaining  chart  on  the  next 
page  [See  Figure  4-3:  Dialect  Chaining  Chart  of  the  East  Nyanza  Languages]  shows  the  close 
relationship  of  the  Mara  languages  to  each  other.  The  numbers  on  the  chart  show  the  percentage  of 
shared  vocabulary  from  a  list  of  100  core  vocabulary  words.25  South  Mara  languages  are  today 
mutually  intelligible  with  differences  in  pronunciation  and  vocabulary  used  locally  as  an  indication 
of  home  community.26  Mekacha  argues  that  the  South  Mara  languages  (Nata,  Ikoma,  Ishenyi  and 
Ngoreme)  should  be  considered  dialects  of  one  language.27 

A  number  of  innovations  in  vocabulary  took  place  among  South  Mara  or  western 
Serengeti  speakers  after  their  languages  differentiated  from  Suguti  speakers  along  the  lake  shores. 
Many  of  these  words  are  also  different  from  the  Kuria  words  for  the  same  objects,  some  of  which 
retain  the  Great  Lakes  Bantu  terms.  Based  on  glottochronology  these  innovations  would  date  to 


See  Chapter  1  for  an  explanation  of  core  vocabulary  words  and  their  use  in  historical 
linguistics. 

26  Schoenbrun,  "Early  History,"  p.  157. 

27  Mekacha,  The  Sociolinguistic  Impact,  p.  56.  South  Mara  languages  in  this  light  would 
be  considered  a  dialect  cluster.  Among  the  South  Mara  languages,  Ikizu  and  Zanaki  tend  to  be 
more  conservative  in  maintaining  the  old  Bantu  sound  patterns,  while  the  eastern  South  Mara 
group,  toward  the  Serengeti  plains,  adopted  more  of  the  of  non-Bantu  words  and  sound  patterns. 
This  may  be  an  indication  of  the  necessity  of  those  further  to  the  east  to  adopt  to  a  pastoral  and 
hunting  way  of  life  due  to  the  demands  of  the  environment. 


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160 
approximately  the  last  600  years,  since  Kuria  and  the  closest  South  Mara  language,  Ngoreme, 
share  seventy-eight  cognates,  out  of  a  list  of  one  hundred  glosses.    The  new  words  in  South  Mara 
are  specifically  within  the  realm  of  livestock  vocabulary.28    Some  of  these  words  are  loan  words 
from  Dadog-speakers,  while  others  are  of  unknown  origin.29  Another  example  of  these  innovations 
is  the  changing  designations  for  cattle  colors.  By  the  time  that  the  Suguti,  North  and  South  Mara 
languages  had  separated  around  1 500  A.D.,  each  was  using  a  set  of  differently  innovated  words 
for  cattle  colors.  The  western  Serengeti  innovations,  referring  to  the  basic  colors  of  black 
(anadaburu),  white  (iyeru)  and  red  (ambereretu  or  beriri),  are  derived  from  pre-  and  proto- 
Southern  Nilotic  roots,  which  appear  in  Dadog.  The  origin  of  other  cattle  colors  is  unknown.30 

The  cattle-word  innovations  in  South  Mara  demonstrate  the  ongoing  frontier  dynamics  in 
which  western  Serengeti  peoples  continued  to  interact  with  Dadog-speaking  pastoralists  and  to 
develop  their  own  economic  adaptations  to  the  environment.  Of  these  South  Mara  innovations, 


28  Examples  include:  in  Nata  the  word  for  bull  is  aheri  or  satima.  in  Ngoreme  eheeri 
(derived  from  the  proto-Southern  Nilotic  root  eeRi  for  male  cattle,  or  hirri  in  Dadog),  while  the 
East  Nyanza  term  is  -galni  or  -geeni  (in  Simbete,  Kuria  and  Shashi);  Ox  or  steer  is  ritwe,  while 
the  East  Nyanza  term  in  taang'ana;  the  word  for  cow  in  addition  to  the  East  Nyanza  term  - 
ha(a)BirI,  Nata  ahabheri,  the  term  anyaburi  is  sometimes  used,  which  can  refer  to  mature  female 
goats,  sheep  or  wild  ungulates;  a  young  she-goat  is  amwali  while  the  term  in  East  Nyanza  is  - 
subiini  or  subeeni.  A  he-goat  is  andome  while  in  East  Nyanza  the  term  is  -gorohe,  in  Ngoreme  it 
is  egorohe.  Schoenbrun,  "Early  History,"  Table  4.26;  Nata,  Ngoreme  word  lists  and  unpublished 
dictionaries;  Muniko  et  al.,  Kuria-English  Dictionary:  Ehret,  Southern  Nilotic  History. 
Appendixes  D.  1  -D.4. 

29  Other  Southern  Nilotic  loan  words  date  to  an  earlier  period  of  interaction  with  Mara 
Southern  Nilotic  speakers,  for  example:  eesono  (barren  cow  in  Nata),  risero  (hide  in  Nata), 
risakwa,  risako  (sheepskin  in  Nata  and  Ngoreme),  ekimano  (kid,  lamb  in  Ngoreme),  and  iguruki 
(ram  in  Kuria),  entikere  (donkey  in  Ngoreme  [from  Dadog,  from  a  pre-Southern  Nilotic  form]), 
egorohe  (he-goat  in  Ngoreme  [from  Dadog])     Ehret,  Southern  Nilotic  History,  pp.  1 30- 1 37;  Nata 
culture  vocabulary  from  Nyamaganda  Magoto;  Ngoreme-English  Dictionary,  Iramba  Parish,  n.d.; 
English  Kikuria  Dictionary,  Maryknoll  Language  School,  n.d.;  Schoenbrun,"Early  History  " 
Table  4.26. 

30  Schoenbrun,  "Early  History,"  p.  497,  Table  4.4.  Comparison  of  cattle  color  words  in 
Kwaya,  Kuria  and  Nata. 


161 
anyabori  is  a  word  used  for  "cow,"  but  also  for  other  female  animals  and  especially  for  a  mature 
female  wild  ungulate,  while  the  word  for  "a  young  she  goat,"  amwati,  also  refers  to  an  immature 
female  wild  ungulate.  This  blurring  of  semantic  domains,  between  words  related  to  herding  to 
words  related  to  hunting,  characterizes  western  Serengeti  people's  strategy  of  integrating  and 
adapting  both  hunting  and  herding  practices  from  different  ecological  zones. 

By  or  before  1500  A.D.  the  present  linguistic/cultural  foundations  of  this  region  were  well 
established.  Each  of  the  Bantu  languages  that  is  now  distinct  had  differentiated  itself.  Bantu- 
speakers  coexisted  on  the  land  with  Tatoga  pastoralists  and  Asi  hunter/gatherers.  Although  each  of 
the  Bantu-speaking  ethnic  groups  today  insists  on  its  own  unique  culture  and  tradition,  these 
groups  share  a  considerable  heritage,  which  developed  out  of  interactions  with  peoples  from  diverse 
backgrounds  in  the  distant  past.  Historical  linguistics  provides  evidence  for  the  interactions  among 
farmers,  herders  and  hunters  that  reaches  back  more  than  two  millennia.  Yet,  as  the  latest 
innovations  in  vocabulary  attest,  this  frontier  process  of  interaction  lasted  right  up  through  the  last 
six  hundred  years.  At  that  point  Bantu-speakers  had  become  dominant,  not  by  economic 
specialization,  but  by  diversification  through  adopting  the  expertise  of  their  neighbors. 
The  Mechanics  of  Incorporation  in  the  Distant  Past 

Given  this  evidence  from  the  distant  past  the  historian  must  ask  just  how  the  linguistic 
landscape  changed  so  dramatically  over  the  past  millennium-from  one  in  which  speakers  of  many 
different  languages  occupied  separate  ecological  zones  and  practiced  different  but  interdependent 
subsistence  economies  to  one  in  which  Bantu-speaking  farmers  came  to  dominate  over  the  smaller 
remaining  groups  of  hunter/gatherers  and  herders  by  adopting  much  of  the  expertise  of  their 
neighbors.  What  kinds  of  social  mechanisms  were  in  place  at  the  time  that  would  have  made  this 
possible?    We  can  only  speculate  on  these  processes,  finding  hints  among  the  mechanisms  for 
incorporation  that  have  functioned  in  historical  times.  After  providing  what  little  evidence  exists 


162 
through  historical  linguistics  and  comparative  ethnography,  I  will  demonstrate  how  oral  tradition 
tells  a  parallel  story  that  provides  insight  into  these  processes. 

Evidence  remains  to  show  that  East  Nyanza-speakers  inherited  a  bilateral  descent  system 
from  their  Great  Lakes  Bantu-speaking  ancestors.  In  the  environment  of  the  east  lake  strong 
matrilineal  tendencies  developed  among  East  Nyanza-speakers  in  the  distant  past.3'  Many  ethnic 
groups  in  the  Mara  Region  today  remain  matrilineal,  while  others  have  adopted  patrilineal  descent 
systems  during  the  colonial  years  or  before.    Even  those  who  emphasize  the  patrilineage  use  the 
prefix  bene  plus  the  name  of  an  ancestor  four  to  five  generations  back  to  refer  to  the  level  of 
segmentation  in  the  patrilineage  known  as  the  ekehita  or  "door."  Christine  Choi  Ahmed  argues  that 
this  common  Bantu  lineage  indicator  is  derived  from  the  root  word  (ny)ina,  meaning  "a  person's 
mother,"  making  these  lineages  unmistakably  matrilineal  in  origin.32  Another  interpretation  of  this 
root  word  is  simply  that  it  indicates  possession  that  could  be  gendered  either  way.'3  In  either  case, 
the  evidence  seems  to  suggest  that  East  Nyanza-speakers  had  at  their  disposal  the  tools  of  lineality 
on  either  side  that  they  could  deploy  as  it  suited  their  needs. 

Women  in  the  western  Serengeti  today  have  control  over  their  own  fields  and  grain 
reserves,  even  though  they  live  in  homesteads  controlled  by  their  husbands.  If  women  also 
controlled  many  of  the  agricultural  resources  when  Bantu-speakers  entered  the  unfamiliar 
environment  of  the  western  Serengeti  1 500  years  ago,  one  might  speculate  that  it  would  have  been 
to  the  advantage  of  their  lineages  to  take  husbands  from  hunter/gatherer  or  pastoral  communities 


31  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  pp.  177-179. 

32  Christine  Choi  Ahmed,  "Before  Eve  was  Eve:  2200  Years  of  Gendered  History  in  East- 
Central  Africa"  (Ph.D.  Dissertation,  U.C.L.A.,  1996),  p.  124. 

33  Schoenbrun,  personal  communication-the  underlying  root  is  a  simple  possessive  particle 
"of,"  -ny-  (the  feminine  form)  cannot  be  automatically  equated  with  -ne. 


163 
already  in  the  area  to  expand  their  food  producing  range.  If  these  communities  emphasized  the 
matrifocal  household,  these  stranger  men  would  have  been  incorporated  into  the  homes  of  their 
wives,  while  their  children  remained  in  the  community  of  their  mother.34 

On  this  inter-cultural  frontier,  land  was  plentiful  and  labor  the  key  scarce  resource. 
Successful  communities  were  those  able  to  attract  new  members  to  exploit  these  resources 
extensively  over  a  large  land  area  rather  than  intensively  on  smaller  but  more  productive  plots  of 
land.  Karla  Poewe  and  others  have  theorized  that  matrilineal  societies  are  best  adapted  for 
incorporating  strangers  and  for  expansion  on  the  frontier.    In  a  matrilineal  system  production  is 
individual  while  distribution  is  communal.  A  man's  sister's  children  inherit  his  wealth,  rather  than 
the  children  of  his  wives,  whose  production  he  controls.  Those  who  inherit  his  wealth  most  often 
live  in  distant  settlements.  This  disjuncture  between  the  locality  of  production  and  distribution 
creates  widespread  networks  of  security  through  the  distribution  of  wealth,  rather  than  accumulates 
wealth  within  self-contained  family  units.  The  matrilineal  system  of  production  and  distribution 
tends  to  be  associated  with  abundant  and  unrestricted  access  to  resources  and  situations  of 
economic  expansion.  This  situation  demands  strong  networks  of  security  because  of  the  risky 
nature  of  frontier  expansion  in  a  marginal  environment.  A  situation  of  scarce  resources 
concentrated  on  productive  land  that  people  must  exploit  intensively  favors  the  patrilineage  with  its 
ability  to  concentrate  wealth.35    Schoenbrun,  also,  argues  that  nondifferentiated  descent  ideologies 
"accompanied  dispersed  and  mixed  farming  systems  whose  main  concern  lay  in  opening  more  land 


34  Also  suggested  as  the  mechanism  for  incorporation  in  other  areas  by  Choi,  "Before  Eve," 
p.  1 1 ;  and  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  p.  1 78. 

35  Karla  O.  Poewe,  Matrilineal  Ideology:  Male-Female  Dynamics  in  Luapula.  Zambia 
(London:  Academic  Press,  1981),  pp.  3,  21,  25-6.  46-7  ;  see  also  Choi,  "Before  Eve,"  p.  143;  and 
Cynthia  Brantley, "  Through  Ngoni  Eyes:  Margaret  Read's  Matrilineal  Interpretations  from 
Nyasaland,"  Critique  of  Anthropology  17,  2  (June  1997):  147-169. 


164 
rather  than  in  protecting  specific  bodies  of  wealth  from  depletion."36  The  ability  to  reckon  descent 
through  either  line  suggests  that  a  flexible  strategy  was  necessary  for  negotiating  various  kinds  of 
relationships  on  the  frontier. 

In  this  scenario  Bantu-speaking  communities  incorporated  Southern  Nilotic  or  Southern 
Cushitic-speaking  men  who  brought  the  skills  and  environmental  knowledge  necessary  for  survival 
in  the  western  Serengeti.  These  newcomers  would  have  allowed  Bantu-speaking  communities  to 
exploit  not  only  their  own  ecological  niche  suitable  for  farming  but  also  take  part  in  hunting  and 
increased  herding  activities.  The  establishment  of  affinal  connections  would  also  have  ensured 
consistent  interaction  between  the  two  communities.    As  already  mentioned,  the  evidence  that  East 
Nyanza-speakers  adopted  the  cycling  age-set  names  and  other  related  words  from  Mara  Southern 
Nilotic-speakers  in  the  early  phase  of  settlement  in  the  region,  suggests  that  the  equivalence  of  age- 
peers  across  linguistic  and  economic  boundaries  may  have  allowed  young  men  to  gain  acceptance 
in  the  community  as  "brothers"  of  their  age-mates.  This  speculation,  based  on  evidence  from 
historical  linguistics,  is,  in  fact,  echoed  in  the  asimoka  narratives,  which  tell  the  story  of  how 
farmers  and  hunters  met. 

The  Nata  Emergence  Story;  The  Union  of  Hunters  and  Farmers 

This  is  one  narration  of  the  Nata  asimoka  story.  [For  other  versions  of  the  story  see 

Appendix  1 .  See  Figure  4-4:  Narration  of  Nata  Emergence  Stories.] 

Our  parents,  of  Nata  are  —  Nyamunywa,  he  was  a  man  —  and  Nyasigonko,  was  a 
woman.  Nyamunywa  was  a  hunter  —  Nyasigonko  was  a  farmer,  the  woman.   They  met  — 
-  this  man,  Nyamunywa,  shot  an  animal,  which  fell  near  to  the  field  of  the  woman, 
Nyasigonko.  The  man,  Nyamunywa,  was  thirsty.   When  he  got  to  where  the  animal  had 
fallen  he  saw  some  green  grass,  which  is  a  sign  of  water,  so  he  went  there  to  look  for 
water.   When  he  got  near,  he  saw  there  was  a  person  coming  out  from  that  place.  It  was 
a  human,  like  him,  and  the  woman  saw  him  loo.  He  went  to  her  house  in  the  cave.  They 
could  only  speak  in  signs  because  they  did  not  know  the  same  language.   The  man  asked 


36  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  p.  178. 


165 

for  water  to  drink.  She  got  him  some  from  the  spring  in  a  gourd  (ekebucho).  She  then 
took  some  millet  from  her  field  and  brought  it  to  him  in  an  elongated  gourd  (akena  ya 
oburwe).  She  put  it  in  his  hand  and  he  chewed  it.  It  was  mixed  with  sesame.  She  asked 
him,  "and  what  do  you  eat?  "  He  showed  her  the  animal  and  skinned  it.   The  man  went 
outside  in  the  bush  and  made  afire  by  twirling  a  stick  into  a  board  using  an  ekengeita 
and  ororende  . . .    shweeeeee.  She  got  wood  and  they  roasted  the  meat.  They  ate  it. 
They  took  the  meal  home  and  lived  in  the  cave  of  the  woman.  Basi  (so  finally),  it  became 
their  home.  The  man  followed  the  woman.   They  gave  birth  to  the  Nata,  Nyamunywa  and 
Nyasigonko.37 

At  one  level  the  Nata  emergence  story  provides  in  a  concrete,  locally  grounded  form,  an 
account  parallel  to  that  based  on  the  evidence  of  historical  linguistics  in  which  the  union  of  peoples 
from  diverse  economic  and  linguistic  backgrounds  forms  a  new  community.  Perhaps  a  woman 
called  Nyasigonko  (from  the  root  word,  -gonka,  "to  suck  at  the  breast")  or  a  man  called 
Nyamunywa  (from  the  root  word,  omunywa,  "mouth")  never  existed  but,  over  many  generations, 
countless  farming  women  may  have  met  hunting  men,  whose  lineages  decided  that  their 
cooperation  would  be  mutually  beneficial.  The  Nata  story  is  the  only  one  of  the  western  Serengeti 
emergence  stories  to  describe  its  origins  in  situ,  without  reference  to  ancestral  migrations  from 
anywhere  else.  It  tells  of  the  springing  up,  awakening,  of  a  new  people  right  where  they  are  today, 
in  Nata  territory. 

In  this  story  the  hunter  comes  to  live  with  the  farmer,  just  as  he  might  have  if  his  farming 
wife  was  part  of  a  Bantu-speaking  society  based  on  matrifocal  residence  patterns.  In  most  versions 
of  this  story  that  I  heard,  elders  identified  the  hunter  as  Asi  and  the  woman  as  vaguely  related  to 
various  Bantu-speaking  groups  such  as  Gusii  or  Sonjo.  This  interpretation  of  the  Nata  emergence 
story  follows  the  model  exemplified  in  Packard's  analysis  of  the  Bashu  origin  myth  of  Muhiyi  in 


37  Interview  with  Jackson  Benedicto  Mang'oha  Maginga,  Mbiso,  18  March  1995  (Nata  cf). 


Sochoro  Khabati  telling  the  Nata  Emergence  Story  at  Bwanda,  1 6  February  1 996 


'■'■■^ 

♦ 

J 

N 

,; 

r- 

Jackson  Benedicto  Mang'oha  Maginga,  14  August 
1995,  Narrator  of  Nata  Emergence  Story  in  Text 


Figure  4-4:  Narration  ot'Nata  Emergence  Stories 


167 
eastern  Zaire.  He  argues  that  an  origin  myth,  "while  not  necessarily  describing  a  specific  series  of 
historical  events,  symbolizes  long-term  historical  processes."38 

What  is  amazing  about  these  asimoka  stories  is  that  they  are  locally-created 
representations  of  a  past  which  is  so  old  that  it  ought  to  have  dropped  out  of  the  historical 
consciousness  of  the  region's  peoples.  This  past  comes  to  the  present  through  the  imaginations  of 
people  who  have  lived  in  these  landscapes,  whose  lives  have  been  shaped  by  its  constraints,  and 
shaped  also  by  the  region's  cultural  resources.  Because  of  this  locally  grounded  quality,  the 
asimoka  stories  account  for  the  early  interactions  of  hunters  and  fanners  in  a  way  that  has  rich 
cultural  resonances.  The  stories  match  the  shape  of  the  best  historian's  hypotheses,  when  the 
historians  reason  from  historical  linguistics  and  archaeology.  The  stories  work  well  as  historical 
representations  because  they  grow  out  of  a  historical  imagination  more  richly  informed  of  ecology 
and  social  possibility  than  any  outsider's  imaginations  could  ever  be. 

This  story  is  from  Nata.  It  was  the  first  story  that  knowledgeable  elders  told  me  when  I 
began  conducting  formal  interviews.  They  told  this  as  a  unique  Nata  story,  concerning  the  essence 
of  what  it  means  to  "be  Nata."  It  was  thus  surprising  to  move  onto  formal  interviews  with  Ikizu 
elders  and  hear  the  Ikizu  asimoka  stories  of  emergence  about  first  woman  the  farmer,  Nyakinywa 
(from  the  word  kunywa,  to  drink),  meeting  first  man  the  hunter,  Isamongo.  The  stories  were 
different  with  different  characters  but  retained  the  same  core  images  of  a  female  farmer  at  her  cave 
meeting  a  male  hunter  from  the  wilderness.  As  I  conducted  interviews  with  other  ethnic  groups,  I 
continued  to  hear  echoes  of  the  same  story. 


38  Packard,  "The  Bashu  Myth  of  Muhiyi,"  p.  174.  See  also  Packard's  longer  analysis  i 
the  book.  Chiefship  and  Cosmology  and  Feierman,"The  Myth  of  Mbegha"  in  The  Shambaa 
Kingdom,  pp.  40-64. 


168 

I  thus  began  to  speculate  on  the  historical  reasons  for  the  widespread  occurrence  of  this 
story  with  many  local  variations  throughout  the  region.  One  possibility  would  be  that  these  are  old 
core  images,  dating  from  the  time  before  each  of  these  groups  (Nata,  Ikizu,  Ikoma)  differentiated 
itself  linguistically,  sometime  during  the  past  500  years.  This  line  of  reasoning  is  based  on  the 
distribution  of  these  core  images  only  among  western  Serengeti  people,  while  the  emergence  stories 
of  the  Kuria  to  the  north  or  Jita  or  Kwaya  toward  the  lake  contain  a  different  set  of  core  images. 
The  variations  elaborated  around  these  core  images  among  western  Serengeti  peoples  seem  to  refer 
to  specific  events  that  occurred  after  each  group  differentiated  itself  linguistically,  in  many  cases 
up  to  the  period  of  the  late  nineteenth  century  disasters. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  historian  cannot  treat  the  geographical  distribution  of  oral  traditions 
in  the  same  way  as  the  distribution  of  words  or  ethnographic  material.39  An  arbitrary  relationship 
between  sound  and  meaning  forms  the  basis  for  recognizing  changes  in  one  or  the  other  of  those 
features  of  language  as  an  historical  change.  Oral  traditions,  on  the  other  hand,  are  laden  with 
heavy  ideological  freight  that  does  not  change  unconsciously  or  arbitrarily  over  time.  Another 
logical  explanation  for  the  regional  distribution  of  the  emergence  stories  is  that  these  communities 
were  continuously  interacting  and  so  shared  stories  that  might  only  date  to  the  nineteenth  century. 
We  cannot  date  these  stories,  in  any  case,  because  isolated  communities,  providing  separate  chains 
of  evidence,  did  not  exist. 


39  Robert  Harms,  Games  Against  Nature:  An  Eco-cultural  History  of  the  Nunu  of 
Equatorial  Africa  (Cambridge:  Cambridge  University  Press,  1 987),  p.  6,  dates  his  ethnographic 
material  in  this  way:  "The  Nunu  area  can  be  subdivided  into  flooded  forest,  flooded  grassland, 
riverbank,  and  dryland.  These  zones  correspond  with  cultural  subdivisions.  By  comparing  the 
ethnography  of  the  different  micro-environments,  one  can  distinguish  the  cultural  traits  shared  by 
all  of  the  Nunu  from  those  that  are  distinct  to  a  single  environment.  Traits  shared  by  all  are 
assumed  to  be  old  unless  it  can  be  demonstrated  that  they  are  recent  innovations.  Therefore,  they 
define  the  more  enduring  and  general  features  of  the  Nunu  culture.  In  contrast,  if  an  institution  or 
practice  is  distinct  to  a  certain  micro-environment,  we  can  assume  that  its  existence  or  persistence 
has  something  to  do  with  conditions  unique  to  that  area.  It  therefore  represents  innovation." 


169 

However,  the  remarkable  congruence  of  these  stories  with  the  processes  recoverable 
through  the  evidence  of  historical  linguistics  and  archaeology  also  seems  to  place  them  in  a  time 
frame  much  older  than  the  nineteenth  century.  They  echo  the  ongoing  frontier  processes  in  which 
farmers  and  hunters  merged  to  form  new  kinds  of  communities  and  developed  new  kinds  of 
adaptations  to  a  harsh  environment.  Rather  than  each  ethnic  group  entering  the  region  separately, 
with  its  own  history  and  identity  already  formed,  these  emergence  stories  seem  to  refer  to  the  sense 
of  group  identity  that  developed  locally  as  new  kinds  of  communities  sprouted  up  from  the 
rhizomatous  networks  that  preceded  them. 

The  core  image  of  a  hunter  from  the  wilderness  coming  to  found  a  new  community  is 
ubiquitous  across  Africa.40  This  is  not  surprising  since  emerging  food-producing  communities  all 
across  Africa  faced  the  process  of  coming  to  terms  with,  or  differentiating  themselves  from, 
preexisting  hunter  communities  in  the  distant  past.  Nevertheless,  it  is  significant  that  this  variation 
of  the  hunter  myth  is  the  one  found  consistently  throughout  the  western  Serengeti.  Bantu-speaking 
immigrants  may  have  brought  the  hunter  myth  to  the  area  but  it  seems  to  have  taken  on  a  particular 
local  form  as  they  forged  new  kinds  of  identities  that  owed  as  much  to  their  hunting  past  as  to  their 
farming  past.  Although  Bantu-speakers  were  well  established  in  the  western  Serengeti  by  1 000 
A.D.,  the  interaction  between  hunting  and  farming  communities  would  have  been  an  ongoing 
process,  not  rendered  altogether  irrelevant  to  oral  memory. 

Social  Reproduction  and  Homestead  Space 
At  another  level,  an  interpretation  of  the  core  spatial  images  of  the  Nata  emergence  story- 
that  of  the  woman  sitting  at  her  cave  and  the  man  coming  from  the  wilderness  on  a  hunt-provides 


40  For  the  representation  of  hunter  founders  in  African  art  see,  Fritz  W.  Kramer,  Red  Fez: 
Art  and  Spirit  Possession  in  Africa,  trans.  Malcolm  Green,  (London,  Verso,  1993  first  published 
1987),  p.  16. 


170 
insight  into  gender  relations  within  the  homestead  as  a  crucial  aspect  of  the  frontier  process.    In  the 
Nata  story  the  woman  welcomes  the  man  into  her  home,  while  the  man  has  no  home,  only  a 
hunting  camp  in  the  wilderness.  These  core  spatial  images  make  use  of  the  opposition  between 
home  and  wilderness,  inside  and  outside,  female  and  male.  A  new  society  emerges  at  the  contact 
point  between  these  dynamically  opposed  forces.    Although  the  house  belongs  to  the  woman  in  the 
story,  man's  presence  from  the  wilderness  domesticates  the  house  and  makes  it  a  civilized  place. 
First  man  brings  fire  to  the  house.  Today  the  hearthstones  are  still  considered  the  very  symbol  of 
home  and  family.  No  home  exists  without  a  fire  burning  in  the  hearth.41  First  man  knew  the  secret 
of  fire  and,  in  many  versions  of  the  emergence  story  told  the  woman  that  he  excreted  the  fire  to 
conceal  the  secret  of  its  origin.  In  other  versions  he  taught  the  woman  how  to  cook.  [See 
Appendix  1  ]  Meat  from  the  wilderness  and  grain  from  the  homestead  are  both  necessary  for 
building  this  new  community. 

These  images  of  an  interdependent  mutuality  between  genders,  which  present  women  in 
control  of  an  autonomous  sphere  of  authority  and  men  as  dependents  in  women's  houses,  conflict 
with  present  gender  relations  in  which  men  are  in  absolute  control  of  the  homestead  and  all  of  its 
productive  and  reproductive  resources.  We  can  date  the  increasing  emphasis  on  male  control  of  the 
homestead  through  the  patrilineage  to  the  late  precolonial  and  early  colonial  periods.  In  the  early 
period  of  settlement  when  livestock  were  few  and  people  grouped  their  homesteads  in  proximity  to 
other  lineage  members,  a  woman's  home  was  the  primary  unit  of  production  and  links  to  her  family 
were  a  way  of  establishing  regional  networks  of  security.  During  the  disasters  of  the  late 


41  See  Brad  Weiss,  The  Making  and  Unmaking  of  the  Hava  Lived  World:  Consumption. 
Commoditization  and  Everyday  Practice  (Durham-  Duke  University  Press,  1996),  pp.  29-31.  51- 
52,  who  describes  the  Haya  ceremony  for  blessing  a  new  house  which  involves  lighting  the  fire  for 
the  first  time  by  the  father  or  a  senior  agnate;  For  the  Kuria  see  Tobisson,  Family  Dynamics  pp 
128-132. 


171 
nineteenth  century  the  dangers  of  raiding,  with  men  leaving  the  home  to  search  for  food  in 
neighboring  areas,  for  raids  or  to  hunt,  restricted  women's  movements.  Without  the  labor  of  men 
and  with  the  specter  of  famine  the  house  became  a  restrictive  site.  During  the  early  colonial  period 
men  recovered  from  famine  by  selling  hunting  products  to  Sukuma  in  exchange  for  livestock.  As 
cattle  wealth  increased  the  man's  spatial  domain  of  the  cattle  corral  became  increasingly  important. 
Nata  elders  can  specifically  remember  when  inheritance  (mainly  livestock)  became  patrilineal 
(through  a  man's  sons)  rather  than  matrilineal  (through  a  man's  sister's  sons).  In  the  new  economy 
of  commodities,  men  controlled  the  cash  and  women  could  not  keep  the  proceeds  from  selling  their 
grain.  Men  accumulated  cattle  wealth  by  inheritance  through  their  sons  rather  than  their  nephews. 
The  colonial  record  preserves  the  ongoing  gender  struggle.  In  1 928  the  Musoma  District  Officer 
reported  that  the  Ikoma,  Ishenyi  and  Nata  "women  have  the  men  completely  under  their  thumbs" 
and  "divorce  is  more  frequent  than  with  most  native  tribes."42 

One  would  expect  that  if  the  emergence  stories  dated  from  the  late  precolonial  and  early 
colonial  period  they  would  assert  the  increasing  dominance  of  men  over  dependent  women.  A 
rarely  told  Ngoreme  emergence  story  collected  by  Odhiambo  Anacleti  explicitly  explains  this 
change  in  gender  relations.  The  story  says  that  men  and  women  once  lived  in  separate  camps.  The 
women  possessed  the  horn  as  their  symbol  of  authority  while  the  men  had  the  drum.  A  child  was 
born  after  sexual  relations  between  youth  who  were  herding.  At  the  meeting  to  solve  the  problem 
of  authority  over  the  child  the  men  offered  the  women  a  fat  barren  she-goat  for  slaughter.  The  men 
picked  up  the  horn  of  authority  and  blocked  all  its  apertures  with  wax  while  the  women  were 
chasing  the  goat.  Without  their  authority,  represented  in  the  horn,  the  women  went  to  live  with  the 


42  Acting  D.O.  Musoma  to  P.C.  Mwanza,  10  October  1928,  Monthly  Report  for 
September  1928,  10  March  1928,  Monthly  Report  for  February  1928,  and  13  September  1927, 
Monthly  Report  for  August  1927,  1926-29  Provincial  Administration  Monthly  Reports,  Musoma 
District,  215/P.C./1/7,  TNA. 


172 
men.43  This  was  the  beginning  of  bridewealth.  Women  traded  their  authority  for  meat.  This  story 
symbolizes  a  change  in  gender  relations  from  that  in  which  men  and  women  controlled  separate 
spheres  of  authority  to  that  in  which  women  were  subordinate  to  men's  authority. 

Yet  the  more  prevalent  Nata  emergence  story,  and  others  like  it  in  the  other  ethnic  groups 
of  the  region,  represents  a  set  of  gender  relations  clearly  at  odds  with  present  patterns  that  seems  to 
refer  to  relations  of  an  earlier  period.  If,  as  I  have  argued,  the  emergence  stories  encode  the 
frontier  process  in  which  settlers  within  diverse  environments  forged  new  kinds  of  communities, 
then  I  must  take  seriously  (and  listen  closely  to)  its  way  of  representing  earlier  forms  of  gender 
relations  and  their  place  in  the  frontier  process.  One  way  to  place  these  core  images  historically  is 
to  investigate  the  gendered  homestead  spaces  to  which  they  refer. 

The  gendered  spaces  of  the  homestead  also  represent  the  same  gender  relations  of  the 
autonomous,  yet  interdependent,  authority  of  men  and  women,  as  reflected  in  the  core  images  of  the 
emergence  stories.  Within  the  "traditional"  homestead  as  elders  remember  and,  in  part,  practice  it 
today,  male  space  is  outside,  in  the  courtyard,  while  female  space  is  inside,  in  the  house.  In  East 
Nyanza  languages  "house"  (anyumba)  refers  not  only  to  the  physical  house  but  to  a  woman,  her 
offspring,  and  the  property  and  dependents  attached  to  her.44  Men  have  no  houses  of  their  own  and 
sleep  in  the  houses  of  their  wives.  Men's  conversation  takes  place  in  the  courtyard  that  surrounds 
the  central  cattle  corral,  as  the  symbol  of  male  property. 


43  Anacleti,  "Pastoralism  and  Development,"  pp.  189-193.  I  did  not  collect  any  stories 
even  remotely  like  this  one  in  Ngoreme  or  elsewhere. 

44  Robert  A.  LeVine,  "The  Gusii  Family,"  in  The  Family  Estate  in  Africa:  Studies  in  the 
Role  of  Property  in  Family  Structure  and  Lineage  Continuity,  eds.  Robert  F.  Gray  and  P.  H. 
Gulliver  (London:  Routledge  and  Kegan  Paul,  1 964),  p.  70;  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  p.  1 74; 
Tobisson,  Family  Dynamics,  pp.  128-137. 


173 
Homestead  Space  Over  the  Long-term 

Although  no  archaeological  evidence  exists  for  homestead  layout  within  the  western 
Serengeti  itself,  one  can  infer  larger  regional  patterns  from  the  work  undertaken  in  neighboring 
areas.  In  western  Kenya,  John  Sutton  surveyed  1 33  archaeological  sites  on  hillsides,  known  in  the 
literature  as  "Sirikwa  holes,"  because  local  Kalenjin  people  identified  them  as  the  cattle-enclosures 
made  by  former  inhabitants  whom  they  called  the  "Sirikwa."  The  "holes"  consist  of  saucer  like 
depressions,  7-25  meters  wide,  at  a  depth  of  up  to  4  meters,  surrounded  by  earthen  or  stonework 
walls.  Two  low  banks  flanked  a  single  entrance  on  the  downhill  side,  with  a  mound  below  it. 
Sutton  identified  circular  houses  around  the  perimeter  of  the  hollow,  and  these  were  entered 
through  the  hollow.  The  hollow  itself  was  a  livestock  corral,  surrounded  by  a  fence  with  a  narrow 
guarded  entrance.  Cleaning  out  mud  and  dung  daily  seems  to  have  formed  the  mounds  outside  the 
entrance,  and  perhaps  the  depression  itself.  One  house  that  Sutton  excavated  in  Chemage,  Kenya, 
was  divided  into  two  sections,  one  for  a  bedroom  and  the  other  for  young  livestock. 
Agriculturalists  who  supplemented  their  diet  with  livestock  seem  to  have  inhabited  the  "Sirikwa 
holes."  Sutton  dated  these  remains  to  a  period  between  1600  and  1800  A.D.45 

Sutton  noted  that  the  most  striking  present  day  analogies  for  the  "Sirikwa  holes"  are  the 
homestead  complexes  of  the  Kuria  and  Gusii  in  western  Kenya,  which  consist  of  a  central  cattle 
corral  surrounded  by  houses,  set  into  a  thorn  fence.  We  could  say  the  same  for  homestead  patterns 
in  the  western  Serengeti,  which  also  match  the  interior  design  of  the  house  described  by  Sutton. 
However,  the  Kuria  houses  include  two  doors  and  the  Kuria  cattle  corral  is  not  sunken.  Sutton, 
therefore  concluded  that  Kuria  and  Gusii  homesteads  cannot  "be  regarded  as  latter-day  "Sirikwa 


45  Sutton,  The  Archaeology  of  the  Western  Highlands,  pp.  50-58. 


174 
holes."46  He  believed  them  to  be  the  work  of  the  ancestors  of  present-day  Kalenjin  peoples  in  the 
area,  who  built  these  homesteads  to  defend  against  wild  animals  and  limited  raids.  People  stopped 
building  in  this  manner  with  the  advent  of  large-scale  Maasai  raiding,  which  rendered  the 
homesteads  vulnerable  to  attack.47 

Whether  the  ancestors  of  present-day  Kalenjin  or  Kuria  populations  occupied  these 
"Sirikwa  holes,"  they  do  demonstrate  the  existence  of  a  spatial  homestead  organization  that  is 
similar  to  that  found  throughout  the  western  Serengeti  today.  Scholarly  debate  involves  the  ethnic 
identity  of  those  who  built  the  "Sirikwa  holes"  (Kuria,  Kalenjin  or  Maasai),48  which  seems 
anachronistic,  given  the  complex  and  heterogeneous  history  of  this  region.  From  the  distribution  of 
Southern  Nilotic-speaking  peoples  reconstructed  through  the  methods  of  historical  linguistics  we 
know  that  Mara  Southern  Nilotic-speakers  occupied  the  whole  region  from  what  is  now  western 
Kenya  through  the  Mara  Region  of  what  is  now  Tanzania  before  1000  A.D.4'  The  same  Southern 
Nilotic  cycling  age-set  names  used  in  the  western  Serengeti  are  found  among  the  Kalenjin  who  live 
in  the  "Sirikwa  hole"  area  today.  In  a  later  re-excavation  at  Hyrax  Hill  in  Kenya,  Sutton  looked 
more  closely  at  the  house  sites  to  determine  the  mode  of  production.  He  concluded  that  the  Sirikwa 
chronology  should  be  pushed  back  to  the  beginning  of  this  millennium  because  of  considerable 
cultural  continuity  with  the  Elmenteitan  Industry,  which  has  also  been  correlated  with  Southern 
Nilotic-speakers.50 


46  Ibid,  p.  62. 

47  Ibid,  pp.  60-63 

48  For  a  discussion  of  this  debate  see  Distefano,  "Precolonial  History,"  p.  127. 

49  Seethe  analysis  of  Kalenjin  and  Luyia  languages  in  terms  of  the  underlying  Southern 
Nilotic  component,  Distefano,  "Precolonial  History,"  p.  141. 

50  Sutton,  The  Archaeology  of  the  Western  Highlands,  p.  22. 


175 

A  comparison  of  homestead  and  interior  house  diagrams  from  the  Nata,  Ikoma  and 
Ngoreme  within  the  western  Serengeti,  with  other  Mara  speakers,  the  Kuria  and  Gusii, 
demonstrates  cultural  continuity  with  these  archaeological  remains.  The  chart  on  the  following 
page  illustrates  this  pattern  in  contrast  to  the  homestead  in  neighboring  Sukuma,  which  they  also 
build  around  the  central  cattle  corral.  [See  Figure  4-5  and  4-6:  Homestead  Layout  and  Interior 
House  Designs.].  The  Nata,  Kuria  and  Ikoma  homestead  pattern  consists  of  houses  built  right  into 
the  corral  fence.  In  all  cases  they  divide  the  house  into  at  least  two  rooms,  with  the  outer  room 
being  used  for  small  stock.  Building  around  a  central  cattle  corral  is  also  a  common  pattern 
recognized  among  southern  Bantu-speakers." 

Historical  linguistics  also  provides  some  evidence  about  early  homestead  patterns.  Great 
Lakes  Bantu-speakers  (C.  500  B.C.)  apparently  began  building  very  different  kinds  of  homesteads 
than  the  ones  built  by  their  linguistic  predecessors  in  the  forests  of  the  west,  which  were  square, 
with  paneled  and  gabled  roofs.  Distinctive  features  among  Great  Lakes  Bantu-speakers  were 
round  houses  with  thatched  roofs  surrounded  by  tall  fences  with  a  main  gateway." 

The  innovation  of  building  around  a  central  cattle  corral  seems  to  date  to  the  time  when 
East  Nyanza-speakers  adopted  a  new  term  for  a  unilineal,  dispersed,  exogamous  group,  the  eka, 
between  500  and  1000  A.D.  This  word  is  derived  from  the  older,  Great  Lakes  Bantu  word  for 
head  of  cattle  (nka,  itself  a  Sudanic  loan  word  meaning  "homestead.").  Western  Serengeti  people 
use  this  term  not  for  the  lineage  but  for  the  homestead  itself  built  around  the  cattle  corral,  aka. 

The  designation  of  the  house  as  female  space,  leaving  the  man  without  a  house,  may  also 
date  to  this  period  when  East  Nyanza-speakers  began  moving  into  the  interior.  The  "house" 


51  Adam  Kuper,  "Symbolic  Dimensions  of  the  Southern  Bantu  Homestead,"  Africa  50  1 
(1980):  8-22. 

52  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  pp.  159-160. 


176 


177 


178 
(anyumba),  as  a  term  that  designates  a  woman  and  her  dependents,  is  common  among  all  East 
Nyanza  languages."    Ethnographers  of  the  Kuria  and  the  Kwaya  report  that  men  do  not  have  a 
house  and  that  the  courtyard  is  man's  space.  Unmarried  men  sleep  together  in  a  house  without  a 
hearth.54    This  dating,  however,  remains  speculative,  since  I  have  no  way  of  knowing,  without 
more  linguistic  evidence,  whether  the  term  "house"  was  gendered  in  the  same  way  that  it  is  in  more 
recent  times.  Overwhelming  ethnographic  evidence  of  gendered  homestead  space,  finally,  cannot 
prove  how  western  Serengeti  people  gendered  space  in  the  distant  past.  It  does,  however,  suggest  a 
culturally  nuanced  way  of  interpreting  the  core  images  of  emergence  stories  that  refer  to  gendered 
homestead  space. 
The  Ethnography  of  Homestead  Space 

Most  of  the  words  used  to  describe  the  homestead  are  common  among  speakers  of  all  East 
Nyanza  languages.  The  words  for  cattle  pen  and  yard,  recorded  here  in  Nata,  seem  to  be  western 
Serengeti  innovations.  The  homestead  pattern  remembered  by  western  Serengeti  elders  today  and 
still  observable  in  some  homesteads  is  one  in  which  each  wife  in  a  plural  marriage  has  her  own 
house  (anyumba)  and  grain  storage  bin  (egitara).  The  man  has  his  own  grain  storage  bin,  which  is 
kept  for  emergencies  and  his  own  needs  for  feasting  and  exchange.  The  homestead  itself  (aka) 
consists  of  a  yard  (ribancha)  enclosed  by  a  brush  fence  (orubago)."  In  the  center  of  the  yard  is 


53  Ibid,  p.  174. 

54  Tobisson,  Family  Dynamics,  pp.  128-132,  says  that  Kuria  men  have  no  house  and  that 
the  youth's  hut  has  no  sections  or  hearth  as  a  woman's  would.  Huber,  Marriage  and  Family,  pp. 
62-68,  reports  that  there  was  no  hut  for  the  man  and  that  the  yard  fire  was  the  man's  space  in  the 
homestead.  A  ritual  was  necessary  for  the  construction  of  the  homestead  gate-way. 

"  Orubago  is  derived  from  the  Great  Lakes  Bantu  root  -go(o)  "enclosure"  which  marked 
"the  regional  appearances  of  the  homestead  layout  so  common  throughout  Bantu-speaking  eastern 
and  southern  Africa."  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place.  Cultural  Vocabulary  #26. 


179 
the  livestock  corral  (asimoora)ie  and  around  the  perimeter  of  the  yard,  the  houses  of  wives  and 
sons.  The  first  wife's  house  is  located  nearest  the  gate  on  the  right  going  in  (or  in  the  center  back), 
the  second  wife  to  the  left  of  the  gate  and  so  on.  The  house  for  young  unmarried  boys  (amachi)  is 
found  opposite  the  gate,  or  guarding  the  gate.  Only  one  gate  or  entrancefefe/Hto)  breaches  the 
homestead  fence  and  it  is  closed  with  a  log  (egeshoko).    If  a  son  marries  and  has  his  own 
circumcised  children  in  the  homestead  they  cut  another  gate  for  him." 

The  gate,  the  courtyard  and  the  cattle  corral  are  male  space  and  symbolize  male  (external) 
authority  while  the  house  symbolizes  female  (internal)  authority.    Narratives  about  the  past 
described  girls'  circumcision  inside  the  homestead  at  the  site  of  the  grain  storage  bins,  to  symbolize 
their  future  work  as  married  women  who  would  provide  food  to  their  families.  Boys'  circumcision 
takes  place  outside  the  homestead  under  a  tree  to  symbolize  their  work  in  conquering  the  bush  as 
hunters.58  Tobisson  argues  that  for  the  Kuria  the  log  of  wood  to  shut  the  livestock  corral  was  the 
most  important  symbolic  marker  of  male  resource  control  used  in  rituals  of  all  kinds."  Kinship 
terms  also  refer  to  these  gendered  spaces  of  the  homestead.  Nata  call  a  person's  maternal  line  the 
anyumba  (house)  and  Ikizu  call  it  the  rigiha  (hearthstones),  while  Nata  and  Ikoma  call  the  paternal 
line  the  ekehita  (homestead  gateway)  and  Ikizu  call  it  the  ekeshoka  (gatepost). 

The  house  itself  is  divided  into  two  areas,  the  omuryango,  or  the  outer  room  for  sheep, 
goats  and  young  calves  to  sleep  in,  or  for  a  sitting  room  and  the  inner  room  or  sleeping  room  where 


56  Asimoora  is  a  Southern  Nilotic  loanword,  Christopher  Ehret,  personal  communication. 

57  Nata  homesteads  from  an  interview  with  Mayani  Magoto,  Bugerera,  1 8  February  1 995 
(Nata  cf).  Ikoma  and  Ngoreme  homesteads  in  Edward  Conway  Baker,  Tanganyika  Papers.  See 
Tobisson,  Family  Dynamics,  pp.  129-133  for  the  Kuria  homestead. 

58  Interview  with  Bhoke  Rotegenga  (Nata  ¥ )  and  Mgoye  Rotegenga  Megasa  (Nata  <?), 
Motokeri,  13  March  1995. 

59  Tobisson,  Family  Dynamics,  pp.  147-148. 


180 

a  cooking  fire  is  kept.  Kuria  call  the  outer  room  for  livestock  the  eheero,  while  they  call  the 
domestic  section  of  the  house  with  the  cooking  fire  a  variation  of  the  word  used  in  Nata  for  the 
outer  room,  the  omorengo.60  In  Gusii  the  outer  room,  the  eero,  is  specifically  designated  as  the 
"husband's  room"  by  LeVine  and  LeVine.61  It  seems  significant  that  among  the  western  Serengeti 
peoples  the  eheero  does  not  exist  and  they  instead  interpret  the  woman's  domestic  section  of  the 
omorengo  as  the  small  stock  room,  making  the  whole  house  female  space.  The  inner  room  is 
closed  to  casual  visitors,  with  its  outside  door  (kyawisiko)  used  only  for  emergency  escape  or  to 
remove  a  corpse.  Guests  always  enter  the  house  through  the  front  door  (hvawibancha),  which 
leads  from  the  courtyard  into  the  omuryango  where  the  small  stock  are  kept. 

Because  livestock  are  the  most  important  form  of  convertible  wealth,  the  corral  in  the 
center  of  the  homestead  as  male  space  is  an  important  symbol  of  male  authority  over  livestock 
production  and  reproduction  in  the  homestead.  People  equate  cattle  with  reproduction  because  of 
their  use  as  bridewealth  and  as  markers  of  other  kinds  of  social  exchange.  The  cattle  corral  is  the 
link  between  the  individual  homestead  and  the  larger  descent  group.62  Similarly,  Rigby  shows  for 
the  agriculturally-based  Gogo  that  "effective  kinship  and  affinal  relations  are  primarily  viewed  in 
terms  of  the  carrying  out  of  certain  jurally  defined  rights  and  obligations  concerning  the  most 
valued  form  of  property,  viz.,  livestock.""  The  corral  is  located  in  the  center  of  the  homestead  in 


60  Miroslava  Prazak,  "Cultural  Expressions  of  Socioeconomic  Differentiation  among  the 
Kuria  of  Kenya"  (Ph.D.  Dissertation,  Yale  University,  1992),  p.  123.  Muniko  et  al.,  Kuria-English 
Dictionary,  this  dictionary  also  defines  another  word,  igiiume  as  "a  man's  private  house  in  a 
homestead,  hut." 

61  LeVine  and  LeVine,  "House  Design,"  p.  159. 

62  Tobisson,  Family  Dynamics  pp.  150-151. 

63  Peter  Rigby,  Cattle  and  Kinship  among  the  Goeo:  A  Seminastoral  Society  of  Central 
Tanzania  flthaca-  Cornell  University  Press,  1969),  pp.  1-2. 


181 
contrast  to  the  position  of  wives'  houses  on  the  periphery.  Some  important  men  choose  burial  in 
their  livestock  corral  rather  than  in  front  of  the  house. 

Although  a  woman  is  incorporated  into  a  man's  homestead  and  lineage  through  bridewealth 
in  the  present  patrilineally  dominated  system,  a  woman  can  still  exert  power  through  control  over 
the  house  as  her  locus  of  authority.  Women  as  farmers  of  millet  and  producers  of  children  strongly 
influence  a  man's  prosperity  and  prestige  in  the  community.  Children  identify  themselves  primarily 
by  the  "house"  of  their  mother,  using  the  inside  possessive  prefix  mwa-  (mwaKimori,  "of  or  inside 
Kimori's  house").  People  often  carry  these  "house"  designations  to  the  second  or  third  generation. 
Whatever  the  formal  lineage  organization,  households  have  a  strong  matrifocal  orientation.  A 
woman  has  primary  responsibility  for  feeding  herself  and  her  family  and  has  fairly  autonomous 
control  over  her  own  resources  to  do  so.64 

The  independence  of  a  woman's  house  alludes  to  another  institution  of  long  duration  in 
East  Africa,  known  in  the  anthropological  literature  as  the  "house-property  complex"  or  the 
division  of  family  wealth  and  inheritance  according  to  the  "house"  of  each  wife  in  a  polygynous 
family.  Each  "house,"  consisting  of  a  woman  and  her  children,  controls  certain  livestock  used  for 
milking  and  meat,  and  paying  the  bridewealth  for  its  sons  to  marry.  Men  allot  these  livestock  to 
each  wife  at  marriage.  A  woman's  "house"  gains  more  cattle  by  trade,  gift  or,  especially,  as 
daughters  of  the  "house"  marry  and  "the  house"  receives  the  bridewealth.  In  the  house-property 
system  of  the  western  Serengeti  men,  as  heads  of  homesteads,  retained  more  flexibility  to  move 
property  between  "houses"  than  did  their  Kuria  and  Gusii  neighbors  to  the  north.  Hakansson 
hypothesizes  that  this  more  centralized  system  is  found  in  "high  risk  environments,"  like  the 
western  Serengeti,  where  periodic  disaster  demands  more  interdependence  among  the  houses  of  one 


64  Tobisson,  Family  Dynamics,  p.  1 47.  argues  for  the  pivotal  position  of  the  maternal 
house  among  the  Kuria. 


182 

homestead.65    In  either  case  the  system  of  independent  "houses,"  controlling  their  own  property, 
gave  women  an  extremely  strong  position  in  the  negotiation  of  family  affairs.  In  spite  of  these 
autonomous  spheres  of  control,  men  and  women  must  ultimately  work  in  unison  for  the  family  to 
function.66 

Both  men  and  women  use  the  powerful  metaphor  of  the  "house"  today,  just  as  we  have 
reason  to  believe  they  would  have  used  it  in  the  past,  in  the  struggles  between  men  and  women  on  a 
daily  basis.  The  ultimate  sanction  that  a  woman  could  exert  over  a  man  was  to  deny  him  access  to 
her  house  or  leave  her  house  to  find  sanctuary  in  another  man's  homestead.67  One  elderly  Nata 
woman  complained  that  even  if  a  woman  had  her  own  house  and  grain  stores  her  husband,  as  head 
of  the  homestead,  would  give  orders  for  work  each  day  and  make  decisions  about  resource  use 
without  his  wives'  opinion.  She  related  the  story  of  her  father's  first  wife  who  butchered  a  goat  to 
eat  (trespassing  on  the  male  space)  during  the  hunger  while  he  was  away  getting  grain  in  Zanaki. 
Someone  who  saw  signs  of  the  goat  in  her  inner  room  attic  (trespassing  on  female  space) 
discovered  her  act  and  so  she  left  for  her  natal  kin  Zanaki.  When  her  husband  came  to  get  her  the 
youth  of  the  homestead  defended  her  right  to  sanctuary  with  their  spears  but  were  finally  persuaded 
to  let  her  husband  take  her  home.  When  they  got  home,  he  cut  off  her  ears  and  never  entered  her 
house  again.  Nevertheless,  as  the  last  word  in  the  story,  when  he  died,  his  body  had  to  be  taken  out 
of  the  back  door,  from  the  inner  room  of  her  house,  as  his  first  wife,  for  burial.68 


65  T.  Hakansson,  "Family  Structure,  Bridewealth,  and  Environment  in  Eastern  Africa:  A 
Comparative  Study  of  the  House-Property  Systems/Ethnology  28  (1989):  119. 

66  Discussed  by  Regina  Smith  Oboler,  "The  House  Property  Complex  and  African  Social 
Organisation,"  Africa  64,  3  (1994):  344,  351. 

"  Interview  with  Tetere  Tumbo,  Mbiso,  5  April  1995  (Nata  cC). 

68  Interview  with  Bhosa  Rugatiri,  Mbiso,  17  June  1995  (Nata  ?). 


183 
Oral  Traditions  and  Gendered  Space 

The  emergence  story  also  represents  the  gendered  spatial  organization  of  the  homestead  by 
first  man  leaving  his  nomadic  camp  and  coming  to  live  in  the  enclosed  space  of  the  cave,  which 
remained  the  woman's  house.    A  Nata  elder  told  me  that  the  man,  Nyamunywa,  was  an  omolware, 
a  term  for  a  man  who  goes  to  live  in  an  independent  woman's  (omosimbe)  homestead  and  is 
married  by  her  (passive),  often  called  a  "male  wife."69  He  could  never  be  the  head  of  the 
homestead  and  was  beholden  to  her  goodwill  as  she  could  ask  him  to  leave  at  anytime.  In  the  Ikizu 
story  Nyakinywa  refuses  to  marry  Isamongo  but  he  stays  in  her  house.™ 

Evidence  for  homestead  space  in  the  distant  past  from  archaeology  and  linguistics, 
evidence  for  homestead  space  in  the  recent  past  from  ethnography,  and  the  representation  of 
homestead  space  in  oral  traditions  of  emergence  all  present  parallel  accounts  of  gender  relations  in 
which  men  and  women  control  autonomous  yet  interdependent  spheres  of  authority  in  the 
homestead.    In  the  preceding  section  1  presented  the  arguments  for  assigning  these  emergence 
stories  to  the  time  frame  of  the  tongue  duree,  reflecting  the  strategies  of  settlers  on  the  frontier  who 
created  new  kinds  of  communities  from  a  diverse  social  environment.  In  this  section  I  have  shown 
that  the  core  images  of  these  traditions  represent  a  spatial  homestead  organization  that  was  in  place 
by  or  before  1000  A.D.  and  continuing,  at  least  in  memory,  to  the  present.  Although  I  cannot 
conclusively  date  the  gendering  of  this  homestead  space  without  more  linguistic  evidence,  the 
overwhelming  ethnographic  evidence  suggests  that  it  is  also  a  pattern  of  long  duration.  All  these 
forms  of  evidence  present  a  picture  of  gender  relations  that  is  clearly  at  odds  with  the  increasing 


69  Interview  with  Sochora  Kabati,  Nyichoka,  2  June  1 995  (Nata  <f).  See  Chapter  2  for  a 
discussion  of  the  omosimbe  position. 

70  Note  that  in  the  story  told  by  Megasa  Mokiri,  Motokeri,  4  March  1995  (Nata  <r)  in 
Appendix  1 ,  he  asserts,  in  contradiction  to  all  other  accounts,  that  first  woman  went  to  live  in  first 
man's  hunting  shelter. 


184 
emphasis  on  the  subordination  of  women  to  male  control  of  homestead  resources  that  can  be  dated 
to  the  late-nineteenth  century.  Although  the  argument  is  not  conclusive,  the  evidence  points  to  a 
pattern  of  gender  relations  in  the  distant  past  that  is  different  from  that  which  exists  today. 

If  the  gender  relations  symbolized  in  the  emergence  stories  form  part  of  the  frontier 
process,  what  crucial  strategies  might  they  represent?  The  spatial  metaphor  of  the  male  hunter 
moving  into  the  female  farmer's  home  might  literally  symbolize  the  historical  process  by  which 
stranger  husbands  moved  into  the  matrifocal  houses  of  their  wives  and  were  incorporated  into  the 
expanding  community.  Of  course  not  all  farming  wives  married  hunter  husbands  but  the 
emergence  traditions  might  encode  this  process  because  it  was  of  crucial  importance  on  the 
frontier.  Matrilineages  could  have  enhanced  their  widespread  networks  of  security  by 
incorporating  hunter  men,  and  their  networks  of  security,  into  farming  communities.  Incorporation 
of  hunting  men  into  a  matrifocal  house  ensured  that  the  children  of  that  union  stayed  in  the  farming 
community.  This  strategy  would  help  to  explain  the  success  of  Bantu-speakers  to  expand  and 
eventually  dominate  in  a  region  once  shared  by  peoples  of  many  different  linguistic  groups. 
Another  possibility  is  that  the  assignment  of  autonomous  spheres  of  authority  to  men  and  women 
within  the  household  was  simply  a  more  efficient  way  of  mastering  the  range  of  skills  necessary  to 
diversify  the  domestic  economy  on  the  frontier. 

However  gender  relations  contributed  to  the  frontier  process,  these  strategies  were  not 
necessarily  consensual  or  automatically  assumed.  Poewe  argues  that  in  a  matrilineal  descent 
system  a  form  of  "sexual  parallelism"  exists  in  which  men  and  women  control  entirely  separate  and 
distinct  resources.  However,  in  a  bilateral  (nondifferentiated)  descent  system,  gender  relations  of 
"reciprocal-dependence"  exist  in  which  the  separate  male  and  female  spheres  of  resource  control 
are  mutually  dependent  on  each  other  for  ongoing  social  reproduction.  This  produces  a  precarious 
situation  in  which  men  and  women  constantly  negotiate  and  contest  the  political  and  economic 


185 

affairs  of  each  gender."  Another  variation  of  the  emergence  story  illustrates  the  contested  nature 

of  male  and  female  domains  of  authority  employed  in  social  reproduction. 

The  Ikizu  Emergence  Story:  The  Division  of  Authority 

The  emergence  stories  use  fire  and  water  to  symbolize  the  different  kinds  of  authority 

controlled  by  men  and  women  and  the  interdependence  of  these  spheres.  Man's  secret  was  fire. 

while  woman  lived  near  a  spring  and  supplied  water.  Many  rituals  and  narratives  also  use  the 

symbols  of  water  and  fire  as  transformative  substances  of  power.72  A  look  at  another  regional 

variation  of  the  emergence  story  provides  a  clearer  understanding  of  the  spheres  of  authority 

represented  by  these  gendered  domains.  In  the  Ikizu  version  first  woman's  secret  was  water,  or 

rain,  while  man's  was  fire.  The  woman  won  in  a  contest  between  water  and  fire  and  took  authority 

as  rainmaker  "chief  over  Ikizu.  [See  Appendix  2  for  other  versions  of  the  story.] 

Nyakinywa  went  by  herself  (from  Kanadi  in  Sukuma)  to  the  cave  ofGaka.   When  she 
entered  the  cave  ofGaka  and  stepped  on  the  rock  it  cried  like  a  drum.   That  is  how  she 
knew  that  she  had  come  to  the  end  of  her  journey.  She  laid  down  her  bundles  in  her  new 
house  prophesied  by  her  father.   The  next  day  she  went  outside  to  look  at  her 
surroundings  when  she  saw  some  smoke.  She  found  out  that  the  smoke  was  coming  from 
the  hill  ofSombayo.  She  went  to  find  it,  over  the  River  Kibangi,  and  to  the  cave  at 
Sombayo.  There  she  met  a  man  named  Isamongo  who  lived  in  the  cave  and  was  of  the 
clan  ofMuriho.  Isamongo  asked  his  guest  where  she  had  come  from.  She  said  she  came 
from  her  house  to  see  where  the  smoke  was  coming  from.  He  asked  to  see  her  house,  so 
they  went  to  Gaka,  to  Nyakinywa's  place,  where  he  asked  her  to  be  his  wife.  She  refused 
but  they  lived  there  together  as  lovers.   Those  two  people  each  had  their  own  area  of 
expertise.  Isamongo  had  the  secret  of  making  fire  and  Nyakinywa  had  the  secret  of 
water,  that  is  she  could  bring  rain.  Each  asked  the  other  to  show  them  their  expertise, 
but  they  could  not  agree.   Things  went  on  like  this  until  one  day  Isamongo  went  out  to 
hunt.  Nyakinywa  brought  a  big  rain  which  completely  soaked  Isamongo  out  in  the  bush. 
Back  at  home  she  had  put  out  the  fire.   When  he  returned,  cold  and  wet,  he  found  the  fire 
out  in  the  cave  at  Gaka.  So  Isamongo  had  to  show  Nyakinywa  how  to  make  fire.  He  took 


71  Poewe,  Matrlineal  Ideology,  pp.  21-26. 

72  For  a  discussion  of  the  symbols  of  fire  and  water  see  Anita  Jacobson-Widding, 
"Encounter  in  the  Water  Mirror,"  in  Body  and  Space:  Symbolic  Models  of  Unity  and  Division  in 
African  Cosmology  and  Experience,  ed.  Anita  Jacobson-Widding  (Uppsala:  Almqvist  and  Wiksell 
International,  1990),  pp.  177-216. 


186 

out  a  board  and  a  stick  that  he  twirled  until  he  made  fire.  So  you  see,  he  had  already 
shown  her  the  secret  of  fire.  He  then  asked  Nyakinywa  to  show  him  the  secret  of  rain. 
She  did  not  refuse  but  asked  him  to  first  bring  her  sister  Wang'ombe  from  Hunyari. 
Then  he  should  go  to  the  bush  and  kill  a  bushbuck,  skin  it  and  bring  the  skin  to  her. 
Isamongo  did  all  that  she  asked.   The  next  day  she  asked  him  to  make  the  pegs  to  stretch 
out  the  hide.   When  this  was  done  the  three  of  them  left  with  the  skin  and  the  pegs  and 
went  to  the  pool  at  Nyambogo.   When  they  arrived.  Isamongo  was  asked  to  peg  out  the 
skin  on  top  of  the  pool.  He  tried  and  failed.  Nyakinywa  tried  it  and  succeeded. 
Isamongo  asked  her  to  do  it  again  but  she  refused.   Wang'ombe  asked  to  try  and  she  also 
succeeded  in  pegging  out  the  skin  on  top  of  the  pool,  like  her  sister  Nyakinywa.  So 
Isamongo  was  told  that  he  had  failed  the  test  and  would  not  be  shown  the  secret  of  rain. 
They  returned  to  their  house  at  Gaka. n 

Although  both  the  Nata  and  Ikizu  emergence  stories  are  basic  to  the  corpus  of  men's 
historical  knowledge,  embedded  in  them  is  the  contested  nature  of  men's  and  women's  autonomous 
but  reciprocal  spheres  of  authority.  In  this  narrative  the  interaction  between  first  man  and  first 
woman  explains  the  establishment  of  ritual  authority  in  Ikizu  over  rainmaking  and  prophecy.  Ikizu 
recognize  Nyakiny  wa's  line  as  the  chiefly  line  of  rainmakers  while  Isamongo's  is  the  line  of 
prophets.  The  female  power  of  water  and  fertility  triumphed  in  this  story  but  only  with  concession 
and  compromise.  To  become  the  mtemi  or  "chief  of  Ikizu  she  had  to  agree  to  certain  provisions 
laid  down  by  Isamongo-that  Ikizu  would  retain  its  basic  social  institutions  of  circumcised  age-sets, 
generation-sets  and  eldership  ranks.    An  alternate  version  of  the  Ikizu  emergence  story  is  told  in 
the  next  chapter.  In  this  story  Muriho,  the  hunter,  conquers  the  malignant  spirits  of  the  land  and 
establishes  Ikizu  by  marrying  a  local  woman  and  settling  at  Chamuriho  Mountain.  Those  who  put 
the  two  emergence  stories  together  say  that  Muriho  was  the  ancestor  of  Isamongo  and  represented 
the  original  Ikizu  people. 

In  the  story  of  Nyakinywa  and  Isamongo  the  interactions  of  first  man  and  first  woman, 
based  on  the  founding  myth,  became  the  vehicle  for  telling  a  new  story  about  changing  political 
authority,  while  the  spatial  arrangement  of  the  homestead  became  the  site  of  these  gendered 


73  P.M.  Mturi  and  S.  Sasora,  "Historia  ya  Ikizu  na  Sizaki,"  unpublished  mss,  1995. 


187 
negotiations.  Far  from  representing  women  in  a  subordinate  position,  in  this  version  woman's 
authority  wins  the  contest,  while  recognizing  the  need  for  mutuality. 

This  version  of  the  emergence  story  reminds  us  that  the  space  of  women's  authority  is  not 
only  their  marital  house  but  also  their  natal  house,  as  discussed  in  Chapter  2.  Western  Serengeti 
emergence  stories  emphasize  the  role  of  women  as  wives.  Yet  in  the  Ikizu  version  Nyakinywa's 
sister,  Wang'ombe,  joins  the  struggle  of  first  man  and  first  woman.  In  other  versions  Nyakinywa 
leaves  Kanadi  with  two  sisters.  This  version  introduces  Nyakinywa  as  the  daughter  of  a  chief. 
The  characters  of  founding  myths  in  many  places  throughout  Africa  represent  the  genealogical 
prototypes  of  parts  of  the  kinship  system.74    The  sisters  in  the  Ikizu  story  would  seem  to  indicate 
the  strength  of  the  matrilineage,  while  the  Ikoma  and  Ngoreme  stories  that  are  considered  in  the 
next  chapter  emphasize  the  brothers  of  a  patrilineage. 
The  Historical  Basis  of  the  Ikizu  Emergence  Story 

Although  rainmakers  from  the  Kwaya  clan  may  have  been  practicing  in  Ikizu  for  a  long 
time,  it  was  only  in  the  late  nineteenth  century,  in  response  to  the  disasters,  that  Ikizu  was 
consolidated  as  a  political  entity  under  the  centralized  leadership  of  one  rainmaker.  In  the  mlemi 
(chief)  list  of  Nyakinywa's  descendants,  discussed  in  the  Chapter  6,  the  first  mlemi  in  the  list  that 
can  be  historically  dated  ruled  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century.  A  similar  pattern  dates 
the  Sizaki  chiefship  to  this  period  from  Sukuma  sources.75    The  Ikizu  developed  this  new  group 
identity  not  through  assimilation  into  Sukuma  (Kanadi)  society  but  rather  through  popular 
acceptance  of  limited  ritual  authority  for  the  descendants  of  Nyakinywa  as  rainmakers.  Individual 


74  See  Karen  Sacks,  Sisters  and  Wives:  The  Past  and  Future  of  Sexual  Equality  (Westport, 
Conn.:  Greenwood  Press,  1979). 

75  Gregory  Bugomora,  Lumuli.  5  August  1949.  Lumuli  was  a  White  Fathers'  Sukuma 
language  newsletter  of  the  church. 


188 

Sukuma  immigrants  seem  to  have  played  an  important  role  in  the  political  realignment  of  the  time 
but  their  numbers  were  not  significant  enough  to  bring  lasting  cultural  or  linguistic  changes. 
Although  colonial  officer  and  anthropologist,  E.  C.  Baker,  used  this  story  as  evidence  to  prove  the 
Sukuma  origins  of  Ikizu,  no  other  evidence  of  mass  migration  from  or  assimilation  into  Sukuma 
exists. 

Because  Ikizu  retained  its  western  Serengeti  culture  and  language,  narrators  might  have 
adapted  the  earlier  emergence  story,  similar  to  that  of  the  Nata,  to  take  into  consideration  the  new 
authority  from  Sukuma.  The  Ikizu  story  about  political  authority  unfolds  in  the  gendered 
homestead  spaces  because  these  are  the  core  spatial  images  of  the  older  founding  myth  on  which  it 
was  based.  By  coopting  the  older  story  as  their  story,  the  Kwaya  clan  of  Nyakinywa  gained  local 
legitimacy.  Many  scholars  have  documented  a  similar  process  by  which  outsiders  gained  access  to 
inside  authority  by  appropriating  cultural  symbols  in  the  west  Lakes  region  of  Buhaya  and 
Bunyoro.76  In  the  Ikizu  example,  the  outsiders  gained  authority  by  inserting  themselves  into  the 
founding  myth  as  the  woman  who  owns  the  house  but  does  not  marry  the  man.  In  this  society, 
women's  power  over  water,  rain  and  fertility  (and  thus  reproduction)  is  something  that  can  be  used 
as  a  tool  to  gain  political  power.  The  first  four  rainmakers  of  Ikizu  in  Nyakinywa's  line  were 
women,  after  which  men  usurped  the  title.  This  subordination  of  women's  authority  to  men's 
suggests  general  trends  in  the  late  nineteenth  century,  which  I  explore  in  later  chapters. 


76  A  good  example  of  this  is  in  the  historical  analysis  of  Bunyoro  see,  Iris  Berger,  Religion 
and  Resistance:  East  African  Kingdoms  in  the  Precolonial  Period  (Tervuren,  Belgium:  Musee 
Royal  de  L'Afrique  Centrale,  Annales  Series,  1 98 1 );  Iris  Berger  and  Carole  Buchanan,  "The 
Cwezi  Cult  and  the  History  of  Western  Uganda,"  in  East  African  Cultural  History,  ed.  Jospeh  T. 
Gallagher,  (Syracuse,  New  York:  Maxwell  School  of  Citizenship  and  Public  Affairs,  Syracuse 
University,  1976);  Peter  Schmidt,  Historical  Archaeology:  A  Structural  Approach  in  an  African 
Culture  (Westport,  Conn.:  Greenwood  Press,  1978);  Tantala,  "The  Early  History  of  Kitara"; 
Newbury,  King  and  Clans:  Randall  Packard,  "Debating  in  a  Common  Idiom:  Variant  Traditions  of 
Genesis  among  the  BaShu  of  Eastern  Zaire,"  in  The  African  Frontier,  ed.  Igor  Kopytoff 
(Bloomington:  Indian  University  Press,  1987),  pp.  148-161 . 


189 

The  Gendered  Division  of  Labor 

This  reading  of  the  emergence  stories  in  terms  of  gendered  and  autonomous  spheres  of 
labor  and  authority  provides  a  further  possible  parallel  to  the  processes  of  community  formation 
on  the  frontier  that  incorporated  the  knowledge  and  economic  strategies  of  both  farmers  and 
hunters.  In  their  representation  of  the  gendered  division  of  labor,  both  the  Nata  and  the  Ikizu 
emergence  stories  demonstrate  that  men's  and  women's  autonomous  spheres  of  authority  depend  on 
mutuality.  First  woman  grows  millet.  She  is  a  farmer.  First  man  provides  meat.  He  is  a  hunter. 
In  the  daily  routine  of  work,  women  of  one  homestead  do  most  of  the  farm  work;  they  control  their 
own  fields  and  jointly  farm  their  husband's  field.  Although  colonial  rumors  existed  of  women 
hunters,  elders  characterized  hunting  as  exclusively  men's  work."  While  women  sometimes  took 
their  turn  at  tending  livestock,  men  also  controlled  this  domain.78 

In  spite  of  these  clear  gendered  divisions  of  labor,  all  those  I  talked  with  agreed  that,  in 
practice,  both  men  and  women  farm.  Ikizu  elders  declared  that  both  men  and  women  share  all 
aspects  of  farming  equally  and  that  farming  was  never  considered  as  women's  work  alone.7'  Ikoma 
elders  in  the  east  placed  more  emphasis  on  hunting  as  men's  work  and  farming  as  women's  work, 
although  men  farmed  in  the  wet  season  and  hunted  in  the  dry  season.  A  young  man  who  wanted  to 
marry,  first  had  to  harvest  from  his  own  fields  and  fill  his  grain  storage  bin.80  An  Ishenyi  elder 
said  that  a  man  checking  out  the  character  of  a  boy  who  wanted  to  marry  his  daughter  would  look 


77  From  the  Game  Warden,  Kilossa,  to  the  Honorable  Secretary  in  Chief.  Dar  es  Salaam, 
26  February,  1924,  p.  62,  2I5/P.C7  14/1,  vol.  1  ,TNA,  "the  craze  has  gone  so  far  that  there  are 
even  women  who  spend  their  entire  time  hunting,  two  of  these  dusky  Dianas  being  particularly 
famous." 

78  See  Tobisson,  Family  Dynamics,  p.  5 1 ,  on  gendered  division  of  labor  among  the  Kuria. 

79  Interview  with  Kiyarata  Mzumari,  Mariwanda,  8  July  1 995  (Ikizu  <f ). 

80  Interview  with  Pastor  Wilson  Shanyangi  Machota,  Morotonga,  12  July  1995  (Ikoma  tf). 


190 
first  at  what  kind  of  farmer  he  was  and,  secondly,  how  well  he  looked  after  his  own  parents.81 
Daily  practice  in  which  men  and  women  cooperate  and  participate  in  the  same  tasks  mediates  the 
separate  economic  realms  of  men  and  women  asserted  in  the  founding  myth. 

The  life-cycle  and  the  seasonal  cycle  determine  in  key  ways  the  division  of  economic  tasks. 
Young  men  and  women  farm  together  without  differentiation,  except  during  the  dry  season  when 
young  men  frequently  engage  in  hunting  or  chase  cattle  raiders  for  long  periods  at  a  time.  A 
mature  man  is  less  likely  to  spend  time  farming  as  he  grows  older  and  elderly  women  retire  from 
farming  if  economically  feasible.  Gendered  domains  are  also  dependent  on  age  and  elderly  women 
more  easily  enter  male  spaces.  Young  men  and  young  women  maintain  an  equality  in  work 
relations  that  is  subordinate  to  elders  of  either  gender.82  Nevertheless,  while  both  men  and  women 
farm,  women  are  more  likely  than  men  to  farm  on  a  daily  basis  from  their  youth  to  old  age. 

If  first  woman  and  first  man  are  in  some  way  symbolic  of  the  larger  processes  in  which 
farmers  and  hunters  collectively  formed  new  societies  from  the  contributions  of  each,  then  the 
assertion  of  their  mutuality  rather  than  one's  dominance  over  the  other  is  significant.  Women 
manage  and  control  the  agricultural  production  of  their  own  fields,  fields  that  provide  most  of  the 
family's  food.  People  placed  even  more  importance  and  value  on  agricultural  production  in  the 
past.  Men  acquired  the  large  livestock  herds  that  dominate  the  western  Serengeti  today  during  the 
early  colonial  period,  as  I  discuss  in  Chapter  10.  Many  elders  said  that  even  in  the  memory  of  their 
grandparents,  livestock  were  few,  counted  mainly  in  goats  and  sheep.  They  exchanged  bridewealth 
in  wild  animal  skins,  hoes,  and  salt  rather  than  in  cattle,  as  is  the  practice  today.  In  matrilocal 


81  Interview  with  Morigo  Mchombocho  Nyarobi,  Issenye,  28  September  1995  (Ishenyi  <?). 

For  an  analysis  of  age  and  gender  in  labor  patterns  and  community  organization  see 
Elias  C.  Mandala,  Work  and  Control  in  a  Peasant  Economy:  A  History  of  the  Lower  Tchiri  Valley 
in  Malawi.  1859-1960  tMadisnn-  University  of  Wisconsin  Press,  1990). 


191 

communities,  bride-service  was  the  norm,  until  recently.  The  prestige  value  of  meat  also  seems  to 
have  increased  since  the  late  nineteenth  century  with  the  introduction  of  new  eldership  titles  gained 
by  feasting. 

In  the  past  the  community  seems  to  have  recognized  a  gendered  division  of  equally  valued 
labor,  with  women  controlling  agricultural  production  and  men  pastoral  and  hunting  resources. 
Yet  in  relation  to  the  communities  that  surround  them  Bantu-speaking  peoples  ascribe  to 
themselves  the  corporate  identity  of  "farmers,"  Rema.  They  distinguish  themselves  from  the  Nyika 
(people  of  the  wilderness)  or  the  Bisa  (enemies),  whom  they  identify  as  those  people  who  do  not 
farm-the  Asi  hunter/gatherers,  Tatoga  and  Maasai  herders.  In  the  emergence  stories  the  woman's 
home  of  cultivated  millet  fields  is  the  space  of  civilization.  Economic  subsistence  patterns  are  an 
important  way  in  which  people  differentiate  themselves  from  others. 

Oral  narratives  metaphorically  extend  the  gendered  tasks  of  the  homestead  (farming, 
hunting  and  herding)  to  conceptualize  relationships  beyond  the  community  with  other  farmers, 
hunters  and  herders.  This  identification  of  the  entire  community  with  the  female  domain  of  farming 
runs  parallel  to  the  evidence  of  historical  linguistics,  comparative  ethnography  and  oral  traditions 
that  seem  to  indicate  a  process  by  which  matrifocally  organized  farming  communities  retained  their 
own  identity  while  assimilating  preexisting  hunting  communities.  In  the  same  way  as  men  and 
women  each  had  their  own  tasks  and  realms  of  authority  within  the  homestead,  so  farmers,  hunters 
and  herders  each  occupied  their  own  place  within  a  regional  economic  system  of  interdependence. 

Conclusion 

Thus,  on  one  level,  the  core  spatial  images  of  the  emergence  stories  refer  to  gendered 
homestead  space  and  tell  us  something  about  the  interactions  of  men  and  women  in  the  past  that 
made  production  and  reproduction  on  the  frontier  possible.  In  this  regard  the  symbols  of  female 
control  over  the  house  and  water  and  male  control  over  the  courtyard  and  fire  represent  separate 


192 
spheres  of  gendered  authority,  each  powerful  in  its  own  way.  The  evidence  of  historical  linguistics 
and  comparative  ethnography  shows  that  these  are  long-standing  generative  principles  in  the 
region.  Gendered  household  space  represents  the  generative  principles  through  which  people 
organized  household  production  and  social  reproduction  on  the  frontier. 

Bantu-speakers  adapted  to  the  new  environment  they  experienced  in  the  western  Serengeti 
by  learning  from  and  incorporating  peoples  that  they  found  already  in  the  area.  The  new  kinds  of 
homesteads  built  by  these  settlers  established  the  productive  and  reproductive  basis  for  their 
eventual  dominance  of  the  region.  In  an  environment  of  abundant  and  extensive  resources  non 
differentiated  lineages  provided  wide  social  networks  and  the  means  for  incorporating  strangers. 

This  chapter  provides  a  view  of  the  emergence  stories  from  the  internal  perspective  of 
homestead  space,  gendered  relations  and  the  organization  of  production  within  the  community.  In 
the  next  chapter  I  examine  other  versions  of  the  emergence  story  in  terms  of  the  external  relations 
of  Bantu-speaking  hill  farmers  with  Asi  hunters  and  Tatoga  herders.  The  core  images  of  these 
stories  move  from  internal  homestead  space  to  external  ecological  space.  Oral  traditions  of 
emergence  contain  both  sets  of  core  images,  but  some  seem  to  emphasize  one  aspect  over  the  other. 
The  asimoka  stories  continue  to  be  so  effective  because  we  can  interpret  them  in  various  ways 
without  exhausting  their  rich  cultural  meaning. 


CHAPTER  FIVE 

ECOLOGICAL  LANDSCAPES  OF  INTERACTION: 

THE  EMERGENCE  TRADITIONS  OF  A  HILL  FARMER  SOCIETY 

The  western  Serengeti  emergence  traditions  also  evoke  the  interdependent  ecological 
spaces  of  woodlands,  hills  and  grasslands  of  this  region.  Within  these  ecological  spaces  early 
settlers  fashioned  economic  subsistence  patterns  that  took  advantage  of  each  niche  from  the 
position  of  the  hills,  in  close  proximity  to  the  woodlands  and  grasslands.    The  congruence  of 
regional  ecologies  with  the  spaces  of  farmers  and  hunters  in  the  Ikoma,  Ishenyi  and  Ngoreme 
emergence  stories  provides  insight  into  the  possible  subsistence  patterns  of  different  communities 
on  the  hills,  in  the  woodlands  and  on  the  grasslands  and  ways  in  which  farmers  used  the  hill 
position  to  gain  rights  to  the  land  and  develop  a  new  combination  of  economic  strategies.    Tatoga 
stories  adopted  by  the  Ikoma  and  Ikizu  shed  light  on  the  changing  relationship  between  farmers  and 
herders  in  the  past.  Yet  these  ecological/economic  patterns  represented  in  oral  tradition  do  not 
represent  an  environmental  determinism. ' 

Over  time  people  have  used  and  imagined  the  same  ecological  spaces  in  different  ways. 
Before  Bantu-speakers  or  Southern  Nilotic-speakers  ever  entered  the  region,  Eastern  Sahelian- 
speaking  agro-pastoral ists  and  Southern  Cushitic-speaking  pastoralists,  along  with  Khoisan- 
speaking  hunter/gatherers  each  occupied  a  different  ecological  niche  within  an  interdependent 
economic  system.    Bantu-speakers  broke  down  these  economic  barriers  that  confined  each  group 
to  a  distinct  ecology  by  practicing  farming,  hunting  and  herding.  They  settled  in  the  hills,  best 


'  s^  Harms.  Games  Against  Nature,  for  an  analysis  of  the  interaction  of  people  with  their 
environment,  especially  "Conclusion:  Nature  and  Culture,"  pp.  243-256. 


193 


194 
suited  for  grain  farming  and,  at  first,  learned  from  and  developed  interdependent  economies  with 
woodland  hunters  and  grasslands  herders.  Yet  as  time  went  on  they  increasingly  became  dominant 
in  the  region  by  encroaching  on  the  ecological  spaces  of  both  hunters  and  herders,  pushing  them 
back  into  more  marginal  areas.  The  last  remnants  of  this  interdependent  economic  system 
collapsed  as  a  result  of  the  late  nineteenth  century  diasters  when  Maasai  raiders  forced  farmers  out 
of  the  eastern  hills,  Asi  hunters  moved  east  to  become  Maasai  clients,  and  Tatoga  herders  relocated 
south  as  Maasai  raiders  came  to  dominate  the  Serengeti  plains.  As  Maasai  strength  declined  after 
the  rinderpest  panzootic  the  hill  farmers  became  commercial  hunters  and  wealthy  livestock  owners, 
dominating  all  three  ecological  zones  in  the  western  Serengeti. 

In  spite  of  these  vast  changes  in  the  regional  economy  the  core  spatial  images  of  the 
emergence  traditions  still  seem  to  refer  to  the  earlier  patterns  of  interaction  between  hill  farmers, 
woodland  hunters  and  grassland  herders.    In  its  exploration  of  the  ecological  spaces  of  the 
emergence  traditions,  this  chapter  shows  how  western  Serengeti  people  shaped  and  were  shaped  by 
the  landscapes  in  which  they  lived.  Historical  linguistics,  archaeology,  and  ecological  studies 
provide  parallel  evidence  for  understanding  the  historical  development  of  relationships  between 
peoples  practicing  different  economic  subsistence  patterns  in  the  region.  People  created  the  social 
identities  of  farmer,  hunter  and  herder  in  the  distant  past  to  organize  a  regional  economy.  Although 
early  Bantu-speakers  also  hunted  and  herded  they  saw  themselves  as  farmers  within  this  regional 
system  based  on  difference. 

The  Ecological  Landscapes  of  Interaction  on  the  Frontier 

Ikoma,  Ishenyi  and  Ngoreme  stories  add  another  dimension  to  the  analysis  of  the 
emergence  of  new  communities  on  the  frontier  in  the  distant  past.  The  core  images  still  concern  the 
interaction  of  farmers,  hunters  and  herders  but  they  seem  to  refer  to  the  external  relationships 
between  communities  of  different  economic  subsistence  patterns,  rather  than  the  internal  division  of 


195 
homestead  labor.  The  spatial  images  are  more  broadly  the  ecological  spaces  of  the  known 
landscape  rather  than  gendered  homestead  space.  This  aspect  of  the  core  spatial  images  of  the 
emergence  stories  is  also  present,  though  not  as  apparent,  in  theNata  and  lkizu  stories  considered 
in  the  last  chapter. 

The  asimoka  traditions  represent  the  interactions  of  farmers,  hunters  and  herders  in  a 
regional  economic  system  of  interdependence  that  is  amazingly  similar  to  that  reconstructed 
through  historical  linguistics  and  ecological  evidence.  Oral  traditions  suggest  possible 
explanations,  expressed  through  local  historical  consciousness,  of  how  and  why  this  regional 
system  of  interdependence  worked  in  the  past  and  how  Bantu-speaking  farmers  eventually  became 
the  dominant  players  as  they  reconfigured  the  entire  system.  A  reading  of  the  core  spatial  images 
of  these  traditions,  however,  must  proceed  alongside  other  kinds  of  sources  that  provide  evidence 
for  the  ways  in  which  these  processes  may  have  operated  in  the  past.    All  these  forms  of  evidence 
seem  to  indicate  that  Bantu-speaking  farmers  founded  successful  communities  on  the  frontier  and 
out-competed  those  who  taught  them  how  to  do  it  by  situating  themselves  at  a  favorable  position  to 
take  advantage  of  other  kinds  of  subsistence  patterns  and  interaction  with  peoples  in  other 
ecological  niches. 
Ngoreme  and  Ikoma  Emergence  Stories 

The  Ngoreme  and  Ikoma  versions  of  the  asimoka  story  are  overtly  concerned  with  their 

ancestral  migration  from  Sonjo  to  settle  in  their  present  homes.    One  version  of  the  Ikoma  story 

goes  like  this:  [See  Appendix  3  for  other  versions  of  the  Ikoma  origin  story.] 

A  Msonjo  came  from  Sonjo  to  hunt.  He  got  lost  and  went  farther  to  the  west  and 
rested  under  an  omokoma  tree.  His  name  became  Mwikoma.  He  came  with  his  bow  and 
arrows  and  when  he  got  lost  he  slept  under  the  huge  tree  that  was  in  the  bush.  The  limbs 
spread  out  like  a  house,  providing  shelter  inside.  This  was  at  the  place  called  Chengero. 
He  killed  an  animal,  skinned  it,  made  afire  and  ate  it  under  the  tree.  This  then  became 
his  house  and  his  camp.  He  would  go  out  to  hunt  and  return  here  at  night.  After  a  while 
he  became  aware  that  other  people  lived  in  the  area.  He  went  to  their  camps  to  talk  with 


196 

them  but  they  could  not  understand  each  other  because  they  spoke  different  languages. 
He  invited  a  woman  to  his  camp.  She  only  ate  grains  or  porridge  and  he  gave  her  meat 
to  eat.  She  was  amazed  and  thought  how  she  had  only  had  porridge  by  itself  and  how 
good  this  was.  Thus,  they  began  to  get  to  know  each  other.  He  said,  "I  am  Mwikoma. " 
They  began  to  live  together  and  then  got  married,  settling  among  those  people  who  were 
already  there. 

He  went  on  and  married  a  second  wife,  they  had  children.   Then  he  married  a 
third  wife.  Soon  his  children  had  grown  up  and  were  adults  themselves.  Each  went  off 
in  a  different  direction  but  Mzee  Mwikoma  stayed  back  in  Chengero  with  his  first  wife 
Nyabaikoma.  His  second  wife's  name  was  Nyabangoreme  and  they  lived  around 
Pangwesi  Mountain.   The  third  wife's  name  was  Nyabaishenyi  and  they  lived  around 
Paori.   They  separated  from  each  other  and  multiplied.  Thus,  today  the  Ikoma,  Ngoreme 
and  Ishenyi  are  one  group,  one  thing,  they  are  from  one  family.   The  Nata  on  the  other 
hand  come  from  the  Ikizu  and  the  Ikizu  come  from  Sukuma2 

The  core  images  remain  consistent  with  those  explored  in  the  last  chapter,  hunter  meets 
farmer  and  goes  to  live  with  her.  Here,  first  woman  comes  from  a  preexisting  community  that 
incorporates  first  man.  His  wives,  as  founders  of  "houses,"  become  the  ancestresses  of  the  three 
related  ethnic  groups.  Ikoma,  Ishenyi  and  Ngoreme.  These  images  are  again  remarkably  congruent 
with  the  linguistic  evidence  for  matrilineal  or  bilateral  descent-based  communities  incorporating 
hunters  as  husbands.  The  "houses"  of  these  women  are  the  points  from  which  oral  tradition 
reckons  differentiation  into  ethnic  groups.  The  Ishenyi  emergence  story  is  an  abbreviated  one  that 
describes  the  first  couple  of  Iyancha  and  Mugunyi  living  in  the  hills  of  Guka. 

One  version  of  the  Ngoreme  story  uses  the  basic  emergence  images  to  explain  the 
relationship  and  differences  between  Ikoma  and  Ngoreme:  they  were  brothers  who  migrated  from 
Sonjo  together.  When  they  got  to  the  mountain  Bangwesi  (or  Mangwesi)  the  Ikoma  brother 
favored  hunting  and  went  off  to  hunt.  The  Ngoreme  brother  finally  refused  to  carry  the  meat  of  his 
brother  and  moved  away  to  find  better  farming  land  in  Ikorongo.3  In  this  version  two  brothers  take 
on  the  role  of  farmer  and  hunter  rather  than  the  original  couple  in  the  Nata.  Ikizu  and  Ikoma 


'-  Interview  with  Machota  Nyantitu,  Morotonga,  28  May  1995  (Ikoma  <f). 
'  Interview  with  Bhoke  Wambura,  Maburi,  7  October  1995  (Ngoreme  ?). 


197 
emergence  stories.  The  separation  of  brothers  according  to  economic  specialization  is  a  familiar 
narrative  theme  around  the  lakes,  used  to  explain  the  common  ancestry  of  peoples  who  are  now 
divided  in  space  and  time.4  The  appearance  of  brothers  (rather  than  first  man  and  first  woman)  as 
the  characters  in  the  Ngoreme  emergence  story  may  be  interpreted  as  genealogical  prototypes  of  the 
kinship  system  and  thus  indicate  a  stronger  patrilineal  emphasis  in  the  east.  Some  have  argued  that 
the  Ngoreme  and  their  neighbors  across  the  Mara  River,  the  Kuria,  became  more  strongly 
patrilineal  because  of  their  greater  emphasis  on  the  inheritance  of  cattle  wealth.5  This  emphasis  is 
probably  the  result  of  late  nineteenth  century  changes  as  western  Serengeti  peoples  in  the  east 
gained  cattle  wealth  through  trade  and  moved  down  onto  the  plains  for  the  first  time. 
The  Importance  of  Place 

What  makes  the  emphasis  in  these  stories  different  from  those  discussed  in  the  last  chapter 
is  that  they  mention  specific  places  known  on  the  landscape  today  that  are  central  to  the  meaning  of 
the  story.  The  Ikoma,  Ngoreme,  and  Ishenyi  all  begin  their  emergence  stories  with  hunters  leaving 
Sonjo.  Narrators  note  particular  places  along  the  way  to  their  present  home,  in  the  Ikoma  story 
these  are  the  home  areas  of  each  of  Mwikoma's  sons.  The  Nata  emergence  story  takes  place  in 
Bwanda  and  the  Ikizu  story  near  Chamuriho  Mountain.  The  mention  of  the  Ikorongo  hills  in  the 
Ngoreme  emergence  story  resonates  today  as  homeland,  though  Kuria  immigrants  from  North 
Mara,  who  also  have  a  tradition  of  Ikorongo  as  homeland,  now  occupy  this  area. 

Because  these  places  play  such  a  critical  role  in  the  imagery  of  the  stories,  I  decided  that 
they  were  worth  investigating  in  their  own  right.  Among  each  of  these  ethnic  groups  individual 
elders  who  took  an  interest  in  my  work  insisted  that  I  go  and  visit  these  important  sites  if  I  wanted 


4  For  Suba  see  Michael  Kenny,  "A  Stranger  from  the  Lake:  A  Theme  in  the  History  of  the 
Lake  Victoria  Shorelands,  Azania  17(1 982):  1 5. 

5  For  an  argument  about  Kuria  and  pastoralism  see  Kjerland,  "Cattle  Breed.", 


198 

to  understand  their  history.  When  I  proposed  to  do  some  videotaping  of  my  research,  the  Ikizu 
elders  decided  that  we  must  go  and  tape  the  stories  at  Isamongo's  camp,  Nyakinywa's  cave,  and  the 
pond  where  they  stretched  the  skin.  On  two  different  occasions  and  in  two  different  places,  I  went 
with  elders  looking  for  the  Nata  origin  site  of  Bwanda.  One  man  told  me  that  someone  had  painted 
the  name  "Bwanda"  on  a  rock  to  mark  the  spot  for  future  generations.6    The  physical  places 
themselves  held  meaning  for  these  elders.  Yet  how  do  these  sites  speak  to  a  historian,  what  do  they 
reveal  about  the  past  and  the  people  who  lived  there? 
Hill  Farmers 

All  these  sites  from  the  emergences  stories  of  Nata,  Ishenyi,  Ikoma  and  Ngoreme  were 
located  on  hills  or  rises  to  the  east  of  where  they  now  live  and  on  the  western  edge  of  the  Serengeti 
plains  and  woodlands.    [See  Figure  5-1 :  Ecological  map  of  the  Serengeti-Mara  Ecosystem- 
woodlands,  hills,  grasslands,  with  emergence  sites.]  Mangwesi,7  one  of  the  highest  mountains  in  the 
area,  is  a  major  point  of  reference  in  the  Ikoma,  Ngoreme  and  Ishenyi  stories.  Although  narrators 
locate  the  Ikizu  emergence  story  around  another  mountain,  Chamuriho,  to  the  west,  an  alternate 
Ikizu  origin  story  describes  the  wanderings  of  the  hunter,  Muriho,  who  takes  refuge  with  an  elder 
at  Mangwesi  before  reaching  Ikizu.  Sonjo  itself  is  found  in  the  hills  on  the  eastern  side  of  the 
Serengeti  plains.  The  Guka  hills  of  Ishenyi  emergence  are  closer  to  Sonjo  than  to  present  day 


6  Interviews  with  Sochoro  Kabati  and  Makuru  Nyang'aka,  trip  to  "Bwanda,"  16  February 
1996;  the  site  near  Tabora  B.  We  looked  for  the  site  near  Matare,  Mugumu,  where  Anacleti  also 
confirms  as  the  site  of  Bwanda.  with  Mariko  Romara  Kisigiro  and  the  Chairman  of  Burunga 
village,  they  had  been  given  instructions  by  Hassan  Irende,  the  elder  who  write  "Bwanda"  on  the 
rock,  who  was  then  bedridden.  This  story  was  confirmed  by  Charles  Nyamaganda  Burunga  3 
June  1995. 

7  Sometimes  rendered  Bangwesi  or  Pangwesi. 


199 


The  Serengeti  -  Mara  Ecosystem 


Graphics  by  Peter  Shetler, 
Dove  Creek  Information  Services 
Arclnfo,  Adobe  Photoshop  Macromedia  Freehand 
Based  on  Map  of  Sereno.eti  National  Park  and  the  Surrounding  Area 
T.M.  Caro,  1970,  Serengeti  Research  Institute 


Figure  5- 1 :  Ecological  Map  of  the  Serengeti- Mara  Ecosystem 


200 
Ishenyi.  Linguistic  evidence  shows  that  these  settlers  were  following  a  very  old  pattern  of  their 
Great  Lakes  Bantu  predecessors  who  commonly  inhabited  the  hill  ridges.8 

Because  of  local  soil  and  climatic  patterns,  hills  constitute  the  ecological  niche  that  farmers 
would  have,  of  necessity,  inhabited.    The  fact  that  all  these  places  in  the  emergence  stories 
representing  early  farming  communities  are  located  on  hills  is  fascinating  considering  the 
ecological  evidence  about  subsistence  patterns.  The  congruence  of  these  two  different  bodies  of 
evidence  seems  to  indicate  that  these  early  communities  were  agriculturally  based.  Some  of  these 
hills,  like  Robanda,  are  the  only  elevation  rise  for  miles  and  miles  on  a  vast  grassland,  while  most 
belong  to  a  chain  of  hills  bordering  on  the  plains  or  woodlands.    Western  Serengeti  farmers  still 
live  on  the  hills  and  rises  to  exploit  the  best  soils.  Farming  practices  today  provide  a  means  for 
hypothesizing  longer  term  interactions  of  farmers  with  their  environment. 

The  emergence  stories  describe  Nyasigonko,  the  first  woman  of  Nata,  as  a  farmer  of 
eleusine  millet,  oburwe.  Today  a  thin  liquid  millet  porridge  (ekerongori)  and  a  thicker  porridge 
eaten  with  the  fingers  (obokima)  are  the  staple  food  of  the  area.  Millet  is  also  used  in  making  beer, 
eaten  raw  on  trips,  and  is  necessary  for  most  rituals  of  blessing.  Millet  obokima  (porridge)  is 
"food"-without  it  one  has  not  eaten.  The  word  "to  eat"  (kuragera)  means  specifically  to  eat 
obokima  (porridge),  with  another  word  (kura)  for  eating  other  things.    Even  today  elders  regard 
cassava  or  maize  obokima  as  second-rate  food.  African  or  finger  millet  (Eleusine  coracana  or  E. 
africana),  a  crop  domesticated  in  greater  eastern  Africa,  was  adopted  by  Great  Lakes  Bantu- 
speakers  from  Central  Sudanic-speaking  peoples  in  the  distant  past.9  Grain  crops  were  necessary 
for  adapting  to  life  in  the  drier  grasslands  of  the  western  Serengeti.  Kjerland  identified  sixteen 


8  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  pp.  160-162.  See  also  Wagner,  "Whose  History,"  pp  26- 
39. 

9  Schoenbrun,  "We  Are  What  We  Eat,"  pp.  10-12. 


201 
varieties  of  finger  millet  used  among  the  Kuria,  differentiated  according  to  soil  tolerances,  color 
and  end  use.10  This  diversity  and  adaptability  of  native  varieties  indicates  a  long  history  of 
cultivation  in  the  area. 

Finger  millet  requires  a  fertile  and  free  draining  sandy  loam  soil,  since  it  cannot  tolerate 
water  logging."    In  the  western  Serengeti  these  soils  are  found  only  on  hills  and  rises.  The  plains, 
interspersed  between  the  hills,  of  the  western  Serengeti  consist  of  the  "mbuga"  type  soil  that  is  a 
dark,  heavy,  clay-like  "cotton  soil,"  becoming  waterlogged  and  swampy  in  the  wet  season. 
Western  Serengeti  people  have  only  fully  exploited  the  "mbuga"  soils  with  the  arrival  of  ox-plows 
during  the  colonial  period.  Many  elders  described  a  wooden  digging  stick  (akoromo  in  Ikoma)  as 
the  original  farm  implement,  which  farmers  gradually  replaced  with  wooden  and  metal  hoes.12 
Although  western  Serengeti  people  have  traded  metal  hoes  from  Geita  for  centuries  before  the 
colonial  period,  these  hoes  seem  to  have  been  a  prestige  item  rather  than  a  common  tool. 
Cultivating  "mbuga"  soils  with  the  digging  stick  or  wooden  hoe  would  be  nearly  impossible  and  is 
difficult  even  with  the  metal  hand  hoe  manufactured  today. 

Local  classification  of  soil  types  includes  ekebuse  (sandy  upland  soils)  and  eseghero  (clay 
bottom  land  soils).  The  best  soil  is  a  mixture  of  both,  found  on  the  low  elevation  rises.  In  the  past 
farmers  had  to  work  up  the  clay  eseghero  soil  in  the  dry  season  to  get  it  ready  before  the  rains. 
This  practice,  called  kuharaga,  has  fallen  out  of  use  since  the  arrival  of  the  ox-plow.  If  the  year  is 
good,  eseghero  soils  are  incredibly  productive.  Nevertheless,  they  either  get  too  hard  in  a  dry  year 
or  too  swampy  in  a  wet  year  to  produce  a  reliable  crop.  Thus,  farmers  seek  out  the  ekebuse  sandy 


10  Kjerland,  "Cattle  Breed,"  p.  37. 

11  J.W.  Purseglove.  Tropical  Crops:  Monocotyledons  I  (London:  Longman,  1972),  pp. 
146-149. 

12  Interview  with  Pastor  Wilson  Shanyangi  Machota,  Morotonga,  12  July  1995  (Ikoma  d-). 


202 
loam  soils  for  their  consistency.  If  a  family  controls  enough  labor,  they  will  exploit  both  kinds  of 
soil  in  one  year. I3 

These  soils  exist  in  various  mixtures  and  within  close  proximity,  usually  depending  on  the 
elevation  of  the  slope,  so  that  farmers  become  adept  at  staggering  the  placement  of  their  fields  to 
find  the  right  combinations.  It  is  reasonable  to  assume  that  people  would  have  followed  a  similar 
strategy  for  exploiting  these  same  hill  ecologies  in  the  past.  Today  one  family  rarely  locates  all 
their  fields  in  one  contiguous  space.  In  the  annual  preparations  for  farming,  a  woman  commonly 
asks  those  who  have  obligations  to  her  in  the  economy  of  reciprocity  to  plant  part  of  their  field  for 
her.  Depending  on  the  level  of  obligation,  she  may  come  for  the  weeding  or  simply  return  when  the 
field  is  ready  for  harvest.  Often  a  man  sends  his  second  wife  or  older  sons  to  distant  fields  for  the 
growing  season.  Land  is  in  plentiful  supply  but  the  right  soil  combinations  and  the  labor  strategies 
to  farm  them  are  critical  issues.  People  spread  out  the  risks  by  maximizing  the  diversity  of  the 
environment. '" 

Western  Serengeti  people,  now  as  in  the  past,  build  their  settlements  on  the  hillsides  to 
escape  the  swampy  lowlands  in  the  rainy  season.  The  low  areas  are  considered  bad  for  the  health 
of  people  and  livestock  in  the  rains."    Elders  testify  that  in  the  past  only  the  "kitchen  gardens" 
were  found  near  the  homestead,  with  the  area  close  by  being  reserved  for  herding.  Fields  were 
located  away  from  the  settlement  area  and  temporary  houses  built  there  for  the  growing  season. 


13  Interview  with  Nyamaganda  Magoto,  Nyawagamba  Magoto,  Mahiti  Gamba,  Bugerera 
(Nata  cf).  ■ 


14  Observations  through  two  farming  seasons  in  Nata  and  travel  throughout  the 


region. 


15  Interview  with  Mahiti  Gamba,  Bugerera,  4  February  1996  (Nata  d").  Presumably  low- 
land areas  are  connected  with  malaria  or  "fevers." 


203 

Farmers  had  to  protect  their  fields  from  wild  animals  so  they  farmed  in  contiguous  blocks, 
surrounding  the  whole  area  with  a  thorn  fence. 

Hills  as  Zones  of  Interaction 

In  the  emergence  stories  western  Serengeti  people  also  located  their  hill  settlements  at  the 
interstices  of  the  ecological  zones  of  the  area,  allowing  farmers  to  exploit  herding  and  hunting 
ecological  zones  contiguous  to  each  other.  This  position  provided  frequent  opportunity  for 
interaction  with  hunter/gatherers  who  lived  in  the  adjoining  woodlands  and  herders  who  lived  on 
the  plains.  It  is  this  pattern  of  interaction,  afforded  by  the  position  of  the  hills,  that  gave  western 
Serengeti  farmers  the  means  for  prosperity  in  a  marginal  land.  These  landscapes  of  hunters, 
herders  and  farmers,  living  in  close  proximity  form  the  ecological  basis  for  the  meeting  of  hunter 
and  farmer,  represented  in  the  spatial  images  of  the  emergences  stories  of  first  man  and  first 
woman. 
Ecological  Zones 

Ecologists  refer  to  the  whole  area,  from  Ikizu  in  the  west  to  Sonjo  in  the  east,  as  the 
Serengeti-Mara  ecosystem,  covering  some  25,000  square  kilometers.  This  area  can  be  broken  into 
three  major  ecological  zones  of  hills,  woodlands  and  grasslands  that  have  provided  the  diverse 
environment  for  inter-cultural  exchange.  Wildlife  populations  have  also  thrived  in  this  varied 
ecosystem,  producing  the  largest  herds  of  grazing  mammals  in  the  world  with  thirty  species  of 
ungulates  (some  2.4  million  total)  and  thirteen  species  of  large  carnivores.16  [See  Figure  5-1: 
Ecological  map  of  the  Serengeti-Mara  Ecosystem,  p.  199.] 


16  Sinclair  and  Norton-Griffiths,  eds.  Serengeti:  Dynamics  of  an  Ecosystem.  Sinclair, 
"The  Serengeti  Environment,"  p.  41.  See  Chapter  1,  "Dynamics  of  the  Serengeti  Ecosystem: 
Process  and  Pattern,"  and  Chapter  2,  "The  Serengeti  Environment,"  both  by  Sinclair  for  an  overall 
view.  The  Serengeti-Mara  ecosystem  is  defined  as  that  area  influenced  by  the  migratory 
wildebeest  population,  p.  3 1 . 


204 

The  extensive  grassland  plains  are  found  in  the  southern  part  of  the  Serengeti-Mara 
ecosystem,  with  projections  reaching  up  into  what  is  now  Loliondo,  to  the  west  of  Sonjo,  and  out  to 
Lake  Victoria  in  what  is  now  the  western  Corridor  of  the  National  Park.  The  Serengeti  plain  is  a 
vast  short-grass  savanna,  with  trees  along  the  rivers  and  among  the  rocky  out-croppings  known  as 
kopjes.  An  impenetrable  hardpan  has  been  formed  under  much  of  the  volcanic  soils  of  the  plains 
making  it  possible  for  only  shallow-rooted  grasses  to  survive.  In  spite  of  this,  the  Serengeti  is  one 
of  the  most  productive  grasslands  in  the  world,  in  terms  of  biomass. "    During  the  colonial  years 
Maasai  herders  moved  into  the  western  Serengeti,  at  least  as  far  as  Moru  Kopjes  in  the  western 
hills,  during  unseasonably  dry  periods.  To  avoid  disease  they  grazed  the  plains  during  the  dry 
season  when  the  large  wildlife  herds  were  not  there.18  The  Tatoga  now  graze  the  plains  of  the 
western  Corridor  but  they  once  dominated  the  Serengeti  plains,  at  least  seasonally,  as  far  as  the 
Ngorongoro  Crater. 

To  the  northwest  of  the  plains  the  volcanic  soils  become  finer  grained,  the  rainfall 
increases  and  taller  grasses  of  different  species  along  with  bush  begin  to  thrive,  merging  into 
woodland.  The  alkaline  ash  soils  demarcate  the  limits  of  the  plain.  The  soils  of  the  woodlands,  to 
the  north  and  west  of  the  great  plains,  are  formed  from  granite  or  quartzite  parent  rock,  creating  an 
acacia  thorn-tree  scrub  and  woodland."  The  small  whistling  thorn  trees  (Acacia  drepanolobium) 
dominate  in  the  woodlands  with  poorly  drained  soils.20 


17  Sinclair,  "The  Serengeti  Environment."  pp.  41-42. 

"  H.  St.  J.  Grant,  District  Officer,  "Report  on  Human  Habitation  of  the  Serengeti  National 
Park,"  May  1 954  and  from  the  District  Office.  Masai,  Monduli,  28  May  1 954  to  the  P.C. 
Northern  Province,  Arusha,  National  Game  Parks,  215/350/vol.  III,TNA. 

19  Sinclair,  "The  Serengeti  Environment,"  pp.  38-39. 

20  Ibid. 


205 

Oral  narratives  identify  these  woodlands  as  the  space  of  the  Asi  hunter/gatherers. 
Ambrose  demonstrates  that  the  areas  best  suited  for  gathering  edible  plants  is  on  the  more  acidic 
soils  of  the  woodland  bush,  not  suited  for  either  grazing  of  livestock,  the  larger  ungulates  or 
farming.  The  low  soil  fertility  and  low  rainfall  of  this  bush  area  encourages  larger  tubers  and 
woody  plants  from  which  edible  plant  foods  are  found.  The  migrating  herds  of  larger  animals  from 
the  plains  move  through  here  in  the  dry  season  in  search  of  the  permanent  water  pools  along  the 
tributaries  of  the  Grumeti  and  Mara  Rivers.  Archeological  evidence  suggests  that  hunter/gatherers 
in  East  Africa  have  always  depended  on  the  resident  populations  of  smaller  game  that  live  in  the 
woodlands,  while  pastoralists  made  use  of  the  larger  ungulate  herds  from  the  plains  for  meat.21 

The  hunter/gatherers  also  preferred  the  eco-tones  between  woodlands  and  grasslands  and 
probably  inhabited  the  hill  areas  before  the  Bantu-speaking  farmers  arrived.  They  hunted  the 
resident  populations  of  smaller  game  in  the  woodlands  and  grazed  small  herds  of  livestock, 
probably  sheep  and  goats,  on  the  grasslands.  However,  as  farmers  came  to  dominate  the  hill 
ecologies,  they  increasingly  relegated  the  hunters  to  the  woodland  ecologies  alone.  The  woodlands, 
with  their  supply  of  edible  plants,  resident  game  population  and  seasonal  arrival  of  larger  game, 
sustained  a  hunter  lifestyle.  Yet  their  confinement  to  the  marginal  woodlands  areas  meant  that  they 
came  to  depend  on  hill  farmers  and  grassland  herders  for  livestock  and  grain  in  return  for 
woodlands  products.22 


21  Ambrose.  "Hunter-Gatherer  Adaptations,"  pp.  11-42;  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  pp. 
1 04-106.  Curtis  Marean,  "Hunter  to  herder:  Large  Mammal  Remains  from  the  Hunter-Gatherer 
Occupation  at  Enkapune  Ya  Muto  Rock-Shelter,  Central  Rift  Kenya,"  The  African  Archaeological 
Review.  10  (1992):  65-127. 

22  Ambrose,  "Hunter-Gatherer  Adaptations,"  pp.  1 1-42;  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place  dp 
104-106. 


206 

The  woodlands  and  plains  finally  break  up  among  the  ranges  of  hills  in  the  northwest, 
creating  a  unique  mosaic  of  many  distinct  ecotones  in  close  proximity.  Rivers  form  valleys 
between  the  hills,  creating  fertile  but  swampy  low-lying  areas  of  woodland.  Directly  to  the  south 
of  the  western  hills  the  grassland  plains  again  dominate,  as  far  west  as  the  lake.  Here  the  Tatoga 
herders  pasture  their  vast  herds  as  close  neighbors  to  the  Bantu-speaking  farmers  who  live  in  the 
hills  of  Ishenyi  or  Ikizu.  This  combination  of  hills,  woodlands  and  plains,  in  close  proximity,  is  the 
landscape  that  lies  at  the  heart  of  the  spatial  images  of  the  emergence  stories,  creating  the 
ecological  basis  for  the  meeting  of  hunter  and  farmer,  first  man  and  first  woman. 

Sustained  farming  is  not  possible  either  on  the  short-grass  plains  or  in  the  acacia 
woodlands.  The  grasslands  have  never  supported  permanent  farming  communities  because  of  the 
hardpan  soils  and  lack  of  permanent  water  sources.  An  early  colonial  report  states  that,  "on  the 
nine  days'  track  Ikoma  to  Ngorongoro  through  the  Zerengeti  [sic]  there  are  only  two  perennial 
watering-places."23  Although  the  average  rainfall  would  allow  for  farming  in  the  woodlands,  the 
poorly  drained  soils  prohibit  it.  A  colonial  resource  survey  of  the  region  describes  these  areas  as 
the  "famine"  land  of  heavy  black  clay  soils,  covered  by  acacia  thorn  bush.24 

Those  areas  that  are  now  woodland  or  grasslands  may  not  necessarily  have  appeared  this 
way  two  hundred  years  ago.  The  savanna  ecosystem  oscillates  between  phases  where  more 
grasslands  or  more  woodlands  exist  depending  on  such  large-scale  perturbations  in  the  system  as 
widespread  disease,  drought,  hunting  or  fire.  For  example,  after  the  1 890  rinderpest  panzootic  in 
which  95%  of  the  wildebeest  and  buffalo  died,  the  grasses  grew  taller,  providing  more  dry  fuel  for 


3  Geographical  Section  of  the  Naval  Intelligence  Division,  Naval  Staff,  Admiralty,  A 
Handbook  of  German  East  Africa  iLnnrlnn-  His  Majesty's  Stationery  Office,  1920;  reprint  ed. 
New  York:  Negro  University  Press,  1969),  p.  159. 

24  V.  C.  R.  Ford,  The  Trade  of  Lake  Victoria  (Kampala:  The  East  African  Institute  of 
Social  Research,  1955),  p.  16. 


207 
hotter  and  larger  fires,  which  destroyed  trees  and  led  to  the  spread  of  grasslands.    The  increase  in 
the  wildebeest  population  and  more  controlled  burning  since  then  has  resulted  in  a  trend  toward 
bush  encroachment.  Ecologists  now  conclude  that  these  extreme  disturbances  of  the  Serengeti 
ecosystem  are,  in  fact,  responsible  for  maintaining  the  diversity,  productivity  and  resilience  of  the 
system.25  Those  who  try  to  preserve  the  Serengeti  in  its  "natural"  state  by  not  allowing  these  large- 
scale  disturbances  may  destroy  the  feature  that  created  its  diversity,  productivity  and  resilience  in 
the  first  place. 
Human  Interaction  with  the  Environment 

Patterns  of  human  habitation  have  done  much  to  create  and  maintain  this  unique  ecosystem 
over  the  past  millennium,  particularly  in  the  use  of  fire  (described  in  oral  narratives  as  the  secret  of 
first  man).  The  woodlands  of  the  northwest  zone  of  what  is  now  the  Serengeti  National  Park 
(closest  to  the  area  historically  inhabited  by  western  Serengeti  peoples)  contain  species  of  trees  that 
serve  as  markers  for  what  ecologists  call  a  "fire-maintained  successional  stage."26  The  dominant 
grasses  of  the  western  Serengeti,  Themeda  triandra  and  associated  grasses,  are  also  fire  tolerant, 
indicating  the  evolution  of  these  ecologies  in  conjunction  with  annual  burning. 

This  ecological  evidence  supports  oral  narratives  that  describe  subsistence  strategies  in 
relation  to  burning.  After  farmers  harvest  the  crops  in  July  and  August  the  dry  grass  is  set  on  fire, 
burning  extensive  areas  before  it  stops.  Ecological  evidence  suggests  that  this  is  a  very  old  way  of 
maintaining  the  optimal  balance  between  grassland  and  woodland.  Burning  eliminates  all  of  the 


25  Norton-Griffiths,"lnfluence  of  Grazing,  Browsing,  and  Fire,"  pp.  332-333,  341-348; 
See  also  Jane  Guyer  and  Paul  Richards,  "The  Invention  of  Biodiversity:  Social  Perspectives  on  the 
Management  of  Biological  Diversity  in  Africa,"  pp.  1-13;  and  Peter  D.  Little,  "Pastoralism, 
Biodiversity  and  the  Shaping  of  Savanna  Landscapes  in  East  Africa,"  pp.  37-51;  both  in  Africa  66 
1  (1996). 

26  Sinclair,  "The  Serengeti  Environment,  p.  39. 


208 

tall  dead  grass  that  has  almost  no  nutritional  value  for  either  wild  animals  or  cattle  and  encourages 
the  growth  of  the  more  nutritious  grasses  such  as  red  oat  grass,  Themeda  triandra,  at  the  expense 
of  the  coarser  grasses.27  Themeda  triandra,  called  ambirisi  (from  the  verb  "to  herd"  korisi),  is 
acknowledged  in  local  languages  as  one  of  the  best  pasture  grasses,  also  valuable  for  thatch.28  The 
month  of  ekinyariri  ("green  lands")  refers  to  the  greenflush  of  grass,  especially  appealing  to  cattle 
and  wild  animals,  that  emerges  right  after  a  burn.  [See  Figure  5-2:  Human  Interaction  with  the 
Environment.] 

The  landscape  created  by  these  burns  has  an  orchard-like  appearance  with  scattered  acacia 
trees  over  a  low  grass  pasture.  The  tree  and  grass  species  of  the  western  Serengeti  are  particularly 
adapted  to  fire  and  regular  burns  do  not  destroy  them.25  One  of  the  most  important  effects  of 
burning  is  to  control  dense  areas  of  bush  which  might  harbor  the  tsetse  fly.    Western  Serengeti 
people  value  and  encourage  open  plains,  as  the  sign  of  a  healthy  environment,  by  burning.  From 
ancient  times  people  not  only  adapted  their  practices  to  the  existing  environment  but  took  an  active 
role  in  creating  an  environment  that  was  conducive  to  their  economic  prosperity. 

Evidence  shows  that  both  the  practice  of  burning  and  agro-pastoral  patterns  in  the  western 
Serengeti  were  also  responsible  for  the  control  of  endemic  trypanosomiases.  Bantu-speakers  who 
farmed  the  hills  kept  mainly  goats  and  sheep  until  the  colonial  period.  Goats  and  sheep  develop 
more  resistance  than  cattle  to  trypanosomiasis  because  they  browse  into  the  bush,  which  brings 
them  into  limited  but  regular  contact  with  tsetse  fly  habitats.    Because  people  kept  their  limited 


27  Norton-Griffiths,  "Influence  of  Grazing,  Browsing,  and  Fire  on  Vegetation  Dynamics," 

28  Grasses  identified  in  Nata  by  Nyawagamba  Magoto  and  keyed  to  scientific  name  in 
D.M.  Napper,  Grasses  of  Tanganyika  (Dar  es  Salaam:  Ministry  of  Agriculture.  Forests  and 
Wildlife,  Tanzania,  Bulletin,  No.  18,  1965),  p.  132. 

29  Sinclair,  "The  Serengeti  Environment,"  pp.  37-40. 


Making  Arrow  Poison  (obosongo), 
Bugerera,  5  January  1996 


Green  Flush  After  a  Burn  in  the  Serengeti 
Figure  5-2:  Human  Interaction  with  the  Environment 


210 
livestock  herds  close  to  concentrated  settlements,  they  avoided  intensive  contact  with  the  tsetse  fly. 
They  farmed,  in  turn,  on  the  boundaries  of  the  bush,  while  visiting  woodland  areas,  where  tsetse 
thrived,  for  hunting,  wood  gathering  or  travel.  A  German  report  from  early  in  this  century  states 
that,  "the  fields  in  some  cases  are  several  hours' journey  from  the  houses,  mostly  lying  in  the  low 
grounds  amongst  the  rivers  and  brooks."30  The  tsetse  fly  officers  in  the  1930s  were  concerned  with 
the  practice  of  farming  away  from  the  homesteads,  into  the  bush.31  Yet  this  periodic  contact  of 
humans  with  the  tsetse  vector  served  to  maintain  sufficient  trypanosomiasis  resistance  levels. 
Together  these  practices  allowed  the  farmers  gradually  to  push  back  the  cleared  areas  and  maintain 
a  controlled  zone  of  regular  contact  with  the  tsetse  fly.32 

Evidence  for  the  successful  control  of  contact  with  tsetse  habitats  comes  from  the  colonial 
record.    A  Veterinary  Officer  reported  in  1928  that,  "the  fly  belt  is  vaguely  demarcated  by  the 
natives  who  seem  to  know  where  they  can  safely  graze  but  keep  dangerous  close  . . .  goats  seem  to 
thrive  there."33  In  the  first  reports  of  sleeping  sickness  in  the  Ikoma  area  the  Medical  Officer  was 
surprised  to  find  that  livestock  were  healthy,  although  he  found  cases  of  trypanosomiasis  among 
them  and  vast  tracts  of  tsetse  infested  bush  surrounded  the  settlements.  The  same  report  also 
found,  in  the  human  case,  that  the  incidence  of  sleeping  sickness  was  only  one  percent,  with  no 


30  Geographical  Section,  A  Handbook  of  German  East  Africa,  pp.  97,  in  the  section 
describing  the  "Washashi  and  Wangorimi." 

31  H.  G.  Caldwell,  "Report  on  Sleeping  Sickness  in  the  Musoma  District,  July  and  August 
1932,  Sleeping  Sickness:  Musoma  District,  215/463,  TNA 

Giblin,  The  Politics  of  Environmental  Control. 

33  District  Veterinary  Officer,  Musoma,  to  the  D.  O.  Musoma,  19  January  1928,  Annual 
Report  1927,  p.  4,  1927-28  Provincial  Administration,  Annual  Reports  1927,  Mwanza  Province 
246/P.C./1/30,  TNA. 


211 
tendency  to  epidemic  spread.34  Western  Serengeti  peoples  had  apparently  learned  how  to  coexist 
with  the  tsetse  fly.35 
The  Wildebeest  Migration 

Wildlife  ecologies  also  affected  historical  developments  in  the  western  Serengeti.  In  the 
Ikoma  and  Ngoreme  emergence  stories  the  hunter  comes  to  the  western  Serengeti  from  Sonjo  by 
hunting  wildebeest.  The  route  of  the  annual  migration  begins  in  the  southeast,  in  December,  when 
the  short-grass  plain  is  teeming  with  vast  herds  of  wildebeest  (about  1.3  million  at  last  count), 
mixed  with  zebra  and  gazelle.  The  herds  come  to  the  plains  in  the  rainy  season  to  give  birth  to 
their  calves  on  pastures  rich  in  minerals,  finding  water  in  pockets  left  by  rain.    The  long  view 
available  on  the  short  grass  plains  also  provides  better  protection  from  predators  when  the  calves 
are  vulnerable.36  As  the  plains  dry  up  from  May  to  June,  the  herds  move  north  and  west  into  the 
woodlands  looking  for  permanent  water  sources  and  fresh  grass.37    The  acacia  woodland  in  the 
western  Serengeti  is  the  termination  point  of  the  migration,  just  where  the  Sonjo  hunters  ended  their 
journey. 


34  J.  F.  Corson,  M.  0.,  Ikoma,  1 5  April  1 927,  "Third  Note  on  Sleeping  Sickness,"  Extracts 
of  Report  by  District  Veterinary  Officer,  1926-29,  Provincial  Administration  Monthly  Reports, 
Musoma  District,  215/P.C./1/7,  TNA. 

35  On  trypanosomiasis  see  Ford,  The  Role  of  the  Trypanosomiases-  Richard  Waller, 
"Tsetse  Fly  in  Western  Narok,  Kenya,"  Journal  of  African  History  31  (1990):  81-101;  and  James 
Giblin,  "Trypanosomiasis  Control  in  African  History:  An  Evaded  Issue?,"  Journal  of  African 
History.  31  (1990):  59-80;  for  a  similar  case  in  Sukuma  and  interaction  with  tick  ecologies  see 
Martin  H.  Birley,  "Resource  Control,"  Africa  52,  2  (1982):  1-29. 

36  These  dynamics  described  in  Sinclair  and  Norton-Griffiths  but  also  for  a  popular 
audience  in  James  Scott,  The  Great  Migration  (London:  Elm  Tree  Books:  1 988). 

37  Dennis  Herlocker,  Woody  Vegetation  of  the  Serengeti  National  Park  (The  Caesar 
Kleberg  Research  Program  in  Wildlife  Ecology  and  Texas  A&M  Univerity,  1973),  p.  9;  Sinclair, 
"The  Serengeti  Environment,"  p.  33 


212 

The  emergence  sites  are  located  in  this  termination  zone  of  the  wildebeest  migration  and  at 
a  perfect  place  for  hill  farmers  to  take  advantage  of  the  sudden  seasonal  arrival  of  meat.    Even  up 
through  the  colonial  period,  western  Serengeti  peoples  most  commonly  hunted  during  the  dry 
season  as  individuals  or  in  small  groups  using  bows  and  arrows  tipped  with  poison,  traps  or  snares. 
However,  when  the  wildebeest  herds  arrived,  they  engaged  in  communal  hunting  using  fall-pits, 
ebereri,  dug  between  one  hill  and  another  or  between  another  natural  means  of  constricting 
movement  through  a  narrow  gap.  Hunters  would  dig  many  pits  in  a  row  and  carefully  conceal 
them  with  grass  and  sticks.38  Everyone,  men,  women  and  children,  turned  out  to  stampede  the 
wildebeest  herds  into  the  pits.  Some  said  that  the  hunters  might  kill  100,  100  or  500  wildebeest  in 
a  day.  In  1 899,  the  German  traveler  Kollman  counted  as  many  as  200  hunting  pits  in  a  half-hour 
walk  through  the  Ruwana  plain.39  The  massive  slaughter  of  wildebeest  reported  in  the  late 
nineteenth  century  and  early  colonial  period  was  a  result  of  the  commercialization  of  hunting 
during  that  era.  However,  the  use  of  hunting  pits  for  obtaining  large  quantities  of  meat  to  dry 
seasonally  seems  to  be  a  much  older  practice. 

In  the  western  hills,  farming  communities  could  take  advantage  not  only  of  the  varied 
ecotones  in  the  region,  each  with  its  own  economic  potential,  but  could  also  exploit  the  annual 
migrations  of  wildlife.  They  could  not  live  permanently  on  the  plains  or  in  the  bush  but  could  use 
these  areas  by  situating  themselves  in  close  proximity.  Given  these  parameters,  one  could  predict 
the  emergence  sites  on  an  ecological  map  of  the  region.  These  ecologies  also  help  to  explain  the 
connection  to  other  hill  farmers  in  the  region,  the  Sonjo. 


38  Interviews  with  Mang'oha  Morigo,  Bugerera,  24  June  1995  (Nata  <f);  Nyambeho 
Marangini,  Issenye,  7  September  1995  (Ishenyi  <?). 

39  Kollmann,  The  Victoria  Nvanza.  p.  199. 


213 
Relations  with  Other  Hill  Farmers:  The  Sonio  Connection 

One  of  the  most  perplexing  problems  in  the  interpretation  of  oral  traditions  of  emergence  is 
making  sense  of  the  purported  connection  of  western  Serengeti  hill  farmers  to  the  Bantu-speaking 
Sonjo  hill  farmers  in  what  is  now  the  Loliondo  district  of  Maasailand.40  Western  Serengeti  peoples 
today  bear  little  resemblance  to  the  Sonjo,  either  linguistically,  culturally  or  in  terms  of  social 
organization.  Yet  Ikoma  and  Ngoreme  asimoka  stories,  told  above,  assert  that  their  ancestors 
came  to  the  western  Serengeti  from  Sonjo  as  hunters.    It  is  not  clear  whether  these  ancestors  were 
supposed  to  have  been  Sonjo  farmers  on  a  seasonal  hunt  or  hunter/gatherers  living  in  close 
relationship  to  Sonjo  farmers.  Because  these  traditions  often  attribute  the  migration  of  Sonjo 
hunters  to  the  impact  of  Maasai  raids,  it  is  also  unclear  whether  they  refer  to  the  period  of 
nineteenth  century  disasters  or  to  much  earlier  patterns  of  interaction. 

When  I  went  to  Sonjo  to  find  out  if  similar  traditions  of  interaction  existed  there,  some 
amazing  congruencies  emerged  in  spite  of  the  separation  of  these  communities  since  the  early 
colonial  period.  Sonjo  traditions  also  tell  of  first  man  as  a  hunter  who  brought  fire.  They  call  the 
hunter  clan  in  Sonjo  the  Sagati,  also  found  among  the  western  Serengeti  Ishenyi  and  Ikoma 
people.41  In  Sonjo,  members  of  the  Sagati  clan  are  responsible  for  blessing  the  bows  and  arrows 
before  a  hunt  and  when  they  are  made.  This  clan  also  kept  the  secret  for  making  arrow  poison  (an 
early  trade  item)  and  wild  herbs  for  medicines.  Sonjo  elders  said  that  these  hunters  maintained 


40  One  possibility  that  was  not  investigated  in  this  project  is  the  connection  between  Mara 
languages  and  Uplands  Bantu  languages.  Fairly  solid  bodies  of  culture  vocabulary  link  the  two. 
This  interaction  in  the  distant  past  may  be  represented  by  the  Sonjo  cliche.  See  Schoenbrun. 
"Early  History";  and  Ehret,  Southern  Nilotic  History. 

41  Among  the  Ishenyi  the  Sagati  or  Sageti  clan  was  reported  by  numerous  informants, 
among  the,  interviews  with  Mang'ombe  Morimi,  Issenye  Iharara,  26  August  1995  (Ishenyi  <f)- 
Mikael  Magessa  Sarota,  Issenye,  25  August  1995  (Ishenyi  a).  The  Sagari  clan  among  the  Ikoma 
was  a  hunting  clan  which  has  since  disappeared  as  an  independent  clan.  Interview  with  Mabenga 
Nyahega  and  Machaba  Nyahega,  Mbiso,  1  September  1995  (Ikoma  <f). 


214 
relations  of  trade  between  [koma  and  Sonjo,  meeting  in  the  wilderness  where  Sagati  gathered  honey 
and  hunted.  The  Sonjo  village  of  Rhughata  claims  origins  from  a  Sagati  hunter  and  his  wife  who 
left  "Ikoma"  because  of  Maasai  raids.42  Traditions  say  that  they  came  from  Jaleti  and  Ngrumega 
(perhaps  a  transliteration  of  the  Rivers  Mbalageti  and  Grumeti  in  the  western  Serengeti).43 
Samonge  village  elders  claim  origins  from  a  hunter  father  who  brought  fire  and  a  farmer  mother 
who  controlled  water.44  These  traditions  from  both  sides  of  the  Serengeti  bear  too  much  similarity 
in  specific  clan  and  place  names  as  well  as  the  core  images  of  emergence  stories  to  be  coincidental. 

Although  a  large  portion  of  the  migration  tradition  from  Sonjo  seems  to  refer  to  the  late 
nineteenth  century  period  of  disasters,  much  evidence  suggests  that  farming  settlements  in  Sonjo 
and  the  western  Serengeti  were  in  contact  from  the  distant  past,  largely  through  the  interaction  of 
hunters  from  both  places  who  traveled  across  the  woodlands  and  plains  in  search  of  game.  The 
hills  of  Sonjo  are  only  80  kilometers  from  Ikoma  straight  across  the  Serengeti  where  the  hills  again 
break  up  the  woodlands  and  plains.  Because  of  the  ecological  patterns  described  above  concerning 
the  wildebeest  migrations,  hunters  from  Sonjo  who  followed  the  herds  seasonally  would  have  had 
occasion  to  ask  for  hospitality  in  Ikoma,  while  Ikoma  hunters  would  have  found  themselves  near 
Sonjo  at  the  end  of  the  dry  season.  Ikoma  migrant  laborers  walking  to  Magadi  Soda  in  Kenya 
during  the  colonial  years  in  search  of  work  slept  the  third  night  in  Sonjo  and  were  welcomed  as 
brothers  by  local  people  who  remembered  these  common  traditions. 

Because  the  hill  ecologies  of  Sonjo  and  the  western  Serengeti  are  similar,  we  might 
hypothesize  that  migrants  looking  for  new  areas  in  which  to  settle  would  have  sought  out 


42  Interviews  with  Peter  Nabususa,  Samonge,  5  December  1 995;  Emmanuel  Ndenu  Sale  6 
December  1 996  (Sonjo  <f). 

43  Interview  with  Emmanuel  Ndenu,  Sale,  6  December  1995  (Sonjo  cf). 

44  Interview  with  Marindaya  Sanaya,  Samonge,  5  December  1995  (Sonjo  cf). 


215 
environments  most  closely  resembling  their  home  areas.45  Once  Sonjo  hunters  established  contact 
in  the  western  Serengeti,  small  groups  of  people  may  have  gone  there  to  build  their  homes  or  to 
marry.  Some  Sonjo  elders  say  that  the  great  prophet  Khambageu  came  from  a  large  mountain  near 
Ikoma  in  the  west,  where  until  recently  Sonjo  people  returned  annually  to  propitiate  his  spirit.46  If 
both  Ikoma  and  Sonjo  formed  their  identity  as  hill  fanners  within  an  inter-cultural  environment  of 
plains  herders  and  woodland  hunter/gatherers  in  the  distant  past,  then  they  may  have  felt  an  affinity 
that  they  explained  by  common  origins.  They  were  "brothers"  within  the  regional  understandings 
of  economically-based  identities. 

Western  Serengeti  and  Sonjo  elders  stated  to  me  that  the  most  conclusive  proof  of  their 
common  parentage  as  children  of  "one  womb"  was  that  both  have  the  ntemi  scar  on  the  right 
breast.  For  the  Sonjo  this  is  a  sign  of  belonging  and  identity.4'  The  Ishenyi,  Ngoreme  and  Ikoma 
also  use  this  mark  but  understand  it  as  a  health  precaution  for  children.  When  I  visited  Sonjo,  an 
Ikoma  and  a  Nata  man  accompanied  me.  Our  Sonjo  hosts  greeted  the  Ikoma  man  who  had  the 


45  Philip  Curtin,  Steven  Feierman,  Leonard  Thompson  and  Jan  Vansina,  African  History 
(New  York:  Longman,  1978),  p.  125,  Feierman  describes  the  pattern  in  the  migrations  of  Bantu- 
speaking  peoples  who,  when  forced  to  move,  chose  those  places  where  they  could  apply  their 
environmental  knowledge.  David  W.  Cohen  describes  the  same  pattern  in, "The  face  of  contact:  a 
model  of  a  cultural  and  linguistic  frontier  in  early  eastern  Uganda,"  in  Nilotic  Studies.  Part  two. 
Proceedings  of  the  international  symposium  on  languages  and  history  of  the  Nilotic  peoples. 
Cologne.  January  4-6.  1987..  eds.  Rainer  Vossen  and  Marianne  Bechhaus-Gerst  (Berlin:  Dietrich 
Reimer  Verlag,  1983),  pp.  339-356. 

46  Interview  with  Emmanuel  Ndenu,  Sale,  6  December  1 995  (Sonjo  <f);  stated 
"Khambageu  was  a  prophet  and  a  god,  he  came  from  over  toward  Ikoma.  His  wife  was  Nankoni. 
They  used  to  visit  back  and  forth  with  Ikoma  especially  in  the  tenth  through  the  twelfth  month. 
They  went  to  worship  there  and  the  ones  that  followed  him  went  there  to  worship  too."  See  also 
Robert  F.  Gray,  The  Sonio  of  Tanganyika:  An  Anthropological  Study  of  an  Irrigation  Based 
Society.  (London:  Oxford  University  Press,  1963),  pp.  1 1-12,  who  relates  the  tradition  of 
Khambageu  coming  from  the  Sonjo  village  of  Tinaga,  and  then  cursing  the  village,  leading  to  its 
destruction. 

See  Gray,  The  Sonio  of  Tanganyika,  p.  1 5,  on  the  ntemi  scar. 


216 
ntemi  scar  as  a  long  lost  brother  and  friend,  giving  him  gifts  and  special  treatment  as  an  honored 
guest.  They  treated  the  Nata  man,  who  had  no  ntemi  scar,  indifferently.  In  the  past  individual 
immigrants  from  Sonjo  may  have  brought  the  practice  of  ntemi  scarification  but  its  meaning 
changed  outside  the  context  of  Sonjo  identity.  It  may  have  remained  in  practice  for  identifying 
"brothers"  in  the  wilderness. 

While  the  evidence  seems  to  support  the  hypothesis  of  a  zone  of  interaction  in  the  distant 
past  between  Sonjo  and  the  western  Serengeti,  much  remains  to  be  explained.  For  example, 
although  Ikoma,  Ngoreme  and  Ishenyi  traditions  claim  origins  in  Sonjo,  little  linguistic  or 
ethnographic  evidence  exists  for  this.  If  Ikoma  ancestors  came  from  Sonjo,  they  retained  almost 
nothing  of  Sonjo  culture  or  language.  Language  shifts  take  at  least  three  generations  and  the 
incorporation  of  loanwords  several  generations.    No  linguistic  trace  of  a  large  migration  from 
Sonjo  remains,  either  in  the  distant  or  recent  past.48  If  small  groups  of  immigrants  did  come  from 
Sonjo,  they  were  completely  incorporated  into  western  Serengeti  society  and  culture.  The  only 
linguistic  evidence  for  interaction  in  the  distant  past  is  shared  loan  words  from  a  preexisting 
Southern  Nilotic-speaking  community  with  which  both  had  contact. 

Evidence  exists  that  today's  Sonjo  are  related  to  the  farmers  who  worked  the  ancient 
irrigation  agricultural  settlements  in  the  Rift  Valley,  known  in  the  archaeological  literature  as 
Engaruka,  dating  to  at  least  300  years  ago.  The  Sonjo  still  practice  a  complicated  system  of 
irrigated  agriculture  that  forms  the  basis  of  their  socio-political  system.49  The  most  influential 
Sonjo  leaders  are  those  who  control  the  allotment  of  water  for  their  sections.  Ngoreme  praise 


1  Ehret,  Southern  Nilotic  History,  pp.  26-27. 
'  Gray>  The  Sonio  of  Tanganyika,  pp.  53-56. 


217 
names  for  Sonjo  ancestors  describe  them  as  "those  who  irrigate."50  Yet  little  evidence  exists  that 
people  in  the  Mara  Region  ever  practiced  this  kind  of  agriculture  or  settled  in  the  patterns  evident 
in  these  archeological  sites." 

Memory  of  the  connection  to  Sonjo  draws  more  directly  on  the  common  experience  of 
Maasai  pressure  during  the  period  of  disasters  in  the  late  nineteenth  century  that  resulted  in  small 
groups  of  refugees  moving  in  both  directions.  Sonjo  sources  date  the  dispersal  to  Ikoma  to  two 
generations  ago.52    This  is  discussed  more  thoroughly  in  later  chapters,  along  with  the  ideological 
reasons  why  the  Ikoma,  Ishenyi  and  Ngoreme  would  have  preferred  origins  in  Sonjo  to  local 
origins.  Similar  to  the  Ikizu  case  already  discussed,  the  Ikoma  and  Ngoreme  seem  to  have  used  the 
older  founding  myth  to  legitimate  later  changes  in  identity  that  resulted  from  the  nineteenth  century 
disasters. 

Whatever  the  particular  connection  of  western  Serengeti  peoples  to  Sonjo  in  the  early 
period,  the  Serengeti  plain  was  clearly  a  zone  of  interaction  rather  than  a  barrier.53  Ecological 
patterns  provided  the  environment  in  which  these  two  sets  of  peoples  would  have  met  each  other 
during  their  everyday  subsistence  activities.  According  to  narratives  on  both  sides,  hunters, 
traders,  settlers  and  pilgrims  frequently  crossed  the  Serengeti  plain.  The  location  of  emergence 


50  Interview  with  Silas  King' are  Magori,  Kemgesi,  21  September  1995  (Ngoreme  <f). 

51  For  a  Sonjo  ethnography  see  Gray,  The  Sonio  of  Tanganyika.  For  archaeological 
investigation  of  Engaruka  see  Leakey,  "Preliminary  Report;"  Sutton,  "Engaruka  etc.,"  pp.  7-10; 
John  Sutton,  A  Thousand  Years  of  East  Africa  (Nairobi:  British  Institute  in  Eastern  Africa   1 990) 
pp.  33-40.  ' 


53  This  thesis  was  first  expounded  by  A.  O.  Anacleti,  "Serengeti:  It's  People  and  their 
Environment,"  Tanganyika  Notes  and  Records  81/82  (1 977):  23-34;  and  by  the  same  author, 
"Pastoralism  and  Development." 


218 
sites  shows  that  western  Serengeti  people  once  lived  much  farther  east,  while  Sonjo  tradition 
described  settlements  located  much  farther  west. 

This  evidence  would  suggest  a  set  of  settlements  in  close  proximity,  identifying  themselves 
as  hill  farmers,  who  later  differentiated  into  Sonjo  and  Mara  peoples  as  they  moved  apart  in  the 
nineteenth  century.54  Whether  the  common  culture  they  shared  was  closer  to  present-day  Sonjo  or 
Mara,  or  entirely  different,  is  now  difficult  to  tell.  The  long-term  pattern  of  interaction  and  the 
deep  connections  built  between  communities  over  the  centuries  forms  the  context  in  which  new 
identities  developed  in  the  nineteenth  century.  During  the  Maasai  raids  refugees  from  Sonjo  may 
have  come  to  Ikoma  because  they  had  relatives,  friends  or  trading  partners  there.    These  ecologies 
were  known  landscapes  that  people  on  both  sides  of  the  plains  frequently  crossed. 

Relations  with  Hunter-Gatherers:  Learning  How  to  Live  on  the  Land 

Hill  settlements,  located  to  take  advantage  of  other  ecologies  and  of  the  annual  wildebeest 
migration,  provided  a  space  in  which  farmers  consistently  interacted  with  hunter/gatherer  peoples 
in  the  woodlands.  The  genius  of  western  Serengeti  Bantu-speaking  peoples'  adaptation  to  this 
environment  lay  in  their  maintaining  a  strong  identity  as  farmers,  separate  from  but  interdependent 
with  hunter/gatherer  and  herder  neighbors,  while  doing  some  seasonal  hunting  and  herding 
themselves.  The  hunting  skills  of  Bantu-speakers  would  have  expanded  as  they  learned  from 
hunter/gatherers  whom  they  incorporated  into  their  communities.    An  investigation  of  the 
relationship  between  farmers  and  hunters  suggests  further  ways  in  which  the  Asi  hunters  were 
"fathers"  to  the  farmers  in  relation  to  the  land. 


54  The  Maasai  Loitai  of  the  Loliondo  highlands,  whose  territory  extended  north  into  Kenya 
and  east  to  Lake  Natron,  reported  to  colonial  anthropologist  Henry  Fosbrooke  that  the  original 
inhabitants  of  this  area  were  the  "Ilmarau,"  the  Maasai  name  for  the  Ikoma  or  Bantu-speaking 
peoples  of  the  western  Serengeti  in  general.  Henry  A.  Fosbrooke,  "Sections  of  the  Masai  in 
Loliondo  Area,"1953,  (typescript)  CORY  #259,  EAF,  UDSM. 


219 
First  Man  as  Asi  Hunter 

If  the  emergence  stories  are  in  some  way  symbolic  of  long-term  social  processes  then 
another  level  of  interpretation  is  possible  by  comparing  these  traditions  with  what  we  know  about 
the  historical  relationships  between  hill  farmers  and  hunters.  Nyamuny  wa,  remembered  as  the  first 
father  of  the  Nata  people,  was  an  Asi  hunter.  The  Asi,  as  a  hunter/gatherer  community  in  the 
western  Serengeti  who  were  there  before  the  Bantu-speakers  arrived,  have  a  long  history  of 
interaction  with  farmers  and  herders. 

One  might  argue  that  the  Asi  hunter  in  the  emergence  story  is  only  a  symbol  of  the 
wilderness  in  a  purely  mythical  founding  story  of  how  civilization  came  to  be.  The  structuralist 
symbols  of  wilderness/home,  male/female,  cooked/raw  are  all  apparent  in  the  story."  The  Asi  are 
liminal  boundary  shifters,  an  elusive  symbol  of  the  wilderness,  whom  farmers  sometimes  call  "wild 
animals."  Some  versions  of  the  Ikizu  and  Ngoreme  emergence  traditions  describe  how  their 
ancestors  won  the  land  by  driving  out  the  original  short  people  with  big  heads,  the  Hengere.56  It  is 
these  people,  rather  than  the  Asi,  who  represent  the  forces  of  nature  conquered  by  civilization  in  the 
emergence  traditions.  Because  the  Asi  hunter  represents  a  historical  community  of  known  people 
with  whom  fanners  had  an  ongoing  relationship,  this  myth  also  has  a  historical  reality  behind  it. 
An  investigation  of  the  relationship  of  hill  farmers  to  Asi  hunters  may  provide  some  insight  into  the 
meaning  of  the  emergence  stories. 

Other  kinds  of  evidence  show  that  Asi  hunter/gatherers  played  a  central  role  in  the  early 
establishment  of  Bantu-speaking  settlers  in  the  western  Serengeti.  Oral  traditions  that  represent  the 


*  Edmund  Leach,  ed.,  The  Structural  Study  of  Myth  and  Totemism  (London:  Tavistock 
Publications,  1967). 

56  For  an  analysis  of  the  common  myth  of  first  peoples  and  "short  people"  see,  Wyatt 
MacGaffey,  Religion  and  Society  in  Central  Africa  (Chicago:  University  of  Chicago  Press.  1986); 
Kenny,  "Mirror  in  the  Forest,"  482-484. 


220 
hunter  as  first  father  also  reflect  the  importance  of  the  Asi.  Western  Serengeti  peoples  give 
precedence  as  "first-comers"  to  Asi  descendants  in  farming  communities,  identified  by  clan 
designation.  For  example,  the  Nata  clan,  Gaikwe,  and  the  Ikizu  clan,  Hemba  (from  to  light  a  fire) 
is  associated  with  and  uses  Asi  praise  names.  The  Asi  founded  one  Kuria  section  called  Nyabasi  in 
North  Mara  where  Asi  ancestors  came  to  farming  communities  to  trade  arrow  poison  for  cattle." 
Some  have  speculated  that  the  name  "Asi"  is  derived  from  the  Bantu  root  for  "earth"  or  "soil,"  in 
Nata  ase  or  ahase." 

In  the  early  years  when  Bantu-speaking  farmers  first  entered  the  region  they  depended 
upon  the  Asi  hunters  to  teach  them  the  skills  necessary  to  survive  in  an  unfamiliar  environment.  It 
also  seems  likely  from  ecological  and  archaeological  evidence  that  the  Asi  hunters  would  have  been 
living  in  the  hill  ecotones  where  they  could  exploit  both  the  grasslands  and  the  woodlands.  Yet 
because  this  was  also  the  ecological  niche  best  suited  for  farming  they  came  into  competition  with 
incoming  Bantu-speaking  settlers.  The  emergence  stories,  at  one  level,  describe  the 
accommodations  and  conflicts  between  these  two  groups  on  the  frontier.  As  the  hill  farmers 
gained  familiarity  with  the  environment,  they  increasingly  pushed  those  Asi  who  refused  to  marry 
into  hill  farmer  communities  into  the  more  marginal  areas  of  the  woodlands  as  they  took  over  the 
hill  ecologies.  The  hill  farmers  still  had  a  close  and  interdependent  relation  with  the  Asi  but  came 
to  dominate  them  rather  then  depend  on  them  as  their  population  expanded  and  many  Asi 
assimilated  as  farmers  and  herders.  Those  Asi  who  lived  in  the  marginal  woodland  areas  bordering 


"  Interview  with  Sira  Masiyora,  Nyerero,  17  November  1995  (Kuria  cf). 

58  Kenny,  "Mirror  in  the  Forest,"  p.  482.  Unfortunately,  I  was  unable  to  find  any 
descendants  of  the  Asi  who  could  recount  their  oral  traditions.  The  Asi  have  either  totally 
assimilated  into  farming  communities  or  have  gone  to  live  in  Loliondo  under  Maasai  patronage. 
Thus,  until  more  research  is  done  the  view  of  Asi  history  presented  here  is  entirely  from  the 
perspective  of  the  farmers.  But  because  western  Serengeti  farmers  consider  the  Asi  one  of  the 
original  parents  and  first-comers  to  the  land,  farmers  respect  their  knowledge  and  history. 


221 
the  hills  gradually  began  to  rely  on  the  farmers  for  grain  and  livestock  in  exchange  for  products  of 
the  wilderness.  The  symbiotic  relationship  between  them  developed  from  one  of  farmers'  reliance 
on  hunters  to  the  farmers'  dominance  and  control  of  the  best  land  in  the  hill  environments. 

In  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  Asi  increasingly  became  the  clients  of  the 
Maasai  who  came  to  dominate  the  greater  Rift  Valley.  However,  this  was  a  slow  process  and  in 
the  early  part  of  this  century  the  Germans  still  distinguished  between  Ndorobo  in  the  Serengeti  area 
who  spoke  a  Maasai  language  and  the  "pure  Wandorobbo  in  the  Zerengeti  [sic]  steppe  on  the 
Syonera  [sic]  living  as  nomads"  who  spoke  a  different  language,  for  which  the  "Washashi  in 
Ikoma"  acted  as  interpreters.  This  testimony  indicates  a  close  relationship  between  hunters  and  hill 
farmers,  only  recently  altered  by  the  presence  of  the  Maasai.  The  same  report  said  that  "during  the 
great  migration  of  the  Masai,  the  Wandorobbo  were  either  driven  out  or  forced  to  submit."59 

Oral  narratives  of  the  western  Serengeti  acknowledge  their  debt  to  the  Asi  in  the  lore  of  the 
woodlands  and  hunting.  Nata  people  learned  the  secret  of  arrow  poison  (obosongo)  from  the  Asi. 
The  Nata  kept  the  secret  to  themselves,  using  it  as  a  trade  good,  until  recent  times  when  clan 
brothers  gave  the  recipe  to  the  Ikoma.60  Hunters  make  the  poison  by  boiling  the  woody  portions  of 
the  obosongo  tree  (Acocanthera  fiersiorum)  and  making  a  dark  concentrate  by  evaporation.  The 
active  ingredient  in  the  poison  was  the  glycoside,  ouabain,  which  western  Serengeti  peoples  say 
"freezes"  the  blood  of  the  animal.  This  arrow  poison  was  extremely  valuable,  one  small  container 
selling  for  the  equivalent  of  a  goat.  Many  people  considered  the  arrow  poison  from  western 
Serengeti  one  of  the  best  and  during  the  colonial  years,  at  least,  they  traded  it  as  far  as  Shinyanga, 


'  Geographical  Section,  A  Handbook  of  German  East  Africa,  pp.  98-99. 
1  Interview  with  Mang'oha  Morigo,  Bugerera,  24  June  1995  (Nata  J). 


222 

Mbulu  and  across  the  Kenya  border.61  There  is  a  hill  near  Nyichoka  that  elders  still  remember  as 
the  place,  protected  by  medicines,  where  they  stored  the  obosongo  when  they  brought  it  home, 
while  the  men  purified  themselves  with  sacrifices  so  they  would  not  become  sick.62  [See  Figure  5-2: 
Human  Interaction  with  the  Environment,  for  a  photo  of  preparing  arrow  poison,  p.  209.] 

Inconclusive  evidence  also  exists  that  western  Serengeti  peoples  borrowed  their  common 
style  of  bows  and  arrows  from  the  Asi.  Western  Serengeti  peoples  use  a  long  bow,  more 
commonly  found  among  hunter/gatherers  in  this  part  of  East  Africa.  Fosbrooke's  1956 
investigation  of  Hadzapi  material  culture  on  Lake  Eyasi  demonstrates  the  contrast  between  the  long 
bows  (180  cm.)  and  arrows  of  these  hunter-gatherers  in  contrast  to  those  of  the  neighboring  Bantu- 
speaking  peoples  that  were  little  more  than  half  as  long.63    When  the  German  traveler  Kollmann 
studied  the  material  culture  of  the  people  of  Lake  Victoria  in  1899  he  noted  that  the  "Ushashi,"  or 
western  Serengeti,  bows  and  arrows  were  also  "strikingly  large  and  beautifully  worked,"  in 
contrast  to  the  other  bows  he  had  seen  on  his  journeys.  [See  Figure  5-3:  Hunting  Vocabulary  and 
Tools.]  The  long  bow  pictured  by  Kollmann  is  1 70  cms.  in  length,  putting  it  within  the  range  of 
bow  lengths  described  by  Fosbrooke  for  Eyasi  hunter/gatherers.64    The  shapes  of  arrow  heads 
described  by  Kollmann  are  also  similar  to  that  of  the  Eyasi  hunter/gatherers,  both  making  common 
use  of  poisoned  wooden  arrow-barbs. 


61  W.  D.  Raymond,  "Tanganyika  Arrow  Poisons,"  Tanganyika  Notes  and  Records  23 
(June  1947):  49-65. 

62  Interview  with  Makuru  Nyang'aka,  Nyichoka,  7  March  1996  (Nata  cf). 

63  H.  A.  Fosbrooke,  "A  Stone  Age  Tribe  in  Tanganyika,"  South  African  Archaeological 
Bulletin  9,  4 1  (March  1 956):  5. 

64  Kollmann,  The  Victoria  Nvanza.  pp  194-5.  When  I  visited  Sonjo  accompanied  by  a 
man  from  Ikoma  and  another  from  Nata  they  laughed  at  the  small  size  of  the  Sonjo  bows  and 
offered  to  teach  them  how  to  make  "real"  bows. 


223 


animal 

Ekinata 
name 

adult  male 

adult 
female 

male  young 

female  young 

hartebeest 

abanosi 

atiribati 

anyabori 

ang'ong'ona 

ang'ong'ona 

impala 

asuma 

abarogwini 

anyabori 

egisaka 

amwati 

gazelle  — 
thompsons 

ambarahe 

aborogwini 

anyabori 

egisaka 

amwati 

topi 

asubugu 

atiribati 

anyabori 

atororo 

atororo 

wildebeest 

asamakiri 

ekiweri 

ndgosana 

abaha 

anyabori 

atwabana 

atwabana 

Names  for  wild  animals  in  Ekinata 

Cultural  Vocabularies  on  wild  animals  and  hunting  provided  by  Nyamaganda  Magoto  and  Tetere 

Tumbo,  Mbiso,  23  November  1995. 


"■""'-  ^''""•"^^^TiFrrnrTTrrnr-i  i,  ■   ■  ■■-.  r- . 


Fi(J.  jio.— BOW.     (One-ieuth  natural  sue,  III    fc.,  5<i,,;.| 


Paul  Kollmann,  The  Victoria  Nvanza:  the  Land,  the  Races,  and  Their  Customs,  with  Specimens  of 
Some  Dialects.  H.  A.  Nesbitt,  trans.  (London:  Swan  Sonneschein  &  Co.,  Ltd.,  1 899),  p.  1 95 


Figure  5-3:  Hunting  Vocabulary  and  Tools 


224 

Hunting  played  a  crucial  role  in  the  economy  of  hill  farmers  and,  until  the  last  century, 
provided  the  major  source  of  meat.  Ritual  feasting  for  taking  eldership  titles  still  requires  a 
prescribed  number  of  pieces  of  dried  wild  animal  meat.  Before  the  Germans  came,  western 
Serengeti  people  paid  bridewealth  in  wild  animal  skins.  They  also  made  clothing  of  these  skins.65 
Photos  from  1904  and  the  testimony  of  elders  show  that  an  elder  draped  the  larger  skin  of  a  topi 
across  his  shoulders  (arachana)  while  a  woman  wore  the  skin  of  a  gazelle  as  an  apron  around  her 
waist  (asaraka).66  [See  Figure  5-4:  Kuria  Woman,  1904.] 

The  languages  of  the  western  Serengeti  themselves  attest  to  the  importance  of  hunting.  For 
example,  each  of  the  wild  animals  is  given  a  separate  name  according  to  sex  and  age,  as 
demonstrated  for  a  few  selected  animals  in  the  chart  on  the  next  page  [See  Figure  5-3:  Hunting 
Vocabulary  and  Tools,  p.  223].  This  complex  naming  of  wild  animals  shows  that  people  highly 
valued  hunting  knowledge.  An  awareness  of  the  hunting  season  permeates  the  agricultural 
calendar.  The  topis,  one  of  the  resident  ungulate  populations  in  the  area,  give  birth  to  their  calves 
in  September  and  October.  This  is  the  sign  that  the  rains  are  coming  and  that  the  fields  should  be 
ready  for  farming.67  In  Ishenyi,  Obutir  (September)  is  the  month  when  the  topi  give  birth  and  the 
time  for  preparing  the  fields,  in  October  the  first  millet  it  planted.  When  the  wildebeest  return  to 
the  short  grass  plains  in  November,  it  is  time  to  plant  sorghum.68 

Elders  retain  memories  from  the  beginning  of  this  century  that  testify  to  the  symbiotic 
relationship  between  hunters  and  farmers  that  existed  before  the  hunters  became  Maasai  clients. 


65  Interview  with  Jackson  Mang'oha,  Mbiso,  13  May  1995  (Nata  <f). 

66  Interview  with  Mahiti  Gamba,  Mayani  Magoto.  Bugerera,  3  March  1 996  (Nata  <t) 
Nyamaganda  Magoto,  collection  of  Culture  Vocabulary. 

"'  Interview  with  Mang'oha  Morigo,  Bugerera,  24  June  1995  (Nata  <*"). 

68  Interview  with  Nyambeho  Marangini,  Issenye,  7  September  1995  (Ishenyi  d% 


225 


Figure  5-4:  Kuria  Women,  1904  [Max  Weiss,  Die  Volkerstamme  im  Norden  Deutsch- 
Ostafrikas  (Berlin:  Carl  Marschner,  1910),  p.  289] 


226 
After  the  farmers  gained  dominance  over  the  hill  ecologies  and  relegated  the  hunters  to  the 
marginal  woodland  areas  the  hunters  developed  friendships  with  farmer  families  to  trade  for  grain 
and  livestock.  A  German  report  states  that  the  "Serengeti  Ndorobo"  also  kept  sheep  and  goats.6' 
Elders  today  remember  this  relationship  with  Asi  hunters  from  their  childhood.  Ikoma  elders  tell 
stories  of  particular  Asi  families  who  would  regularly  come  to  their  homes.  Patron-client 
relationships,  particularly  between  Ikoma  and  Asi  families,  apparently  lasted  over  generations. 
Asi  brought  wild  animal  products  like  ivory,  wildebeest  tails,  lion  manes  and  honey  to  their 
patrons'  homes  to  trade  for  livestock,  grain,  iron  or  salt.    Some  Ikoma  lineages  identified  Asi 
ancestors.  Asi  friends,  clients  or  kin  spoke  Mara  languages  but  few  Mara  speakers  learned  the  Asi 
language.70  In  a  colonial  case  of  the  theft  of  nineteen  head  of  cattle  in  Ikoma  by  hunter/gatherer 
"Dorobo"  from  Loliondo,  the  suspects  were  identified  by  name,  along  with  the  "two  Ikoma  who  are 
friendly  with  these  Wandorobo."  The  District  Officer  further  added  that  the  Native  Authorities  of 
Ikoma  Federation  would  not  "take  any  action  to  recover  the  stolen  stock  or  to  arrest  the  culprits  as 
they  are  afraid  of  the  Wandorobo.""  Or  perhaps  they  had  ongoing  obligations  with  those  families. 
Stories  also  exist  of  conflicts  between  western  Serengeti  farmers  and  Asi  hunters,  such  as 
the  war  of  Kangashori  during  the  early  colonial  years  (C.  1920s).  A  Nata  hunting  party  found  an 
animal  killed  with  an  Asi  arrow,  but  they  took  it  anyway  and  began  to  divide  out  the  meat.  When 
the  Asi  arrived  a  fight  erupted  and  the  Nata,  being  outnumbered,  ran  away.  The  Nata  left  behind 
an  old  man  named  Kangashori  whom  the  Asi  killed.  They  next  day  a  Nata  party  took  revenge, 


69  Geographical  Section,  A  Handbook  of  German  East  Africa,  p.  99 

70  Kratz,  "Are  Okiek  really,"  p.  359,  argues  that  the  fact  that  the  Okiek  speak  the  language 
of  their  host  does  indicate  the  superiority  of  the  host  but  rather  the  Okiek  ability  in  crossing 
cultural  boundaries. 

71  McMahon,  D.O.,  to  A.D.O  Loliondo,  7  February  1932,  and  D.C.  to  P.C.  Lake  Province 
Mwanza,  16  Marcha,  1932,  Stock  Thefts:  Musoma  District  1932,  215/351,  TNA. 


227 
attacked  an  Asi  camp  and  killed  twelve  people.  The  Asi  appealed  to  the  Nata  chief,  Rotigenga,  who 
called  the  elders  to  perform  an  oathing  ceremony  that  joined  them  as  brothers.  After  that,  they 
could  neither  steal  from  nor  kill  each  other.72  Even  in  this  story  of  conflict  the  boundaries  were 
mediated  and  enemies  became  brothers. 

Over  the  centuries  the  peoples  of  western  Serengeti  have  learned  from  the  Asi, 
intermarried,  traded,  and  fought  with  them  but,  in  spite  of  this  frequent  interaction,  both  farmers 
and  hunters  have  managed  to  maintain  seemingly  rigid  boundaries.    However,  the  distinction 
between  western  Serengeti  farmers  as  seasonal  hunters  and  Asi  hunter/gatherers  may  not  be  as  firm 
as  it  appears.  Scholars  working  among  the  Maasai  argue  that  although  social  boundaries  in  the  Rift 
Valley  corresponded  to  economic  subsistence  patterns  of  herders,  hunters  and  farmers,  individuals 
frequently  crossed  those  boundaries.  When  Maasai  lost  cattle  they  "became"  hunting  Dorobo  and 
when  Sonjo  farmers  gained  enough  cattle  they  "became"  Maasai.73  In  the  western  Serengeti 
examples  exist  of  individuals  crossing  these  boundaries  as  marriage  partners,  adopted  sons  or  out 
of  economic  necessity.  The  boundaries  may  also  have  been  mediated  by  shared  clan  names  that 
are  discussed  in  Chapter  6  or  shared  age-sets  that  are  discussed  in  Chapter  9.  As  the  hill  farmers 
pushed  the  Asi  hunters  into  more  marginal  wilderness  areas  the  hunters  increasingly  had  to  rely  on 
the  farmers  for  some  basic  elements  in  their  subsistence  economy. 


72  Interviews  with  Mayani  Magoto;  Yohana  Kitena  Nyitanga,  Makondusi,  1  May  1995 
(Nata  <f).  Arrows  are  marked  with  individual  and  clan  markings  so  that  the  ownership  of  a  killed 
animal  can  be  determined  in  the  bush.  The  ceremony  is  called  kura  aring'a  and  is  described  in 
Chapter  10. 

73  See  Spear  and  Waller,  Being  Maasai:  and  Berntsen,  "Pastoralism,  Raiding,  and 
Prophets.";  Kratz,  "Are  the  Okiek  really  Masai?" 


228 
Asi  Territory  and  the  Emergence  Sites 

Looking  at  the  geographical  relationship  of  the  places  reported  in  oral  traditions  to  be 
where  Asi  hunters  and  western  Serengeti  farmers  lived  affords  further  insight  into  the  nature  of  the 
historical  relationship  between  the  two.  The  emergence  sites  named  in  the  oral  traditions  of  hill 
farmers  are  all  located  in  areas  now  identified  as  Asi  territory.  The  site  of  Bwanda  (near  to  where 
Mugumu  town  now  stands)  was  in  an  area  known  traditionally  as  Materego  yabaAsi  (the 
wilderness  of  the  Asi).74  Oral  testimony  also  identifies  the  area  north  of  Nyichoka  in  Nata 
territory,  contiguous  with  the  Ngoreme  emergence  site  of  Ikorongo,  as  Asi  country.  The  Ishenyi 
emergence  site  of  Guka  is  well  into  the  woodland  territory  but  also  located  on  the  hills.  The 
earliest  German  maps  (1910)  show  these  same  areas  as  "Ndorobo"  territory,  described  as 
"undulating  country  of  open  thorn  bush  and  grass,"  or  "open  bush  and  thick  scrub."75  The  colonial 
Game  Warden  found  most  hunting  activity  around  the  Moru  Kopjes,  and  the  Mbalageti  and 
Seronera  Rivers,  where  Ikoma  traditions  say  they  first  settled.    That  all  the  emergence  sites  are 
located  within  what  is  known  as  Asi  territory  and  within  the  woodland  ecologies  of 
hunter/gatherers,  tells  us  that  early  agricultural  settlers  came  into  direct  competition  with  hunters 
for  the  same  land.76 


74  Interview  with  Sira  Masiyora,  Nyerero,  17  November  1995  (Kuria  cT). 

75  Karte  von  Deutsch-Ostafrika,  A.4  Ikoma  (Berlin:  D.  Reimer  [E.  Vohsen] :  1 9 1 0), 
German  Maps,  GM  30/3,  TNA. 

76  One  interpretation  of  this  evidence  could  be  that  western  Serengeti  farming  communities 
developed  out  of  a  preexisting  hunter/gatherer  society  and  that  the  emergence  sites  were  their 
remembered  hunting  camps.    Yet  this  kind  of  major  shift  in  identity  from  a  hunter/gatherer  society 
to  one  based  on  farming  would  presumably  constitute  a  rupture  in  historical  consciousness  similar 
to  that  described  in  the  last  chapter  as  happening  during  the  period  of  disasters.  Then  places 
significant  to  an  earlier  way  of  life  would  be  forgotten  when  divorced  from  their  social  context. 
The  old  sites  of  hunter/gatherer  communities  would  not  have  figured  in  the  historical  imagination 
of  these  new  communities.  The  evidence  of  historical  linguistics  and  archaeology  already 
presented  points  to  two  separate  communities  of  hunters  and  farmers  with  different  histories  who 


229 

That  farmers  inhabited  these  hill  sites  within  Asi  territory  meant  that  they  had  to  have 
accommodated  the  Asi  "first-comers"  to  take  control  of  the  land.  Each  practiced  a  different 
economic  strategy  within  overlapping  ecological  zones.  Bantu-speaking  farmers  were  strangers 
and  newcomers  in  an  unfamiliar  land.  Their  oral  traditions  relate  symbolically  how  they  may  have 
come  to  terms  with  those  who  were  there  before  them  and  who  knew  how  to  live  on  the  land.  They 
did  this  by  incorporating  the  hunter  into  their  own  communities  and  by  situating  themselves  in  a 
location  that  could  take  advantage  of  new  economic  possibilities.  By  encroaching  on  the  ecological 
niche  that  the  Asi  occupied,  the  hill  farmers  put  increasing  pressure  on  them  either  to  leave  or  to 
assimilate. 

Elders  remember  the  Asi  hunters  as  first-comers  who  performed  rituals  to  maintain  the 
prosperity  of  the  land.  This  relationship  to  the  land,  as  farmers  now  ritually  maintain  it,  is 
discussed  in  more  detail  in  Chapters  7  and  8.  In  this  ritual  tradition  western  Serengeti  people 
propitiate  the  ancestors  of  particular  lineages  as  "guardians  of  the  land."  Many  of  those  ancestors 
are  from  the  Asi  hunter  clans  of  Gaikwe  and  Hemba.  If  western  Serengeti  people  have  maintained 
a  ritual  relationship  to  the  land  over  the  long-term,  as  seems  likely,  then  in  order  for  hill  fanners  to 
settle  and  prosper  they  would  have  to  have  been  accepted  as  "children"  in  the  lineage  of  the  Asi 
ancestors  who  were  connected  to  the  land.  They  may  have  undergone  "ritual  adoption"  into  Asi 
lineages  to  gain  access  to  the  land.  This  hypothesis  for  the  relationship  of  hunters  and  farmers  in 
the  distant  past  is  congruous  with  the  position  of  Asi  hunter  as  "father"  in  oral  traditions  and  oral 
narratives  about  an  "oath"  between  Asi  hunters  and  hill  farmers.77  A  parallel  process  existed  in  the 
Kenyan  highlands  where  Kikuyu  tradition  recounts  ritual  adoptions  of  Kikuyu  into  Ndorobo  kin 


met  on  the  frontier. 

77  Mahiti  Kwiro,  Mchang'oro,  19  January  1996  (Nata  cf). 


230 

groups  to  clear  the  land  for  farming.  I  am  not  sure  why  Kikuyu  traditions  would  be  more  specific 
about  this  process.78  Most  western  Serengeti  elders  deny  a  relation  of  kinship  with  the  Asi. 
However  it  happened,  Bantu-speaking  farming  communities  were  able  to  gain  ritual  access  to  the 
land  and  successfully  diversify  their  own  economic  practices,  leading  to  their  dominance  in  the 
region.  As  a  result  the  farmers  increasingly  marginalized  the  Asi  hunters,  who  had  taught,  married 
and  adopted  them.  As  they  gained  ritual  control  over  the  land  hill  farmers  usurped  the  place  of  the 
Asi  as  first-comers  and  guardians  of  the  land. 

Relations  with  Plains  Herders:  The  Silent  Texts 
If  the  emergence  stories  are  simply  about  the  identity  of  hill  farmers  in  relationship  to 
people  who  practiced  different  economic  strategies,  then  the  silences  in  the  emergence  traditions 
speak  as  loudly  as  the  texts.  None  of  the  emergence  stories  mentions  the  relationship  to  herders  on 
the  plains.79  This  seems  to  refute  the  claim  made  earlier  that  the  core  spatial  images  of  the 
emergence  traditions  also  refer  to  the  ecological  spaces  of  woodlands,  hills  and  plains  where  the 
long-term  patterns  of  interaction  between  hunter,  farmer  and  herder  were  enacted.  If  herders  were 
an  important  part  of  this  interdependent  system  of  economic  subsistence  then  farmers  would  surely 
remember  the  presence  of  herders  in  oral  tradition.  One  must  consult  other  traditions  and  other 
evidence  to  understand  this  key  omission. 


78  Greet  Kershaw.  Mau  Mau  from  Below  (Athens:  Ohio  University  Press,  1 997),  pp.  20- 
21 .  Kershaw  dates  the  Kikuyu  settlement  of  Kiambu  to  the  era  preceeding  the  Kiraka  famine  of 
1835. 

™  Traditions  of  the  Lakes  peoples  do  specifically  recount  stories  of  interaction  with  the 
Tatoga.  See  Huber,  Marriage  and  Family,  pp.  38-40  for  the  Kwaya;  and  Hartwig,  The  Art  of 
Surviva|.  PP-  47-48,  for  Kerewe.  Among  the  Sizaki,  interview  with  Thomas  Kubini  and  Jacob 
Mugaka,  Bunda,  10  March  1995  (Sizaki  if).  For  the  Sukuma,  Itandala,  "A  History  of  the 
Babinza,"pp.  174-193. 


231 

Abundant  evidence,  already  presented,  exists  that  agriculturalists  did  in  fact  interact  with 
pastoralists  in  the  distant  past.  The  evidence  of  historical  linguistics  shows  that  these  two 
communities  have  been  in  close  contact  ever  since  Bantu-speakers  arrived  in  the  region.  Many 
Southern  Nilotic  loanwords  in  Mara  languages  concerning  livestock  indicate  a  high  level  of 
interaction  and  learning  from  Mara  Southern  Nilotic-  and  Dadog-speaking  pastoralists  in  the 
distant  past.80    The  word  for  sheepskin,  among  others,  was  originally  Southern  Cushitic,  attesting 
to  an  even  earlier  set  of  interactions  and  learning.*' 

Nor  can  one  interpret  the  silence  in  oral  tradition  concerning  pastoralists  as  the  lack  of  a 
herding  component  in  the  farming  economy.  From  the  evidence  of  historical  linguistics  we  know 
that  the  first  Bantu-speakers  who  entered  the  region  had  small  stock.  Although  the  importance  of 
livestock  increased  in  the  post-crisis  era,  herding  was  thoroughly  integrated  into  the  total  economic 
strategy  of  western  Serengeti  farmers  from  the  distant  past.    It  was  another  way  of  minimizing  risk 
by  maximizing  use  of  each  of  the  available  environmental  niches.  Livestock  were  valuable  for 
exchange  and  necessary  for  most  rituals.  Goats  and  sheep  were  kept  in  greater  abundance  because 
people  could  more  easily  give  them  up  for  a  feast  or  in  exchange  for  grain  in  times  of  need.  Since 
people  grazed  their  livestock  near  the  homestead  they  could  employ  young  boys  and  girls  as 
herders  while  concentrating  the  labor  of  adult  men  and  women  in  hunting  and  farming.  Cattle 
trusteeship  (kusagari  chatugo)  was  one  option  used  further  to  spread  out  the  risk  of  losing  an 
entire  herd  to  disease  or  raid  at  one  time.  Western  Serengeti  people  brand  livestock  with  the  sign  of 


80  See  Chapter  4  for  linguistic  evidence. 

81  Ehret,  Ethiopians,  p.  83. 


232 
the  patrilineage  (ekehila)  and  of  the  owner.  Looking  at  the  brands  in  his  corral  one  can  tell  the 
owner's  social  relations.82 

Because  oral  traditions  are  transmitted  and  maintained  by  specific  social  networks  it  may 
be  that  no  one  group  among  the  farmers  had  reason  to  preserve  information  about  encounters  with 
herders.  On  the  other  hand  we  have  seen  that  specific  farmer  clans  did  have  reason  to  remember 
the  nature  of  their  interaction  with  hunters  to  preserve  their  rights  to  the  land.  Tatoga  were  not 
considered  "guardians  of  the  land"  in  the  same  way  as  Asi  hunters.  Differing  concepts  of  territory 
and  relationship  to  the  land  between  hill  farmers  and  Tatoga  herders  are  discussed  in  Chapter  8. 
Here  it  is  only  important  to  note  that  western  Serengeti  people  do  not  associate  Tatoga  ancestors 
with  ritual  control  over  specific  places  on  the  land  as  they  do  Asi  ancestors,  represented  by  clan 
affiliation.  Western  Serengeti  farmers  did  not  build  on  the  plains  or  encroach  much  on  the 
grasslands  ecology  of  the  herders  until  the  last  century,  while  the  farmers  came  into  direct 
competition  with  the  hunters  for  hill  ecologies.  Farmers  acknowledge  Tatoga  authority  as  first- 
comers  only  in  relation  to  mobile  ritual  items.  Herders  may  not  appear  in  the  emergence  stories 
because  they  did  not  bequeath  the  ritual  possession  of  the  hills  for  farming.  The  differences  in 
these  relationships  may  have  left  herders  out  of  the  emergence  stories  but  does  not  diminish  their 
importance  in  western  Serengeti  history. 

However,  despite  the  importance  of  these  considerations,  I  will  argue  that  the 
overwhelming  reason  that  emergence  traditions  do  not  include  stories  about  relations  with  herders 
concerns  the  historical  development  of  relations  between  herders  and  farmers  over  the  last 
millennium.  The  historical  linguistic  record  shows  that  the  most  intense  period  of  linguistic 
innovations  in  herding  vocabulary  dates  to  interactions  with  Mara  Southern  Nilotic-speakers  before 


82  Observations  of  branding,  Nyawagamba  Magoto.  Bugerera,  14  April  1995  (Nata  <f). 


233 
1 000  A.D.  This  was  the  period  in  which  East  Nyanza-speaking  peoples  adopted  cycling  age-set 
names,  along  with  other  words  concerning  life-cycle  stages  and  non-kin  relations,  including  a  new 
name  for  the  homestead  itself,  built  around  the  livestock  corral.  During  the  next  millennium  they 
adopted  a  few  loan  words  concerning  livestock  from  Dadog-speakers  in  the  region,  but  innovated 
many  more  internally.  Dadog-speakers  also  dropped  the  Southern  Nilotic  age-set  names  at  this 
time,  perhaps  indicating  that  these  two  communities  were  not  seeking  the  same  kinds  of  connections 
that  facilitated  the  adaptation  of  Bantu-speakers  to  the  drier  environment  of  the  interior.  The 
encroachment  of  Bantu-speakers  into  the  herding  economies  dominated  by  Dadog-speaking  herders 
may  have  led  to  the  increasing  separation  between  these  two  communities.  Bantu-speakers  with 
expertise  in  livestock  management  simply  may  not  have  needed  herders  as  they  had  when  they  first 
entered  the  region. 

The  history  of  farmer-herder  relations  thus  begins  with  a  period  of  intense  relations  with 
herders  in  the  distant  past,  broken  by  a  period  of  less  intense  relations,  and  finally  in  the  late 
nineteenth  century  by  a  period  of  enmity  and  raiding  by  yet  another  group  of  herders.  The 
nineteenth  century  history  of  Maasai  raiding  and  their  hegemonic  position  throughout  the  greater 
Rift  Valley  was  outlined  in  the  Chapter  3.  Hill  farmers  came  into  conflict,  rather  than  symbiotic 
interaction,  with  herders  during  the  early  part  of  this  century  because  they  were  now  in  direct 
competition  for  pastoral  resources  with  the  increase  in  cattle  wealth  as  a  result  of  trade.  It  is 
possible  that  during  this  period  in  which  herders  became  enemies  instead  of  useful  allies  stories 
about  earlier  relations  with  herders  were  obliterated.  Yet  it  also  seems  that  the  relationship  with 
Tatoga  herders  became  closer  just  as  the  disasters  began  when  farmers  sought  the  ritual  expertise 
of  herders  to  solve  these  new  problems. 


234 
Tatoga  Herders 

One  may  gain  insight  into  the  past  relationship  between  herders  and  farmers  in  the  western 
Serengeti,  at  least  during  the  period  in  which  western  Serengeti  peoples  have  been  in  contact  with 
Tatoga  herders,  by  investigating  the  nature  of  their  interactions  today  and  oral  evidence  about  these 
interactions  in  the  past.  The  Tatoga  now  live  on  the  plains  south  of  Ikoma,  Nata,  Ishenyi  and  Ikizu 
and  call  themselves  the  Rotigenga  section  of  the  "Aratoga,"  known  by  Bantu-speaking  farmers  as 
Tatoga  or  Tatiro.  They  live  in  close  but  separate  relation  to  the  Dadog-speaking  hunter/gatherer 
Isimajek.83 

Bantu-speaking  farmers  and  Dadog-speaking  pastoralists  each  occupy  particular 
ecological  niches  in  close  proximity  to  each  other.  When  asked  about  their  relationship  to  the  Ikizu 
farmers,  Tatoga  elders  said,  "we  are  the  people  of  the  plains,  they  are  the  people  of  the  hills-when 
we  go  over  there  to  the  hills  we  say,  we  are  going  to  Ikizu;  when  they  come  over  here  to  the  plains 
they  say,  we  are  going  to  Tatiro."84    These  differences  are  reflected  in  the  ways  in  which  they 
"map"  and  name  the  same  landscapes.  The  Tatoga  have  names  for  the  gaps  between  hills  and  the 
plains  while  the  western  Serengeti  farmers  name  the  rises  and  hills. 

The  different  economic  subsistence  patterns  practiced  by  each  group,  in  the  past,  did  not 
put  them  into  competition  for  the  same  resources,  although  the  Bantu-speaking  farmers  also  herded 
some  and  the  Dadog-speaking  herders  also  farmed.    Rather,  their  occupation  of  different  ecologies 
opened  options  for  trade  that  were  mutually  beneficial.  The  Tatoga  traded  their  livestock  for  grain 
and  established  relations  of  cattle  trusteeship  in  both  directions  to  protect  the  herds  from  disease. 


83  G.  McL.  Wilson,  "The  Tatoga  of  Tanganyika  (Part  1),"  Tanganyika  Notes  and  Records 
33  (1952):  40-41,  describes  the  Tatoga  Iseimajek  and  Rutageink  who  live  in  the  Ruwana  valley  of 
Mara,  numbering  1,300  people  in  1948. 

84  Interview  with  Merekwa  Masunga  and  Giruchani  Masanja,  Mariwanda,  6  July  1995 
(Tatoga  (?). 


235 
The  two  communities  cooperated  in  the  chase  whenever  one  was  raided.  Through  farmers  with 
their  large  herds  of  livestock  now  encroach  on  the  plains  ecology  of  the  Tatoga  herders,  some 
remnant  of  the  past  relationship  of  interdependence  remains  in  practice  and  in  oral  tradition. 

Each  group,  farmers  and  herders,  claims  that  it  was  the  first  to  enter  this  region:  each 
describes  the  other  as  a  newcomer.  Both,  in  fact,  are  right.  In  the  period  of  early  settlement  the 
Tatoga  were  the  first  occupants  of  the  plains.  Then  they  left  during  the  nineteenth  century  famines 
when  the  Maasai  defeated  them  to  follow  their  prophet  south  as  far  as  the  region  of  what  is  now 
Tabora.  During  this  time  of  radical  reconfiguration  of  social  identity  the  farmers  took  over  the 
status  of  first  occupants.    The  Tatoga  were  not  present  during  the  most  important  period  of  recent 
identity  formation. 

Although  we  might  hope  that  Tatoga  oral  traditions  would  shed  light  on  their  relationship 
to  western  Serengeti  farmers  in  the  past,  these  narratives,  too,  are  strangely  silent  on  this  account. 
I  heard  narratives  among  the  Tatoga  concerning  the  division  of  the  different  Tatoga  groups  from 
each  other,  the  division  of  the  Maasai  from  the  Tatoga  and  the  division  of  Isimajek  hunter- 
gatherers  from  the  Tatoga  proper.  One  tradition  about  the  division  of  Tatoga  from  the  farmers 
appears  as  an  addition  to  an  otherwise  independent  story  in  the  cycle  of  narratives  about  the  major 
Tatoga  prophets.  In  this  story  the  farmers  are  the  ones  who  were  willing  to  kill  their  mothers  to 
secure  rain  from  the  Tatoga  prophet.  It  is  a  statement  about  the  moral  superiority  of  herders  over 
farmers  rather  than  a  core  image.  These  stories  are  reproduced  in  Appendix  4. 

Tatoga  emergence  stories  are  characteristic  of  a  wholly  different  narrative  tradition,  with 
longer  and  more  detailed  stories,  usually  involving  the  lives  of  past  prophets,  both  real  and 
mythical.  These  are  the  stories  of  heroic  deeds  and  miraculous  happenings  that  ordered  the  world 
as  we  know  it.  In  fact,  Tatoga  oral  traditions  bear  a  strange  resemblance  to  the  Sonjo  stories  of 
their  prophet  Khambageu,  whom  they  said  performed  many  miraculous  deeds.  This  is  not 


236 
surprising  given  the  long-term  interactions  of  the  Sonjo  with  Dadog-speakers  uncovered  through 
the  evidence  of  historical  linguistics.85  What  seems  more  surprising  is  that  western  Serengeti 
farmers  demonstrate  so  little  of  this  influence.    In  contrast  to  the  western  Serengeti  stories  of  first 
man  and  first  woman  as  unifying  stories  of  hunter  and  farmer,  the  Tatoga  stories  are  of  division 
and  exclusivity. 

The  Tatoga  retain  a  distinct  identity  as  herders  (as  opposed  to  farmers  and 
hunter/gatherers),  but  at  the  same  time  are  integrated  and  deeply  implicated  in  the  most  intimate 
aspects  of  the  lives  of  western  Serengeti  farmers.  The  Tatoga  learn  the  Bantu  languages  of  their 
neighbors  but  almost  no  farmers  speak  Dadog.  Tatoga  distinctiveness  has  been  responsible,  in 
part,  for  their  ability  to  play  a  highly  influential  role  among  their  neighbors  as  gifted  prophets.  All 
ethnic  groups  in  the  area  still  call  on  Tatoga  prophets  for  rainmaking,  healing  and  protection 
medicines.  In  some  Bantu-speaking  ethnic  groups  descendants  of  a  particular  Tatoga  prophetic  line 
hold  leadership  positions  of  great  power.  Some  of  the  most  commonly  told  stories  of  the  nineteenth 
century  raids  and  famine  revolve  around  the  prophecy  of  a  Tatoga  healer  who  gave  advice  they  did 
not  heed,  causing  disaster.86 

The  Ikoma  have  a  tradition  in  which  a  Tatoga  prophet  from  Ngorongoro  gave  them  their 
most  sacred  object  of  collective  identity,  the  Machaba,  a  set  of  elephant  tusks.  Because  of  this,  the 
descendants  of  that  prophet  must  participate  in  the  rituals  in  which  the  Machaba  play  a  part  and  the 
Tatoga  are  designated  as  "father"  of  the  Ikoma  people.87  The  first  choice  of  Ikoma  people  for  a 
colonial  chief  was  a  Tatoga  prophet.  In  one  version  of  the  Ikoma  emergence  story  [reproduced  in 


85  Ehret,  Southern  Nilotic  History,  pp.  55-62 

86  See  Chapter  1 0,  the  war  of  Ndabaka. 

87  See  section  on  the  Machaba  in  Chapters  7  and  8. 


237 
Appendix  3]  Mwikoma  left  Sonjo  because  the  Tatog  prophet  told  him  to  seek  a  new  land.  It  makes 
some  sense  that  the  Ikoma  would  have  the  strongest  relationship  with  the  Tatoga  because  they  are 
the  only  one  of  the  western  Serengeti  peoples  to  live  in  closer  proximity  to  the  grasslands  than  to 
the  woodlands.  Both  Ishenyi  and  Ikoma  traditions  say  that  they  killed  their  own  prophets  and  were 
thus  cursed  to  rely  on  Tatoga  prophets.88 

The  ritual  precedence  that  hill  farmers  give  to  Tatoga  in  prophecy  indicates  a  historical 
relationship  quite  different  from  that  between  Bantu-speakers  and  Asi  hunters.  Because  herders 
had  access  to  the  most  conspicuous  form  of  wealth  in  livestock,  they  occupied  a  strong  position  in 
trade  or  marriage  negotiations  and  by  that  gained  prestige.  Livestock  was  one  of  the  few 
convertible  forms  of  wealth  in  a  society  in  which  land  was  abundant  and  freely  accessible.  If 
prophetic  efficacy  was  judged  by  its  material  benefits,  hill  farmers  may  have  sought  out  Tatoga 
prophecy  to  gain  access  to  the  wealth  that  it  represented.  Colonial  investigations  of  local  politics 
concluded  that  the  Tatoga  once  held  a  dominant  position  from  Lake  Victoria,  up  to  the  Mara  River 
and  across  the  Serengeti  plains  to  Ngorongoro  Crater. "  In  the  mid-nineteenth  century  the  Maasai 
defeated  the  Tatoga  in  a  decisive  battle  for  the  Crater.  Sometime  after  this,  cattle  diseases 
devastated  their  herds  and  many  followed  the  prophet  south.  Ikoma  elders  said  that  after  the 
livestock  deaths  of  the  early  colonial  period  the  Tatoga  were  reduced  to  work  for  them  as  cattle 
herders  to  regain  their  livestock."1 

The  stories  concerning  Tatoga  as  influential  prophets  and  "fathers"  seem  to  date  to  mid- 
nineteenth  century,  just  before  or  into  the  period  of  disasters.  It  may  be  that  when  the  first  signs  of 


88  Machota  Sabuni,  Issenye,  in  a  letter,  23  March  1997,  recorded  by  Nyawagamba 
Magotto. 

89  R.  S.  W.  Malcolm,  "System  of  Government,"  p.  4,  1937,  MDB. 

90  Interview  with  Bokima  Giringayi,  Mbiso,  26  October  1 995  (Ikoma  cf). 


238 

the  disasters  to  come  began  to  be  felt,  (through  localized  famine,  the  introduction  of  new  diseases, 

the  appearance  of  the  first  caravans  in  the  area,  and  the  encroachment  of  Maasai  into  hill  farmer 

territory)  hill  farmers  turned  to  the  Tatoga  for  help.  The  Tatoga  would  have  been  natural  allies  in 

times  of  crisis  because  they  lived  in  a  different  ecological  niche  and  so  famine  and  disease  affected 

them  differently.  Yet  just  as  with  the  hill  farmers'  relationship  to  the  hunters,  while  learning  from 

and  getting  aid  from  the  Tatoga  herders,  the  farmers  appropriated  their  expertise  and  gained 

dominance  in  the  region.  The  prosperity  and  success  of  Bantu-speakers  resulted  from  their  ability 

to  break  down  the  ecological/economic  boundaries  defining  the  identities  that  had  allowed  the 

regional  system  to  function. 

The  Prophetic  Stories  of  Masuche  and  Zeaera 

Through  an  interpretation  of  stories  appropriated  from  Tatoga  tradition  but  told  by  hill 

farmers  as  their  own,  one  gains  insight  into  the  historical  process  by  which  hill  farmers  came  to 

dominate,  linguistically,  culturally  and  demographically,  over  herders  and  hunters  in  the  region. 

For  example,  in  Ikoma  elders  took  me  to  see  a  rock  with  natural  depressions,  resembling  a  bao 

board  game  of  parallel  sets  of  holes  in  which  seeds  are  placed  as  counters  for  the  play.  They  told 

me  that  this  was  Masuche's  bao,  which  he  used  to  trick  God,  the  sun.  [See  Figure  5-5:  Two 

Versions  of  the  Story  of  Masuche's  Bao.]  The  Ikoma  story  told  at  the  site  went  like  this: 

They  call  this  Masuche's  Bao  (agoreshi  e  Masuche).  Masuche  played  bao  with  God,  the 
Sun  (lriobaj  here.  Masuche's  cattle  went  out  and  grazed  themselves  and  came  back  at 
night  because  God  was  close  to  Masuche.  One  day  they  quarreled  and  the  Sun  went 
home  in  anger.  Only  some  cattle  had  come  home  to  the  corral  by  then,  when  it  got  dark, 
because  the  Sun  left.  So  the  ones  who  were  left  out  became  the  wild  animals  —  Masuche 
named  them  zebra,  gazelle,  topi,  impala,  and  all  the  others.   That  is  how  the  wild 
animals  came  to  be.   They  are  Masuche's  cattle.1" 


"  Interview  with  Moremi  Mwikicho,  Sagochi  Nyekipegete,  Kenyatta  Mosoka,  Robanda, 
12  July  1995  (Ikoma  cf).  See  the  story  of  the  Bao  game  in  Buganda  tradition,  Wrigley,  Kingship 
and  State,  pp.  101. 


239 

Masuje  is  one  of  the  most  important  Tatoga  prophets  and  Tatoga  elders  told  me  one  part  of 

his  story  in  this  way  [The  full  story  is  reproduced  in  Appendix  4]: 

Giriweshi  was  born  of  a  woman  and  was  the  son  of  God.  His  son  was  Masuje  who 
tricked  God,  the  Sun,  in  a  game  ofbao  because  he  knew  how  to  make  the  stones  revolve 
endlessly  without  coming  to  an  empty  hole.  Because  the  game  never  ended  the  Sun  never 
set  and  Masuje's  cattle  could  graze  far  from  home.   The  Sun  became  angry  and  retreated 
into  the  sky,  taking  Giriweshi  with  him.'2 

Ikoma  appropriation  of  Tatoga  stories  illustrates  the  historical  process  by  which  Bantu- 
speaking  farmers  forged  new  identities  by  adopting  elements  from  the  diverse  people  who 
surrounded  them.  The  Ikoma  could  only  know  these  stories  of  Tatoga  prophets  if  they  had  been  in 
close  interaction  with  their  Tatoga  neighbors,  participating  in  events  at  which  they  naturally  told 
these  tales.  This  indicates  a  relationship  of  some  degree  of  mutuality.  Yet  the  Ikoma  men  who  told 
me  this  story  did  not  suggest  that  they  knew  that  Masuje  was  a  Tatoga  prophet.  Ikoma  elders  had 
completely  assimilated  Masuche  into  a  "traditional"  Ikoma  narrative. 

Just  as  early  settlers  recognized  and  learned  from  the  greater  expertise  of  preexisting 
pastoralists  to  cope  with  an  unfamiliar  environment,  Ikoma  acceptance  of  these  foundational  stories 
of  how  the  world  was  created  recognizes  the  efficacy  of  their  knowledge  about  the  world.  Many 
examples  exist  in  East  Africa  of  people  appropriating  the  origins  of  those  with  more  power  to 
increase  their  own  standing.  This  may  be  why  the  Kuria  claim  to  have  come  from  Egypt  or  the  Jita 
from  Buganda  and  Buhaya.  Here,  Ikoma  do  not  claim  Tatoga  origins  and  parentage  but 
appropriate  the  source  of  Tatoga  knowledge,  and  so  their  power,  in  prophecy.  This  story  connects 
between  Tatoga  prophecy  to  wealth  in  livestock.  In  the  Ikoma  version  of  the  story  Masuche,  a 
Tatoga  prophet,  controls  all  of  the  original  livestock  and  therefore  also  the  wild  animals. 


92  Interview  with  Stephen  Gojat  Gishageta  and  Girimanda  Mwarhisha  Gishageta  Issenye 
27  July  1995  (Tatoga  <f). 


Moremi  Mwikicho,  Sagochi  Nyekipegete,  Wilson  Machota,  Kenyatta 
Mosoka,  Robanda,  12  July  1995,  at  Masuche's  Bao  in  Ikoma. 


~{ 

■  > 

1 

£^r 

^^^" 

Stephen  Gojat  Gishageta  and  Girimanda  Mwarhisha  Gishageta,  Narrators  of 
the  Tatoga  Masuche  Story,  Issenye,  27  July,  1985 


Figure  5-5:  Two  Versions  of  the  Story  of  Masuche's  Bao 


241 

Another  example  of  Tatoga  narrative  style  in  hill  farmer  tradition  is  an  Ikizu  story  of  one 

of  their  prophets,  Zegera,  whose  miraculous  birth  and  actions  resemble  nothing  more  then  the 

Tatoga  prophetic  accounts.  The  story  begins  with  an  alternate  Ikizu  emergence  story  to  the  one  of 

first  man  and  first  woman  told  in  the  last  chapter.  In  this  version  Muriho,  a  hunter,  establishes  the 

country  by  using  his  prophetic  powers.  It  is  significant  that  the  elder  tells  this  story  (which  is  one 

of  the  very  few  stories  of  miraculous  prophets  that  I  collected  among  the  hill  farmers)  in  relation  to 

the  story  of  driving  out  the  Tatoga  from  Ikizu.  For  all  of  the  myriad  times  I  asked  people  about  the 

relationship  between  Tatoga  and  Bantu-speaking  communities  this  is  the  only  time  that  I  got  a  full 

narrative.  It  was  also  the  only  response  that  suggested  a  relationship  of  conflict  rather  than  of 

coexistence  and  peace.  The  full  story  is  reproduced  here  because  it  is  a  unique  combination  of  the 

older  emergence  stories  with  Tatoga  prophetic  tales. 

Samweli:  Muriho  came  from  the  west,  the  lake,  Nyanza,  through  the  north  to  Kisu,  but 
he  did  not  go  through  Gorogosi.  He  was  a  healer  and  had  medicine.    When  he  left 
Kisii,  Muriho  went  first  out  to  Ngoreme,  to  the  mountain  ofMangwesi.  Mangwesi  was  a 
hunter  and  invited  Muriho  to  be  his  guest.  Mangwesi  was  a  Ngoreme.  Mangwesi  told 
Muriho,  "you  are  my  friend,  why  not  stay  here  in  my  country  and  build  with  me?  " 
Muriho  said,  "I  am  going  over  there  to  the  mountain,  the  big  one  that  I  dreamed  about, 
Chamuriho. " 

So  Muriho  left  and  came  to  his  land  and  was  welcomed  by  a  man  named 
Nyamwarati.  He  learned  that  the  Hengere  were  bothering  those  people.  After  living 
with  Nyamwarati  for  a  while  Muriho  asked  him,  "who  is  the  big  man  of  this  country?" 
Nyamwarati  answered,  "I  am,  but  lam  defeated  by  the  terrible  people  here  called  the 
Hengere."  Muriho  said,  "if  1  drive  them  out  what  will  you  give  me?"  Nyamwarati 
answered,  "if you  drive  these  people  out  of  my  country  I  will  give  you  my  daughter  to 
marry. "  Muriho  tried  first  to  send  wild  buffalo  to  bother  them  day  and  night  in  their 
homes,  but  they  did  not  leave.  He  sent  snakes  to  bite  them  and  scare  them,  but  they  did 
not  leave.  Then  he  used  ants  who  would  bite  them  at  night,  but  they  did  not  feel  it.  He 
said,  "what  shall  I  do  with  these  people,  the  moon  is  nearly  gone. "  Then  he  used  bees  on 
them  and  the  very  day  that  they  stung  them  the  Hengere  moved  away.    The  bees  drove 
them  off. 

There  is  a  point  I  forgot,  Muriho  had  spoken  to  Nyamwarati,  saying,  "I  am  a 
prophet  and  we  cannot  live  in  one  homestead. "  So  he  went  and  established  his  home  on 
the  mountain  at  Itongo  Moriho.  Nyamwarati  lived  in  Sarama.  [.  .  .]  The  Hengere  are 
the  people  of  the  Congo,  the  pygmies.   When  the  Hengere  were  chased  out  Muriho 
encircled  the  mountain  and  the  land  with  protection  medicine  to  make  it  safe  so  they 
would  not  return. 


242 

The  first  wife  ofMuriho  was  the  daughter  ofNymwarati  —  Wanzita.  She  gave 
birth  to  Mughabo.   We  say,  "we  are  the  Ikizu,  the  people  of  Wanzita  and  — . " 
Audience:  Mughabo. 

Samweli :  Muriho  had  this  many  wives  —  /holds  up  fingere/ 
Audience:  Eight. 

Samweli:  Muriho  had  eight  wives  from  different  places,  but  the  first  wife,  the  big  house, 
was  from  Ikizu,  Nyamwarati's  daughter,  from  Salama,  Kombogere,  Zahya,  the  big  house. 
Wanzita  gave  birth  to  Mughabo  and  Mugabho  gave  birth  to  Kishoko.   The  sister  of 
Kishoko  was  Wasatu  and  they  built  a  house  together .  .  .   Then  Kishoko  gave  birth  to 
Mabere.  Mabere  was  a  prophet.  Mabere  gave  birth  to  her  son,  Zegera. 
Zegera  was  born  speaking  and  holding  his  medicines  ...  but  wait  I  must  go  back. 

Before  Muriho  came  the  Taturu  were  here,  and  together  with  the  Rangi  they 
were  also  driven  out  by  the  Hengere.   They  left,  but  when  the  Taturu  heard  that  the 
Hengere  were  gone  they  came  to  ask  Muriho  if  they  could  build  here  again.  So  Muriho 
agreed  and  asked  what  they  would  give  him.   They  said  they  would  give  him  a  wife  and 
this  is  the  house  of  the  Batatiro.   They  came  back  from  Mbulu  where  they  had  gone.   The 
first  person  to  come  was  Gambasarakwa,  who  built  at  Sarakwa  Hill,  this  is  a  Tatiro 
place.   The  next  person  was  Gambamiri,  who  gave  his  daughter  to  Muriho  and  built  at 
Kirinero ...    He  gave  his  daughter  to  Muriho  because  in  the  past  when  you  wanted  to 
build  somewhere  it  was  important  to  give  something  in  return.  After  he  gave  his 
daughter,  he  was  allowed  to  build  here.  Muriho  was  the  son-in-law  ofNyamwarali  who 
passed  on  his  authority  over  the  land  to  Muriho,  he  said,  go  ahead  and  live  here  and 
herd.  He  gave  him  all  of  the  hills  to  keep  the  enemy  out.  Do  you  understand? 
Jan:  Yes. 

Samweli:   Write  it  then.  Muriho  became  a  soldier  of  the  old  man  to  guard  the  hills  so 
that  no  enemy  would  come.  So  that  is  how  the  Taturu  came. 
Jan:  Where  did  they  settle,  in  the  hills  there  or  where? 

Samweli:  Muriho's  Tatiro  father-in-law  built  in  the  hills  a  little  there  in  Kirinero.   The 
others  were  on  the  plains  at  Sarakwa,  down  there.   They  were  so  few  anyway.   Then 
Muriho  disappeared.  After  the  Taturu  came  in,  they  spent  some  years  and  he 
disappeared  and  returned  to  Ngoreme,  Maji  Moto,  to  his  friend  Mangwesi.  [.  .  .]  Now 
after  they  said  that  Muriho  was  dead,  but  there  was  no  grave,  the  Taturu  began  to 
agitate.   They  wanted  authority  over  the  land  for  themselves  and  they  had  their  own 
medicines.   They  harassed  the  Ikizu  constantly  for  many  years,  maybe  ten.   Then  this  one 
was  born,  Zegera,  the  one  who  was  born  speaking. 

When  Zegera  was  born,  he  said  to  his  mother,  "give  me  the  milk  of  a  white  cow 
or  a  black  cow. "    The  elders  were  afraid,  "how  is  it  that  an  infant  speaks?"  So  they 
sounded  the  alarm  call  and  brought  everyone  together.   When  everyone  came  together, 
they  asked,  "what  is  the  alarm  all  about?  "  The  child  spoke  again,  "ask  my  mother  and 
father,  I  asked  for  milk  but  instead  they  gave  the  alarm,  what  is  this  all  about?  "  The 
people  were  amazed.  So  they  left  and  went  to  the  big  Diviner  who  said,  "this  child  was 
born  speaking  and  had  everything,  even  his  own  medicines  in  his  hand  in  a  bag,  together 
with  millet  and  sorghum  seeds. "  "He  is  coming  to  save  the  Ikizu  from  the  oppression  of 
the  Taturu. "  The  Diviner  said,  "take  this  child  to  the  crossroads  and  lay  him  there  with 
a  black  cow  hide  over  him,  let  him  sleep  on  the  crossroads. "  "If  he  is  hurt  by  any  animal 
by  morning  know  that  you  have  not  yet  found  your  savior. "  Yet  if  you  find  that  he  is 
unhurt  in  the  morning  know  that  you  have  already  been  saved. "  So  they  laid  him  there 


243 

and  slept  uneasily  in  their  homes  all  night,  listening.  At  dawn  they  realized  they  had 
passed  the  night  without  hearing  the  laugh  of  the  hyena  and  they  knew  that  he  was  all 
right.   They  went  and  found  him  well,  they  had  laid  the  hide  on  top  of  him  but  he  was 
sitting  on  it  watching  them  come.   They  took  him  to  do  sacrifices  on  his  behalf  Then  the 
Diviner  said,  "build  a  house  for  him  right  where  he  slept. "  Zegera  made  medicines 
again  after  he  was  one  year  old  —  a  child  that  was  born  speaking  —  he  was  made  like 
Jesus  —  he  came  miraculously.  So  he  made  medicines  that  they  put  in  the  water  where 
the  Taturu  cattle  drank.   The  cattle  in  the  whole  area  began  to  die.  A  great  many  died 
and  when  they  died  the  Taturu  moved,  they  went  back  to  Mbulu,  others  to  Sukuma,  others 
to  Majita.  they  dispersed .  .  .  After  this  the  land  was  of  the  Ikizu.K 

This  story  acknowledges  the  Tatoga  as  having  been  in  the  land  first,  but  ineffective  against 
the  agents  of  destruction  and  thus  not  in  control  ritually  as  guardians  of  the  land.  Again  the  hunter, 
Muriho  in  this  case,  marries  a  local  woman  to  gain  access  to  the  land.  This  version  acknowledges 
his  wife,  Wanzita  and  her  child,  as  the  founders  of  the  "houses"  of  Ikizu.  The  genealogical  line  of 
prophets  runs  through  these  women  and  their  sisters.  His  journey  to  the  mountain  of  Mangwesi  in 
Ngoreme  and  his  final  settlement  at  the  mountain  of  Chamuriho  resonate  with  the  emergence 
stories  that  have  already  been  told. 

The  story  of  Zegera  depicts  a  contest  for  authority  over  the  land  between  the  Tatoga  and 
the  Ikizu.  Although  the  Tatoga  had  been  in  the  land  first,  they  were  not  able  to  defend  it  against 
the  Hengere  and  only  returned  after  the  Ikizu  hero,  Muriho  (a  hunter),  had  done  the  job.  They 
established  reciprocal  in-law  relations  to  live  together  on  the  land.  Nevertheless,  after  Muriho  was 
gone,  the  Tatoga  tried  to  regain  their  former  authority  through  prophecy.  The  Ikizu  produced  a 
more  powerful  prophet  and  drove  them  off  by  killing  their  cattle  with  medicines.  The  Ikizu 
challenged  the  hegemony  of  the  herders  by  using  prophecy,  the  source  of  Tatoga  power,  against 
them.  They  defeated  the  Tatoga  by  killing  their  cattle,  the  material  basis  of  their  power.  By 
controlling  a  prophetic  narrative  of  their  own  the  Ikizu  at  once  accept  Tatoga  power  and  attempt  to 


n  Interview  with  Samweli  M.  Kirimanzera,  Kurusanda,  3  August  1995  (Ikizu  cf). 
Samweli  is  a  healer  by  profession  and  tells  this  story  to  defend  the  authority  of  the  prophetic  line  of 
Muriho  in  Ikizu  as  having  priority  over  that  of  Nyakinywa  from  Kanadi. 


244 
overturn  it  and  assert  their  own  dominance.  This  story  provides  further  evidence  that  although  the 
Tatoga  were  among  the  first-comers,  they  were  not  the  ritual  guardians  of  the  land.  Samweli's 
narrative  claims  that  the  Tatoga  could  not  protect  people  against  the  Hengere. 

Western  Serengeti  farmers  are  clear  in  their  narratives  that  they  control  the  land  and 
maintain  the  relationship  with  it  necessary  for  prosperity.  They  contend  that  the  Tatoga  are 
interlopers  and  newcomers  on  the  land.  However,  their  silence  concerning  the  relationship  between 
herders  and  farmers  in  the  emergence  traditions  may  indicate  that  the  Ikizu  gained  a  certain  kind  of 
power  by  the  incorporation  of  Tatoga  prophecy  as  their  own.  The  Ikizu  took  the  mobile  power  of 
the  prophet,  connected  with  the  wealth  and  prosperity  of  livestock,  and  attached  it  to  a  fixed  site  on 
the  land.  Western  Serengeti  people  still  accept  the  ritual  precedence  of  the  Tatoga  without 
acknowledgment  of  their  role  in  the  emergence  of  farming  communities  on  the  frontier.  People 
value  the  Tatoga  for  their  ritual  power,  in  spite  of  their  diminished  material  and  demographic 
strength. 

The  few  stories  that  remain,  such  as  the  one  told  by  Samweli,  suggest  that  farmers  gained 
ascendency  over  pastoralists  who  first  inhabited  the  plains,  by  their  ability  to  incorporate  rather 
than  to  exclude.  Farmers  gained  herding  expertise  from  their  herding  neighbors,  but  they  also 
learned  the  more  esoteric  knowledge  of  prophecy  that  gave  them  additional  tools  for  maintaining 
successful  settlements  on  the  frontier  and  meeting  the  challenges  of  the  disasters.  The  Tatoga  and 
their  Bantu  speaking  neighbors  shared  the  land  and  maintained  relations  of  reciprocity  because  they 
occupied  different  ecological  niches:  the  plains  and  the  hills.  Yet  just  as  with  the  Asi,  conflict  and 
competition  were  also  important  elements  in  the  emerging  historical  relationship.  Because  the 
farming  communities  were  so  adept  at  incorporating  new  knowledge  and  practice  they  began  to 
take  over  areas  once  dominated  by  the  Asi  and  the  Tatoga. 


245 
Conclusion 

The  interpretation  of  the  asimoka  traditions  through  the  core  spatial  images  provides  a 
glimpse  into  important  aspects  of  the  distant  past  through  the  internal  lens  of  local  historical 
imagination.  It  allows  us  to  come  to  tentative  understandings  of  how  Bantu-speaking  immigrants 
on  the  frontiers  of  an  inter-cultural  environment  forged  unique  new  communities  in  an  unfamiliar 
landscape.  They  did  this  by  drawing  on  their  own  traditions  as  well  as  incorporating  the 
experience  of  their  neighbors.  The  image  of  the  female  farmer  bringing  the  male  hunter  into  her 
home  and  together  giving  birth  to  a  nation  is  one  that  aptly  symbolizes  this  development.    Through 
the  incorporation  of  farmers  into  hunter  lineages  they  gained  ritual  control  over  the  land. 

Farmers  located  their  settlements  on  the  hills  and  at  the  interstices  of  the  different 
ecological  zones  to  realize  a  wider  economic  range  and  to  facilitate  interaction  with  neighbors  from 
whom  they  could  learn.  Different  kinds  of  social  interactions  with  hunters  and  herders  produced 
very  different  concepts  of  social  identity  and  the  oral  traditions  that  represent  them.  In  each  case 
the  success  of  Bantu-speaking  communities  was  a  result  of  their  ability  to  incorporate  rather  than 
to  exclude,  to  widen  their  options,  rather  than  to  specialize.  Their  rhizomatous  growth  has  drawn 
on  many  connected  underground  stems,  thriving  in  an  interstitial  space. 

These  long-term  processes  of  inter-cultural  interaction  on  the  frontier  must  be  kept  in  mind 
as  we  turn  to  the  investigation  of  a  different  kind  of  social  identity— that  of  clans.  The 
ecological/economic  identities  of  farmer,  hunter  and  herder  formed  a  regional  system  of  difference 
that  allowed  for  interdependent  relations.  Yet  as  we  have  already  seen,  people  needed  to  find  ways 
of  crossing  these  boundaries  to  gain  access  to  the  expertise,  knowledge  and  resources  of  others  that 
were  crucial  to  their  prosperity.  They  mediated  these  boundaries  primarily  through  clans,  based  on 
the  very  old  idiom  of  kinship. 


CHAPTER  SIX 

REGIONAL  PATHS  OF  ASSOCIATION- 

THE  CLAN  TRADITIONS  OF  A  MOBILE  SOCIETY 

Clan  histories,  in  contrast  to  the  stories  of  ethnogenesis  discussed  in  the  previous  chapter, 

are  a  separate  but  related  kind  of  emergence  story.  They  constitute  another  genre  of  oral  tradition. 

Elders  presented  these  stories  as  some  of  the  oldest  traditions,  reaching  back  "before  the 

grandfather  of  our  grandfathers."  Like  ethnic  emergence  stories,  they  contain  layers  of  meaning 

related  to  different  time  frames-the  elaborations  of  more  recent  experience  and  also  core  spatial 

images  that  represent  some  regional  generative  principles  at  work  in  the  more  distant  past.  This 

chapter  explores  clan  traditions  as  they  shed  light  on  community  organization  and  dispersed 

regional  alliances  before  the  era  of  disasters.  It  demonstrates  how  the  meaning  of  clans  changed  as 

their  historical  context  in  relation  to  larger  scale  social  identities  changed. 

In  this  chapter  I  argue  that  clans  are  not  fixed  and  timeless  social  structures  but  rather 

inherently  flexible  units  for  creating  cohesive  local  communities  and  for  providing  regional 

"pathways"  whereby  people  gain  access  to  the  resources  and  knowledge  of  others.  The  structural 

interpretation  of  Cans  by  both  anthropologists  and  historians,  as  units  in  a  segmentary  lineage 

system,  and  by  oral  traditions  told  today,  as  subunits  of  ethnic  groups,  distorts  an  older  meaning  of 

clan  still  recoverable  in  the  core  images  of  oral  traditions.  Rigid  interpretations  of  ethnically 

bounded  Cans  do  not  work  in  the  western  Serengeti  because  the  same  Can  names  are  found  among 

many  ethnic  groups  throughout  the  wider  region,  rather  than  uniquely  in  one  ethnic  group.  This 

configuration  results  from  a  history  in  which  dispersed  Cans  and  Can  narratives  preceded  ethnic 

groups  and  ethnic  narratives  in  the  region.  Clans  were  the  social  unit  which  existed  over  the 

246 


247 
longue  duree;  within  them  people  transmitted  emergence  stories,  and  these  later  became  ethnic 
stories.  Although  clan  narratives  have  most  often  been  interpreted  as  "migration  stories,"  I  analyze 
them  as  the  formalized  recognition  of  "resource  and  knowledge  pathways." 

I  argue  that  clan  stories  represent  long-term  generative  principles  through  the  core  spatial 
images  of  the  homestead  and  of  dispersed  regional  pathways.  The  homestead  image  allowed  people 
in  the  past  to  unite  diverse  peoples  into  cohesive  residential  territories.  In  the  context  of  the  late 
nineteenth  century  disasters  when  western  Serengeti  people  began  forming  ethnic  territorial 
boundaries  they  used  the  genealogical  aspect  of  the  homestead  image  to  imagine  clans,  like 
lineages,  as  subsets  of  ethnic  groups.  In  the  period  before  the  disasters  clans  seem  to  have 
functioned  primarily  to  mediate  diverse  kinds  of  regional  social  boundaries  marked  by  economy, 
bodily  marking,  geography  or  expertise.  These  large-scale  social  identities  (like 
herder/hunter/farmers)  controlled  access  to  resources  and  knowledge,  creating  a  regional  system  of 
exchange  and  interdependence.  Clans  crossed  these  boundaries,  giving  their  members  access  to 
resources  and  knowledge  that  others  controlled.  These  clan  networks  were  formed  both  by  the 
settlement  mobility  of  lineages  and  by  the  metaphorical  association  through  common  praise  names 
and  avoidances  of  people  controlling  particular  suites  of  knowledge  and  resources.  Today, 
prophets  use  clan  networks  as  the  basis  of  their  power;  one  of  the  few  remaining  examples  of  clans 
as  dispersed  pathways. 

Anthropologists  struggle  with  the  problem  of  defining  "clan"  because  what  they  describe  as 
"clan"  in  one  society  may  not  have  the  same  function  or  organization  as  "clan"  in  another.  While 
people  use  various  words  for  "clan"  across  the  Mara  Region,  they  refer  in  every  case  to  a  social 
identity  made  up  of  people  who  trace  their  descent  to  a  common  ancestor,  recognize  commonly  held 
territory,  and  have  occasion  to  take  communal  action.  Dispersed  throughout  the  region  one  finds 
clan  groups  with  the  same  names,  sharing  a  sense  of  common  origins  and  avoidances.  What 


248 
distinguishes  clan  from  lineage  in  the  Mara  Region  is  that  people  of  the  same  clan  cannot  ascertain 
their  exact  relationships  to  one  another,  as  can  the  members  of  one  lineage,  nor  are  precise 
genealogical  relationships  deemed  important.  Each  clan  also  claims  a  set  of  oral  traditions  that 
explains  its  origins  and  dispersal  throughout  the  region. 

I  interpret  clan  narratives  as  representing  part  of  the  longue  duree  history  of  this  region  in 
terms  of  generative  principles,  rather  than  specific  events.  In  Chapter  4, 1  demonstrated  from 
linguistic  sources  that  the  lineage  principle  is  very  old  in  the  region,  brought  by  Lakes  Bantu- 
speakers  as  they  forged  new  kinds  of  settlements  on  the  frontier.  Yet  because  lineage  provided  a 
flexible  and  adaptable  strategy  we  do  not  know  exactly  how  people  would  have  used  it  in  the 
distant  past.  For  the  same  reasons,  it  is  also  difficult  to  tell  which  specific  clan  histories  are  older 
than  others.  Many  scholars  have  argued  that  the  clans  claiming  "first-comer"  status  were  the  first 
to  enter  the  region.  Nevertheless,  these  clans  may  have  usurped  those  rights  from  others  before 
them  and  the  clan  units  themselves  likely  changed  over  time. 

Clan  histories  do,  however,  seem  to  be  old:  the  emergence  stories  presented  in  Chapter  4 
and  5  were  probably  clan  stories  before  they  became  ethnic  stories.  I  have  argued  that  the  core 
spatial  images  of  ethnic  emergence  stories  represent  the  principles  of  production  and  reproduction 
used  by  settlers  on  the  frontier  in  the  distant  past.  Yet  if  people  carried  these  stories  in  oral 
memory  as  the  stories  of  clans,  then  clans  might  have  been  the  units  that  organized  local 
communities  within  the  larger  regional  context  of  a  hill  farmer's  identity.  The  clan  stories  which 
scholars  have  often  interpreted  as  the  "migration"  histories  of  ethnic  groups  seem  to  reflect  an 
earlier  context  where  clans  provided  the  means  for  crossing  the  boundaries  of  regional  identities 
such  as  farmer,  herder  and  hunter,  among  others.    "Migration"  stories  make  connections  among 
diverse  peoples  across  the  region;  they  describe  the  pathways  that  gave  people  access  to  knowledge 
and  resources  beyond  their  communities. 


249 

In  this  chapter  I  analyze  two  different  kinds  of  clan  narratives  which  reflect  the  two 
contexts  in  which  clan  identity  functioned.  The  first  are  clan  "migration"  histories;  the  second  are 
histories  of  clans  as  "children"  of  the  ethnic  group's  founding  parents.  The  core  spatial  images  of 
the  first  type  are  movement  through  diverse  regional  pathways.  Those  of  the  second  type  are 
images  of  family  relations  within  a  homestead.  Each  type  emphasizes  an  aspect  of  clan  identity 
that  served  the  purposes  of  people  operating  in  different  historical  contexts. 

Yet  both  kinds  of  core  images  represent  aspects  of  the  generative  principle  of  clanship  that 
has  operated  over  the  tongue  duree.  Although  homestead  images  were  effectively  used  to  join 
clans  into  ethnic  groups  in  the  reconfigured  narratives  of  the  late  nineteenth  century,  they  also 
capture  an  aspect  of  clanship  that  is  much  older.  In  Chapter  4, 1  demonstrated  that  the  core  spatial 
images  of  the  ethnic  emergence  stories  represented  gendered  homestead  space.  These  same 
homestead  images  may  also  have  functioned  in  the  period  before  the  disasters  to  create  the 
organizing  principle  around  which  settlers  built  local  clan-based  communities-like  the  relations  of 
a  homestead  but  on  a  larger  scale.  This  is  shown  by  an  analysis  of  the  words  for  lineages  and 
clans,  used  from  the  time  East  Nyanza  Bantu-speakers  first  entered  the  region.  All  these  words 
represent  homestead  space  (house,  gate,  hearthstones). 

Clans  as  Children  of  the  Homestead 

The  first  type  of  clan  histories  presented  in  this  chapter  are  those  that  have  been 
incorporated  into  ethnic  stories.  They  are  analyzed  not  only  as  they  represent  clan  identity  in 
relation  to  ethnic  identity  in  the  post-disaster  period  but  also  as  they  represent  clan  identity  as  a 
means  for  organizing  local  communities  before  the  disasters.  Elders  often  integrate  the  origin  of 
clans  into  their  narrations  of  the  ethnic  emergence  stories.  This  version  of  the  Nata  asimoka  story 
ends  with  the  creation  of  the  four  Nata  clans  or  hamate  by  the  children  of  Nyamunywa  and 
Nyasigonko: 


250 

The  woman  became  pregnant  and  gave  birth  to  a  son.   Then  she  gave  birth  to  a 
daughter,  and  in  total  four  boys  and  four  girls.   When  they  were  grown,  they  were 
married  to  each  other.   This  is  the  reason  that  Nata  inherit  through  the  woman's  side. 
The  children  made  the  clans  of  Nata.   The  place  where  they  lived  is  called  Bwanda. 
When  they  got  to  be  too  many,  they  divided  into  the  saiga  [age-set  cycles]. ' 

An  Ikoma  elder,  Mahewa,  along  with  my  colleague  Wilson,  listed  all  of  the  clan  names  and 

their  founders  as  subunits  of  the  greater  Ikoma  people  [See  Figure  6-1 :  Narrators  of  Clan 

Histories], 

Jan:  What  is  your  clan?  [1  used  the  Nata  term  for  clan,  "hamate."] 

Mahewa:  What  does  she  want  to  know? 

Wilson:  She  wants  to  know  your  land  (ekyaro). 

Mahewa:  Oh,  so  that  is  it!  Ok. 

Wilson:  Your  gateway  lineage  (ekehitaj. 

Mahewa:  Abarache  of  the  lineage  of  Obohimaro.  [.  .  .] 

Young  man:  Let  me  explain  this  to  you.  All  of  us  who  live  here  as  a  tribe  are  the  Ikoma. 

The  Ikoma  are  divided  again  among  the  gates  (ebehita)  which  are  the  Hikumari,  Rachi 

and  others.  The  gate  of  this  man  is  the  Rachi.   The  Rachi  are  also  divided  among 

smaller  groups.  [.  .  .] 

Jan:  Among  all  the  Ikoma  how  many  clans  are  there? 

Wilson:  There  are  eight  clans.   Who  is  the  eldest  of  them? 

Mahewa:  Mrachi,  then  Hikumari,  then  Getiga,  then  Himurumbe,  then  Gaikwe,  then 

Mwancha,  then  Serubati,  then  Sagarari,  that  is  all. 

Wilson:  But  explain  to  her  so  she  understands,  the  name  of  Mrachi  was  what? 

Mahewa:  Mgosi. 

Wilson:  This  man  was  named  Mgosi. 

Mahewa:  Hikumari's  name  was  Kumari. 

Jan:  Was  this  the  name  of  the  one  who  founded  the  clan? 

Mahewa:   Yes 

Wilson:  And  for  the  Getiga  was  Mago.  Murumbefor  Himurumbe. 

Mahewa:  Gaikwe,  I  do  not  know  his  name,  he  was  an  Asi.  Mwancha  was  Marakanyi. 

Serubati  was  Nyawatika.  Sagarari  was  Mumare. 

Jan:  Are  these  their  names  or  the  places  where  they  came  from? 

Wilson:  They  are  the  names  of  the  eldest.   The  ones  who  began  each  clan. 

Mahewa:  They  are  the  children  ofMwikoma,  the  founder  of  all  Ikoma.2 


1  Interview  with  Megasa  Mokiri,  Motokeri,  4  March  1995  (Nata  a"). 

2  Interview  with  Mahewa  Timanyi  and  Nyambureti  Morumbe,  Robanda,  27  May  1995 
(Ikoma  cf). 


251 


Nyambureti  Morumbe  and  Mahewa  Timanyi  with  Mahewa's  wife  between, 
Robanda,  27  May  1995. 


Samweli  M.  Kirimanzera,  holding  staff  and  black  tail,  with  friends  and  research 
colleague  Kinanda  Sigara  (standing),  Kurusanda,  3  August  1995. 


Figure  6-1 :  Narrators  of  Clan  Histories 


252 

These  narratives  fully  incorporate  clans  into  the  ethnic  account,  with  the  clan  founders 
represented  as  children  of  the  original  parents.  These  accounts  order  the  relationships  among 
people  of  different  clans  within  one  ethnic  group.  The  Ikoma  clans  acknowledge  their  unity  as 
children  of  the  same  parents,  and  also  recognize  their  individuality  and  differences  in  seniority. 
Many  historians  and  anthropologists  have  explained  this  family  idiom  as  a  mechanism  for  ordering 
internal  political  relationships.3  The  status  of  "first  child"  often  gives  that  clan  ritual  precedence 
within  the  ethnic  group.  David  Newbury's  account  of  the  royal  First  Fruits  ceremony  on  Ijwi 
Island  in  Lake  Kivu,  shows  the  ritual  role  of  each  clan  in  relation  to  its  social  position  within  the 
kingdom." 

Western  Serengeti  peoples,  too,  identify  clans  with  certain  ritual  and  functional  roles 
within  the  ethnic  group.  Nata  give  a  representative  of  the  clan  of  the  first  son,  Gaikwe,  a  token 
inheritance  at  every  funeral  before  dividing  the  rest  of  the  inheritance.  In  the  Nata  story  told  by 
Sochoro  Kabati  in  Appendix  1,  first  woman  Nyasigonko  was  from  the  Getiga  clan  of  Sonjo  and 
first  man  from  the  Gaikwe  clan,  an  Asi  hunter  from  the  wilderness.    Gaikwe,  as  the  hunter,  has 
"first-comer"  status-since  in  oral  memory  it  was  the  Asi  who  taught  farmers  how  to  hunt  and 
make  fire,  and  gave  them  rights  to  the  land.  The  two  Ikoma  clans  that  keep  the  elephant  tusks,  the 
Machaba,  have  this  authority  as  first  sons  and  first-comers.  In  Ikizu  the  rainmaker  "chiefs"  come 
from  the  clan  of  first  woman,  Nyakinywa,  while  the  prophets  come  from  the  clan  of  Isamongo,  first 
man.  The  Ngoreme  and  Ikizu  ethnic  groups  that  are,  by  their  own  account,  amalgamations  of 
many  different  peoples,  nevertheless  tell  a  story  of  an  original  nucleus  of  clans  descended  from  the 
first  parents  which  then  drew  in  other  peoples  from  elsewhere  over  time. 


3  For  an  example  of  this  argued  on  the  basis  of  regional  sources  see  Kenny,  "Stranger  from 
the  Lake,"  p.  9. 

4  Newbury,  Kings  and  Clans,  pp.  200-226. 


253 
From  Clan  to  Ethnic  Histories 

While  clan  stories  are  now  presented  as  subtypes  of  ethnic  stories,  it  seems  more  likely  that 
the  narrators  of  the  ethnic  emergence  stories  presented  in  the  last  chapter  created  them  by  joining 
together  the  narratives  of  the  clans  that  made  up  newly  forming  ethnic  groups.  Although  I  have 
hypothesized  that  hill  farmers  in  the  early  period  of  frontier  settlement  shared  a  founding  myth 
containing  the  core  spatial  images  of  the  homestead  and  the  ecological  landscapes  of  economic 
subsistence  patterns,  these  stories  had  to  be  transmitted  and  maintained  by  a  coherent  corporately 
based  social  group,  which  1  suspect  was  the  residential  clan  community. 

Quite  a  bit  of  evidence  supports  the  claim  that  some  form  of  residential  organization  based 
on  the  idiom  of  clan/lineage  existed  among  Bantu-speakers  of  the  Lakes  Region,  at  least  from  the 
time  that  they  entered  the  western  Serengeti.5  At  the  same  time,  I  found  no  evidence  for 
organization  into  ethnic  groups,  as  we  now  know  them,  until  the  late  nineteenth  century.  Abuso 
demonstrates  for  the  Kuria  that,  "before  the  twentieth  century  they  did  not  know  themselves  as 
Abakuria  but  by  either  their  various  clans  or  by  the  "provinces"  from  which  they  came."  Kuria 
identity  emerged  as  an  amalgamation  of  clan  "provinces"  during  the  colonial  era,  with  the  name 
"Kuria"  being  first  applied  to  the  whole  group  by  early  chiefs  for  political  reasons.6    Clans,  rather 
than  ethnic  groups,  were  the  unit  that  organized  communal  resistance  to  colonial  measures.7  All 
available  evidence  suggests  that  before  the  era  of  disasters  the  residential  clan  was  the  largest  scale 
level  on  which  communities  organized  themselves  and  took  corporate  action.  Other  kinds  of  large 


5  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  pp.  168-181. 

6  Abuso,  A  Traditional  History,  p.  7.  The  same  conclusion  is  reached  by  Tobisson, 
Family  Dynamics,  pp.  94,  115-1 16. 

7  For  the  Kuria  see  Tobisson,  Family  Dynamics,  p.  95,  she  also  concludes  that  the  Kuria 
"only  began  to  look  upon  themselves  as  a  distinct  group  by  the  beginning  of  the  lO"1  century."  p. 
94.  See  also  Prazak,  "Cultural  Expressions,"  p.  45. 


254 
scale  social  identity  did  exist,  such  as  those  divisions  based  on  ecology  and  economy  discussed  in 
the  previous  chapter.  Nevertheless,  people  did  not  organize  their  local  communities  on  the  basis  of 
subsistence  identities.  Although  the  bonds  between  hill  farmers  represented  a  kind  of  "ethnicity," 
they  were  much  too  loose  to  secure  the  claims  of  reciprocal  obligation.  When  the  pressures  of  the 
nineteenth  century  disasters  demanded  larger  scale  identity  formation  within  bounded  units, 
western  Serengeti  peoples  formed  ethnic  groups  in  each  area  as  amalgamations  of  residentially 
based  clans.  (This  process  is  explained  in  more  detail  in  Chapter  9.) 

Since  we  know  that  territorial  clans  existed  before  the  nineteenth  century  disasters  and  that 
ethnic  groups  developed  as  a  result  of  those  same  disasters,  then  it  seems  reasonable  to  presume 
that  clan  histories,  in  some  form,  preceded  ethnic  histories.  Clan  histories  and  clan  identity  also 
changed  as  a  result  of  the  nineteenth  century  disasters  but  the  stories  retained  the  core  images 
associated  with  earlier  social  forms  even  as  they  became  the  stories  of  new  groups. 

The  contradictions  inherent  in  the  stories  themselves  testify  to  these  changes  in  the  social 
basis  of  the  narratives.  Clan  "migration"  stories  still  exist  separate  from  and  cross  the  boundaries 
of  ethnic  narratives.  Clan  "migration"  stories  and  ethnic  narratives  which  incorporate  clans  are  in 
many  ways  incompatible  with  each  other.    For  example,  if  the  clan  founder  Gaikwe  was  the  son  of 
first  man  Nyamunywa  how  can  one  tell  a  Gaikwe  history  without  reference  to  the  larger  ethnic 
group  of  which  he  is  a  part?  How  can  Nata  identify  first  man,  Nyamunywa,  as  a  Gaikwe  clan 
member  if  Nyamunywa's  sons  founded  the  clans?    Many  elders  were  clearly  uncomfortable  with 
talking  about  these  two  kinds  of  histories  in  sequence.  In  fact,  the  account  of  Samweli,  reproduced 
below,  was  one  of  the  few  that  admitted  to  a  relationship  between  clans  of  the  same  name  in 
different  ethnic  groups.  Most  elders  said  that  the  Gaikwe  of  Nata  and  the  Gaikwe  of  Ikoma  had  no 
connection  except  in  the  coincidence  of  names.  In  the  clan  history  told  below  the  Ikizu  narrator 


255 
Samweli  avoided  the  issue  of  whether  he  could  claim  clanship  with  the  Gaikwe  of  Ikoma  by 
describing  the  overall  unity  between  the  Ikizu  and  the  Nata, 

The  process  of  ethnic  formation  is  recent  enough  that  inconsistencies  remain  in  clan  stories 
that  narrators  have  not  yet  fully  assimilated  into  an  ethnic  account.  Elders  still  readily  identify  the 
characters  in  the  ethnic  emergence  stories  with  their  clan.  The  stories  some  elders  tell  as  clan 
history  in  one  ethnic  group,  elders  from  another  ethnic  group  may  tell  as  ethnic  history.  For 
example,  a  Gaikwe  clan  elder  in  Nata  told  me  the  story  of  hunters  following  the  wildebeest 
migration  from  Sonjo,  and  Ikoma  elders  told  me  the  same  story  as  one  about  ethnic  emergence. 
Particular  clan  histories  often  include  what  is  now  known  as  the  ethnic  emergence  story  as  part  of 
the  clan  narrative.  When  I  asked  about  Nata  origins,  one  knowledgeable  elder  told  how  members 
of  a  particular  clan  from  Gusii  came  hunting  at  the  mountain  Magaka  in  Nata.  Nata  people 
incorporated  these  hunters  as  friends,  and  later  as  family,  into  an  existing  lineage.  When  asked 
how  it  was  that  the  people  who  lived  there  accepted  these  hunters,  this  elder  began  a  narration  of 
the  Nata  origin  story  of  first  man  and  first  woman.8  Clan  and  ethnic  stories  overlap  so  much  that 
the  narrators  themselves  have  trouble  distinguishing  them. 

The  story  of  Ngoreme  ethnic  origins,  told  by  a  Timbaru  clan  elder,  is  a  good  example  of 
this  merging  of  clan  stories  into  ethnic  stories.  This  elder  seems  to  be  elaborating  an  ethnic  origin 
history  around  an  Iregi  clan  praise  shout  that  goes  like  this:  "the  Ngoreme  of  Isabayaya,  of 
Wandira,  of  Mangwesi-Regata-Manyere,  waters  which  trickle  down  from  above,  the  Ngoreme  of 
Nyahaba."'  The  Iregi  clan,  among  others  who  claim  origins  in  Sonjo,  say  that  Isabayaya  was  their 


8  Interview  with  Maguye  Maginga,  Nyeketono,  21  June  1995  (Nata  tf). 

'  "Abangoreme  ba  Sabayaya  re  Wandira  re  Mangwesi-Regata-Manyere-Manchira 
Baigora  (Batahera  Manche  na  Migeri);"  interview  with  Apolinari  Maro  Makore,  Mesage,  29 
September  1995,  in  a  handwritten  manuscript  of  Ngoreme  history.  Praise  shouts  or  a  praise  names 
are  commonly  used  across  Africa  to  commemorate  a  famous  person,  group  or  event.  They  are 


256 

clan  founder.10    The  Iregi  are  also  those  whose  story  of  dispersal  from  Nyeberekera  during  the 

disasters  was  told  in  Chapter  3.    Their  name,  derived  from  "Regata,"  links  them  to  Sonjo.  Their 

clan  origins  have  become  the  origins  of  all  Ngoreme.    This  is  the  ethnic  story  built  by  Mzee  Silas: 

Silas:  We  Ngoreme,  as  I  learned  from  the  elders  who  told  me,  they  said  that  we  came 
from  the  southeast.   Maybe  the  areas  to  the  north  or  east.  [.  .  .]  To  say  for  sure,  the 
places  themselves  are  not  named.   To  the  north  over  there,  the  area  of  Sonjo,  where  we 
border  south  in  the  hills,  that  is  where  we  began.  From  there  they  came  to  the  area  of 
Mangwesi  Mountain.  Before  they  got  to  Mangwesi  Mountain  they  were  harassed  by 
others,  at  the  place  ofManyere.   The  elders  said  that  Mangwesi  was  not  where  Manyere 
was  from,  Manyere  came  to  Mangwesi.  So  Manyere  must  be  the  name  of  a  person,  not  a 
place.  But  the  place  was  named  after  him.  [. .  .]  The  Taturu  call  us  Manyerega.  So  I 
think  that  this  person  Manyerega  was  the  same  as  this  person  Manyere.  [. . .]  After 
coming  here  Manyere  and  his  people  were  dispersed,  maybe  because  of  war.  His  son 
was  Wandira  . .  .  He  was  a  farmer,  his  other  brothers  were  hunters.   But  he  liked  to 
farm  and  liked  to  find  good  fertile  soil  to  farm.   This  was  Wandira.  [.  .  .]  After  Wandira 
was  Isabayaya.  He  was  the  son  of  Wandira.  At  this  time  they  had  come  from  the 
southeast,  they  had  come  as  far  as  Serengeti  in  the  hills.   They  came  to  Mangwesi 
Mountain  and  then  to  lkorongo.  But  before  they  got  to  Ikorongo,  there  at  Mangwesi 
Mountain,  the  lkoma  separated  off  and  went  to  Ikoma.   The  lkoma  liked  to  hunt.  So  they 
went  off  on  their  hunt  ...  I  do  not  know,  this  is  what  the  elders  thought.   They  went  to 
Nyeberekera. 

But  the  others  went  off  looking  for  soft  earth  to  farm.   The  soil  here  was  good 
because  the  elephants  had  dug  up  the  soil  over  there  and  it  dried  up,  so  they  had  to 
move.  At  that  time  they  farmed  with  sticks.   There  were  not  even  hoes  then.  That  is  what 
they  told  me.  So  they  came  looking  for  a  place  to  farm  and  to  build  their  houses  safe 
from  enemies.   The  hills  would  protect  them.   They  did  not  have  anyone  to  bother  them. 
That  is  how  they  came  to  Ikorongo.  At  Mangwesi  Mountain  Isabayaya  was  born  to 
Wandira  there.   Then  after  Isabayaya  moved  to  Ikorongo,  he  gave  birth  to  Mongoreme. 
So  that  is  why  this  is  called  Ngoreme.  Even  today  we  say,  "we  Ngoreme  are  the  people 
of  Isabayaya  and  Wandira. 
Jan:  Do  you  have  kinship  with  the  Sonjo? 

Silas:  We  have  the  praise  name  of  the  Sonjo,  that  they  have  the  irrigation  channels.   We 
pray  Bigoro  Manche  ra  Mogera, "  the  water  that  trickles  down  from  on  high. "  This  means 


performed  in  public  gatherings  like  dances  or  feasts.   See  Barber.  1  Could  Speak,  for  an  analysis  of 
Yoruba  praise  names. 

10  P.  Haimati  and  P.  Houle,  "Mila  na  Matendo  ya  Wangoreme,"  (unpublished  mimeo) 
Iramba  Mission,  1 969.  Philipo  Haimati  is  from  the  Taboori  clan,  which  along  with  the  Maare  are 
said  to  be  the  first  to  arrive  from  Sonjo. 


257 

that  we  came  from  Sonjo.   When  we  pray,  we  ask  for  a  blessing  from  where  we  came. 
When  we  do  eldership  titles,  we  pray  this.   We  pray  this  to  the  ancestors  from  Sonjo. ' ' 

The  process  of  the  incorporation  of  clan  histories  into  ethnic  accounts  is  ongoing  and 
documented  in  the  written  sources.  Today,  elders  rarely  tell  clan  histories  any  more  as  an 
independent  narrative  form.  When  Musoma  District  Officer  E.  C.  Baker  questioned  elders  in  the 
1920s  and  early  1930s  about  clan  names,  avoidances,  and  place-names,  he  got  quite  thorough  lists 
throughout  the  region.12  In  my  research,  few  elders  could  recite  clan  history  with  any  detail.  Clans 
had  political  saliency  in  the  early  colonial  period  when  the  residential  clans  of  Zanaki  and  Kuria 
got  their  own  chiefs.  Yet  with  the  reorganizations  of  the  1950s,  clan  territorial  chiefs  became  local 
headmen  and  all  the  people  elected  a  Paramount  Tribal  Chief.  In  both  cases,  however,  the 
administration  understood  clans  as  subsections  of  "tribes,"  referred  to  by  Baker  as  "sub-tribes," 
and  not  as  dispersed  networks  of  affiliation.  Thus  people  ceased  to  tell  publicly,  and  gradually 
forgot,  clan  histories  that  made  regional  connections." 
The  Core  Spatial  Images  of  Clan  Traditions 

The  more  inclusive  core  spatial  image  of  the  homestead  is  overshadowed  in  clan  traditions 
integrated  into  ethnic  narratives  by  the  image  of  a  bounded  community,  defined  by  the  genealogical 
relationships  of  children  to  their  parents.  Although  genealogical  relatedness  forms  a  part  of  the 
homestead  image,  in  these  clan  narratives  it  becomes  the  central  image.  These  narratives 
characterize  clans  as  subsets  of  a  particular  ethnic  group  whose  relationships  are  contained  within 
that  unit.  This  image  is  consistent  with  the  classic  anthropological  understanding  of  clans  as  a 


"  Interview  with  Silas  King" are  Magori,  Kemegesi,  21  September  1995  (Ngoreme  cf). 

12  "Avoidances"  or  "totems"  are  animals  or  objects  respected  or  "avoided"  by  specific 
groups  like  clans. 

13  Baker,  "Tribal  History  and  Legends,"  MDB;  Baker,  Tanganyika  Papers. 


258 
form  of  social  organization  based  on  lineage  or  genealogical  descent.  In  a  segmentary  lineage 
system  a  number  of  clans  form  an  ethnic  group.  These  clans  are  made  up,  in  turn,  of  a  number  of 
maximal  lineages,  that  are  made  up  of  a  number  of  minimal  lineages,  approximating  a  neat  set  of 
nesting  boxes.  This  model  gives  the  impression  that  ethnic  groups,  made  up  of  discrete  clans, 
formed  isolated  and  autonomous  units.14 

Beginning  more  than  two  decades  ago,  Africanist  scholars  mounted  an  incisive  critique  of 
segmentary  lineage  theory.  Some  have  concluded  that  the  concept  is  a  fantasy  of  the  west  and  that 
blood  ties  never  formed  the  basis  for  social  organization  among  aboriginal  peoples."  Kuper  went 
as  far  as  to  assert  that,  "the  lineage  model,  its  predecessors  and  its  analogs,  have  no  value  for 
anthropological  analysis."  His  reasons  for  this  radical  statement  were  that  the  lineage  model  does 
not  represent  folk  models  of  society  and  that  there  are  no  societies  that  "a  repetitive  series  of 
descent  groups  ever  organized.'"" 

Western  Serengeti  ethnography  would  confirm  that  the  segmentary  lineage  model  in  the 
strictest  sense  does  not  apply  here.  If  the  model  functions  one  would  expect  to  find  that  lineages 
are  unique  subsets  of  particular  clans.    In  Nata,  for  example,  the  ekehita  or  lineage  of  Abene 


14  See  Evans-Pritchard,  The  Nuer  for  the  classical  case  and  R.  Cohen,  "Ethnicity:  Problem 
and  Focus  in  Anthropology,"  Annual  Review  of  Anthropolopv.  7  (1978):  379-403,  for  its  more 
recent  manifestation.  See  also  Aidan  Southall,  Alur  Society:  a  study  in  processes  and  types  of 
domination  (Cambridge:  Heffer,  1956);  and  Aidan  Southall,  "The  Segmentary  State:  From  the 
Imaginary  to  the  Material  Means  of  Production,"  in  Early  State  Economics,  eds.  Henri  J.  M. 
Claessen  and  Pieter  van  de  Velde  (New  Brunswick:  Transaction  Publishers,  1991),  pp.  75-96. 

"  See  A.  Kuper,  "Lineage  Theory:  Critical  Retrospect,"  Annual  Review  for  Anthropology 
1 1  (1982):  71-95;  D.  W.  Hammond-Tooke,  "In  Search  of  the  Lineage:  The  CapeNguni  Case  " 
Man,  (n.s.)  19,  I  (March  1984):  77-93;  Jane  I.  Guyer,  "Household  and  Community  in  African 
Studies,"  African  Studies  Review  24,  2/3  (June/September  1981):  87- 137.  See  also  Parker 
Shipton,  "Strips  and  Patches:  A  Demographic  Dimension  in  Some  African  Land-Holding  and 
Political  System,"  Man  (n.s.)  1 9,  4  (December  1 984):  6 1 3-634. 

16  Kuper,  "Lineage  Theory,"  p.  92. 


259 
O'Mugabho  is  found  in  each  of  the  four  hamate  or  clans.  We  have  already  seen  that  clans  are  not 
unique  subunits  of  ethnic  groups.  In  segmentary  lineage  terms  this  is  not  a  neat  set  of  nesting 
boxes  in  which  each  set  is  a  subset  of  the  next  higher  level  of  lineage  organization.  Elders 
sometimes  explained  these  inconsistencies  by  citing  the  stories  of  individuals  who  moved  between 
clans  in  times  of  stress.  Some  life  stories  that  I  collected  told  of  a  grandfather  who  was  left  as  an 
orphan  and  went  to  his  mother's  kin  to  seek  help.  The  clan  then  adopted  him,  but  he  kept  the 
lineage  name  of  his  father. 

However,  one  cannot  explain  this  lack  of  fit  within  a  segmentary  lineage  system  by  the 
exceptional  circumstances  of  individuals  crossing  clan  lines.  On  the  contrary,  lineage  terminology 
itself  is  flexible  at  every  level  and  a  single  lineage  designation  does  not  necessarily  refer  to  units  of 
the  same  value.  After  a  great  Nata  man,  like  Magoto,  who  had  lots  of  children  dies,  his 
grandchildren  may  start  calling  themselves  "of  the  Magoto  family"  or  Abhene  O'Magoto.  A  new 
lineage  (ekehita)  spontaneously  forms  around  an  important  man  instead  of  continuing  to  use  the 
previous  lineage  name.  At  the  same  time,  other  lineages  of  the  same  level  go  on  using  the  older 
names.  If  no  great  men  appear  in  recent  generations  the  descendants  might  continue  using  one 
name  for  longer  than  five  generations.  The  ekehita  can  also  divide  into  smaller  groupings  to  retain 
the  original  name.  The  ekehita  of  Gitaraga  refers  to  the  great  rainmaker  Gitaraga  and  that  name  is 
necessary  for  those  who  continue  to  propitiate  his  spirit  for  rain  at  his  grave-site.  Yet  the  lineage 
has  gotten  so  big  that  they  now  subdivide  it  into  three  sections."  In  time  little  structural  similarity 
exists  between  lineages  of  one  level  of  segmentation.  The  names  of  clans  that  suffer  extreme 


"  Interview  with  Keneti  Mahembora,  Gitaraga,  9  February  1996  (Nata  cf). 


260 

misfortune  are  often  changed  while  others  spontaneously  adopt  auspicious  names.18  One  clan  name 
may  refer  to  different  levels  of  segmentation  in  different  ethnic  groups." 

This  evidence  confirms  what  Moore  succinctly  concluded  about  lineage  theory:  "descent 
ideology  in  its  most  basic  form  is  an  ideology  of  identities  ...  it  is  an  idea  that  can  be  used  in 
many  different  ways  and  it  is  enormously  adaptable  and  manipulatable."20    The  same  ideology  can 
lead  to  different  forms  of  social  organization  according  to  the  historical  context.  As  Guyer 
suggests,  the  social  identity  translated  as  "clans"  in  one  place  is  not  necessarily  "comparable  in 
size,  internal  structure,  legal  status,  kind  of  corporate  property,  or  principles  of  recruitment"  to 
what  are  known  as  "clans"  elsewhere.21  Although  most  recent  studies  have  adopted  a  more  flexible 
notion  of  lineage,  just  how  scholars  should  describe  local  social  organization  remains  uncertain. 
Kuper  declares  the  segmentary  lineage  model  bankrupt,  but  offers  no  alternative.  Guyer  worries 
that  an  emphasis  on  the  negotiability  of  lineage  as  ideology  will  make  each  study  too  particularistic 
to  allow  for  comparison.22 

The  core  spatial  image  of  the  homestead  embodied  in  clan  accounts  is  much  broader  and 
more  flexible  than  its  genealogical  aspect.  The  dominant  image  of  the  blood  relationships  of  a 
bounded  community  in  the  clan  stories  noted  above  seems  to  have  resulted  from  the  reformulation 


18  Siso,  "The  Oral  Traditions  of  North  Mara." 

"  Prazak,  "Cultural  Expressions,"  p.  49,  describes  the  discrepancies  in  the  Kuria 
segmentary  lineage  system  in  this  way,  "the  lack  of  distinctiveness  of  descent  groups  results  from 
the  circumstantial  character  of  genealogical  rationalization  and  a  tendency  for  descent  groups  of 
different  order  to  phase  into  each  other." 

20  Quoted  in  Guyer,  "Household  and  Community,"  p.  92,  from  S.  F.  Moore,  "Descent  and 
Legal  Position,"  in  Law  in  Culture  and  Society,  ed.  L.  Nader,  (Chicago:  Aldine,  1969),  p.  380. 

21  Guyer,  "Household  and  Community,"  p.  92. 

22  Ibid,  p.  93;  Kuper,  "Lineage  Theory,"  p.  93. 


261 
of  clan  stories  into  ethnic  accounts  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century.  What  changed  during  this 
time  were  not  the  core  spatial  images  themselves  but  the  emphasis  and  interpretation  of  particular 
aspects  of  the  images.  The  clan  stories  transcribed  above  are  part  of  the  ethnic  emergence  story 
and  thus  reflect  the  core  spatial  images  of  the  homestead,  where  the  ideology  of  descent  plays  a 
central  part. 

Using  the  model  of  the  homestead,  people  imagined  larger  units  of  social  organization. 
Genealogical  relatedness  ideally  forms  the  basis  of  the  relationship  of  those  people  who  live 
together  in  a  homestead.  Yet  every  homestead  incorporates  strangers  and  dependents  using  kinship 
idioms  or  by  finding  other  obscure  lines  of  descent.  The  homestead  is  an  indigenous  model  of 
social  organization  that  creates  a  sense  of  a  discrete  bounded  community  with  corporate  property 
but  still  allows  for  the  flexibility  needed  to  incorporate  outsiders.  Kuper  has  shown  that  people  in 
Southern  Africa  also  used  this  model  as  the  basis  for  organizing  the  Zulu  state  in  the  late 
eighteenth  century.23 

The  ideology  of  lineages  and  clans  based  on  the  model  of  the  homestead  seems  to  be  a  very 
old  concept  in  the  region.  The  oldest  words  for  lineage  and  clan  refer  to  the  homestead  itself. 
Schoenbrun's  study  demonstrates  that,  early  in  the  first  millennium  A.D.,  when  East  Nyanza 
speakers  were  moving  into  the  drier  and  more  open  environments  of  the  east  lake,  they  brought 
with  them  a  concept  of  residential  groupings  of  people  based  on  dispersed  and  exogamous  lineages, 
expressed  by  the  term,  eka.  This  word  was  an  older  Great  Lakes  Bantu  word,  derived  from  a 
Sudanic  loan  word,  for  a  head  of  cattle  or  a  cattle  camp.  Schoenbrun  postulates  that  settlers 
adopted  this  form  of  social  organization  because  "accumulations  of  wealth  in  animals  were  stable 


23  Adam  Kuper,  "The  'House'  and  Zulu  Political  Structure  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,' 
Journal  of  African  History.  34  (1993):  469-487. 


262 
enough  to  warrant  their  conservation  by  developing  unilineal  principles  for  inheriting  them."24  The 
male  space  of  the  cattle  corral  signified  broader  connections  to  kin  with  claims  on  that  wealth. 
Earlier  I  argued  that  in  the  western  Serengeti  this  East  Nyanza  Bantu  word  for  lineage,  eka,  was 
used  to  create  the  homestead  built  around  a  central  cattle  corral  as  a  formative  strategy  for 
expansion  on  the  frontier.  A  comparison  of  the  terms  and  the  ethnography  for  clans  across  the 
region,  shows  the  elaboration  of  the  homestead  concept.  While  the  segmentary  lineage  model 
presumes  that  social  organization  based  on  kinship  is  diametrically  opposed  to  that  based  on 
territory,  the  homestead  model  incorporates  them  both.25 
Hamate:  Clan  as  Locality 

An  important  aspect  of  the  homestead  model  is  its  function  as  a  residential,  localized  form 
of  social  organization.  Although  clan  organization  and  the  words  used  to  describe  it  vary  across 
the  region  they  hold  in  common  the  ideological  view  that  a  clan  is  a  group  of  people  who  live 
together  on  clan  controlled  land.  Today  the  clan  unit  is  the  largest  grouping  of  people  who  speak 
about  their  relationships  to  each  other  in  lineage  and  descent  ideology  below  the  level  of  the  ethnic 
group.  In  the  ethnic  groups  farthest  west,  Ikizu  and  Zanaki,  each  of  the  clan  groups  lives  in  one 
area  and  claims  clan  lands.  In  the  ethnic  groups  farthest  to  the  east  (Ikoma,  Ishenyi,  Nata, 
Ngoreme)  clans  have  been  dispersed  among  the  three  different  age-set  territories,  with  people  of  the 
same  clan  tending  to  settle  as  neighbors.  In  Ngoreme,  traditions  tell  explicitly  of  people  moving 
out  of  clan  lands  during  the  disasters  and  gradually  back  again  during  the  colonial  period.  Even  in 


24  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  pp.  170-1. 

This  is  a  classic  anthropological  assumption,  Sir  Henry  Sumner  Maine,  Ancient  Law 
(London:  J.  Murray.  1861);  Lewis  Henry  Morgan,  Ancient  Society  (New  York:  World  Publishing. 
1877);  these  ideas  were  picked  up  by  later  anthropologists  as  the  foundation  of  much  ethnography 
in  Africa,  A.  R.  Radcliffe-Brown,  The  Study  of  Kinship  Systems:  Structure  and  Function  in 
Primitive  Society  (New  York:  Free  Press,  1 965),  pp.  49-5 1 ;  Meyer  Fortes,  Kinship  and  the  Social 
Order  (London:  Routledge  and  Kegan  Paul,  1 969),  pp.  27ff. 


263 

"Ujamaa"  villages  organized  after  the  Arusha  Declaration  in  1977,  clan  members  tended  to  build 
their  houses  together.  Clans  seem  to  have  been  the  largest  scale  level  of  residential  organization 
before  the  disasters  of  the  late  nineteenth  century. 

One  word  for  clan  used  throughout  the  region  is  hamate,  a  locative  word  that  specifically 
refers  to  the  politically  independent  territorial  clan  grouping.  Oral  testimony  identifies  nine  Zanaki 
and  fifteen  Kuria  clan  territories  that  anthropologist  Malcolm  Ruel  describes  as  "provinces."26  The 
prefix  for  place  designation,  bu,  is  added  to  the  clan  name  to  indicate  clan  lands,  as  in  Busegwe 
(Zanaki)  or  Bukiroba  (Kuria).  In  Kuria,  as  elsewhere  in  the  region,  all  land  belonged  to  the  clan.27 
The  British  vacillated  between  appointing  a  separate  chief  in  each  hamate  and  appointing  a 
paramount  chief  for  the  whole  ethnic  group.  Colonial  anthropologist,  Hans  Cory,  struggled  to 
figure  out  which  was  more  consistent  with  traditional  practice.  Little  evidence  exists  that  in 
precolonial  times  these  autonomous  clans  ever  united  with  other  clans  for  joint  action.28 

The  term  hamate  designates  a  place  or  territory,  with  the  particle  "ha"  referring  to  an 
exact,  particular  place,  as  in  ahaase  or  land.  Each  of  the  hamate  in  its  praise  names  gives  a  place 
of  reference.  The  word  hamate  is  also  used  generically  throughout  the  region  as  "place."  For 
example  in  Nata  one  can  use  the  term  to  say,  "a  beautiful  place."  Because  age-set  cycles  became 
territorially  based  in  the  east  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  people  in  those  areas  often  refer 


-'  Ruel,  "Kuria  Generation  Classes,"  pp.  14-36;  on  provinces,  Bischofberger,  The 
Generation  Classes,  pp.  15-16.  In  Zanaki  the  clan  "provinces"  are  called  ekyaro  while  the  "sub- 
clans"  are  called  hamati  which  are  not  territorial  and  move  between  provinces.  Clans  are  not 
exogamous. 

27  E.  D.  Dobson,  "Comparative  Land  Tenure  of  Ten  Tanganyika  Tribes,"  Tanganyika 
Notes  and  Records.  38  (March  1955):  31-39. 

28  Ruel,  "Kuria  Generation  Classes,"  pp.  14-36.  Hans  Cory,  "Report  on  the  pre-European 
Tribal  Organization  in  Musoma  (South  Mara  District  and  ...  Proposals  for  Adaptation  of  the  Clan 
System  to  Modern  Circumstances,"  1945,  pp.  1-14,  CORY  #173,  EAF,  UDSM. 


264 
to  both  clans  and  age-set  cycles  as  hamate.  Thus  at  a  basic  level  hamate  means  people  who  live 
together  on  the  same  land.  The  Kuria  dictionary  defines  hamate  as  "outsiders,  people  at  large."29 
Although  one  may  find  it  incongruous  to  use  this  word  to  refer  to  outsiders,  the  same  territorial 
boundaries  that  define  insiders  also  designate  outsiders. 

People  within  the  residential  hamate  are  responsible  to  care  for  the  land,  celebrate  their 
own  circumcision  ceremonies,  and  take  public  action.  The  hamate  corresponds  to  the  boundaries 
of  what  western  Serengeti  people  call  the  ekyaro  or  the  ritually  maintained  lands  of  a  group  of 
people  (discussed  in  Chapter  8).  In  the  Ikoma  narrative  reproduced  above  Wilson  explains  the 
term  I  used  for  "clan"  by  referring  to  the  ekyaro  or  land.  Tobisson  describes  the  essence  of 
belonging  to  a  Kuria  ikiaro  as  the  "close  link  between  agnatic  descent  (real  or  fictive)  from  an 
eponymous  clan  founder  and  affiliation  to  a  particular  territory  associated  with  him  as  the  'first- 
clearer  of  the  land.'"30  There  are  certain  corporate  rights  and  obligations  expected  from  those 
living  in  the  residential  hamate.  They  contribute  to  compensation  in  blood  suits  if  another  clan 
accuses  a  member  of  murder.  At  a  Nata  funeral,  the  hamate  of  the  deceased  receive  a  cow  out  of 
the  inheritance  (ang'ombe  umwando).3' 
Clan  as  Metaphorical  Homestead 

Those  people  who  live  together  on  clan  lands  attest  to  their  relatedness  based  on  a  common 
ancestor.    Yet  most  of  the  words  for  clan  or  lineage  refer  not  to  genealogical  relatedness  but  back 
to  the  core  spatial  images  of  the  homestead,  analyzed  in  Chapter  4  as  fundamental  to  the 


29  Muniko  et  al,  Kuria-Enelish  Dictionary,  p.2 1 .  The  Gusii  also  use  the  term 
eamate/chiamate  to  mean  clan.  Philip  Mayer,  The  Lineage  Principle  in  Cmsii  Snrigfy  (London- 
Oxford  University  Press,  1949),  p.  9. 

30  Tobisson,  Family  Dynamics,  p.  97. 

31  Interview  with  Nyamaganda  Magoto,  Bugerera,  4  October  1995  (Nata  d). 


265 

organization  of  production  and  reproduction.  This  suggests  that  people  have  made  a  metaphorical 
connection  between  the  relationship  among  those  who  live  together  in  a  homestead  and  that  among 
those  who  share  clan  membership.  People  have  found  it  useful  to  expand  the  homestead  model 
beyond  one  family  unit  to  describe  relationships  within  a  larger  territorial  community. 

Except  for  hamate  all  of  the  words  used  for  "clan"  in  the  western  Serengeti  refer  to  the 
spatial  organization  of  the  homestead.  In  Ikizu  the  clan  is  called  irigiha  (hearthstones),  in  Ikoma 
ekehila  (gateway),  in  Ishenyi  and  Ngoreme  ekeshoko  (gatepost).  Among  related  Mara-speaking 
peoples,  the  Kuria  and  Gusii,  the  clan  is  also  called  the  egesaku  (doorway)  and  the  lineage  the 
irigiha  (hearthstones).32    The  hearthstones,  located  in  the  female  space  of  the  house,  represent 
Ikizu  matrilineal  inheritance  principles.  In  Ikizu  the  clans  (hearthstones)  are  grouped  into  loose 
associations  called  zenyumba  or  "houses."  The  patrilineal  Ikoma  and  Ishenyi  use  terms  for  clan 
that  refer  to  the  male  domain  in  the  homestead,  the  gate  of  the  livestock  corral. 

A  common  characteristic  of  words  for  clan  and  lineage  among  all  Lakes  Bantu  speakers  is 
that  these  words  are  derived  from  the  spatial  imagery  of  the  homestead.  This  seems  to  indicate  that 
this  idiom  for  expressing  relationships  is  old  and  probably  brought  by  Bantu-speakers  when  they 
first  entered  the  region  (c.  500  A.D.).33  These  images  suggest  that  local  people  conceptualize  the 
relationship  among  those  within  one  settlement  as  an  extended  homestead  rather  than  as  a 
genealogical  line.34  A  person  says  that  they  come  from  the  same  "house"  as  all  those  whom  they 


168-174. 


32  See  Tobisson,  Family  Dynamics,  pp.  98-100;  and  Mayer,  The  Lineage  Principle,  p.  5. 
3  Schoenbrun,  Etymologies  #  1 07.  #121,  #135,  #1 17;  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  pp. 


4  Adam  Kuper  does  this  in  his  analysis  of  the  Zulu  state  as  representing  deep  continuities 
with  the  house  model  rather  than  in  terms  of  lineage.  "The  House  and  Zulu  Political  Structure." 
See  also  David  L.  Schoenbrun,"Gendered  Histories  Between  the  Great  Lakes:  Varieties  and 
Limits."  International  Journal  of  African  Historical  Studies  29,  3  (1996):  470-480.  Christopher 
Ehret  disagrees  and  points  to  the  etymology  of -longo  for  a  line  of  object  in  The  Classical  Age. 


266 

collectively  associate  with  their  mother  or  sister,  regardless  of  the  exact  relationship.  Likewise 
they  come  out  of  the  same  "gateway"  as  those  whom  they  collectively  associate  with  their  father  or 
brothers.  The  relationships  among  many  of  these  people  is  by  "blood,"  but  because  the  terms  are 
flexible  and  metaphorical,  people  calculate  these  relationships  in  many  different  ways,  allowing  for 
the  use  of  a  kinship  idiom  to  unite  diverse  people,  to  merge  generations,  or  to  adopt  people  from 
other  kin  groups. 

People  also  use  the  same  homestead  imagery  to  describe  lineage  (as  opposed  to  clan) 
relations  but  in  this  case  they  designate  a  particular  known  ancestor  of  four  to  five  generations 
removed  as  the  founder.  For  the  lineage  divisions  below  the  level  of  clan  people  usually  use  the 
prefix  abhene  in  Nata  or  abhahiri  in  Ikizu  (meaning  the  people  of  a  particular  ancestor),  followed 
by  the  name  of  a  known  ancestor  four  or  five  generations  removed.  Nata  call  this  lineage  group  the 
ekehita  (gateway)  and  the  Ikizu  call  it  the  gate  post  (egeshoko). 

Although  people  use  the  same  homestead  imagery  to  represent  both  lineage  and  clan,  oral 
traditions  about  the  two  forms  are  quite  different  and  presumably  represent  different  kinds  of  social 
identity.    Western  Serengeti  elders  can  usually  recite  their  exact  genealogies  to  four  generations  on 
both  their  mothers'  and  fathers'  sides— naming  up  to  their  grandfathers'  grandfathers."  This 
knowledge  is  immediately  accessible  since  most  of  them  grew  up  knowing  their  paternal 
grandfathers  (or  maternal  grandmothers)  and  therefore  would  have  heard  the  names  of  their  fathers 
and  grandfathers  (or  their  mothers  and  grandmothers)  within  the  lineage  as  a  matter  of  course.36 


35  lona  Mayer,  "From  Kinship  to  Common  Descent:  Four  Generation  Genealogies  among 
the  Gusii,"  Africa  35,  4  (October  1965):  306,  demonstrates  that  four  generations  is  "the  usual 
maximum  limit  for  exact  genealogical  tracing  in  many  African  kinship  systems"  because  this  is  the 
"natural  limit  of  historical  record  in  a  preliterate  culture." 

36  In  the  naming  system  today  a  person  uses  his  personal  name,  followed  by  his  father's 
name,  followed  by  this  grandfather's  name. 


267 
Clan  members,  by  contrast,  cannot  tell  their  exact  genealogical  relationship  to  each  other  or  to  their 
founder,  nor  is  this  knowledge  considered  important. 

Clan  members  relate  to  each  other  as  equals  within  a  common  category  while  lineage 
members  must  determine  the  exact  nature  of  their  relationship  according  to  gender,  generation  and 
distance.  This  is  because  lineage  members  have  specific  ritual  and  jural  obligations  to  each  other 
concerning,  for  example,  land,  livestock,  inheritance  or  funeral  mourning.  Therefore,  knowing  the 
exact  genealogical  relationship  with  other  lineage  members  is  necessary  to  know  the  degree  of 
personal  obligation.    Evans-Pritchard  defined  this  difference  between  clan  and  lineage  as  one 
between  relations  of  personal  obligation  versus  structural  relations  between  collectivities.37 

When  a  man  recites  his  genealogy  by  saying  "I  am  the  son  of  x,  who  was  the  son  of  y,  who 
was  the  son  of  z  . . . ,"  after  four  or  possibly  five  generations  he  names  the  sub-clan  or  clan 
founder  and  then  the  ethnic  group  founder,  rather  than  the  known  father  of  his  great  great- 
grandfather. This  "telescoping"  of  earlier  generations  is  a  common  feature  of  lineage  reckoning 
throughout  Africa.  The  number  of  relationships  to  other  groups  that  people  must  explain 
determines  the  number  of  generations  recited  in  a  genealogy.  Based  on  similar  observations  in 
Gusii,  Iona  Mayer  argued  that  lineage  and  clan  or  what  she  called  "kin  lineage"  and  "ancestral 
lineage"  should  not  be  merged  in  one  model  of  kinship.  Instead,  the  anthropologist  can  only 
properly  interpret  the  kin  lineage  as  a  kinship  group.38 

This  distinction  is  also  useful  in  the  consideration  of  oral  traditions  about  lineages  and 
clans.  Lineage  traditions  are  frequently  reminiscences  about  known  ancestors.  People  still 
associate  lineage  ancestors  furthest  removed  in  time  (five  generations)  with  the  particular  places 


"  Evans-Pritchard,  The  Nuer.  p.  366. 
38  Mayer,  "Four-Generation,"  p.  383. 


268 
where  they  lived.  They  can  communicate  with  these  lineage  ancestors  through  rituals  performed  at 
these  sites.  Lineage  narratives  are  the  subject  of  the  next  chapter.  On  the  other  hand,  people  do 
not  associate  clan  ancestors  with  exact  places  but  with  general  directions  nor  do  they  propitiate  the 
spirits  of  clan  ancestors.  The  name  of  a  clan  ancestor  often  has  symbolic  meaning,  such  as 
Mwancha,  for  the  lake  or  west,  rather  than  the  name  of  a  remembered  person.  Although  the 
localized  clan  could  take  political  action  based  on  the  defense  of  corporate  property,  dispersed  clan 
members  had  little  corporate  responsibility  to  each  other. 

The  lineage  idiom  implicit  in  the  recitation  of  a  line  of  ancestors  grows  out  of  the  core 
spatial  images  of  the  homestead.  Ethnic  stories  create  new  units  by  imagining  clans  as  subunits  of 
the  ethnic  group,  just  as  lineage  groupings  made  up  the  territory  of  a  residential  clan.  However, 
when  elders  tell  clan  stories  independently,  they  do  not  invoke  images  of  bounded  subunits  related 
to  each  other  by  genealogy.  These  contrasting  images  seem  to  reflect  differing  social  realities 
behind  clan  in  different  historical  contexts,  before  and  after  the  period  of  disasters.  In  the  context 
of  emerging  ethnic  units  in  the  late  nineteenth  century,  western  Serengeti  people  increasingly  saw 
clans  as  units  that  were  like  lineages  only  bigger.  The  clan  stories  that  remain,  not  assimilated  into 
ethnic  stories,  but  sometimes  presented  as  the  "migration"  stories  of  ethnic  groups,  present  an 
understanding  of  clan  that  seems  to  predate  the  disasters. 

Clan  Histories  as  Pathways  of  Regional  Association 

A  few  elders  told  me  clan  histories  unrelated  to  an  ethnic  story.  The  story  of  the  Hemba 
told  by  Ikizu  narrator  Samweli  Kirimanzera  is  a  particularly  full  account.  He  told  this  story  after 
we  had  been  talking  about  matrilineal  inheritance,  in  his  case  as  a  Hemba  clan  member.  He  said 


269 

that  inheritance  changed  as  people  married  into  other  ethnic  groups,  as  for  example  when  people 

fromZanaki  married  in  Ikizu:39  [See  photo  Figure  6-1:  Narrators  of  Clan  Histories,  p.  251.] 

Jan:  There  are  Hemba  in  Zanaki  too,  aren't  there? 

Samweli:  Yes,  of  course. 

Jan:  And  are  you  the  same  as  them?  The  Hemba  of  the  Zanaki  and  the  Hemba  of  the 

Ikizu? 

Samweli:  We  are  all  one.  They  separated  and  some  went  there  and  others  came  here. 

Jan:  Did  the  Hemba  begin  in  Zanaki  and  then  come  here  or  did  they  begin  here  and  go 

there? 

Samweli:  Why  do  you  bring  up  a  new  history  now?  You  know  that  the  history  of  the 

Hemba  is  different  from  the  history  of  the  Ikizu. 

Jan:  So  shall  we  leave  it  aside  for  now? 

Samweli:  You  want  to  know  the  history  of  the  Hemba?  You  mean  where  they  came 

from? 

Kihenda:  She  wants  to  know  where  they  came  from,  who  they  came  with,  and  what  — 

Samweli:  Is  that  what  you  want  to  know? 

Jan:  /  want  to  know  it  all. 

Samweli: . . .  The  Hemba  came  —  they  were  great  hunters,  fierce  people  who  lived  in  the 

wilderness.   They  came  from  the  east,  around  the  area  of  Kilimanjaro.   When  they  left 

Kilimanjaro  they  went  to  Tamoga.  Singira  and  Ragega. 

Jan:  Aaah  haa 

Samweli:  They  came  and  passed  Ndamio.   Then  they  came  to  Ikoma  where  they  left 

behind  some  Hemba  called  Gaikwe.  Others  divided  off  from  Ikoma  and  went  to  Nata 

Ok? 

Jan:  So  the  Gaikwe  are  Hemba? 

Samweli:  They  are  one  thing.  If  you  hear  Gaikwe  in  Nata  it  is  we  Hemba,  we  are  one. 

When  they  left  there  they  entered  Tarime,  while  they  were  hunting  These  people  are 

called  Nchage  and  they  are  also  Hemba,  they  are  our  people  too,  the  Timbaru.   When 

they  —  Have  you  written  that? 

Jan:  Uh  huu. 

Samweli:  When  they  left  there  they  passed  here  in  the  land  of  the  Kenye,  the  Wahiri 

Hemba,  they  are  our  people  too,  in  Bukenye.  From  there  they  went  to  Mobasi,  the  Asi  of 

Kiagata.   When  they  left  there  they  multiplied  greatly  and  lived  a  long  time  and  then 

separated  again  and  went  to  Buhemba,  Saani  —  the  Hemba  of  Zanaki.   While  in  the 

area  of  Saani  others  broke  off  and  went  to  Butuguri  of  Zanaki.   They  are  the  Hemba  of 

Zanaki.  Again  Zanaki  B.  Zanaki  A  is  here.   They  were  hunters,  going  here  and  there  to 

hunt.  After  that  —  clan  —  let's  go  slowly  — 

Jan:  Ok,  I'm  with  you. 

Samweli:  Of  the  clans  that  were  left,  others  divided  and  came  to  Ikizu.  —  When  they  got 

to  Ikizu  others  dispersed,  small  groups  went  to  Sizaki,  Changuge,  the  Hemba  of 

Changuge,  the  people  ofMbasha  Megunga,  they  were  —  one.   Then  other  Hemba 


39  Interview  with  Samweli  Kirimanzera  and  Kihenda  Manyorio,  Kurasanda  3  August 
1995  (Ikizu  o"). 


270 

dispersed  and  when  they  got  to  Bigegu,  they  went  to  the  area  of  Mwibaghi,  where  there 

were  lots  of  animals.  After  Mwibaghi  they  came  to  Rindara,  in  Majita.   When  they  lived 

in  Rindara,  one  elder  named  Guta  built  at  the  place  now  called  Guta,  he  died  there  in 

Guta,  this  Hemba  man.  They  went  to  Kirio.  near  Guta.  Then  when  they  were  finished, 

other  Hemba  of  Rindara,  after  some  years  went  to  Majita.  That  is  why  you  hear  then 

talking  about  Wiyemba,  Wiyemba  —  they  are  in  Majita  and  are  the  same  as  we  Hemba. 

We  came  from  one  place  and  dispersed.   Then  other  youth  of  Guta  moved  to  Nyatwara 

and  then  to  Nasa.   When  the  Germans  came  there  was  a  youth  named  Kitubaha  of  Guta 

who  was  made  Mwanangwa  (headman)  of  Nasa.  ...  All  of  them  are  Hemba,  coming 

from  up  there.  Those  that  stayed  behind  there  and  then  dispersed  in  Tarime,  they 

returned  and  are  called  those  you  hear  of.  the  Ndorobo.  They  are  still  hiding  out  there 

and  even  the  foreigners  cannot  capture  them,  they  don't  pay  taxes.  Even  when  Nyerere 

ruled  they  still  didn't  pay  taxes.  But  they  eat  meat  from  the  hunt  and  honey. 

Jan:  So  those  that  we  call  Asi  —  are  they  those?  The  same? 

Samweli:  The  same  ones. 

Jan:  They  came  from  Tarime? 

Samweli:  Ehhhee.   They  returned  again,  after  coming  from  the  east  they  came  here,  and 

then  they  went  down  again,  they  went  again  to  the  wilderness  and  stayed  there.  Don 't 

you  see?  In  a  household,  one  child  becomes  a  farmer,  another  a  trader,  another  a 

hunter  —  so  the  household  that  turned  back  was  of  the  hunters,  they  love  meat,  they 

don't  want  to  herd  or  farm.  Those  who  came  down  were  the  ones  who  wanted  to  farm  and 

herd. 

Kihenda:  I  have  never  seen  a  Ndorobo  who  was  caught  by  the  Game  Guards  — 

Jan:  There  where  you  came  from  in  the  east  —  where  is  it?  Soncho  Loliondo  or  farther? 

Samweli:  I  told  you  —  It  is  to  the  east,  on  the  side  of  Kilimanjaro,  there  are  a  few  hills  . 

.  .  much  farther  east  than  Soncho.  Soncho  is  our  neighbor. 

Jan:  So  when  the  Nata  tell  the  story  ofNyamunywa  and  Nyasigonko  the  first  parents  who 

gave  birth  to  the  Nata  —  they  say  that  Nyamunywa  was  Asi. 

Samweli:  Yes,  he  was  of  these  people.  This  one,  Asi,  they  used  the  name  Asi,  but  when 

they  began  to  disperse  —  you  see  the  Hemba  were  the  ones  to  discover  fire.  Fire  was  a 

problem  then.   They  were  hunters  who  ate  raw  meat  until  they  discovered  fire.  So  in 

some  places  they  are  called  Bahemba  morero,  "to  light  the  fire. "  They  are  the  ones  to 

discover  fire.  Isamongo  oflkizu  was  a  Hemba  too.  [.  .  .]  They  shortened  the  name  as 

language  changed. 

Jan:  So  they  came  from  over  there  and  at  each  stop  left  people? 

Samweli:  They  left  groups  here  and  there  and  went  on. 

Jan:  Could  you  still  go  to  those  of  the  Ikoma  and  claim  clanship  with  them? 

Samweli:  The  Nata  and  the  Ikizu  are  one  thing.   Until  now,  even  our  eldership  ranks  are 

the  same. 

Kihenda:  Even  if  you  go  to  my  house  you  will  see  that  the  brands  for  goats  and  cattle  are 

the  same  as  the  Nata. 

Samweli:  And  he  is  the  same  as  me,  he  is  a  Hemba. 

The  core  spatial  image  of  this  story  is  not  the  genealogical  relatedness  of  a  bounded 

residential  unit  but  the  movement  of  a  group  of  people  from  one  place  to  another  across  the 


271 
landscape.  Similar  images  are  encountered  in  the  Ikoma  emergence  story  in  the  last  chapter,  of 
Mwikoma  moving  from  place  to  place  before  settling  in  Robanda,  or  the  Ngoreme  story  told  above 
of  the  lineage  of  Isabayaya  moving  until  they  found  their  home  in  Ikorongo.  One  can  identify  clan 
stories,  even  those  incorporated  as  ethnic  accounts,  by  these  core  images  of  dispersed  pathways. 

Where  these  stories  are  incorporated  into  an  ethnic  account  elders  present  them  as 
"migration"  stories.  Here  the  sons  and  grandsons  of  the  ethnic  group  founder  move  from  place  to 
place  until  they  finally  settle  in  their  present  home.  The  narrators  of  these  accounts  project 
genealogical  unity  on  the  diverse  origins  of  present  day  ethnic  groups.  These  accounts  present 
places  which  have  been  important  in  the  past  in  a  linear  narrative  as  stops  on  the  migration  route. 
However,  taken  without  the  ideological  assumptions  of  the  ethnic  group,  one  can  also  see  these  clan 
"migration"  stories  as  a  mental  map  of  a  very  different  kind. 

The  listing  of  all  these  places  and  groups  of  people  who  live  there  makes  a  connection 
between  and  unifies  seemingly  unrelated  elements.  The  lineage  idiom  does  not  seem  to  function  at 
all.  Samweli's  list  cuts  across  ethnic  lines,  economic  subsistence  patterns  and  geographical 
distance,  reaching  from  Mt.  Kilimanjaro  to  the  shores  of  Lake  Victoria.  In  this  account  Asi 
hunters  are  the  clan  brothers  of  Bantu-speaking  hill  farmers  and  lake  fishermen  from  all  across  the 
region.  Mapping  the  points  mentioned  in  the  story  would  produce  the  image  of  a  crisscrossing 
pathway,  doubling  back  on  itself  across  the  region.  How  were  these  paths  formed  by  historical 
process  and  what  kind  of  relationship  do  they  signify? 

I  argue  that  the  core  spatial  images  of  clan  stories,  which  scholars  have  often  interpreted  as 
"migration"  stories,  represent  the  regional  connections  of  dispersed  clans  in  the  past.  The  evidence 
of  historical  linguistics  suggests  that  some  of  the  earliest  ways  in  which  Bantu-speakers  used 
lineage  principles  to  organize  local  communities  were  also  used  to  maintain  claims  outside  their 
local  communities.  Schoenbrun  demonstrates  through  the  reconstruction  of  words  for  lineages  that 


272 
just  as  people  used  lineage  as  a  way  to  conserve  wealth,  at  the  same  time  the  inheritance  of  wealth 
by  lineage  members  in  other  settlements  created  webs  of  clientship  outside  their  local  residences.40 
Separating  these  two  aspects  of  lineage  or  clan  is  impossible;  the  internal  and  the  external  exist  in  a 
dialectical  tension.  The  community  builds  itself  by  boundary  formation  and  exclusion  but  cannot 
maintain  itself  without  using  those  same  bonds  to  establish  regional  linkages. 
The  Material  Basis  for  Clan  Networks 

Regional  networks  were  a  crucial  part  of  the  total  economic  strategy  as  settlers  moved  into 
the  drier  and  more  marginal  agricultural  lands  of  the  interior.  The  environment  of  the  western 
Serengeti  is  a  productive  one  in  good  years  but  prone  to  an  equal  number  of  years  without  enough 
rain,  too  much  rain  or  unseasonable  rain.  Differences  in  rainfall  patterns  are  highly  localized, 
meaning  that  one  hill  settlement  might  experience  drought  while  their  neighbors  a  day  or  two  walk 
away  would  harvest  in  abundance.  To  survive  these  fluctuations  people  needed  to  develop 
relations  of  reciprocal  obligation  with  other  people  in  a  variety  of  locations.  Herders  and 
hunter/gatherers  accommodated  these  climatic  fluctuations  through  transhumance.  They  could 
pick  up  and  move  to  the  area  where  resources  were  more  abundant  in  any  one  year.  Yet  hill 
farmers  could  not  be  so  flexible.  Although  they  moved  every  5-10  years,  they  were  anything  but 
nomadic  and  only  moved  short  distances.  Farmers  were  tied  to  the  land.  The  problem  for  them  in 
times  of  environmental  stress  was  how  to  make  claims  for  assistance  on  people  who  did  not  live  in 
their  immediate  locality. 

Using  clan,  with  its  implicit  reference  to  the  space  of  the  homestead,  was  an  emotionally 
powerful  way  of  asserting  these  claims.    People  bound  by  clan  ties  felt  some  of  the  same  sense  of 
corporate  obligation  to  those  whom  they  saw  infrequently  as  to  those  living  in  the  same  homestead 


1  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  pp.  170-171. 


273 
or  settlement.  Many  of  our  Sonjo  hosts  greeted  the  Ikoma  man  on  the  trip,  whom  they  had  never 
met,  by  saying  "we  are  of  one  womb."  It  is  clear  from  the  composition  of  the  internal  homestead 
that  this  sense  of  unity  was  not  necessarily  dependent  on  blood  relations.  People  find  it  hard  to 
avoid  these  claims  of  obligation  between  clan  members.  The  metaphor  of  the  homestead  allows  for 
many  different  kinds  of  relationships  (subordination,  superordination  or  equality)  based  on  the 
generational,  parental,  sibling  or  marital  relationships  of  the  homestead.  Kuper  also  claimed  that 
"the  patron-client  relationships  of  the  house  system"  provided  the  framework  for  much  larger  scale 
relationships  in  the  Zulu  state.41 

Although  theoretically  it  makes  sense  that  people  used  clan  ties  (in  which  they  invested 
social  capital  in  times  of  plenty)  to  make  claims  among  distant  communities  in  times  of  need,  how 
were  those  paths  described  in  Samweli's  story  created?  How  were  connections  made  across  great 
geographical  distances  and  across  ethnic  and  economic  boundaries?  Again,  it  is  useful  to  speculate 
on  this  process  by  looking  both  at  patterns  that  have  existed  in  historical  times  and  at  testimonies 
about  the  past.  If  people  moved  a  lot  in  a  frontier  situation,  they  needed  to  develop  not  only 
structures  for  organizing  new  settlements  but  also  the  means  for  maintaining  connections  to  people 
from  their  home  communities.  Clan  identity  served  both  needs.  In  his  treatment  of  the  "African 
frontier"  Kopy  toff  theorizes  that  groups  who  moved  out  in  search  of  new  land  maintained  contact 
with  home  communities,  eventually  establishing  communication  networks  over  long  distances.42 
A  Tradition  of  Mobility: 

Hill  farmers  of  the  western  Serengeti  have  a  long  tradition  of  settlement  mobility.  They 
might  move  whole  settlements  twice  or  more  in  a  decade.  Repeatedly  elders  would  tell  me,  "we 


41  Kuper,  "The  House  and  Zulu  Political  Structure,"  p.  486. 

42  Kopytoff,  "The  Internal  African  Frontier,"  pp.  7-22. 


274 
are  a  moving  people,  we  never  stay  long  in  one  spot."43  In  their  life  histories  many  elders  related 
all  of  the  moves  they  had  made  in  their  lifetimes,  including  stints  as  migrant  laborers.  Some  moved 
out  of  their  ethnic  area  as  youth  but  moved  back  again  as  elders.  Today  many  Ikoma  people  live  in 
the  lshenyi  and  Nata  areas,  with  no  plans  to  return.  Elders  stated  that  in  the  past  an  entire 
settlement  would  move  together. 

Oral  narratives  suggest  that,  ideally  at  least,  moving  was  a  decision  made  by  the  elders  of 
the  settlement,  or  in  consultation  with  a  prophet.  The  decision  rested  on  the  perception  of  problems 
in  the  home  area  such  as  infertility  and  insecurity  or  the  promise  of  better  conditions  in  another 
place.  It  was  also  possible  for  one  or  more  families  to  move  out  without  disturbing  the  critical 
mass  of  the  settlement.  One  family  might  follow  a  relative  who  found  a  fertile  new  area  in  which 
to  settle.  People  used  already  established  relations  of  reciprocity  to  gain  a  foothold  in  a  new  area. 
Elders  most  often  said  they  moved  to  find  better  farming  and  grazing  lands.  Some  families  said 
they  moved  because  of  a  number  of  deaths  and  misfortune  in  their  previous  home.44 

The  important  thing  to  note  in  these  testimonies  is  that  people  chose  their  destinations 
based  on  having  a  connection,  kinship  or  otherwise,  with  someone  who  already  lived  there.  Carole 
Buchanan's  study  of  inter-ethnic  clan  relations  in  Uganda  suggests  that  clan  affiliation  made  these 
movements  less  random  and  more  secure.  It  "maximized  the  safe  options  for  people  in  crisis  and 
influenced  groups  to  move  less  capriciously,  particularly  if  kinsmen  were  known  in  comparable 


43  Interview  with  Bita  Makuru,  Bugerera,  1 1  February  1995  (Nata  <?).  For  Kuria 
settlement  mobility  see  Prazak,  "Cultural  Expressions,"  pp.  65-89,  he  found  that  an  average 
homestead  lasted  for  10-20  years,  p.  124. 

44  These  generalizations  are  taken  from  many  informal  conversations,  the  narratives  of 
traditions  about  this  period,  the  life  stories  of  elders,  including  their  narration  of  their  parent's  life 
histories  and  especially  interviews  with  Surati  Wambura,  Morotonga,  13  July  1995  (Ikoma  ?);  and 
Mariko  Romara  Kisigiro,  Burunga,  3 1  March  1 995  (Nata  <f ). 


275 
ecological  zones."  She  maintains  that  clan  identity  provided  a  regional  framework  within  which 
individuals  could  be  more  easily  adapt  to  new  localities.4' 

Older  people  told  me  that  before  the  advent  of  trucks,  buses  or  bicycles  to  facilitate  moves 
they  carried  everything  on  their  heads  or  backs  to  the  next  site  of  settlement.  They  described 
moves  as  festive  times  when  people  called  all  their  relatives,  friends  and  neighbors  to  help  carry 
loads  to  the  new  site,  often  a  full  day's  walk  or  more  away.  If  enough  people  were  there  to  help, 
they  could  move  the  entire  homestead-wooden  house  poles,  furniture,  utensils  and  livestock— in  a 
couple  of  days.  They  often  sent  the  youth  of  the  family  ahead  by  a  full  season  to  plant  and  build 
temporary  housing.  Donkeys  or  other  pack  animals  were  not  used  in  the  western  Serengeti,  not  for 
lack  of  knowledge  but  because  of  tsetse  fly  infestation  and  a  lack  of  consistent  need  for  them. 
Pastoral  peoples,  such  as  the  Tatoga  and  Maasai,  used  donkeys  in  this  area.  Elders  simply  stated 
that  donkeys  were  not  kept  because  they  fed  and  cared  for  the  animals  without  getting  any  use  out 
of  them.  This  clearly  suggests  a  pattern  of  settlement  mobility  over  a  period  of  years  rather  than  a 
transhumant  lifestyle  following  the  seasonal  grazing  patterns.  It  also  means  that  new  settlements 
were  located  fairly  close  to  the  old  sites,  usually  within  a  day's  walk. 

A  settlement  would  be  located  so  that  residents  could  move  the  outlying  fields  (ahumbo) 
for  several  seasons  without  moving  the  settlement.  Once  they  exhausted  all  of  the  potential  fields 
in  the  area,  the  settlement  itself  would  have  to  move  to  a  new  center  of  possible  fields  and  grazing 
areas,  while  still  located  near  enough  to  harvest  the  fields  left  behind  for  another  season.  Thus,  in  a 
leapfrogging  fashion,  settlements  would  gradually  spread  out  to  their  outlying  fields  and  then  skip 
over  them  to  the  next  settlement  site.  The  Nata  village  where  I  lived  had  been  a  settlement  in  the 
past,  was  abandoned,  then  became  the  ahumbo  fields  for  a  new  village  called  Mbiso,  located  on  the 


45  Carole  A.  Buchanan,  "Perceptions  of  Ethnic  Interaction  in  the  East  African  Interior:  The 
Kitara  Complex,"  The  International  Journal  of  African  Historical  Studies  11,3  (1978):  425-426. 


276 
main  road  ten  kilometers  away.  When  the  government  recently  stopped  enforcing  its  policy  of 
"villagization"  people  from  Mbiso  started  moving  out  to  take  up  permanent  residence  in  their 
ahumbo  fields.  Scholars  have  described  this  sort  of  "migration"  as  "natural  drift,"  which  shows  a 
patterned  mobility  rather  than  random  moving.46 

Mobility  was  also  possible  here  because  of  the  relative  ease  of  clearing  the  land  for  new 
fields  and  obtaining  materials  for  building.  Because  of  vegetation  patterns  in  the  area,  people 
cleared  new  fields  by  burning  brush  and  chopping  down  larger  trees  in  the  months  before  planting. 
This  meant  that  farmers  put  little  long-term  labor  investment  into  any  one  field.  Land  was  not 
"owned"  in  the  past  in  the  sense  of  exclusive  and  inheritable  rights  of  land  use.    Settlers  used  fields 
for  a  number  of  seasons  before  moving  onto  other  fields  within  the  area  ritually  maintained  by  the 
clan.  In  contrast  to  this  is  the  system  of  land  "ownership"  by  Kikuyu  lineage  groups  in  Kenya  who 
laboriously  cleared  farmland  over  a  period  of  years  out  of  the  highland  forest.47 

If  one  extrapolates  patterns  of  mobility  in  the  western  Serengeti  over  the  long  term,  it  is 
easy  to  recognize  how  networks  of  affiliation  developed.  Over  time  the  connections  between  new, 
old  and  still  older  settlements  would  diversify  and  extend  over  long  distances.  People  would  be 
drawn  into  the  networks  of  others  within  the  settlement  as  they  became  acquainted  with  their 
neighbor's  visiting  relatives  or  friends.  As  time  went  on  the  pathways  between  communities  would 
become  denser  and  more  diverse,  no  longer  linked  to  specific  genealogical  lines.  The  particular 


46  Vansina,  Paths  in  the  Rainforest,  p.  55,  he  calculates  that  spread  of  22  km  in  10  years  is 
quite  possible  with  this  type  of  "drift".  Christopher  Ehret,  Southern  Nilotic  History,  describes 
migration  as  a  slow  and  gradual  process  of  small  groups  moving  onto  the  next  pasture  or  field,  a 
process  of  assimilation  rather  than  extermination,  pp.  26-27.  See  also  D.  P.  Collett,  "Models  in  the 
Spread  of  the  Early  Iron  Age,"  in  The  Archaeological  and  Linguistic  Reconstruction  of  African 
History,  eds.  Christopher  Ehret  and  Merrick  Posnansky  (Berkeley:  University  of  California  Press 
1982),  pp.  182-195. 

"  Kershaw,  Mau  Mau  From  Below,  pp.  22-23. 


277 
connections  of  a  few  clansmen  might  become  generalized  to  represent  reciprocal  connections 
between  specific  places,  as  they  appear  in  Samweli's  narration.    The  connections  between  places 
resemble  paths  of  communication  and  interaction  that  had  practical  value. 

The  most  common  way  that  historians  have  explained  this  East  African  pattern  of  regional 
clan  networks,  like  the  one  Samweli  describes,  has  been  by  dispersal  from  a  central  place  of  origin. 
The  pioneering  academic  histories  of  East  African  societies  based  on  oral  sources  interpreted  clans 
as  descent  groups  that  migrated  from  original  homelands  to  many  places  in  the  region,  creating  new 
ethnic  groups  by  the  amalgamation  of  many  clans.48  These  histories  were  based  on  the  collection 
of  rich  and  detailed  clan  traditions,  largely  accessible  to  students  returning  to  their  home 
communities.  They  wrote  histories  in  which  the  place-names  were  stops  on  a  migration  route- 
producing  dots  on  a  map  connected  by  arrows  and  correlated  with  a  chronology  of  generations. 

This  kind  of  historical  reconstruction  is  problematic  because  it  projects  the  image  of  clans 
or  ethnic  groups  as  we  know  them  today  moving  as  fixed  and  solid  units  across  the  landscape  from 
place  to  place.  It  does  not  take  into  account  the  possibility  of  forming  new  kinds  of  units, 
permeating  the  boundaries  of  the  units  themselves,  or  incorporating  strangers.  "Tribal"  migration 
histories  draw  on  models  produced  in  the  nineteenth  century  by  Europeans  re-envisioning 
themselves  as  self-conscious  nations  of  people  with  a  common  past  as  wandering  "tribes."49 
Narrators  easily  adapted  the  place-name  lists  of  the  western  Serengeti  to  this  migration  model  and 
many  elders  tell  their  story  in  this  way.  However,  a  closer  look  at  these  places,  the  imagined 


48  For  examples  from  the  surrounding  regions  see  B.  A.  Ogot,  A  History  of  the  Southern 
Luo  (Nairobi:  East  African  Publishing  House,  1967);  Paul  Asaka  Abuso,  A  Traditional  History  of 
the  Abakuria.  C.A.D.  1400-1914  (Nairobi:  Kenya  Literature  Bureau,  1 980);  Itandala,  "A  History 
of  the  Babinza;"  William  R.  Ochieng',  A  Pre-Colonial  History  of  the  Gusii  of  Western  Kenya 
(Nairobi:  East  African  Literature  Bureau,  1974);  and  Henry  Okello  Ayot,  A  History  of  the  l.uo- 
Abasuba  of  Western  Kenya,  from  A.D.  1760-1940  (Nairobi:  Kenya  Literature  Bureau,  1979). 

49  This  point  is  made  by  Kopytoff,  "The  Internal  African  Frontier,"  pp.  3-4. 


278 
landscapes  that  they  evoke  and  the  social  relationships  represented  in  them  bring  the  migration 
paradigm  into  question.    However,  although  historians  have  criticized  these  early  histories  for  their 
literal  acceptance  of  clan  migrations,  scholars  have  suggested  no  plausible  alternative  to  explain 
clan  dispersal,  apart  from  this  literal  movement  of  people  away  from  their  homes,  whether  in  mass 
and  unified  migrations  or  by  migratory  drift. 

There  is  little  doubt  that  migration  played  a  central  role  in  creating  these  dispersed  clan 
associations.50  The  pathways  described  in  the  narratives  were  often  literally  the  paths  that  people 
walked  back  to  known  home  communities  or  to  those  of  distant  relatives  to  obtain  aid.  Although 
clan  histories  describe  a  unilineal  movement,  the  paths  seem  to  have  been  worn  in  both  directions 
over  extended  periods  of  time.  Clan  histories  were  social  maps  that  would  enable  the  next 
generation  to  find  the  paths  that  led  to  people  on  whom  they  could  depend. 
The  Historical  Context  of  Regional  Identities 

Clan  networks  provided  the  means  for  crossing  social  boundaries  created  by  distance  and 
time  to  settle  in  a  different  area  or  gain  access  to  its  resources  and  knowledge.  These  clan 
networks  did  not  result  only  from  a  simple  process  of  settlers  going  to  new  areas  and  maintaining 
their  old  clan  names.  Depending  on  the  conditions  surrounding  their  arrival  they  might  introduce 
their  clan  name  as  a  new  one  in  the  area,  they  might  assimilate  into  an  existing  clan  as  a  new 
lineage  or  they  might  abandon  their  clan  affiliation  altogether.  For  example,  the  Kobera  clan 
among  the  Ishenyi  are  in  the  process  of  "disappearing."  Traditions  say  that  the  Kobera  people 
lived  near  the  Ishenyi  long  ago  at  Nyeberekera.  When  the  famine  came  they  did  not  go  to  Sukuma 
with  the  others  but  the  Nata  invited  them  to  move  to  Nagusi  with  the  Ishenyi.  There  the  Bene 


50  Cohen,  "Pirn's  Doorway,"  p.  196;  and  David  William  Cohen,  "Reconstructing  a 
Conflict  in  Bunafu:  Seeking  Evidence  outside  the  Narrative  Tradition,"  in  The  African  Past 
Sneaks,  ed.  Joseph  Miller  (Kent,  England:  Folkestone,  1 980)  and  Womunafu's  Bunafu.  pp.  48-67. 


279 
Omugenyi  clan  in  all  of  its  lineages  took  them  in,  or  "swallowed  them."51  The  Kobera  go  back  to 
the  hill  of  Kobera  where  they  came  from  to  make  offerings  to  their  ancestors  but  also  make 
offerings  at  the  lshenyi  ancestral  sites.  They  maintain  a  dual  identity  but  are  increasingly 
identifying  themselves  as  lshenyi. n 

We  better  understand  clans  as  a  strategy  for  asserting  useful  relationships  across  social 
boundaries  rather  than  as  fixed  and  enduring  social  units  of  equal  value  brought  by  immigrants 
and  inserted  into  a  preexisting  structure.  People  used  the  generative  principles  of  clan  association 
represented  in  the  core  images  of  the  homestead  to  improvise  their  relationships,  both  near  and  far. 
By  asserting  membership  in  a  clan  associated  with  the  clan  who  controlled  the  land,  new  settlers 
could  claim  rights  to  the  land.  The  bargaining  power  that  immigrants  had  with  their  hosts,  who 
provided  them  access  to  land  and  protection  in  return  for  clearing  and  farming  new  land,  may  have 
determined  whether  immigrants  kept  their  old  clan  names  or  accepted  membership  in  existing  clans. 
This  may  account  for  the  fact  that  clans  constitute  themselves  in  different  ways  in  different  places, 
depending  on  the  circumstances.  In  Ikizu  the  Moriho  clan  claims  pride  of  place  as  "first-comers," 
while  in  Zanaki  the  Moriho  live  as  a  small  lineage  within  another  clan  territory,  and  in  Nata  the 
Moriho  are  one  clan  among  four  founding  clans.  Units  with  similar  names  did  not  necessarily  have 
similar  forms  or  functions." 

The  simple  image  of  clans  originating  in  one  place  and  gradually  spreading  out  by  a 
process  of  settlement  mobility  across  the  region  does  not  explain  why  relatively  few  clan 


51  Eating  is  a  powerful  metaphor  for  instrumental  power  throughout  the  Lakes  Region, 
especially  of  kingship  and  chiefship.  It  is  significant  that  it  is  used  here  to  mark  the  disappearance 
of  a  clan  group  name.  David  Schoenbrun,  personal  communication. 

52  Interviews  with  Mashauri  Ng'ana,  Issenye,  2  November  1 995  (lshenyi  <f);  Jackson 
Mang'oha,  Mbiso,  13  May  1995  (Nata  <?). 

53  Moore,  Space  Text  and  Gender,  p.  1 7  . 


280 
associations  are  prominent  region-wide  out  of  the  unlimited  number  of  possible  clan  names  if  each 
father  or  mother  potentially  generates  a  new  lineage.  Some  critical  ideological  or  material  criteria 
must  determine  the  privileged  position  of  some  clans  over  others.  Neither  does  the  mobility  of 
individuals  of  particular  descent  groups  account  for  the  ideological  association  of  some  clans  with 
other  clans  of  different  names.  It  seems  that  the  pathways  depicted  in  clan  narratives  also  represent 
a  "deeper  and  more  abstract  or  metaphorical  meaning  at  a  level  where  clans  are  embodied  ideas." 
Waller  suggests  that  clan  names  might  indicate  both  historical  settlements  and  "social  pathways  or 
claims  between  communities."54 

Although  scholars  have  long  acknowledged  inter-ethnic  clan  relationships  there  are  few 
who  attempt  to  explain  these  dynamics  outside  a  process  of  migration.  Two  notable  exceptions  are 
Gunter  Schlee  in  Identities  on  the  Move  and  an  article  by  Carole  Buchanan  on  ethnic  interaction  in 
the  "Kitara  Complex"  of  Uganda."    However,  although  their  rich  data  provide  evidence  for  forms 
of  association  beyond  that  of  migrating  kin  maintaining  old  clan  alliances,  their  analysis  does  not 
go  far  enough.  Buchanan  suggests  that  the  patterns  observed  in  clan  designations  seem  to  suggest 
that  the  system  of  clans  constituted  a  larger  "contextual  framework"  within  which  people  operated. 
"Clan  membership  was  intrinsic  to  belonging  to  the  social  order  and  an  essential  feature  of 
ethnicity  itself."56 


54  Richard  Waller  personal  communication. 

55  Gunther  Schlee,  Identities  on  the  Move:  Clanship  and  Pastoralism  in  Northern  Kenya 
(Manchester:  Manchester  University  Press,  1989);  Buchanan,  "Perceptions  of  Ethnic  Interaction.' 
See  also  M.  d'Hertefelt,  Les  Clans  du  Rwanda  Ancien.  Elements  d'Ethnosociologie  et 
d'Ethnohistoire  (Tervuren:  Musee  Royal  de  I'Afrique  Central,  1 97 1 );  and  Luc  de  Heusch,  Le 
Rwanda  et  la  Civilisation  lnterlacustre  (Brussels:  Universite  Libre  de  Bruxelles,  Institut  de 
Sociologie,  1966). 

56  Buchanan,  "Perceptions  of  Ethnic  Interaction,"  pp.  417,  425,  427. 


281 

Newbury's  study  of  clanship  in  relation  to  kingship  on  Ijwi  Island  of  Lake  Kivu 
demonstrates  that  clans  were  not  archaic  forms  of  social  organization,  eventually  superseded  by  the 
formation  of  centralized  states.  Rather,  clanship  and  kingship  are  "seen  as  different  aspects  of  a 
single  larger  process,  that  is,  as  complementary  as  well  as  opposed  concepts."  One  cannot 
understand  clans  without  seeing  them  within  the  broader  context  in  which  they  functioned. 
Newbury's  work  shows  how  changes  in  clan  identity  not  only  result  from  the  incorporation  of 
strangers  and  the  movement  of  clan  members  to  other  areas  but  also  reflect  changes  in  the  structure 
of  clan  categories  themselves." 

These  changes  in  the  structures  of  clan  categories  in  relation  to  the  broader  context  renders 
the  oral  traditions  surrounding  clans  in  the  western  Serengeti  confusing  for  the  historian.  Clans 
have  operated  differently  in  at  least  two  identifiable  historical  contexts,  mediated  by  the  disasters  of 
the  late  nineteenth  century.  The  two  kinds  of  clan  narratives  investigated  here  characterize  each  of 
these  periods  of  clan  identity.  During  and  after  the  disasters  the  ethnic  groups  as  we  know  them 
today  began  to  take  shape,  with  clans  increasingly  reduced  to  isolated  subunits.  Samweli's  Hemba 
history  places  clans  in  a  very  different  historical  context.  What  then  were  the  wider  social 
identities  that  formed  the  context  in  which  clans  operated  before  the  disasters? 
Wider  Social  Identities  Before  the  Disasters 

Within  a  regional  set  of  large-scale  social  identities,  clan  was  one  of  the  few  identities  that 
crossed  boundaries  and  united  people  otherwise  divided.  People  used  clans  as  a  mediating  device 
across  various  kinds  of  social  boundaries  to  gain  access  to  resources  and  knowledge  controlled  by 
others.  Before  the  disasters  a  number  of  large-scale  identities  operated,  based  on  different 
principles  of  organization  and  function.  Some,  like  the  boundaries  between  the  Mara  peoples  and 


"  Newbury,  Kings  and  Clans,  pp.  4,  227-23 1 .  See  also,  D.  Newbury,  "The  Clans  of 
Rwanda:  An  Historical  Hypothesis,"  Africa  50.  4  (1980):  389-403. 


282 
the  Sukuma  were  marked  by  bodily  markings,  while  others,  like  the  boundaries  between  North  and 
South  Mara  peoples  were  marked  by  geographical  barriers,  and  still  others,  like  the  boundaries 
between  black-smiths  and  non-blacksmiths  were  marked  by  expertise  and  technical  skill.  Each  of 
these  kinds  of  boundaries  created  a  regional  system  of  exchange  through  difference.  Although  they 
were  marked  in  different  ways  each  kind  of  boundary  controlled  access  to  certain  kinds  of 
resources  and  knowledge. 

For  example,  we  have  already  seen  how  the  identities  of  farmer,  herder  and  hunter  created 
a  regional  system  of  economic  interdependence.  People  identified  others  by  the  ecological  niches 
that  they  occupied  in  relation  to  their  subsistence  strategies.  These  categories  corresponded  to  the 
basic  divisions  in  language  groups,  East  Nyanza  Bantu-speakers  (farmers),  Southern  Nilotic 
Dadog-speakers  (Tatoga  herders)  and  perhaps  Southern  Cushitic  or  Southern  Nilotic-speakers  (Asi 
hunters).  Even  through  farmers  also  hunted  and  herded,  in  their  regional  interactions  they  defined 
themselves  as  farmers  to  structure  their  relations  with  others.  Yet  they  also  had  to  find  ways  of 
crossing  those  boundaries  to  gain  ritual  control  over  the  land  from  the  Asi  hunters  or  to  gain 
prophetic  expertise  from  the  Tatoga.  They  did  this  by  claiming  common  clanship  with  the  Asi  (the 
Gaikwe  or  Hemba  clan  in  Samweli's  story)  or  kinship  as  sons  of  a  ritual  "father"  with  the  Tatoga. 

Western  Serengeti  people  deployed  the  kinship  idiom  of  clan  to  make  claims  to  land,  ritual 
knowledge  and  trade  items  across  all  kinds  of  social  boundaries.  We  cannot  understand  clans 
isolated  from  the  historical  context  in  which  they  functioned  as  mediating  devices.  Yet  the 
mediation  of  boundaries  by  clans  did  not  destroy  those  other  social  identities  of  regional  difference. 
People  could  claim  common  clanship  with  each  other  while  still  recognizing  their  difference. 
Samweli  explained  how  different  people  could  still  be  related  using  the  familial  idiom:  "In  a 
household  one  child  becomes  a  farmer,  another  a  trader,  and  another  a  hunter." 


283 

Clans  crossed  the  boundaries  of  other  kinds  of  social  identities  besides  those  of  economic 
subsistence  patterns.  Regionally  people  distinguished  themselves  from  each  other  by  bodily 
markings— circumcised  and  uncircumcised  peoples.  Uncircumcised  peoples  bordered  East  Nyanza 
Bantu-speaking  farmers  to  the  north,  south  and  west.    Western  Serengeti  peoples  today  define  the 
land  south  of  the  Mbalageti  River  as  the  land  of  the  Sukuma,  in  spite  of  their  settlement  beyond 
this  boundary.  They  call  the  Sukuma  Kereti  (perhaps  those  who  carry  "crates"),58  who  in  turn  call 
the  Mara  peoples,  Shashi.  We  know  that  the  term  Shashi  was  in  use  during  the  period  right  before 
the  disasters  because  the  earliest  travelers  who  had  Sukuma  guides  named  the  whole  region  on  their 
maps  Ushashi.59  The  most  salient  feature  of  this  identity  for  the  Sukuma  is  that  Shashi  people 
practice  circumcision.  The  Western  Nilotic-speaking  Luo,  who  live  North  of  the  escarpment,  and 
the  Bantu-speaking  peoples  around  Lake  Victoria,  of  Buganda  and  Buhaya,  do  not  circumcise. 
Mara  peoples  know  the  Luo  as  Gaya  (slaves),  who  in  turn  call  the  Mara  peoples  Mwa. 

It  is  difficult  to  say  whether  these  divisions  were  part  of  the  historical  context  in  which 
clan  identity  functioned  before  the  disasters.  Western  Serengeti  people  took  both  the  terms  Gaya 
and  Kereti  directly  from  the  period  of  the  disasters  in  their  reference  to  the  slave  and  the  caravan 
trades.  However,  since  elders  always  described  the  social  divisions  between  themselves  and  the 
Kereti  or  Gaya  as  related  to  the  practice  of  circumcision,  the  boundaries  themselves  may  have 
preceded  their  present  names.  In  spite  of  changes  in  cultural  practice  encouraged  by  schools, 
government  and  churches,  circumcision  remains  a  crucial  marker  of  Mara  identity  and  also  of  the 
transition  to  adulthood.  This  became  an  issue  during  the  colonial  period  when  the  administration 
brought  teachers  from  Sukuma  and  Buganda  to  staff  the  primary  schools.  Circumcised  teenage 


58  Interview  with  Thomas  Kubini  and  Jacob  Mugaka,  Bunda,  10  March  1995  (Sizaki  <?). 

59  R.  Kiepert  and  M.  Moisel,  "Victoria  Nyansa"  10  January  1896,  GM  157/1  A3,  TNA,  is 
one  example. 


284 
students  would  not  submit  to  corporal  punishment  by  their  teachers  who  were  categorically  still 
children.60  This  also  made  marriage  with  uncircumcised  peoples  more  difficult,  though  not 
impossible. 

The  institution  of  age-sets  and  initation  into  age-sets  by  circumcision  seems  to  have  been 
adopted  by  East  Nyanza-speakers  from  Mara  Southern  Nilotic-speakers  before  1000  A.D.  as  a 
means  for  learning  from  agro-pastoralists  already  familiar  with  the  dry  inland  environment. 
Circumcision  and  common  age-sets  united  hill  farmers  with  Tatoga  herders,  Maasai  herders  and 
Asi  hunters.  Yet  at  the  same  time  it  divided  them  from  other  hill  farmers  like  the  Sukuma  and  the 
Luo,  with  whom  they  came  into  contact  through  trade.    Shared  clans  mediated  these  boundaries 
created  by  bodily  markings.  Creating  brothers  among  people  who  were  outwardly  different. 

Today  western  Serengeti  peoples  also  mark  a  difference  between  themselves  and  the  Lakes 
peoples  to  the  west  by  reference  to  cardinal  directions  and  geography.  Western  Serengeti  people 
know  those  who  live  on  the  lakeshore  as  Nyancha  (including  the  ethnic  groups  of  Jita,  Ruri,  Kwaya 
and  Kerewe),  using  the  same  word  for  both  "lake"  and  "west."  The  emergence  traditions  told  by 
lakes  peoples  trace  migrations  to  their  present  homes  from  across  the  lake.  The  lakes  people  speak 
the  Suguti  languages  of  the  East  Nyanza  Bantu  family,  becoming  distinct  from  the  Mara  languages 
by  about  500  A.D.  The  congruence  of  these  categories  of  lake  and  inland  with  linguistic  and 
historical  distinctions  suggests  that  this  division  has  also  been  one  of  long  duration. 

However,  we  must  remind  ourselves  that  these  categories  of  lakes  and  inland  were 
situational  and  relational.  The  Lakes  peoples  knew  the  western  Serengeti  peoples  as  Rogoro,  or 
"the  people  of  the  east."  Yet  who  fit  that  category  depended  on  the  context.  A  Sizaki  might  refer 
to  his  Ikizu  neighbor  to  the  west  as  Rogoro,  but  the  Ikizu  man's  Nata  neighbor  to  the  east  might 


1  Interview  with  Nyamaganda  Magoto,  Musoma,  8  March  1996  (Nata  <?). 


285 
refer  to  him  as  Nyancha.    In  a  report  of  the  White  Fathers  from  the  Nyegina  station  in  1 9 1 9, 
among  the  Ruri  people,  the  priests  cautioned  visitors  not  to  get  directions  from  local  people  by 
asking,  "where  is  Bururi?"  "For  the  inhabitants  of  the  lake  will  indicate  the  mountains  of  the 
interior,  while  if  you  are  coming  from  the  east  the  inhabitants  of  the  interior  will  indicate  the 
Iakeshore."61 

In  addition  to  the  east/west  division,  the  Mara  River  divides  the  region  north  and  south. 
The  Mara  is  the  largest  river  in  the  district.  In  some  places  it  spreads  out  into  marshy  areas  many 
miles  wide.  Only  a  few  places  exist  where  the  river  can  be  crossed  or  forded  with  any  consistency. 
It  was  only  in  1 989  that  the  government  built  a  bridge  at  Kirume,  after  many  years  of  unsuccessful 
construction  attempts  and  the  use  of  an  unreliable  ferry.  The  colonial  government  divided  the 
administrative  district  of  North  Mara  from  South  Mara  because  of  the  difficulty  of  crossing  the 
river.  The  oral  traditions  collected  by  Siso  in  North  Mara  describe  one  Luo  group  returning  back 
across  the  Mara  River  (even  after  their  hosts  offered  them  land  in  the  south)  because  the  river 
would  cut  them  off  from  their  kin  in  what  is  now  Western  Kenya.62  This  geographical  boundary 
may  have  marked  social  difference  between  western  Serengeti  peoples  and  Kuria-speaking  people 
to  the  north  of  the  river. 

However,  clans  cross  both  the  east/west  and  the  north/south  boundaries  in  the  region.  The 
same  clan  names  are  found  among  lakes  people,  inland  people  and  North  and  South  Mara  peoples. 
Those  boundaries  marked  geographically  represent  divisions  according  to  economic  specializations. 
The  lakes  people  specialized  in  fishing  and  hippo  hunting  and  engaged  in  trade  around  the  Lake 


61  Societe  des  Missionaires  d'Afrique  (Peres-Blancs),  "Nyegina,"  Rapports  Annuals  No 
13,  1919-1920,  p.  353. 

62  Siso,  "Oral  Traditions  of  North  Mara;"  E  .  C.  Baker,  "North  Mara  Paper,"  July  1935,  p. 
4,  Tanganyika  Papers. 


286 
Victoria  shorelands.  The  North  Mara  people  live  on  the  higher  elevations  of  the  escarpment  where 
rainfall  is  consistently  high,  allowing  them  to  grow  bananas.  These  divisions  established  a  regional 
system  of  exchange  and  interdependence.  Yet  Western  Serengeti  people  needed  to  establish 
contacts  across  those  boundaries  to  facilitate  trade  and  to  find  patrons  who  would  give  them  food 
in  times  of  localized  drought.  Common  clanship  provided  the  link  between  otherwise  different 
peoples. 

A  final  social  division  that  seems  to  be  of  long  duration  in  the  region  is  that  marked  by 
technological  expertise-blacksmiths/potters  (Turif1  and  non-blacksmiths/potters  (Bwiro).  Today 
blacksmiths  (and  potters)  have  their  own  endogamous  lineages  but  are  incorporated  into  the  clan 
structure  of  many  ethnic  groups.   Turi  are  kept  ritually  and  socially  separate  from  Bwiro.  If 
sexual  relations  occurred  between  them  (or  in  the  past  if  a  Turi  sat  on  the  stool  of  a  Bwiro  or  if  a 
Bwiro  picked  up  a  Turi  hammer)  the  offenders  would  have  to  perform  special  rituals  to  protect  the 
entire  community  from  misfortune.  In  the  case  of  sexual  relations  the  offender  would  build  a  small 
grass  hut  and  go  inside  while  the  house  was  set  on  fire.  Then  he  or  she  would  run  out  naked  before 
it  burned  to  the  ground.  In  Ikizu,  Turi  cannot  accompany  Bwiro  to  their  sacred  sites  for 
propitiation  of  the  ancestral  spirits  even  if  they  share  the  same  clan.64  [See  Figure  6-2:  Blacksmiths 
and  their  Tools.) 


63  From  the  root  -tuli,  to  castrate,  to  hammer,  from  the  Mashariki  protolanguage. 
Schoenbrun,  Etymologies.  #27. 

64  Interviews  with  Sarya  Nyamuhandi  and  Makanda  Magige,  Bumangi,  1 0  November 

1995  (Zanaki  cf);  Kinanda  Sigara,  Bugerera,  27  May  1995  (Ikizu  0%  Isaya  Charo  Wambura, 
Buchanchari,  22  September  1995  (Ngoreme  <?);  Apolinari  Maro  Makore,  Mesaga,  29  September 

1996  (Ngoreme  cf);  Bhoke  Wambura  (Ngoreme  9)  and  Atanasi  Kebure  Wamburi,  Maburi,  7 
October  1995  (Ngoreme  <f);  Bischofberger,  The  Generation  Classes,  p.  51,  describes  the 
avoidance  of  Turi  by  Bwiro  in  Zanaki;  Gray,  The  Sonio  of  Tanganyika,  on  Sonjo  Turi 
blacksmiths,  p.  78. 


287 


Sarya  Nyamuhandi,  Bumangi,  10  November  1995, 
Blacksmith,  Holding  old  Trade  Hoe 


Blacksmith  Implements,  Sukuma  Museum,  Bujora,  Mwanza 
Figure  6-2:  Blacksmiths  and  Their  Tools 


288 

Although  the  Bwiro  seem  to  be  ostracizing  the  Turi,  elders  compared  the  relationship 
between  Bwiro  and  Turi  to  that  between  blood  brothers  (aring'a  or  amuma),  among  whom  sexual 
relations  and  theft  are  prohibited.  This  relationship  is  a  result  of  Bwiro  respect  for  the  power  of 
those  who  work  with  iron.  Testimonies  put  both  rainmakers  and  iron  makers  in  equivalent  but 
exclusive  categories.  Both  are  people  with  medicine  and  secrets.  Through  a  ritual  of  oath-taking  a 
Turi  can  become  Bwiro,  and  cross  the  ostensibly  rigid  boundary.6' 

The  word  mwiro/bwiro  comes  from  the  Great  Lakes  Bantu  root  mwiru  meaning  "farmer" 
in  distinction  to  the  balud  or  original  hunter/gatherers.  In  the  Western  Lakes  era  the  word  mwiro 
took  on  the  additional  meanings  of  client,  follower  or  subject  in  distinction  to  pastoralist  peoples.66 
It  thus  seems  that  the  East  Nyanza  meaning  of  non-blacksmith,  with  the  connotation  of  owners  of 
the  land,  was  unique  to  this  area  where  patron-client  relations  between  farmers  and  herders  did  not 
develop. 

The  social  division  of  blacksmiths  and  non-blacksmiths,  too,  seems  to  have  a  long  history 
in  the  region.  The  same  traditions  and  practices  surround  the  relationships  between  Turi  and  Bwiro 
all  over  the  region,  even  where  no  Turi  presently  live.   Turi  tell  their  emergence  traditions  as  clan 
traditions  with  origins  in  Geita,  in  what  is  now  Sukuma.  Other  traditions  describe  patterns  of  trade 
existing  in  the  distant  past  for  iron  hoes  and  salt  in  Sukuma.  Almost  no  tradition  of  iron  smelting 
in  the  Mara  Region  is  recoverable  from  historical  sources;  blacksmiths  got  raw  iron  from  Sukuma 


65  Interviews  with  Riyang'ang'ara  Nyang'urara,  Sarawe,  20  July  1 995  (Ishenyi  <f );  Silas 
King'are  Magori,  Kemegesi,  21  September  1995  (Ngoreme  <?);  Makuru  Moturi,  Maji  Moto,  29 
September,  1995  (Ngoreme  &);  Bhoke  Wambura,  Maburi,  7  October  1995  (Ngoreme  9);  Sarya 
Nyamuhandi  and  Makanda  Magige,  Bumangi,  1 0  November  1 995  (Zanaki  tf). 

66  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  p.  157;  and  Schoenbrun,  Etymologies.  #196  and  #331. 


289 
to  the  south  or  Luo  areas  to  the  north.67  A  Turi  ethnic  group,  with  its  own  territory  called  Buturi, 
now  exists  in  North  Mara;  it  adopted  Luo  speech  and  custom  within  the  last  two  generations.68 

The  distinctions  between  blacksmith  and  non-blacksmith  established  exclusive  control  over 
certain  economic  resources-blacksmiths  guarded  access  to  the  secrets  of  iron-working  and  iron 
trade  while  non-blacksmiths  guarded  access  to  the  secrets  of  ritual  control  over  the  land  and 
farming.  Yet  because  Mwiro  and  Turi  lived  together  as  neighbors  they  needed  to  cross  these 
boundaries  frequently  to  engage  in  trade  and  mutual  assistance.  In  the  western  Serengeti  shared 
clans  assured  that  blacksmiths  and  non-blacksmiths  were  never  exclusive  categories. 

Differences-marked  by  economy,  bodily  marking,  geography  and  technological  skill- 
defined  control  over  certain  resources  and  knowledge.  Clans  operated  in  this  context  to  mediate 
these  rigidly  defined  boundaries  so  that  people  on  both  sides  might  engage  in  mutually  beneficial 
exchange  of  resources  and  knowledge.  Shared  clan  membership  crossed  each  of  these  boundaries. 
Thus  in  this  context  clanship  appears  as  a  crucial  means  for  reaching  beyond  locality  to  find 
security  from  drought  and  for  reaching  across  social  boundaries  to  gain  access  to  the  expertise  and 
knowledge  controlled  by  other  groups.  As  Newbury  suggests,  clanship  existed  in  dialectical 
tension  with  wider  social  identities  of  difference. 

Yet  in  these  contexts  of  great  geographical  and  social  distance  the  probability  of  "blood" 
kinship  decreases  greatly.  How  then  were  these  clan  networks  that  mediated  many  different  kinds 
of  social  boundaries  formed  apart  from  kinship  ties?    How  were  people  able  to  establish  a  bond  of 
clanship  across  the  space  of  these  various  boundaries?  Because  clanship  works  through  the  idiom 


67  Bischofberger,  The  Generation  Classes,  p.  51,  reports  that  blacksmiths  from  Zanaki 
went  to  Uzinza  to  get  iron  heart-shaped  hoes. 

68  Siso,  "Oral  Traditions  of  North  Mara,"  reports  that  the  people  of  Buturi  in  North  Mara 
used  to  smelt  iron. 


290 
of  kinship,  we  may  presume  that  sometimes  people  developed  common  clanship  across  social 
boundaries  either  through  intermarriage  or  adoptive  kinship.  The  last  chapter  discussed  the 
possibility  that  hill  farmers  sought  adoption  into  Asi  lineages  to  gain  access  to  the  land  or  that  hill 
farmer  matrilineages  sought  husbands  among  Asi  hunters  to  gain  hunting  expertise.  In  both  cases 
the  Asi  became  "fathers"  to  the  hill  farmers  and  thus  remembered  as  ancestors  of  particular  clans. 
This  could  also  have  been  the  story  of  Sonjo  and  western  Serengeti  people  who  met  on  the  hunt. 
They  may  have  sealed  hunting  alliances  and  trade  agreements  through  the  ntemi  mark  and  through 
adoption  into  each  other's  lineages.  Blacksmiths  coming  to  a  new  area  may  have  sought  adoption 
into  a  clan  in  order  to  live  peacefully.  Disparate  peoples  literally  became  kin  and  thus  clan 
members. 

From  this  perspective  one  can  derive  a  new  level  of  meaning  from  the  ethnic  emergence 
stories.  The  similarities  between  the  story  that  Samweli  tells  of  the  Hemba  moves  and  the  ethnic 
emergence  stories  are  apparent.  Both  tell  the  story  of  the  clan  of  first  man  the  hunter  who  was  the 
keeper  of  fire.  Yet  in  the  clan  version  first  man  leaves  his  ethnic  moorings  and  crosses  cultural, 
economic  and  geographical  boundaries.    In  the  last  chapter  first  man  was  interpreted  as  an  Asi 
hunter.  Nevertheless,  first  man  as  a  Hemba  or  Gaikwe  clan  member  could  have  been  an  Asi 
hunter/gatherer  or  from  any  one  of  the  Bantu-speaking  hill  farmer  localities,  from  Kilimanjaro  to 
the  Lake.  It  was  through  the  link  of  clan  that  these  communities  could  share  expertise,  knowledge 
and  rights  to  the  land. 

Kinship,  or  even  Active  kinship  was  not  the  only  way  that  people  in  the  western  Serengeti 
formed  clans  networks  which  crossed  the  boundaries  of  other  regional  social  identities.  Clan 
networks  also  seem  to  have  been  based  on  metaphorical  associations.  Those  who  controlled  similar 
resources  or  knowledge  in  their  home  communities  associated  themselves  with  others  in  similar 
positions  throughout  the  region  through  clan  networks.  The  clan  that  gained  rights  to  the  land  or 


291 

the  medicines  of  the  prophet  controlled  those  resources  within  clan  networks.  Those  clans  who 

were  recognized  as  first-comers  with  rights  to  the  land  as  Asi  hunter  descendants  may  have  formed 

associations  with  clans  in  other  areas  who  claimed  similar  rights  and  expressed  their  position 

symbolically.    This  symbolic  association  through  clan  networks  of  diverse  peoples  controlling 

similar  resources  or  knowledge  in  their  home  communities  is  demonstrated  in  the  use  of  praise 

names  and  common  avoidances. 

Praise  Names  and  Prohibitions 

Clans  do  not  represent  themselves  as  genealogically  based  groups  in  their  praise  names  and 

avoidances,  but  rather  as  symbolic  associations  of  people  who  "praise"  the  same  objects.  Each 

"clan,"  is  associated  with  a  set  of  praise  names  and  avoidances  (emigiro,  from  the  Bantu  root  - 

gldo)."'1    In  the  past,  young  people  sang  or  shouted  the  praise  names  at  public  dances.  [See  Figure 

6-3:  Praise  Shouts  at  the  New  Moon  Dances.]  For  example,  Nata  has  four  clans.  The  Gaikwe 

avoidance  is  the  zebra  and  the  praise  names  associate  the  Gaikwe  with  Asi  hunter/gatherers, 

coming  from  Rakana,  Moturi  and  Buhemba.  The  Mwancha  avoidance  is  fish  and  the  leopard  and 

they  name  the  place  of  Muganza,  to  the  west  and  refer  to  the  lake.  The  Getiga  avoidance  is  the 

kunde  bean,  and  they  name  places  in  Soncho.    The  Moriho  avoidance  is  cattle;  if  a  drop  of  milk 

spills  they  touch  their  finger  to  it  and  put  it  on  their  forehead  as  a  blessing.  They  name  Bwiregi,  a 

place  in  North  Mara  known  for  its  love  of  cattle.  One  version  of  the  Muriho  clan  praise  names  is 

reproduced  in  full: 

We  are  the  Muriho,  people  who  honor  the  cattle,  the  Iregi  people  ofUhlsacha  and 
Tunda:  those  who  store  freshly  churned  butter  in  the  attic,  together  with  the  Iregi  of 
cattle,  coming  from  Itiyariro.   Those  who  go  to  the  fields  are  farmers,  we  took  the 


'  Schoenbrun,  Etymologies.  #287  and  #288. 


292 

branding  iron  and  branded  nine  calves  and  the  rams  complained  that  they  were  not  yet 
branded.   We  are  the  Iregi  who  praise  cattle  and  millet. '" 

The  symbolic  representation  of  things,  places  and  economies  allowed  clans  to  associate 
themselves  with  other  clans  using  similar  praise  names  throughout  the  region.  I  identified  the  same 
clan  names  and  names  associated  with  them,  in  conjunction  with  common  avoidances  and  places  of 
reference,  in  many  other  ethnic  groups  throughout  the  region.  For  example,  1  found  references  to 
the  Iregi,  named  here  in  relation  to  the  Moriho.  all  over  the  Mara  Region,  far  beyond  the  territorial 
boundaries  of  Nata.  Ishenyi  tradition  says  that  the  Iregi  left  Ishenyi  during  the  disasters  at 
Nyeberekera.  The  Kuria  Iregi  clan  has  a  lineage  group  called  the  Isenye  with  a  tradition  of 
migration  from  the  Range  hills  near  Ikorongo,  in  western  Serengeti.  Among  the  Southern  Nilotic 
Kipsigis  in  western  Kenya  a  clan  named  Rangi  takes  its  name  from  these  same  hills.71    One  could 
extend  these  chains  of  association  across  vast  geographic  and  cultural  distances. 

In  the  Moriho  praise  shout  no  indication  of  lineage-based  organization,  or  descent  from  one 
ancestor  exists.  Instead,  the  clan  praises  itself  with  reference  to  economy  (herding),  things  (cattle, 
butter,  millet),  peoples  (the  Iregi)  and  places  (Mbisacha,  Tunda,  Itiyariro).  Around  the  region,  the 
Moriho  clan  name,  and  associated  names  like  the  Iregi,  all  have  the  same  identification  of 
economy,  things,  peoples  and  places.  When  E.  C.  Baker  collected  clan  names  in  the  1930s,  he 
made  an  unambiguous  connection  between  places  and  people  names  in  the  praise  shouts  and  the 
origins  of  the  clans.72  The  eiders  with  whom  I  spoke,  however,  described  these  as  metaphorical 
associations-the  Muriho  clan  extolls  cattle  and  so  admires  the  Iregi  of  North  Mara  who  have  so 


70  Interview  with  Megasa  Mokiri,  4  March  1995,  Mayani  Magoto,  Bugerera,  5  April  1996 
(Nata  cf). 

71  Abuso,  A  Traditional  History,  pp.  83-86. 

72  Baker,  "Notes  on  Tribes,"  pp.  36-54;  Baker.  "Tribal  History  and  Legends,"  MDB. 


293 


Mabenga  Nyahega,  Singer,  Bugerera,  19  August  1995,  with  Nata  Dancers 


Figure  6-3:  Praise  Shouts  at  the  New  Moon  Dances 


294 

many  cattle.  The  word  for  shouting  clan  praise  names  is  -ibaaka,  meaning  "to  praise  oneself  (by 
formal  declaration).'"3  Thus,  nothing  about  these  praise  names  suggests  that  these  are  ancestral 
places  or  people  names. 

As  an  example  of  the  regional  distribution  of  clan  associations,  their  avoidances  and  place 
references,  1  took  the  four  clans  of  Nata— Getiga,  Gaikwe,  Moriho  and  Mwancha— and  noted  all 
other  clans  with  which  they  had  association  in  other  ethnic  groups  around  the  region  in  Figure  6-4: 
The  Regional  Distribution  of  Four  Major  Clans.  No  doubt  with  more  exhaustive  research  one 
could  fill  out  this  table  further  and  extend  it  more  widely  within  the  region  and  beyond. 

This  evidence  seems  to  suggest  that  at  another  level  clan  culture  was  a  metaphorical 
association  of  peoples  through  a  common  set  of  symbols,  rather  than  a  line  of  descent  or  a  history 
of  migration.  As  Paul  Abuso  explains,  "these  people  who  come  to  embrace  that  particular  totem 
[avoidance]  need  not  necessarily  have  the  same  historical  origin....  [they]  agree  to  accept  the  myth 
of  origin,  as  is  indicated  by  the  origin  of  the  totem  for  themselves."74    People  seem  to  have  formed 
association  with  other  clans,  who  were  not  related  by  kinship  but  by  common  symbolic 
representation. 
Resource  Pathways 

The  metaphorical  association  of  clans,  at  one  level,  seem  to  represent  economic  networks 
of  regional  trade  and  specialization.  The  symbols  of  clan  praise  names  and  avoidances  often 
represented  economic  subsistence  patterns.  The  four  clan  associations  shown  in  the  chart  represent 
the  economies  of  hunting,  farming,  herding  and  fishing.  This  pattern  seems  to  suggest  some  kind 
of  regional  system  rather  than  a  random  occurrence. 


73  Muniko  et  al,  Kuria-English  Dictionary,  p.  48. 

74  Abuso,  A  Traditional  History,  p.  143. 


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For  example,  the  association  of  the  Gaikwe  with  Asi  hunter/gatherers  may  have  been  a 
way  for  farmers  to  secure  access  to  forest  products  for  use  in  regional  trade.  Asi  hunters  came  to 
Ikoma  homesteads  to  trade  ivory,  rhino  horn,  wildebeest  tails  and  lion  manes  in  exchange  for 
livestock.  Gaikwe  clan  elders  most  often  mentioned  friendships  with  Asi  hunters.  Gaikwe  clan 
elders  said  that  the  Gaikwe  and  the  Asi  had  taken  an  oath  of  friendship  together."  If  this  oath 
refers  to  the  adoption  of  hill  farmers  into  Asi  lineages  to  gain  access  to  the  land,  as  I  proposed  in 
the  Chapter  5,  then  some  hill  farmers  and  Asi  would  have  shared  an  ongoing  clan  identity.  Or  it 
might  refer  to  the  association  of  peoples  harvesting  and  trading  forest  products.  Clan  members 
may  have  passed  on  forest  products  to  other  Gaikwe  (Hemba)  related  clans  in  the  networks  of 
trade.  It  is  possible  that  Gaikwe  clan  affiliation,  although  originally  based  on  the  adoption  of 
farmers  into  Asi  lineages,  later  became  an  important  link  in  the  regional  economy. 

The  association  of  each  clan  with  a  different  aspect  of  the  economy  (herding,  farming, 
fishing,  hunting)  may  have  developed  in  relation  to  regional  specializations.  The  clan  links  of 
western  Serengeti  peoples  with  Turi  blacksmiths  may  have  given  them  access  to  trade  with  Sukuma 
for  iron  and  salt."  Membership  in  the  Mwancha  clan,  associated  with  the  lakes  people  (Mwancha 
is  derived  from  the  word  nyancha,  for  lake  or  west),  may  have  provided  access  to  the  flourishing 


75  Interviews  with  Bokima  Giringayi,  Mbiso,  26  October  1995  (Ikoma  cf);  Mahewa 
Timanyi  and  Nyambureti  Morumbe,  Robanda,  27  May  1995  (Ikoma  <?);  Mahiti  Kwiro, 
Mchang'oro,  19  January  1996  (Nata  cf). 

76  For  Sukuma  salt  trade  see  H.  S.  Senior,  "Sukuma  Salt  Caravans  to  Lake  Eyasi," 
Tanganyika  Notes  and  Records  6  (1938):87-92;  Michael  Kenny.  "Salt  Trading  in  Eastern  Lake 
Victoria,"  Azania  9  (1975):  225-8;  Elias  Nchoti,  "Some  Aspects  of  the  Iron  Industry  of  Geita,  c. 
1850-1950  A.D."  (M.A.  Thesis,  University  of  Dar  es  Salaam,  1975). 


298 

trade  on  Lake  Victoria.77  Each  of  these  trades  was  crucial  to  the  total  economy  of  the  western 
Serengeti  and  the  means  by  which  men  with  wide  connections  achieved  prosperity. 

On  the  other  hand,  like  many  aspects  of  the  regional  configuration  of  clans,  the  pattern  of 
four  clans  and  four  economies  seems  more  symbolic  than  experiential.  Idealized  patterns  are 
characteristic  of  the  ways  in  which  elders  conceptualize  clan  associations.  For  example,  in 
reference  to  the  four  clans  traced  in  Figure  6-4,  each  represents  a  cardinal  direction  and  place  of 
origin  besides  their  association  with  economy.  The  Mwancha  clan  is  associated  with  the  Lake  or 
west,  fishing  peoples  from  the  shores  of  Lake  Victoria,  around  Mugango.  The  Getiga  are 
associated  with  the  east,  from  around  Sonjo.  The  Gaikwe  are  also  associated  with  the  east  or  the 
south,  from  the  woodland  wilderness  ecologies  rather  than  from  the  hills  of  the  farming 
communities.  The  Muriho  are  associated  with  the  north,  or  the  cattle  keeping  areas,  in  connection 
with  Kuria  or  Gusii.  Yet  since  these  directions  of  origin  take  on  an  ideal  pattern  to  represent  each 
of  the  four  cardinal  directions,  one  might  question  if  this  is  only  historical  coincidence.78 

Within  the  ethnic  groups  as  they  exist  today,  clans  also  take  on  an  idealized  numerical 
pattern.  Most  ethnic  groups  have  four,  eight  or  a  multiple  number  of  clans.  Four  is  the  ideal 
number  and  in  most  rituals  and  stories,  things  and  events  come  in  multiples  of  four.  In  Kuria  a 
word  exists  for  the  additional  cattle  that  must  be  added  if  a  three  or  seven  is  agreed  on  as  the 
bridewealth.  Within  ethnic  groups  clans  are  usually  divided  into  moieties  with  two  or  four  clans  in 
each  half.  These  perfect  structures  seem  to  be  the  result  of  conscious  manipulation  rather  than  the 


77  Michael  Kenny,  "Pre-colonial  Trade  in  Eastern  Lake  Victoria,"  Azania  14  (1979):  97- 

1 07;  Gerald  Hartwig,  "The  Victoria  Nyanza  as  a  Trade  Route  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,"  Journal 
of  African  History  11,  4  (1970):  535-52;  Margaret  Jean  Hay,  "Local  Trade  and  Ethnicity  in 
Western  Kenya,"  African  Economic  History  Review  2.  I  (1975):  7-12. 

78  Buchanan,  "Ethnic  Interaction,"  pp.  418-419,  reports  the  same  use  of  cardinal  directions 
for  clans  in  the  Kitara  complex. 


299 

accident  of  birth.  Ethnic  groups  could  have  maintained  these  ideal  structures  by  forming  new  clans 
out  of  existing  lineages,  adopting  stranger  clans  or  eliminating  clans  that  had  diminished  in  number 
or  influence. 

These  ideal  patterns  suggest  an  organizational  paradigm  for  creating  regional  systems 
rather  than  the  random  spread  of  clans  to  new  areas.  It  indicates  a  systematization  of  elements  that 
were  already  functional  in  many  separate  communities,  in  communication  with  each  other  over 
long  distances.    From  this  evidence  of  idealized  clan  structures  and  regional  patterns  that  go 
beyond  the  random  movements  of  descent  groups  we  might  conclude  that  clan  histories  took  shape 
after  people  had  already  developed  the  associations  between  communities  based  on  various  kinds  of 
affiliation  like  kinship,  economy  or  rights  to  resources.  By  joining  them  in  a  historical  account 
narrators  gave  substance  to  the  reciprocal  claims  embodied  in  these  informal  pathways.  Clan 
traditions  represent  a  process  of  looking  back  and  ordering  or  reordering  these  regional 
connections,  lineage  based  or  otherwise. 

People  would  then  have  elected  to  associate  themselves  with  the  regional  associations  that 
brought  the  most  benefits.  Communities  seeking  to  assert  an  association  with  other  communities 
may  have  adopted  the  names  and  avoidances  deemed  most  efficacious.  Clan  names  may  have 
begun  as  the  names  of  ancestors  but,  in  time,  emigrants  took  them  to  unrelated  communities  while 
at  the  same  time  outside  communities  adopted  the  names.  Historical  examples  exist  of  groups  who 
changed  their  clan  name  or  avoidance  because  of  misfortune."  They  took  the  names  of  prosperous 
groups.  Some  peoples  adopted  new  clan  avoidances  because  of  particular  experiences.  The  Sweta 
of  North  Mara  relate  a  story  in  which  a  group  of  baboons  saved  them  and  so  they  adopted  the 


'  Baker,  "Notes  on  Tribes,"  pp.  13-14. 


300 
baboon  avoidance.80  They  made  this  choice  with  full  knowledge  of  other  baboon  clans  in  the 
region  with  whom  they  would  now  be  associated.  Many  Kuria  wild  animal  avoidances  are  the 
same  as  those  used  in  the  Lakes  kingdoms  of  Busoga,  Bunyoro  and  Buganda-states  that  came  to 
influence  what  is  now  western  Kenya  and  the  Mara  Region  in  the  nineteenth  century."    Clan 
names  and  avoidances  may  have  spread  ahead  of  migrating  people.  It  may  have  been  a  little  like 
joining  a  club  or  lodge  today  where  members  treat  each  other  like  family. 
Clans  as  Pathways  of  Knowledge  and  Resources 

This  line  of  thinking  suggests  that  people  formed  clan  networks  by  metaphorical 
association  in  order  to  cross  various  kinds  of  regionally  based  social  boundaries  to  gain  access  to 
resources  and  knowledge  controlled  by  others.  Membership  in  a  clan  allowed  a  person  to  make 
claims  on  the  particular  expertise  or  resources  of  other  members.  Although  all  western  Serengeti 
people  practiced  a  similar  agro-pastoral-hunting  economy,  they  maintained  suites  of  knowledge 
that  made  each  collectively  valuable  specialists  within  a  larger  regional  system.  If  a  person  wanted 
to  obtain  a  lion  mane  or  an  ivory  bracelet,  he  would  go  to  a  Gaikwe  clan  community  where  they 
maintained  relations  with  Asi  hunters,  for  knowledge  of  cattle  medicines  to  the  Moriho  clan  or  for 
fish  poison  to  the  Mwancha  clan.  Historical  pathways  between  communities  became  a  means  to 
gain  access  to  valuable  sources  of  knowledge  and  resources. 


80  Siso,  "Oral  Traditions  of  North  Mara,"  Sweta. 

81  David  William  Cohen,  ed.  Towards  a  Reconstructed  Past:  Historical  Texts  for  Busoea 
(Oxford:  Oxford  University  Press,  1 986);  Wriglev,  Kingship  and  State:  Kagwa.  Basekabaka  be 
Buganda;  Roscoe;  The  Buganda:  Hartwig,  The  Art  of  Survival,  p.  40,  Hartwig  shows  that  many  of 
the  wild  animal  avoidances  in  Ukerewe  traced  their  origins  to  Bunyoro.  For  the  influence  of  these 
kingdoms  on  the  other  side  of  the  late  in  the  nineteenth  century  see,  David  W.  Cohen,  "Food 
Production  and  Food  Exchange  in  the  Precolonial  Lakes  Plateau  Region,"  in  Imperialism. 
Colonialism  and  Hunger:  East  and  Central  Africa,  ed.  Robert  I.  Rotberg  (Lexington  Mass.:  D.  C. 
Heath  and  Co.,  1983),  pp.  1-18. 


301 

A  person  of  that  clan  may  not  have  had  the  desired  knowledge  himself  but  would  have 
acted  as  the  intermediary  to  those  in  his  clan  who  would  know.  This  process  is  similar  to  the  way 
in  which  I  gained  access  to  knowledge  as  a  researcher.  I  could  not  go  straight  to  the  person  I 
wanted  to  interview  but  had  to  find  an  intermediary  to  whom  he  or  she  was  connected  by  reciprocal 
obligation.  Knowledge  bases  even  today  are  diverse,  specialized  and  highly  localized.  A  cure  for 
hepatitis,  the  skill  to  feather  arrows  correctly  or  the  knowledge  of  circumcision  songs  were  some 
areas  of  expertise  that  I  was  aware  of  people  seeking  out  through  these  clan  channels. 

Clans  did  not  confine  the  knowledge  that  they  controlled  to  economic  resources.  People 
also  maintained  control  over  ritual  knowledge  within  the  paths  of  clan  and  lineage.  The  Gaikwe 
clan  controls  the  major  places  of  spiritual  power  over  the  land  in  Nata,  at  Gitaraga,  Nyichoka  and 
Geteku.  The  Gaikwe  have  this  power  as  the  clan  of  first-comers  who  must  maintain  the  ritual 
relationship  to  the  land  necessary  for  the  prosperity  of  the  community.  Clan  members  hold  this 
knowledge  as  an  asset  that  guarantees  their  prestige  and  authority  in  relation  to  others  who  wish  to 
ask  for  rain  or  a  good  crop. 

Wealth-in-knowledge  is  a  concept  proposed  by  Guyer  and  Belinga  seeking  to  move  away 
from  the  wealth-in-people  model,  based  on  accumulation  and  domination.  They  suggest,  from 
Equatorial  ethnography,  that  knowledge  was  diverse,  multiple  and  widely  distributed  among  adepts 
on  the  basis  of  personal  capacity,  going  beyond  what  would  be  necessary  for  survival.  Because 
knowledge,  represented  in  individual  people  and  things,  is  diverse  and  multiple,  people  acquire 
wealth  by  composition  rather  than  accumulation  and  concentration.  A  wealthy  man  is  one  who  can 
tap  the  differentiated  knowledge  of  a  wide  variety  of  people  over  a  diverse  social  landscape.  If 


302 
"multiplicity  and  expansive  frontiers"  were  valued  then  the  social  dynamic  was  not  one  of 
domination  and  appropriation  but  of  improvisational  incorporation.82 

In  this  sense  Samweli's  list  is  an  invocation  of  the  diverse  and  singular  knowledge  and 
power  represented  by  each  of  the  places  and  peoples  named  in  the  Hemba  clan  history.  The 
process  of  naming  asserts  the  individuality  and  personal  qualities  of  each  place.  The  clan  is  the 
pathway  which  connects  these  peoples  and  places  and  brings  each  into  its  legitimate  social  context. 
Although  the  representation  of  economic  symbols  for  each  clan  avoidance  may  indicate  certain 
kinds  of  knowledge,  the  nodes  on  the  pathway,  represented  by  the  places  in  Samweli's  list,  would 
have  been  far  more  diverse  and  specific,  as  a  result  of  a  long-term  process  of  continual  change. 
New  adepts  would  surface,  new  nodes  of  power  become  actualized,  and  accommodated  by  the 
pathway  of  clan. 

Gunther  Schlee  argues  that  clans  are  conservative  structures  in  contrast  to  ethnic  groups 
that  were  much  more  flexible  in  the  past.  He  surmised  that  in  Northern  Kenya  the  same  clan 
names  had  been  operational  for  the  last  400  years.83  The  duration  of  many  clan  names  in  the 
western  Serengeti  over  a  long  time  period  also  may  be  a  reasonable  assumption.  However,  if  they 
do  represent  pathways  of  knowledge,  rather  than  only  genealogical  relationship,  the  particular 
places,  peoples  and  things  listed  in  clan  histories  are  likely  to  change  as  the  nodes  of  power  change. 
Some  would  stay  the  same  but  take  on  different  meaning  as  new  practitioners  arose.  While  the 
name  of  the  clan  and  even  its  avoidance  might  remain  the  same,  the  content  of  its  knowledge 
represented  by  the  composition  of  its  place-named  nodes  would  have  changed. 


82  Guyer  and  Belinga,  "Wealth  in  People,"  pp.  91-120. 

83  Gunther  Schlee.  "Interethnic  Clan  Identities  Among  Cushitic-Speaking  Pastoralists,' 
Africa  55.  1  (1985):  20. 


303 
Prophecy  as  the  Specialist  Knowledge  of  Clans 

Confirming  this  hypothesis  of  clans  as  pathways  in  the  flow  of  compositional  knowledge  is 
difficult  today  because  these  regional  clan  associations  have  been  considerably  neglected.  Yet  one 
clear  instance  in  which  clan  pathways  remain  is  that  of  the  specialist  knowledge  of  prophets  and 
rainmakers  whose  power  depends  upon  their  regional  clan  associations.  It  is  the  connection  of 
ritual  specialists  to  a  regional  set  of  networks  that  not  only  legitimizes  their  authority  but  gives 
them  the  knowledge  necessary  to  carry  out  their  tasks. 

Prophets,  healers,  diviners  and  rainmakers  are  some  of  the  categories  of  people  possessing 
specialized  ritual  knowledge  in  the  region.  Although  one  can  "buy"  specific  medicines,  the  power 
of  prophecy  is  always  a  result  of  clan  or  lineage  connections.  The  spirit  of  a  particular  clan  or 
lineage  ancestor  must  choose  the  person  wishing  to  become  a  ritual  specialist  and  actualize  the 
individual  gifts  and  inclination  of  the  initiate  by  directing  him  or  her  through  dreams.  The 
knowledge  base  that  this  person  taps  into  is  that  of  the  dispersed  and  diversified  clan.  Using  this 
kind  of  power  to  consolidate  hierarchical  authority  was  difficult.  Yet  these  specialists  were  the 
most  influential  in  a  society  without  chiefs  or  kings.  Colonial  officer  Baker  stated  that,  "in  nearly 
every  case  where  a  chief  was  established  in  Musoma  District  before  European  occupation  of  the 
country,  he  obtained  his  position  through  the  supposed  possession  of  supernatural  powers."84 
Baker  found  this  to  be  the  case  in  Ikizu,  a  number  of  Jita  clans,  Zanaki  and  Ukerewe. 

The  glimpse  we  get  of  rainmakers  in  the  early  colonial  period  demonstrates  that  their 
authority  was  regional  and  dispersed  rather  than  localized  and  concentrated.  Rainmakers  could 
demand  tribute  in  kind  and  in  labor  and  had  a  powerful  voice  in  the  affairs  of  the  people. 
Nevertheless,  they  were  experts  whom  people  called  on  in  times  of  need  rather  than  pro-active 


84  Baker,  "Rain,"(  typescript),  p.  4,  Tanganyika  Papers. 


304 

agents  of  authority.  Authority  over  land  and  people  was  locally  based,  in  the  ekyaro  or  landed  clan 
territory,  while  rainmakers  operated  on  a  regional  scale,  between  clans  and  even  between  ethnic 
groups.  Claims  of  a  pan-Zanaki  identity  among  the  various  residential  clans  in  the  precolonial  era 
are  based  on  the  office  of  the  head  rainmaker  at  Busegwe,  who  authorities  later  made  the  Zanaki 
Paramount  Chief.85  In  the  emergence  story,  the  Ikizu  gave  the  head  rainmaker  authority  only  as 
she  agreed  to  the  ultimate  authority  of  local  institutions. 

The  local  community  controlled  the  specialist  as  much  as  she  or  he  controlled  them.  Early 
colonial  reports  tell  of  sanctions  taken  against  rainmakers.  In  Ngoreme,  when  the  rains  were 
delayed  too  long,  the  highest  ranking  women  would  call  together  other  women  by  beating  a  drum 
and  together  march  off  to  see  the  rainmaker.  They  would  beat  and  curse  the  rainmaker  until  he  or 
she  promised  to  send  rain.86  Baker  reported  that  the  community  would  take  all  the  rainmaker's 
cattle  until  the  rain  fell.  He  would  be  placed  on  a  high  rock  in  the  sun  until  the  drought  ended  or 
his  'death  from  starvation  and  exposure  proved  him  to  have  been  an  imposter.'87  Each  community 
also  had  other  rainmakers  in  other  areas  to  turn  to,  or  their  own  sacred  places  where  they 
propitiated  the  ancestral  spirits  for  rain.  No  one  person  or  office  could  monopolize  these  powers. 
Obueabho:  Mara-stvle  Prophecy 

Western  Serengeti  people,  and  people  throughout  the  Mara  Region,  conceptualized 
prophecy  and  healing  as  the  power  of  distribution  and  disbursement,  rather  than  concentration  and 
accumulation.  The  general  word  for  prophecy,  healing,  divining  and  rainmaking  throughout  the 


85  Bischofberger,  The  Generation  Classes,  pp.  17-18,  writes  that  the  rainmaker  had  no 
political  authority,  this  was  vested  in  the  generation-set. 

86  Interviews  with  Maro  Mugendi  (Ngoreme  cf)  and  Maria  Maseke  (Ngoreme  ?),  Busawe, 
22  September  1995;  Njaga  Nyasama,  Kemgesi,  14  September  1995  (Ngoreme  ?). 

8'  Baker,  "Rain,"  p.  4. 


305 
region  is  obugabho.  This  word  is  derived  from  the  old  Lakes  Bantu  root,  -gabd,  or  "to  divide  up, 
distribute,"  usually  in  the  sense  of  one  who  gives  big  feasts  or  gives  things  away  generously.88 
Mara  languages  use  the  verb  kugaba  only  in  reference  to  the  division  of  inheritance.  Other  Lakes 
Bantu-speakers  use  this  root  in  reference  to  one  of  the  oldest  forms  of  authority  in  which  "big 
men"  divided  out  land  among  other  resources  to  their  clients  in  return  for  protection.  This 
developed  into  ritual  roles  for  protecting  the  land  through  the  office  of  the  chief  or  king.8'  The 
restriction  of  this  word  to  prophecy  and  healing  in  the  Mara  Region  may  indicate  the  importance  of 
the  role  of  prophets  and  also  their  value  in  sharing  out  power  and  blessings. 

What  abagabho  controlled  was  knowledge,  the  compositional  knowledge  of  clan/lineage 
pathways  and  their  own  idiosyncratic  learning  from  multiple  sources.  Their  power  lay  in  their 
ability  to  dispense  this  knowledge  in  response  to  the  needs  of  those  who  asked.  Peoplejudged 
prophets  by  their  efficacy  rather  than  by  their  position.  The  widespread  regional  distribution  of 
obugabho  in  its  many  variations  is  an  indication  of  its  ancient  roots.  A  consistent  feature  of 
obugabho  is  that  it  is  always  inherited  through  clan  or  lineage  and  is  considered  the  patrimony  of 
the  clan.  These  features  of  prophecy  in  relation  to  clan  are  investigated  more  thoroughly  in  the 
caseoflkizu.  [See  Figure  6-5:  Two  Ikizu  Rainmakers.] 
The  Kwava  Clan  of  Ikizu  and  the  Ulemi 

The  rainmakers  of  Ikizu  also  seem  to  have  been  obugabho-styh  prophets  in  spite  of  their 
purported  clan  origins  in  Sukuma.  The  clan  affiliations  of  first  woman,  the  rainmaker  Nyakinywa, 
present  another  level  of  meaning  in  the  Ikizu  emergence  story.  Narratives  state  that  Nyakinywa 
came  from  the  Kwaya  clan  of  the  ulemi  (chiefly)  line  in  Kanadi,  Sukuma.  Before  the  investiture  of 


88  Schoenbrun,  Etymologies.  #162. 

89  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  p.  187. 


306 


pi 
§ 


307 
a  new  Ikizu  mtemi  a  delegation  vists  the  Kwaya  clan  in  Kanadi,  obtains  ritual  items  for  the 
ceremony,  and  also  consults  with  the  Kanadi  elders. " 

Oral  traditions  from  Kanadi  confirm  this  historical  connection  through  the  utemi.  These 
narratives  relate  that  the  founders  of  the  Kwaya  clan  came  from  a  place  called  Usonge  and 
wandered  many  places,  meeting  many  people  from  Uganda  to  Ukerewe  before  settling  in  Ururi, 
Majita  on  the  lakeshore  of  what  is  now  the  Mara  Region.  There  they  ruled  as  walemi  for  many 
years  and  got  the  name  Kwaya  because  of  the  spears  that  they  used  to  prove  their  strength  to  the 
local  people.  Two  daughters  of  the  mtemi,  Hoka  and  Magawa  ran  away  with  their  brothers  to 
escape  the  wrath  of  their  father.  The  women  ended  up  in  Ikizu.  Magawa  was  married  to  the  ruler 
of  one  clan  territory  (Hunyari)  while  Hoka  was  married  to  another  (Kihumbo).  The  brothers  went 
on  to  found  the  utemi  of  Kanadi  with  the  cooperation  of  Tatoga  herders  who  already  lived  there. 
The  herders  gave  fire  to  the  brothers  in  return  for  rain,  and  provided  leather  for  making  the  bracelet 
of  utemi  investiture  (ndezi),  which  the  Ikizu  must  get  in  Kanadi.   Later  a  man  from  Ikizu,  in  the 
line  of  Hoka,  named  Chamuriho,  after  the  mountain,  went  to  rule  Kanadi.91 

The  pathways  of  Kwaya  clan  knowledge  thus  extend  from  the  Lakes  kingdoms  of  Uganda 
and  Ukerewe  to  the  dispersed  Jita  communities  of  Ururi.  The  Kwaya  clan  taps  the  power  of 
Tatoga  herders  in  the  ritual  of  investiture,  embodied  in  the  ndezi  bracelet.  The  clan  mediates  the 
regional  boundaries  of  circumcised/non-circumcised,  east/west,  herder/hunter/farmer.  The  Kanadi 
story  demonstrates  that  a  one-  way.  one-time  event  did  not  establish  the  pathways  of  clan  but  they 


90  Interview  with  Ikota  Mwisagija,  Kihumbo.  5  July  1995  (Ikizu  cf),  Ikota  is  from 
Nyakinywa's  clan. 

"  Mtemi  Seni  Ngokolo,  "Historia  ya  Utawala  wa  Nchi  ya  Kanadi  ilivyo  andikwa  na 
marahemu  Mtemi  Seni  Ngokolo  mnamo  tarehe  10/6/1928,"  provided  by  his  son,  Mtemi  Mgema 
Seni,  20/5/1971  to  Buluda  Itandala.  Thanks  to  Dr.  Itandala  for  his  help  on  Sukuma  traditions 
about  the  Mara  Region. 


308 

were  the  result  of  considerable  traffic  in  both  directions.  Even  conceptualizing  the  Kwaya  clan  as 
"Sukuma"  in  the  sense  that  we  think  of  it  today  is  misleading.  In  this  story  the  two  Kwaya  women 
who  marry  Ikizu  men  come  from  Ururi,  a  place  that  is  linguistically  and  culturally  not  at  all 
"Sukuma,"  but  closely  related  to  Ikizu.92  A  present  day  ethnic  group  called  the  Kwaya  lives  on  the 
lakeshore  near  Musoma.93  The  brothers  of  these  women  only  later  go  on  to  Kanadi  and  at  least  one 
mtemi  comes  from  Ikizu  to  rule  Kanadi.  In  fact,  the  sisters  settled  in  Ikizu  before  the  brothers  ever 
reached  and  founded  Kanadi.  The  stories  of  fire  and  water  suggest  further  the  mutual  interaction 
of  oral  traditions  between  Kwaya  and  Ikizu. 

Nyakinywa  was  the  first  in  the  line  of  rainmakers  or  walemi  chiefs  in  Ikizu.   Ulemi  comes 
from  the  Sukuma  word  for  chiefship  and  carries  the  meaning  of  the  "first  clearer  of  the  land"  or  the 
"owner  of  the  land."  The  Sukuma  ntemi  comes  from  outside,  from  the  wilderness  and  brings  peace 
to  the  land.94  Just  as  in  Sukuma,  the  Ikizu  inherit  the  utemi  through  the  maternal  line. 
Nevertheless,  in  Ikizu  the  mtemi  does  not  have  chiefly  authority  over  the  land  as  a  whole.  Rather, 
he  or  she  is  a  particularly  powerful  rainmaker  in  the  tradition  of  Mara  obugabho.  Given  the 
relationship  between  the  Kwaya  clan  and  the  various  places  in  the  Mara  Region  it  also  seems  likely 
that  Kanadi  itself  did  not  accept  a  Sukuma-style  ulemi  until  much  later.  Many  Ikizu  elders  gave 
me  a  list  of  the  Ikizu  rainmakers  in  the  line  of  Nyakinywa  as  part  of  the  emergence  story.  A 


92  The  Kwaya,  Ruri  and  Jita  speak  languages  of  the  Suguti  branch  of  the  East  Nyanza 
languages. 

93  See  ethnography  of  the  Kwaya  ethnic  group  near  Musoma,  Huber.  Marriage  and 
Family. 

94  Per  Brandstrom,  "Seeds  and  Soil:  The  Quest  for  Life  and  the  Domestication  of  Fertility 
in  Sukuma-Nyamwezi  Thought  and  Reality,"  in  The  Creative  Communion:  African  Folk  Models  of 
Fertility  and  the  Regeneration  of  Life,  ed.  Anita  Jacobson-Widding  (Uppsala:  Almqvist  and 
Wiksell  International,  1990),  pp.  167-186;  Hans  Cory,  The  Indigenous  Political  System  of  the 
Sukuma  and  Proposals  for  Political  Reform  (Nairobi:  East  African  Institute  of  Social  Research,  by 
Eagle  Press,  1954). 


309 

comparison  of  various  accounts  is  reproduced  on  the  next  page.  [See  Figure  6-6:  The  Ikizu  Utemi 
Lists.] 

The  utemi  list  of  the  descendants  of  Nyakinywa  includes  anywhere  from  eight  to  fourteen 
rainmakers.  The  written  Ikizu  history  represented  in  the  first  set  of  boxes  has  assigned  dates  to 
each  rule,  presumably  based  on  the  author's  own  estimation.  For  the  rainmakers  since  the 
beginning  of  this  century  written  accounts  exist  to  corroborate  the  dates.  Among  the  five  versions 
of  this  list  that  are  reproduced  here,  no  two  agree  on  the  names  or  their  order  before  Gibwege  (c. 
1 890)."  It  is  significant  that  this  was  the  general  time  frame  of  the  "Hunger  of  the  Feet"  and  the 
massive  reorganization  of  society  outlined  in  Chapter  3. 

The  reasons  for  the  discrepancy  in  names  before  Gibwege  may  be  that  no  unified  Ikizu 
utemi  existed  before  the  disasters.  Rather,  many  different  obugabho-styk  rainmakers  operated 
throughout  what  is  now  Ikizu.  The  stress  of  the  disasters  resulted  in  the  need,  or  opportunity,  for  a 
more  centralized  authority  and  the  creation  of  Ikizu.  Sizaki  was  also  consolidated  under  Sukuma 
chiefship  at  this  time.96  The  oral  traditions  of  emergence  were  reconceptualized  to  account  for  this. 
If  so  then  it  makes  sense  that  former  rainmakers,  from  the  Kwaya  clan,  in  various  localities  would 
be  incorporated  into  the  genealogical  line  of  Nyakinywa  to  legitimize  the  centralization  of 
authority."  With  the  formation  of  ethnic  groups,  such  as  Ikizu,  the  function  of  clans  would  have 
changed  from  that  of  diffuse  pathways  of  regional  knowledge  to  a  consolidated  line  of  power  within 


95  Other  traditions  collected  in  the  1930s  testify  that  Muesa  was  "the  first  remembered 
chief,"  (C.  1895)  Richard  C.  Thumwald,  Black  and  White  in  East  Africa:  The  Fabric  of  a  New 
Civilization,  a  Study  in  Social  Contact  and  Adaptation  of  Life  in  East  Africa  (London:  George 
Rutledge  and  Son,  Ltd.,  1935),  pp.  46-47. 

96  Bugomora,  Lumuli. 

97  For  a  recent  critique  of  king  lists  see  Wrigley.  Kingship  and  State,  pp.  27-41. 


310 


Informant  #1 

Informant  #2 

Informant  #3 

Informant  #4 

Informant  #5 

1 .  Nyakinywa 
(1815-25) 

1 .  Nyakinywa 

1 .  Nyakinywa 

1 .  Nyakinywa 

1 .  Nyakinywa 

2.  Nyakazenzeri 
(1825-35) 

2.  Wakunja 

2.  Nyekono 

3.  Hoka 
(1835-45) 

2.  Hoka 

2.  Wang'ombe 

3.  Nyakazenzeri 

4.  Kesozora 
(1845-55) 

3.  Nyambube 

3.  Kesozora 

3.  Kisozura 

4.  Hoka 

5.  Hoka  Nyabusisa 
(1855-65) 

4.  Kirongo 

4.  Nyekono 

5.  Guya 

6.  Wekunza 
(1865-75) 

5.  Kisusura 

5.  Kerongo 
(first  male) 

4.  Wekunza 

6.  Kesozora 

7.  Nyambobe 
(1875-85) 

6.  Nyakinywa  11 

5.  Mayai 

8.  Gibwege 
(1885-95) 

6.  Gibwega 

7.  Gibwege 

6.  Gibwege 

7.  Gibwege 

9.  Mwesa  Gibwege 
(1895-1901) 

7.  Mwesa 
(first  man) 

8.  Mwesa 

7.  Mwesa 

8.  Mweda 

10.  Nyakinywa  II 
(1901-1906) 

9.  Nyakinywa 

1 1 .  Matutu  Mawesa 
(1906-1926) 

8.  Matutu 

9.  Matutu 

8.  Matutu 

10.  Matutu 

1 2.  Makongoro 
Matutu  (1926-1958) 

9.  Makongoro 

1 0.  Makongoro 

9.  Makongoro 

1 1 .  Makongoro 

13.  Matutu  Matutu 
(1959-1986) 

1 1 .  Matutu 
Matutu 

14.  Adamu  Matutu 
(1986  -) 

1 0.  Adamu 
Matutu 

1 2.  Adamu 
Matutu 

1 1 .  Adamu 
Matutu 

Informant  #1  -  P.M.  Mturi,  "Historia  ya  Ikizu  na  Sizaki,"  unpublished  mss.,  1995  (Nyamuswa) 
Informant  #2  -  Ikota  Mwisagija  and  Kiyarata  Mzumari,  Kihumbo,  5  July  1995  (Kihumbu) 
Informant  #3  ~  Maarimo  Nyamakena,  Sanzate,  10  June  1995  (Kirinero) 
Informant  #4  -  Zamberi  Manyeni,  Guti  Manyeni  Nyabwango,  Sanzate,  15  June  1995. 
Informant  #5  -  E.C.  Baker,  "Notes  on  the  Waikizu  and  Wasizaki  of  Musoma,"  Tanganyika  Notes 
and  Records.  23  (June  1947):  66-69. 


Figure  6-6:  The  Ikizu  Utemi  List 


311 
Ikizu.  Other  unlikely  sources  of  obugabho-sty\e  prophecy  still  exist  in  the  Mara  region,  not 
consolidated  into  chiefly  power. 
Tatoga  Prophet  Clans 

Among  the  Tatoga  certain  clans  also  carry  the  knowledge  of  prophecy.  The  Ghaoga  are 
the  rainmaker  clan  whose  first  prophet  came  from  Lake  Victoria  and  disappeared  into  it  again 
rather  than  dying.  The  Ghaoga  go  to  the  lake  to  propitiate  his  spirit  and  their  houses  all  face  west. 
One  "house"  of  the  Ghaoga  clan,  the  Omoghira,  are  not  circumcised  to  show  their  authority  as  first 
sons.  The  Relimajega  clan  is  the  prophet  clan  who  specialize  in  protection  medicines.  Their  first 
prophet  came  from  the  east  and  they  must  return  there  to  the  volcanic  mountain  Gijisem  to 
propitiate  his  spirit.  Their  houses  all  face  east.  These  same  clans  with  the  same  prophetic  stories, 
indication  of  places  and  expertise  can  be  found  among  all  Tatoga  groups  in  East  Africa,  the 
Barabaig  of  Mbulu,  the  Burerega  of  Sukuma  and  the  Rotegenga  of  Mara.  They  also  appear 
among  the  Isimajek  fishermen  and  hunters  whom  the  Rotegenga  otherwise  despise  and  ostracize. 

Although  I  found  no  evidence  that  clanship  crosses  the  boundary  between  Dadog-  and 
Bantu-speakers,  the  concept  of  obugabho,  if  not  the  name  itself,  seems  to  be  the  same.'8  Tatoga 
elders  said  that  the  most  important  and  powerful  people  in  the  community  were  the  prophets. 
When  I  asked  Tatoga  elders  who  were  their  leaders,  they  would  immediately  reply,  'the  prophets.' 
Yet  the  power  of  these  prophets  was  the  same  diffuse  and  distributive  kind  of  power  that 
characterized  obugabho.  Tatoga  elders  told  me  that  they  moved  according  to  their  prophet.  But 
when  questioned  further,  it  seemed  that  the  prophet  did  not  "tell"  them  to  go  as  much  as  he 
"foretold"  that  they  would  go.  Another  elder  said  that  the  Ghaoga  and  Relimajega  prophets  would 
"rule"  the  Tatoga  together.  Yet  on  further  questioning  it  seemed  that  each  clan  had  more  than  one 


98  The  Ikoma  use  the  Relimajega  Tatoga  prophet  clan  and  the  Ishenyi  the  Ghaoga  Tatoga 
prophet  clan. 


312 
prophet  at  any  one  time,  in  fact  all  Relimajega  were  potential  prophets.  Their  authority  was 
ephemeral  in  nature  based  on  their  efficacy  and  the  particular  situation  that  confronted  the  people.™ 

Because  of  these  shared  concepts  of  obugabho  power  through  dispersed  rather  than 
concentrated  knowledge,  hill  farmers  could  incorporate  Tatoga  prophecy.  Traditions  from  both  the 
Ikoma  and  Ishenyi  relate  how  they  killed  their  own  prophets  when  they  failed  to  make  rain  or  keep 
away  the  Maasai.  As  a  result  the  prophets  cursed  them,  never  again  could  they  have  another 
prophet  of  their  own.100  Western  Serengeti  people  did  not  seem  to  understand  this  as  turning  over 
local  authority  to  outsiders  but  rather  the  practical  need  to  cross  social  boundaries  and  tap  into 
other  networks  of  knowledge  that  were  efficacious.  Characteristic  of  this  compositional  social 
process,  western  Serengeti  peoples  were  broadening  and  diversifying,  rather  than  constricting  and 
making  exclusive,  their  sources  of  knowledge.  Western  Serengeti  people  used  the  idiom  of  kinship 
and  clanship  to  gain  access  to  Tatoga  prophetic  knowledge  by  incorporating  them  as  "fathers." 
They  crossed  the  boundaries  that  divided  herders  and  farmers  in  the  realm  of  prophetic  power  but 
otherwise  maintained  their  difference. 

Conclusion 

This  chapter  has  explored  the  various  levels  of  meaning  in  oral  traditions  about  clans.  It 
has  gone  from  an  understanding  of  clan  as  a  bounded,  residential  unit  based  on  the  core  spatial 
image  of  the  homestead  to  that  of  the  clan  as  a  dispersed  regional  association  based  on  the  core 
spatial  image  of  pathways  of  knowledge  and  resources.  Both  aspects  of  clan  identity  must  be  kept 


99  Interviews  with  Ginanani  Chokora  and  Gejera  Ginanani,  Kyandege,  26  July  1995 
(Tatoga  o"),  of  the  Relimajega  Prophet  Clan  and  Stephen  Gojat  Gishageta  and  Girimanda  Marisha 
Gishageta,  Issenye,  28  March  1996  and  27  July  1995  (Tatoga  <f),  of  the  Gaogha  Prophet  Clan. 
Gilumughera  Gwiyeya,  Girihoida  Masaona,  Gorobani  Gesura,  Issenye,  28  July  1995  (Tatoga  &). 

m  Machota  Sabuni,  Issenye,  in  a  letter,  23  March  1997,  recorded  by  Nyawagamba 
Magoto,  ties  the  Ikoma  and  Ishenyi  curses  together. 


313 
in  creative  tension  to  come  to  some  understanding  of  the  local  meaning  of  clan  narratives.  The 
long-term  generative  principle  of  clans  was  inherently  flexible  and  adaptable,  allowing  people  to 
form  cohesive  communities  based  on  the  obligations  of  clan  members  as  well  as  regional  networks 
based  on  metaphorical  associations.  These  metaphorical  associations  operated  side  by  side  with 
kinship-based  associations  so  that  people  did  not  distinguish  who  were  "real"  clan  brothers  and 
who  were  "fictional"  clan  brothers. 

The  functions  of  clans,  using  the  same  generative  principles  inherent  in  the  core  images  of 
clan  tradition,  changed  according  to  the  historical  context.  In  the  era  before  the  disasters  clans 
functioned  as  a  mediating  device  for  crossing  regional  boundaries.  In  the  era  after  the  disasters 
clans  became  subunits  of  ethnic  groups.  As  I  show  in  the  last  chapter,  during  the  late  nineteenth 
century,  when  clans  functioned  less  as  mediating  devices,  other  social  identities  filled  that  role  in  an 
inter-ethnic  regional  context.    In  a  recent  book  on  ethnicity  and  gender,  Sandra  Greene 
demonstrated  for  the  Anlo  of  southeast  Ghana  that  the  way  of  classifying  clans  and  their  function 
within  society  changed  considerably  over  time.""  In  both  cases,  the  seemingly  rigid  "text"  of  clan 
identity  was  "read"  differently  according  to  need. 

The  picture  formed  by  clan  narratives  that  refer  to  the  pre-disaster  era  is  one  of  settlements 
grouped  within  a  territory  controlled  by  a  clan.  The  clan  that  held  ritual  control  over  the  land 
encouraged  settlers  to  come  and  incorporated  them  in  various  ways  into  the  clan  structure.  Yet 
those  settlers  also  maintained  contact  with  their  former  communities  (with  whom  they  also  had  clan 
connections)  and  with  clan  members  in  distant  communities  on  whom  they  could  depend  in  times  of 
hunger.  In  addition  people  with  similar  economic  or  ritual  specializations  augmented  regional  clan 
networks  through  metaphorical  associations.  All  of  these  kinds  of  connections  known  as 


101  Sandra  E.  Greene,  Gender,  Ethnicity,  and  Social  Change  on  the  Upper  Slave  Coast :  A 
History  of  the  Anlo-Ewe  (Portsmouth:  Heinemann,  1996). 


314 
"clanship"  operated  together  and  formed  complicated  regional  pathways  used  to  mediate  the 
boundaries  of  other  social  identities  and  to  gain  access  to  the  resources  and  knowledge  of  others. 

In  the  next  section  we  will  turn  to  look  at  traditions  of  a  more  recent  era,  not  precisely 
dateable  by  age-  or  generation-  set  but  within  the  time  period  when  people  established  particular 
rights  to  the  land  before  the  disasters  of  the  late  nineteenth  century.  Lineage  traditions,  in  contrast 
to  clan  traditions,  describe  particular  settlements  within  these  larger  clan  territories. 


PART  THREE: 
SOCIAL  PROCESS  IN  THE  MIDDLE  PERIOD  OF  SETTLEMENT 


315 


CHAPTER  SEVEN 

THE  GENERATION  OF  SETTLEMENT  (1850-1870): 

CLAIMING  A  RELATIONSHIP  TO  THE  LAND 

The  oral  traditions  that  represent  the  "middle  time  period"  of  indigenous  chronology  are 
characterized  by  narratives  that  establish  claims  to  the  land  for  certain  lineages  who  represent 
themselves  as  "guardians  of  the  land.'"  These  traditions  differ  from  the  clan  narratives  discussed 
in  the  last  chapter  because  they  refer  to  individual  lineage  settlements  rather  than  to  clan  territories. 
The  traditions  from  this  period  are  usually  little  more  than  a  list  of  place-names  occupied  by  those 
lineages.  I  interpret  these  traditions  concerning  claims  to  the  land  in  the  "generation  of  settlement" 
alongside  other  evidence  to  form  tentative  hypotheses  about  settlement  patterns  in  the  nineteenth 
century:  on  what  social  basis  settlements  were  formed,  how  new  settlements  were  established,  and 
how  new  settlers  were  incorporated. 

In  this  chapter  I  provide  a  reinterpretation  of  place-name  lists  in  oral  traditions  which  are 
commonly  understood  as  stops  on  a  migration  route  or  as  mythical  places.  1  argue  that  these 
places  represent  a  long  time  period  collapsed  into  memories  about  one  generation  of  ancestors  just 
before  the  period  of  disasters  who  are  responsible  for  maintaining  a  relationship  to  the  land  by 
mediating  the  dangerous  forces  of  the  wilderness.  Individual  lineages  who  have  connections  to 
specific  places  that  they  no  longer  occupy,  preserve  oral  traditions  about  the  places  and  perform 


'  See  this  concept  in  J.  M.  Schoffeleers,  ed„  Guardians  of  the  Land:  Essays  on  Central 
African  Territorial  Cults  (Gwelo,  Zimbabwe:  Mambo  Press,  1 978);  and  Gregory  Maddox,  James 
Giblin  and  Isaria  N.  Kimambo,  eds.,  Custodians  of  the  Land:  Ecology  and  Culture  in  the  History 
of  Tanzania  (London:  James  Currey,  1996).  Also  on  territorial  cults  see  J.  Matthew  Schoffeleers, 
River  of  Blood:  The  Genesis  of  a  Martyr  Cult  in  Southern  Malawi,  c.  A.D.  1600  (Madison: 
University  of  Wisconsin  Press,  1992. 

316 


317 
rituals  there  as  representatives  of  "first-comers,"  those  with  ritual  authority  over  the  land.  Western 
Serengeti  people  claim  a  ritual  relationship  to  the  land  by  peopling  it  with  their  ancestors,  rather 
than  occupying  or  "owning"  the  land. 

The  places-name  lists  of  oral  tradition  represent  former  settlements  of  people  organized  by 
the  idiom  of  kinship,  yet  attracted  to  these  settlements  by  the  patronage  of  prosperous  men.  People 
who  were  connected  to  each  other  by  their  relationship  to  the  land,  through  ancestral  spirits  who 
guarded  the  land,  used  the  homestead  model  to  represent  the  relationship  between  members  of  one 
settlement-as  coming  out  of  the  same  "gateway"  or  living  in  the  same  "house."  Mechanisms  were 
in  place  to  incorporate  strangers  as  "native  born"  where  inclusiveness  was  necessary  to  make  use  of 
extensive  land  resources.  The  settlements  positioned  themselves  within  a  wider  constellation  of 
multiple  and  overlapping  social  networks  that  radiated  out  from  these  fixed  and  knowable  points  on 
the  landscape. 

The  Spaces  of  Important  Places 

The  narrative  process  has  reduced  oral  traditions  about  the  middle  period  of  time  in 
indigenous  chronology  to  their  core  spatial  images,  representing  social  processes  as  place-names. 
Historians  interested  in  a  locally  grounded  interpretation  of  the  past  must  therefore  investigate 
these  named  places  because  they  are  the  idioms  through  which  narratives  convey  knowledge  about 
the  past.  The  task  of  translating  local  representations  of  the  past  into  academic  historical 
categories  requires  the  translator  to  emphasize  the  cultural  meaning  of  place  and  space. 
Settlement  Site  Lists 

After  telling  the  emergence  story,  elders  often  immediately  proceeded  to  recite  a  list  of 
place-names,  representing  the  time  after  first  man  and  first  woman  and  their  children.  For  ethnic 
groups  with  "migration"  stories  place-names  from  this  time  period  formed  the  later  part  of  the  list 
of  migration  stops,  including  known  and  local  places.  In  Nata,  where  migration  histories  are  not 


318 

told,  the  place-names  refer  to  abandoned  settlement  sites.  In  Ikizu,  where  many  in-migrating 

groups  have  come  together,  the  list  of  place-names  refers  to  the  places  where  different  immigrants 

settled  or  originated.  This  is  an  example  from  the  Nata: 

We  are  the  people  ofGilaraga  and  Mochuri,  Rakana  and  Moteri,  Sang'anga  and 
Kyasigela,  Torogoro  and  Site,  Magita  and  Wamboye.2 

Although  similar  lists  of  place-names  occupy  an  essential  place  in  the  corpus  of  oral 
tradition  throughout  Africa,  scholars  have  not  often  taken  the  cultural  meaning  of  these  places 
seriously  in  their  own  representations  of  the  past.  Many  anthropologists  have  assumed  that  these 
are  mythical  places  and  so  treat  them  symbolically.  Others  recognize  that  they  are  known  places, 
but  argue  that  naming  them  serves  primarily  to  validate  present  claims  to  land  or  to  convey  a  sense 
of  immediacy  and  validity  to  the  text.3  Yet  elders  in  the  western  Serengeti  do  not  understand  the 
place-name  lists  in  the  same  way  that  they  understand  the  places  of  mythical  origin  or  emergence. 
Each  are  the  product  of  the  history  and  self-understanding  of  a  particular  social  group.  The 
ecological  and  gendered  spaces  of  frontier  hill  farmers,  the  places  marking  the  dispersed  pathways 
of  clan  knowledge,  and  the  ancestral  places  of  lineages  all  represent  histories  about  very  different 
subjects.  However,  a  literal  interpretation  of  place-name  lists  as  migration  routes  has  also  led  to 
historical  anachronisms,  as  were  discussed  in  the  last  chapter. 

The  settlement  site  or  place-name  lists  that  represent  the  middle  period  of  indigenous 
chronology  have  a  different  provenance  from  the  clan  "migration"  stories  to  which  narrators  often 
append  them.  The  social  basis  for  the  "migration"  traditions  presented  in  the  last  chapter  are  clans, 
while  the  social  basis  for  the  settlement  site  lists  are  lineages.  As  1  argued  in  the  last  chapter, 


2  Interview  with  Megasa  Mokiri,  Motokeri,  4  March  1994  (Nata  a"). 

3  See  for  example  the  analysis  of  T.O.  Beidelman,  Moral  Imagination  in  Kaguru  Modes  of 
Thought (Bloomington:  Indiana  University  Press,  1986;  reprinted.,  Washington:  Smithsonian 
Institution  Press,  1993),  pp.  67-83,. 


319 
lineages  and  clans  are  very  different  kinds  of  social  identities,  although  narrators  present  them  both 
within  an  idiom  of  kinship  ideology.  Both  are  flexible  ideologies  that  can  be  used  in  different  ways 
in  different  contexts.  Lineage,  like  clans,  do  not  fall  into  a  neat  order  of  segmentation.  The  last 
chapter  presented  evidence  for  the  hypothesis  that  clan  traditions  represent  long-term  generative 
principles  in  the  region.  However,  elders  represent  the  settlement  site  lists  preserved  by  lineages  as 
dating  to  three  to  five  generation  ago,  conveying  the  histories  of  known  ancestors  who  are  still 
actively  involved  in  the  life  of  the  community. 
Walking  the  Places 

Many  of  the  elders  who  recited  lists  of  place-names  were  anxious  that  1  visit  those  sites.  I 
gained  additional  insight  into  the  cultural  meaning  of  place-name  lists  by  going  to  these  places  and 
walking  over  them  with  elders  who  knew  their  histories.  While  visiting  past  settlemet  places  elders 
spontaneously  told  other  related  stories  and  identified  the  socially  significant  elements  in  the 
landscape-each  rock  outcropping,  hill  and  stream  with  its  own  history.  Places  serve  as  mnemonic 
devices  to  remind  men  of  the  stories  behind  them.  The  land  is  a  "text"  of  history  and  walking  over 
it  with  the  elders  who  tell  their  stories  is  an  act  of  "reading"  the  past.  As  long  as  people  remember 
these  places  they  will  also  remember  the  ancestors  and  their  histories.4 

The  ancestors  claimed  by  specific  lineages  dwell  at  these  places.  While  elders  identify  and 
tell  stories  about  many  hundreds  of  places  only  a  few  appear  in  the  list  of  place-names  in  the 
historical  narrative.  Those  places  are  most  often  either  emisambwa  sites,  places  where  spirits  of 


4  In  much  the  same  way  Ranger  describes  pilgrimage  places  in  Zimbabwe,  Terence 
Ranger,  "Taking  Hold  of  the  Land:  Holy  Places  and  Pilgrimages  in  Twentieth-Century 
Zimbabwe,"  Past  and  Present  1 1 7  (November  1 987):  1 58-1 94.  For  a  similar  approach  outside  of 
Africa  see  Keith  H.  Basso,  Western  Apache  Language  and  Culture:  Essays  in  Linguistic 
Anthropology  (Tucson:  University  of  Arizona  Press,  1990). 


320 
ancestors  who  have  power  over  the  land  reside,  or  they  may  also  be  ebimenyo  sites,  places  where 
important  settlement  sites  of  the  past  were  located. 
Mapping  the  Places 

The  exercise  of  walking  the  places  showed  me  that  place-name  lists  refer  to  known  and 
identifiable  places,  rather  than  to  the  mythical  or  forgotten  places  of  the  emergence  stories  of  ethnic 
groups  or  clans.  Men  who  have  a  thorough  knowledge  of  local  geography  from  hunting,  trading  or 
raiding  trips,  can  locate  these  now-uninhabited  places  in  a  wilderness  without  roads  or  maps. 
Western  Serengeti  people  remember  these  places  because  they  mark  the  graves  of  ancestors, 
ancestors  whose  spirits  still  reside  there  and  who  are  still  intimately  involved  with  the  workings  of 
present  day  society. 

All  these  place-names,  even  those  from  groups  with  migration  stories  from  Sonjo  (Ikoma, 
Ishenyi,  Ngoreme),  can  be  located  within  the  western  Serengeti.  Ishenyi  tradition  provides  some 
evidence  that  Regata,  the  place  often  referred  to  as  the  Sonjo  origin  place  for  many  western 
Serengeti  groups,  was  found  within  what  is  now  the  Mara  Region.  The  place-names  refer 
primarily  to  important  social  processes  within  the  western  Serengeti  rather  than  to  migration 
stories,  although  people  were  surely  moving.  This  chapter  discusses  the  "generation  of  settlement" 
without  positing  massive  migrations  from  anywhere  else.    [See  Figure  7-1 :  Nineteenth  Century 
Settlement  Sites.] 

Although  elders  list  place-names  of  the  "generation  of  settlement"  as  discrete  sites 
associated  with  their  own  ethnic  group,  mapping  the  sites  on  a  geographical  grid  reveals  a  pattern 
of  settlement  that  invites  a  different  explanation.  All  these  sites  are  hill  settlements,  demonstrating 
similar  subsistence  patterns  to  those  described  in  Chapter  5.  They  are  located  farther  to  the  west 
than  the  emergence  sites.  The  sites  named  by  each  ethnic  group  situate  themselves  somewhat 
territorially.  Yet  the  sites  of  each  ethnic  group  are  also  located  side  by  side  with,  and  often  closer 


321 


19th  Century  Settlement  Sites 
of  the  Western  Serengeti 


O  Nata 

•  Ikoma 

O  Isenye 

•  Ngoreme 

®  Ikizu 

Peter  Shetler 

Dove  Creek  Information  Services 

IDRISI  and  Macromedia  Freehand 


30  km 


Figure  7-1 :  Nineteenth  Century  Settlement  Sites  of  the  Western  Serengeti 


322 
to,  the  sites  of  other  ethnic  groups  than  to  other  sites  of  their  own  group.  This  patterning  could  be 
read  to  suggest  that  if  ethnic  groups  existed  at  all  they  did  not  control  a  bounded  and  exclusive 
territory.  Their  proximity  to  each  other  as  neighbors  suggests  a  pattern  of  interaction,  rather  than 
isolation,  between  people  who  now  claim  and  maintain  different  ethnic  identities.  Different  ethnic 
groups  claim  some  of  the  same  settlement  sites,  such  as  Mangwesi  Mountain,  indicating  that  the 
distinction  of  ethnic  groups  did  not  exist  at  all  or  that  the  site  was  contested. 

Although  Nata  elders  often  claimed  that  they  were  reciting  the  place-names  in 
chronological  sequence  of  settlement  by  one  group  moving  from  place  to  place,  this  ordering  may 
refer  to  concepts  of  space  rather  than  of  time.  When  asked  to  name  the  places  in  a  certain  area, 
elders  ordered  place-names  linearly,  as  they  would  appear  sequentially  on  a  journey.  Thus  when 
Nata  elders  list  place-names  sequentially  from  east  to  west  one  must  question  whether  these  are 
successive  settlements  in  time  or  in  space.    While  some  elders  list  these  names  in  a  sequential  order 
of  settlement,  others  simply  list  all  of  the  places  without  order.  I  suggest  that  the  ordering  of  place- 
names  is  spatial  rather  than  temporal  and  that  narrators  conflate  all  of  the  settlements  into  the  time 
of  one  generation  just  before  the  disasters.  Elders  order  the  settlement  site  names  in  this  way  not 
because  they  are  sequential  settlements  in  time  but  because  that  is  how  people  remember  their 
sequence  on  a  journey.  Memories  are  attached  to  a  place  rather  than  to  a  time  sequence. 
Dating  the  Places 

If  the  ordering  of  place-name  lists  is  not  a  temporal  sequence  but  rather  a  spatial  sequence 
how  might  the  historian  locate  places  from  lists  of  place-names  in  time?  Narratives  link  the  place- 
names  and  their  landscapes  to  a  specific  period  of  time,  known  locally  as  the  "generation  of 
settlement"  (in  Nata  the  word  for  settlement,  ebimenyo,  comes  from  the  verb,  komenya,  "to  build"). 
This  is  the  period  of  time  that  Vansina  refers  to  as  the  "floating  gap."  It  has  been  a  particularly 
difficult  period  for  historians  to  analyze  because  of  the  cryptic  nature  of  these  traditions, 


323 
"telescoping"  a  long  period  of  time  into  one  generation.  Vansina  explains  this  "gap"  by  the 
inability  to  keep  chronology  after  a  certain  time  depth,  depending  on  the  nature  of  the  social 
structure  and  its  way  of  reckoning  time.5    Although  this  has  validity,  what  is  more  important  is 
understanding  why  this  particular  set  of  place-names  and  the  "generation"  to  which  it  refers 
represents  the  period  of  settlement  in  the  western  Serengeti. 

Place-names  from  the  lists  of  oral  tradition  represent  the  period  during  which  the  land  was 
settled  by  telescoping  a  long  period  of  time  into  the  memories  about  the  generation  just  before  the 
late  nineteenth  century  disasters.  Although  many  elders  could  not  put  a  relative  date  to  the 
settlements  (they  assured  me  it  all  had  happened  a  very  long  time  ago)  others  identified  them  as 
having  happened  in  the  time  of  the  generation  of  the  Abamaina,  Amatara,  or  Amasura.  These  are 
among  the  earliest  generation-set  names  that  people  remember  in  connection  with  specific  ancestors 
and  the  last  generation  before  the  massive  social  transformations  of  the  late  nineteenth  century. 
They  probably  date  to  between  1 850  and  1 870.  In  this  area  cycling  names  for  both  age-  and 
generation-set  are  in  use  today.  Yet  narratives  usually  refer  to  these  settlement  sites  in  relation  to  a 
generation-set,  rather  than  an  age-set.  This  leads  me  to  think  that  they  refer  to  settlements  before 
the  late  nineteenth  century  disasters  when  the  way  of  calculating  time  shifted,  particularly  in  the 
east,  from  one  based  on  generation-sets  to  one  based  on  age-sets.6 

The  social  processes  referred  to  in  these  narratives  about  one  generation  just  before  the 
disasters  operated  over  a  long  period  of  time.  We  know  from  the  evidence  cited  in  Chapter  4  that 
hill  farmers  had  settled  in  this  area  before  1000  A.D.  However,  these  oral  traditions  tell  of  the 
generation  of  ancestors  in  living  memory  who  established  claims  to  the  land  that  everyone  still 


5  Vansina,  Oral  Traditions  as  History,  p.  23. 

6  This  shift  in  the  reckoning  of  time  from  generation-set  to  age-set  is  argued  more  fully  in 
Chapter  9. 


324 
recognizes.    Although  settlers  had  sparsely  populated  the  land  before,  people  preserve  the  memory 
of  "the  generation  of  settlement"  because  it  represents  direct  historical  continuity  with  those  living 
on  the  land  now.  The  particular  place-names  in  the  lists  recited  by  elders  today  seem  to  refer  to 
remembered  people  and  places  just  before  the  period  of  disasters,  while  representing  social 
processes  of  much  longer  duration. 

Because  social  identity  changed  so  drastically  during  the  late  nineteenth  century  disasters, 
people  preserve  only  unconnected  bits  of  knowledge  from  the  period  immediately  before  the 
disasters.  Still,  the  survivors  of  the  disasters  did  pass  on  the  knowledge  preserved  by  lineages  who 
had  obligations  to  their  ancestors  at  specific  sites  on  the  land.  The  history  of  the  period  before  the 
disasters,  like  these  points  on  the  landscape,  appears  as  unconnected  images  of  life  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  with  no  master  narrative. 

The  generation  of  settlement  represents  the  first  settlements  of  people  whom  western 
Serengeti  people  identify  as  lineage  ancestors  and  who  thus  possess  the  power  in  present  day  life 
and  historical  imagination  to  provide  protection  and  security  for  the  living.  People  do  not  propitiate 
the  spirits  of  first  man  and  first  woman  in  the  emergence  stories,  nor  do  they  remember  their 
graves.'  Clan  founders,  too,  have  no  known  graves  nor  do  they  have  power  to  influence  events  in 
the  present.  The  generation  of  settlement  is  the  first  generation  that  narrators  remember  by  place 
and  thus  by  name.  Those  ancestors  are  a  living  presence,  with  their  own  demands  and  obligations, 
among  western  Serengeti  peoples  today.  This  generation  is  responsible  for  preserving  the  health  of 
the  land  and  its  people. 


7  The  exception  to  this  is  the  grave  of  Nyakinywa  as  first  woman  of  the  Ikizu.  The 
reformulation  of  this  origin  story  in  the  late  nineteenth  century  was  explained  in  Chapters  4  and  6. 


325 
The  Living  Dead 

The  dead  are  a  part  of  the  community  and  their  descendants  must  maintain  relationships  to 
them  with  as  much  care  as  they  give  to  relationships  with  living  people  and  with  the  same 
possibilities  for  benefit  and  obligation.  The  word  for  the  burial  in  Nata  is  kutindeka  or  "to  store." 
A  deceased  person  has  not  gone  away  but  simply  taken  on  a  different  form.  The  ancestors  buried 
at  the  sites  listed  in  these  traditions  occupy  a  special  place  as  guardians  of  the  land  and  the  living 
must  appeal  to  them  for  rain,  fertility  and  protection. 
Obligations  to  the  Dead 

Western  Serengeti  people  bury  their  dead  in  the  homestead  and  abandon  the  graves  when 
they  leave  the  settlement.  Families  or  lineages  do  not  maintain  common  burial  plots  through  the 
generations.  People  are,  however,  expected  to  remember  the  grave-sites  of  their  ancestors  for  at 
least  two  to  three  generations,  to  clean  their  graves  and  offer  gifts  there  at  least  once  a  year 
(kusengera,  meaning  "to  beseech"  in  Nata),  often  on  the  anniversary  of  death.  They  must  return 
often  to  old  settlement  sites  to  meet  their  obligations. 

Numerous  conversations  over  the  course  of  my  research  convinced  me  that  should  a 
mother  or  father  on  their  deathbed  administer  a  curse  on  their  children,  this  curse  could  have 
consequences  in  the  children's  lives.  I  heard  many  stories  of  people  who  refused  to  go  to  their 
father's  death  bed  because  they  were  too  busy  or  did  not  do  what  their  father  asked  before  he  died. 
Later  their  children  began  to  get  sick  and  die,  they  lost  their  cattle  and  wives,  or  their  business  went 
bankrupt.  A  father's  blessing  brings  prosperity,  good  crops,  many  children  and  cattle,  a  thriving 
business  and  a  large  home  full  of  people.  The  foolish  son  does  not  take  this  power  seriously. 

People  also  remember  their  ancestors  by  naming  children  after  a  deceased  grandparent. 
[See  Figure  7-2:  Respect  for  the  Ancestors.]  Until  very  recently  parents  would  not  give  their  child 
the  name  of  a  living  person,  because  the  ancestor  lives  through  the  child.  The  child  acquires  the 


326 


Granddaughters  named  after  Nyangere  Bukaya,  at  her  grave,  Mbiso 


Sons  of  Magoto  Mossi  Magoto:  Faini,  Nyamaganda,  Joseph  Sillery,  Mayani,  Mossi, 
Nyawagamba,  Manyika,  at  their  father's  grave,  Mbiso  on  the  anniversary  of  his  death. 


Figure  7-2:  Respect  for  Ancestors 


327 
characteristics  and  personality  of  the  person  he  or  she  was  named  after,  and  is  treated  as  that 
person  reborn.  When  a  child  is  born  parents  or  grandparents  on  either  side  often  have  dreams  in 
which  an  ancestor  appears  to  them  and  expresses  the  desire  to  have  the  child  named  after  them  or 
they  see  that  their  child  resembles  a  deceased  grandmother. 

Western  Serengeti  people  experience  the  presence  of  the  ancestors  in  the  community  by 
their  frequent  communication  with  the  living  in  dreams.  If  the  family  no  longer  uses  an  ancestor's 
name  or  forgets  his  or  her  grave  site,  the  spirit  passes  into  a  more  dangerous  realm  of  "loose" 
spirits,  without  community  moorings."  When  problems  occur  in  the  homestead,  such  as  illness  or 
death,  the  head  of  the  homestead  consults  a  diviner,  who  often  diagnoses  the  misfortune  as  the 
result  of  forgetting  the  ancestors. 

The  word  for  the  ancestral  spirits  of  a  family  in  the  western  Serengeti  is  simply 
omokoro/abakoro  (derived  from  the  word  for  "big"  or  "elder")  or  ekehwe/ebehwe  ("ghosts"  or 
"shadows").  Other  Lakes  Bantu  speakers  refer  to  the  spirits  of  the  ancestors  by  using  the  root  - 
zimu  (from  -dpn,"be  lost,  extinguished").  These  are  the  homestead  ancestral  spirits  for  whom  a 
small  spirit  hut  is  constructed  and  whose  propitiation  is  handled  by  the  head  of  the  homestead. 
Peoples  of  the  western  Serengeti  do  not  normally  build  spirit  huts  in  the  homestead  (exceptions 
may  be  healers  and  diviners).' 
Emisambwa:  Guardians  of  the  Land 

Yet  the  spirits  connected  to  many  of  the  important  places  named  in  oral  traditions  of  the 
generation  of  settlement  are  different  from  the  abakoro  or  ancestors  in  general.  They  are  the 


8  See  M.  J.  Ruel,  "Religion  and  Society  Among  the  Kuria  of  East  Africa."  Africa  (London) 
35,3  (July  1965):  295-306,  for  outline  of  different  kinds  of  spirits  among  the  Kuria. 

This  information  about  spirits  comes  from  innumerable  discussions  but  in  particular  an 
interview  with  Kinanda  Sigara  (Ikizu  <?),  Nyawagamba  Magoto  (Nata  d-)  (who  were  my 
assistants),  Chamuriho  (Ikizu  cf)  and  Mahiti  Kwiro  (Ikizu  cr),  Mchang'oro,  19  January  1996. 


328 

erisambwa/  emisambwa  spirits,  spirits  of  important  ancestors,  often  rainmakers  or  prophets,  who 
are  buried  at  the  named  sites  where  their  lineages  still  make  offerings  to  them.  These  spirits  are 
always  connected  to  the  land  and  people  propitiate  them  for  help  in  resolving  community  problems 
such  as  rain,  protection  and  fertility.  Although  ancestral  graves  (abakoro)  are  usually  located  in 
identifiable  places  and  the  spirits  dwell  in  those  spots,  they  have  no  efficacy  over  the  land  itself 
unless  they  are  emisambwa.  People  consider  the  spirits  of  ancestors  who  were  efficacious  in  life  as 
rainmakers  or  prophets  as  emisambwa:  those  to  whom  the  living  will  appeal  for  assistance. 
Nevertheless,  not  all  important  prophets  or  rainmakers  become  emisambwa. 

Erisambwa/ emisambwa  in  Mara  languages  derives  from  a  Great  Lakes  Bantu  root,  samb- 
(ua),  meaning  "territorial  or  nature  spirit,  which  protects  first  comers  (often  represented  as  an 
agnatic  group)."10  In  other  Lakes  Bantu  languages  it  means  variously:  "nature  spirits  of  rivers," 
"spirits  attached  to  larger  lineage  groups  and  to  areas  associated  with  these  groups,"  "woods- 
dwelling  spirit,"  (North  Nyanza),  "clan  spirits  and  habitat  for  them-wild  animals,  rivers,  etc.,"  and 
the  "protective  spirit  of  a  settlement"  (Rutara).  Both  Kirwen,  who  interviewed  many  diviners  in 
Luo  and  Zanaki  areas  of  the  Mara  Region,  and  Ruel,  who  worked  with  the  Kuria,  interpret 
emisambwa  (abasambwa  in  Kuria)  as  forgotten  and  potentially  dangerous,  malevolent  spirits." 
The  western  Serengeti  elders  with  whom  I  spoke  consistently  referred  to  the  emisambwa  as 
powerful  but  none-the-less  beneficent  spirits,  while  the  few  Kuria  interviews  that  I  did  confirmed 

Ruel's  assessment.  In  other  parts  of  the  Lakes  Region  emisambwa  can  also  be  malevolent  spirits.12 



10  Schoenbrun,  Etymologies.  #347;  See  discussion  of  spirits  in  Chapter  5  and  6  of 
Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place:  This  substantive  meaning  was  itself  derived  from  a  verb  meaning  "to 
judge"  or,  possibly,  "to  grant  blessing,"  found  more  widely  in  Savannah  Bantu. 

"  Ruel,  "Religion  and  Society,"  pp.  296.  Michael  Kirwen,  The  Missionary  and  the 
Diviner  (Maryknoll,  NY:  Orbis  Books,  1987),  p.  6 

12  Schoenbrun,  Etymologies.  #347. 


329 

The  shift  in  meaning  among  peoples  of  the  western  Serengeti,  from  territorial,  nature  or 
malevolent  spirits  to  ancestral  spirits  which  guard  the  land,  seems  to  suggest  a  particular  kind  of 
relationship  to  the  land,  dating  to  as  early  as  five  hundred  years  ago  when  North  and  South  Mara 
speakers  separated  from  each  other.  Western  Serengeti  people  have  collapsed  the  spirits  of 
particular  important  dead  ancestors  (abakoro)  with  the  spirits  of  particular  places  (emisambwa)  to 
the  point  where  they  are  now  indistinguishable  as  emisambwa.  This  explains  why  western 
Serengeti  people  perceive  emisambwa  as  beneficent-because  they  are  known  ancestors,  not 
forgotten  and  lost  spirits.  The  elders  themselves  were  not  clear  whether  erisambwa  mean  "the 
spirit  of  the  ancestor"  or  "the  spirit  of  the  place,"  the  two  meanings  have  become  synonymous.  The 
meaning  of  emisambwa  is  implicit  in  the  use  of  the  emisambwa  places  in  the  place-name  lists  of 
oral  tradition  referring  to  the  "generation  of  settlement." 

The  Ngoreme,  who  are  much  closer  to  the  Kuria  geographically  as  well  as  culturally  than 
other  western  Serengeti  peoples,  join  these  different  conceptions  of  emisambwa.  Many  of  their 
emisambwa  do  not  demand  ancestral  sacrifices  but  are  places  remembered  for  important  events. 
At  these  locations  elders  gather  mud,  particular  tree  branches,  honey  or  water  for  other  rituals. 
Animals  or  monsters  inhabit  some  of  these  sites  that  are  not  connected  to  stories  of  ancestors  but 
which  a  particular  lineage  is  still  responsible  for  propitiating.  They  also  have  emisambwa  that  are 
both  ancestors  and  spirits  of  the  land.  One  of  the  most  famous  Ngoreme  emisambwa  sites  is  the 
hot  springs  at  Maji  Moto.    An  elder  of  the  Kombo  lineage,  who  are  ritually  responsible  at  this  site, 
said  that  the  people  of  a  whole  village  live  under  the  water.  Sometimes  people  hear  a  child  cry 
there.  When  the  colonial  government  came  to  explore  volcanic  activity  at  Maji  Moto,  the  earth 
swallowed  up  all  of  their  large  machinery  and  those  who  did  the  work  died  once  they  got  home. 


330 
When  the  machines  drilled  into  the  rock,  they  brought  up  blood.13  [Figure  7-3:  Emisambwa  in 
Ngoreme.] 

By  collapsing  the  meaning  of  specific  dead  ancestors  into  the  concept  of  a  territorial  spirit 
of  a  place,  peoples  of  the  western  Serengeti  made  claims  to  the  land  that  they  occupied.  Yet  more 
than  that,  they  made  a  profound  identification  of  themselves,  in  the  form  of  their  ancestors,  with  the 
land.  The  spirit  of  the  land  is  the  spirit  of  the  ancestors,  one  and  the  same.  Kirwen's  informants 
said  that  ancestors  "are  the  ones  who  put  us  into  the  land,  they  are  the  elders  and  owners  of  the 
land,  they  are  the  ones  with  power  to  prevent  or  ward  off  sickness,  famine  and  death,  evil  comes 
when  we  break  our  ties  with  the  ancestors,  they  ensure  that  the  moral  order  is  kept."14 

Although  Tatoga  herders  deny  that  they  have  emisambwa  sites,  as  do  their  Bantu-speaking 
neighbors  in  the  western  Serengeti,  much  evidence  exists  to  suggest  shared  understandings  of 
ancestral  spirits.  In  Ngoreme  a  local  farmer  showed  me  a  pair  of  large  rocks  worn  smooth, 
presumably  by  the  touch  of  hands,  that  he  described  as  a  Tatoga  erisambwa  for  which  Tatoga 
periodically  returned  to  do  the  sacrifices  [Figure  7-3:  Emisambwa  in  Ngoreme.].  As  the  deeds  of 
great  prophets  of  the  past  were  remembered  so  the  landscape  was  appropriated  with  their  relics. 
Tatoga  elders  said  that  the  stone  axe  of  the  Relimajega  prophet  Gwataye  is  still  embedded  in  a  tree 
near  the  Mara  River."  The  hunter/fishermen  Tatoga,  Isimajega,  have  a  profound  attachment  to  the 
mountain  that  they  call  Somega,  in  the  western  corridor  of  Serengeti  National  Park,  now  known  as 


13  Interview  with  Maro  Mchari  Maricha,  Maji  Moto,  28  September  1995  (Ngoreme  <?). 

14  Michael  Kirwen,  The  Missionary  and  the  Diviner,  pp.  8. 

15  Interviews  with  Stephen  Gojat  Gishageta  and  Girimanda  Marisha  Gishageta,  Issenye,  28 
March  1996;  Merekwa  Masunga  and  Giruchani  Masanja,  Mariwanda,  6  July  1995;  Gilumughera 
Gwiyeya,  Girihoida  Masaona  and  Gorobani  Gesura,  Issenye,  28  July  1995  (Tatoga  cf);  Wambura 
Nyikisokoro,  Sang'anga  Buchanchari,  23  September  1995  (Ngoreme  <3%  Marunde  Godi,  Juana 
Masanja.  Mayera  Magondora,  Manawa,  24  February  1 996  (Isimajega  <f). 


David  Maganya  Masama,  Wambura  Nyikisokoro  and  Mayani  Magoto, 
Sang'ang'a  Buchanchari  Ngoreme,  at  the  Tatoga  Erisambwa  Rocks,  23 
September  1995. 


Maji  Moto  Hot  Springs 
Figure  7-3:  Emisambwa  in  Ngoreme 


332 

Simiti  hill  across  the  Grumeti  River  from  the  Girawera  game  post.  The  Isimajega  call  the  spring 
there  Yiwanda,  after  the  rainmaker  prophet  Ghamilay  who  is  buried  there.  People  went  there  to  ask 
for  rain,  fertility,  health  or  prosperity." 

The  ancestors  as  emisambwa  are  just  as  real  a  presence  in  community  life  as  those  more 
recently  deceased.  An  example  from  my  field  work  shows  the  feeling  of  their  personal  presence. 
When  I  went  with  the  elders  to  visit  the  grave  of  Gitaraga,  a  rainmaker,  they  did  not  address  the 
spirit  with  formal  ritualized  speech,  they  spoke  to  him  as  one  would  speak  to  a  living  person.  One 
elder  from  the  lineage  of  Gitaraga  brought  along  a  gourd  of  water.  We  sat  for  awhile  at  the  grave 
talking  and  then  went  to  the  place  where  the  rainpots  were  buried  in  the  ground  under  an  over- 
hanging rock.  After  discussing  whether  1  should  take  photos  here  and  disallowing  the  use  of  pen 
and  paper,"  he  poured  the  water  from  the  gourd  out  on  the  ground  and  spoke  to  Gitaraga: 

Mzee  (elder)  Gitaraga,  we  have  come  to  greet  you,  we  are  your  children,  do  not  be  angry 
with  us  but  send  us  blessings,  do  not  be  astonished  that  some  others  of  your  children 
have  come  to  greet  you.   They  have  not  come  for  a  long  time,  but  they  are  never-the-less 
your  children.   They  are  from  across  the  ocean. I8 

One  the  way  home  that  day  it  poured  down  rain.  [See  Figure  7-4:  Nata  Sites,  Gitaraga  and 

Riyara.] 


16  The  Isimajega  elders  requested  that  I  ask  the  Park  for  permission  for  them  to  return  there 
to  propitiate  the  erisambwa.  Tatoga  ethnographies  report  large  funeral  mounds  built  for  important 
elders  in  their  cattle  kraals.  Poles  which  were  planted  in  the  mound  grew  into  trees  and  a  "sacred 
grove"  was  established,  which  would  be  visited  by  the  man's  ancestors  for  propitiation  of  his  spirit. 
George  J.  Klima,  The  Barabaig:  East  African  Cattle-Herders  (New  York:  Holt,  Rinehart  and 
Winston,  1970),  pp.  102-107.  He  reports  that  only  rarely  are  these  mound  built  for  women.  G. 
McL.  Wilson,  "The  Tatoga  of  Tanganyika,  Part  I,"  Tanganyika  Notes  and  Records  33  (1952)-  34- 
47. 

17  They  finally  agreed  that  1  could  take  a  picture  but  the  photo  did  not  turn  out  on  a  roll  of 
otherwise  good  pictures.  This  was  the  last  picture  on  the  roll  and  when  1  went  to  change  film  I 
could  not  find  the  roll  that  I  was  sure  I  put  in  my  bag  that  morning. 

18  Interview  with  Keneti  Mahembora,  Gitaraga,  9  February  1996  (Nata  tf). 


Mokuru  Nyang'aka,  Barichera  Machage 
Barichera,  Nyawagamba  Magoto,  and  Sochoro 
Kabhati,  Riyara,  7  March  1996,  the  bee  cave. 


Keneti  Mahembora,  Mokuru  Nyang'aka  and  author, 
Gitaraga,  9  February  1996,  Gitaraga's  grave. 


Figure  7-4:  Nata  sites,  Gitaraga  and  Riyara 


334 

The  association  of  emisambwa  with  forces  of  the  wilderness,  as  opposed  to  the  civilized 
spaces  of  the  homestead,  provides  further  insight  into  the  identification  of  the  spirits  of  the  land 
with  the  spirits  of  the  ancestors.  People  may  not  cut  the  groves  of  trees  that  grow  up  around  these 
sites  and  they  foster  the  untamed  growth  of  these  groves.  Emisambwa  sites  are  always  located 
away  from  present  settlement  sites,  in  the  bush.  Even  those  in  the  more  densely  populated  areas  of 
Zanaki  are  found  outside  the  village.  One  elder  described  these  as  places  inhabited  by  leopards, 
snakes  and  where  lions  give  birth."  Traditions  associate  these  places  with  the  ritual  symbols  of 
water,  fertility,  women  and  growth.  Many  other  anthropologists  and  historians  of  Africa  have 
noted  the  recurrent  ritual  theme  of  mediation  between  the  forces  of  the  bush  and  the  forces  of  the 
home.  Feierman  and  Packard  demonstrate  the  role  of  the  king  or  chief  as  intermediary  between 
wilderness  and  culture.20  The  peoples  of  the  western  Serengeti  assign  this  role  to  a  variety  of 
important  ancestors,  located  at  specific  places  of  power  to  mediate  between  wilderness  and  culture. 
Other  Kinds  of  Emisambwa 

Emisambwa  belong  to  a  polysemous  category  used  in  a  variety  of  other  circumstances. 
Emisambwa  spirits  can  also  reside  in  particular  objects  or  animals.  The  erisambwa  of  a  place  may 
appear  as  a  snake  or  a  hyena.    Testimonies  often  call  these  animals  the  messengers  of  the 
erisambwa,  but  just  as  often  say  they  are  the  erisambwa  itself.  One  elder  differentiated  the 
emisambwa  as  "big"  and  "little"  emisambwa.21  According  to  this  elder,  the  "big"  emisambwa  are 
those  ancestors  at  certain  places  propitiated  by  particular  lineages  for  rain  or  fertility.  The  "little" 
emisambwa  are  animals  associated  with  lineages  or  clans,  the  emigiro  or  avoidances  discussed  in 


"  Interview  with  Sochoro  Kabati,  Nyichoka,  2  June  1995  (Nata  <f). 

20  Feierman,  Peasant  Intellectuals,  pp.  69-93;  and  Packard,  Chiefship  and  Cosmology  ,  pp. 

21  Interview  with  Yohana  Kitena  Nyitanga,  Makondusi,  1  May  1 995  (Nata  cf). 


335 
Chapter  6,  that  people  must  feed  and  be  careful  not  to  harm.    The  most  common  animals  are  a 
particular  kind  of  snake  (often  pythons),  the  hyena,  or  a  tortoise.  Some  Ikoma  lineages  with  the 
hyena  erisambwa  have  a  special  gateway  cut  in  the  homestead  fence  for  the  hyena  to  enter.  Some 
people  told  me  that  the  erisambwa  at  Nyichoka  is  a  snake  while  others  related  the  story  of  a  barren 
woman,  told  in  Chapter  2.22 

Scholars  have  interpreted  this  understanding  of  emisambwa  as  "clan  totems"  or  avoidances 
(emigiro).      Yet  seeing  avoidances  as  emisambwa,  with  the  nuanced  meanings  enumerated  above, 
subtly  shifts  the  traditional  understanding  of  this  phenomenon.  For  western  Serengeti  peoples,  clan 
avoidances  are  more  than  a  symbolic  representation  of  the  spirit  of  the  collective.  They  are  the 
located  spirit  of  an  ancestor  who  provides  for  the  welfare  of  that  clan  and  the  health  of  the  land 
they  live  on  and  use.  This  may  also  explain  the  references  to  "clan"  as  territorially  based.  If  the 
clan  has  an  erisambwa  then  that  spirit  must,  by  definition,  have  a  dwelling  place  related  to  a 
people.  This  is  another  example  in  which  narrators  blur  the  distinction  between  lineage  and  clan  by 
using  the  same  idioms  in  reference  to  both. 

Ritual  specialists  such  as  healers,  prophets,  diviners  and  rainmakers  each  have  their  own 
erisambwa  that  directs  their  work.  They  are  the  spirits  of  known  ancestors  or  perhaps  the  spirits 
that  their  ancestors  used  to  do  their  own  work.  The  emisambwa  communicate  with  ritual 
specialists  in  dreams  and  tell  them  what  to  do.  While  people  can  learn  or  buy  some  medicines, 
ritual  specialists  do  not  choose  to  do  this  work.  The  emisambwa  choose  them  and  may  make  them 
ill  or  appear  crazy  until  they  agree  to  become  a  prophet.  Yet  this  is  not  a  possession  cult  as  such 
and  the  ritual  specialists  do  not  take  on  the  person  of  the  erisambwa  as  much  as  receive  help  from 


22  The  word,  Nyichoka,  means  "the  place  of  a  snake." 

23  Claude  Levi-Strauss,  Totemism.  trans.  Rodney  Needham  (Boston:  Beacon  Press,  1962). 


336 
it.24    Each  erisambwa  has  its  own  rules  and  prohibitions  that  the  ritual  specialist  must  follow  to  do 
their  work  effectively.    Ritual  specialists  often  have  a  special  ornament  or  implement  used  by  the 
ancestor  that  they  call  the  erisambwa.  The  erisambwa  relates  to  people  of  a  particular  lineage  and 
ancestry.  An  erisambwa  cannot  direct  a  person  outside  the  lineage,  on  either  side. 

Dreaming  is  the  most  important  way  that  the  living  communicate  with  the  dead.  This  is 
the  source  of  power  for  all  ritual  specialists:  prophets,  rainmakers  and  healers.  Without  the 
knowledge  communicated  by  ancestors  in  dreams,  prophets  cannot  perform  their  task.  A  general 
word  for  a  prophet  who  dreams  (and  they  all  must  dream  to  have  power)  is  an  omoroti/abaroli 
(from  the  verb,  -rota,  "to  dream").  Common  people  also  communicate  with  the  dead  in  dreams  and 
receive  instruction,  warning  or  encouragement  for  their  daily  activities. 
Emisambwa  Sites  as  the  Spaces  of  Lineage 

Specific  lineages  always  control  the  emisambwa  sites.  Not  just  anyone  can  guide  a 
stranger  to  these  places.  A  representative  of  the  particular  lineage,  ekehila,  whose  ancestors  are 
buried  at  that  place,  must  be  present  to  approach  those  places  and  do  the  required  rituals.  They  tell 
stories  about  the  lives  of  these  ancestors  during  a  particular  period  of  crisis,  for  example  when 
there  was  famine  and  the  rainmaker  brought  rain  and  prosperity.  These  sites  are  points  on  the  map 
which  represent  particular  lineages  and  the  histories  of  great  men  and  women  in  the  past. 
Emisambwa  may  represent  a  matriline  or  a  patriline.  In  Nata,  ebehila  (patrilines  or  "gates") 
control  all  of  the  communal  emisambwa  of  the  land.  Those  of  the  matrilines,  (nyumba  or 
"houses")  are  individual  or  "small"  emisambwa.  The  Nata  recognize  only  three  important 


24  Differentiated  from  Cwezi  cults,  see  Renee  Louis  Tantala,  "The  Early  History  of  Kitara 
in  Western  Uganda:  Process  Models  of  Religion  and  Political  Change"  (Ph.D.  Dissertation, 
University  of  Wisconsin,  Madison,  1 989);  and  John  Beattie,  "Group  Aspects  of  the  Nyoro  Spirit 
Mediumship  Cult,"  Rhodes-Livingston  Institute  Journal  (1961):  1 1-35;  or  Ngoma  in  John  Janzen, 
Ngoma:  Discourses  of  Healing  in  Central  Africa  (Berkeley:  University  of  California  Press,  1992). 


337 
emisambwa,  while  in  Ngoreme  and  Ikizu  each  community  or  clan  controlled  territory,  ekyaro,  has 
its  own. 

The  Ikizu  describe  the  emisambwa  as  both  prophets  and  as  spirits  whom  their  founder, 
Muriho,  put  there  when  he  conquered  the  land.  They  say  that  each  prophet  came  to  give  direction 
to  a  particular  lineage  and  place,  so  that  they  would  have  recourse  in  times  of  trouble.  A  particular 
lineage  propitiates  each  of  the  emisambwa  at  their  grave  site.  The  Ikizu  elders  who  wrote  a  book 
on  their  history  listed  twenty-one  ritual  places  inhabited  by  the  emisambwa.  Out  of  that  list  more 
than  half  of  the  ancestors  came  from  outside  of  Ikizu,  for  example,  Nyambobe  was  a  Luo  woman 
who  came  in  a  boat  with  potatoes  and  bananas.25 

Although  not  stated  explicitly,  those  lineages  who  propitiate  the  spirits  of  their  ancestors  at 
the  emisambwa  sites  may  have  authority  there  because  of  their  status  as  those  who  came  first.  The 
ancestor  buried  at  that  place  has  a  special  connection  to  the  land.  As  an  erisambwa,  the  ancestor 
becomes  one  with  the  spirit  of  the  land  and  thus  is  responsible  for  the  health  of  the  land.26  Those 
who  settled  in  the  area  first  made  the  accommodation  with  the  land  (perhaps  through  association 
with  first-comers  like  the  Asi  hunters)  and  have  ritual  authority  over  it.  Because  of  the  association 
of  these  places  with  symbols,  like  the  python,  that  are  ancient  throughout  the  Bantu-speaking  world 
and  commonly  used  at  sacred  spots  like  shrines,  one  is  tempted  to  hypothesize  that  these  are 
ancient  sites  of  power  that  have  changed  hands  many  times  as  new  groups  and  new  identities  took 
control.27  They  could  also  represent  critical  sites  of  productive  value  located  at  the  ecotone 


25  Mturi,  "Historia  ya  Ikizu,"  pp.  25-27. 

6  For  an  example  elsewhere  in  Tanzania  of  ritual  precedence  given  to  "first-comers"  in 
ceremonies  concerning  the  land  see,  H.  A.  Fosbrooke,  "A  Rangi  Circumcision  Ceremony:  Blessing 
a  New  Grove,"  Tanganyika  Notes  and  Records  ( 1 958):  30-8. 

27  See  Schmidt's  analysis  of  the  "tree  of  iron"  in  Historical  Archaeology,  p.  105. 


338 
between  mixed  farmers  and  herders  or  hunters.  In  either  case  they  are  now  represented  by  fairly 
recent  lineage  ancestors. 

Ritual  Possession  of  the  Land 

In  relation  to  the  generation  of  settlement,  the  meaning  of  these  lists  of  place-names  is  more 
than  simply  remembering  people  and  events  from  the  past  by  places  on  the  landscape.  By  naming 
places  on  the  landscape  western  Serengeti  people  took  possession  of  these  sites.  One  cannot 
become  a  people  without  a  land  and  the  land  must  be  ritually  possessed  rather  than  simply 
occupied.  Ritual  possession  makes  the  land  available  for  proper  political  use  and  ecological 
management;  it  "humanizes"  the  land.28  It  becomes  "our  land"  through  the  practice  of  naming  it 
and  peopling  it.  The  peoples  of  the  western  Serengeti  were  extremely  mobile.  They  moved  their 
homes  and  fields  every  5-10  years,  as  many  as  ten  times  in  a  life  time. 

Many  historians  have  confused  mobility  with  a  lack  of  territoriality  or  feeling  for  the  land. 
Paul  Abuso,  in  his  history  of  the  Kuria  states. 

The  Abakuria  did  not  have  that  sacred  attitude  toward  land  as  a  land  of  their  ancestors. 
They  had  no  such  claim  to  the  land  they  lived  on.   The  owner  of  a  home,  when  dead,  was 
buried  inside  his  cattle  kraal  and  when  the  people  migrated  from  the  place  the  grave  was 
completely  forgotten.   The  people  had  no  more  attachment  to  it.   This  detached  attitude 
of  the  Abakuria  was  seen  in  the  way  they  welcomed  many  strangers  in  their  midst.29 

A  similar  sentiment  is  expressed  by  B.  A.  Ogot  in  his  history  of  the  Southern  Luo.30  Both  seem  to 

confuse  attachment  to  the  land  with  the  exclusive  occupation  of  one  kingroup  in  the  same  plots  of 

land  for  generations.  This  bias  is  perhaps  the  result  of  comparison  with  the  dominant  studies  of 

kingdoms  and  centralized  states  in  Lakes  Region. 


David  Schoenbrun,  personal  communication,  with  reference  to  ritual  possession  of  the 
land  throughout  the  lakes  region. 

29  Abuso,  A  Traditional  History,  p.  35. 

30  Ogot,  Southern  Luo.  pp.  38-39. 


339 

People  possessed  the  land,  not  in  terms  of  ownership,  but  rather  identified  with  it  by  ritual 
occupation,  or  by  peopling  it  with  the  spirits  of  the  ancestors  who  continue  to  respond  to 
propitiation.  That  is  why  oral  traditions  represent  the  land  as  empty  before  first  man  and  first 
woman  came-because  one's  own  ancestors  did  not  people  it.  The  ancestors  of  others  must  either 
be  expelled  or  coopted  in  order  to  live  peacefully  there."  The  land  is  empty  not  when  no  people 
occupy  it,  but  when  no  emisambwa  dwell  there.  The  Nata  claim  a  much  larger  territory  than  that 
in  which  Nata  people  now  live.  However,  the  graves  of  their  ancestors  inhabit  that  larger  territory 
and  thus  embody  its  extent. 
Muriho  Possesses  Ikizu  bv  Planting  the  Emisambwa 

The  story  of  Muriho  taking  possession  of  Ikizu  is  the  most  vivid  example  of  the  process  of 

peopling  the  land  with  the  ancestors  among  the  western  Serengeti  narratives: 

Muriho  himself  was  a  healer  and  a  prophet,  in  his  prophecy  he  was  promised  authority 
in  a  land  of  tall  mountains  and  so  it  is  at  this  high  mountain  that  he  established  his 
settlement,  ltongo  Muriho.  His  goal  was  to  possess  the  mountain  now  called 
Chamuriho,  but  he  was  not  at  first  successful  because  people  were  already  living  there, 
called  the  Abahengere  (short  people).  Muriho  came  up  with  a  plan  for  overcoming  these 
people.   The  Abahengere  also  became  aware  of  the  presence  of  Muriho  and  his  people  at 
Rosambisambi.  So  they  came  to  attack  Muriho,  but  when  they  arrived  they  found 
nothing  there  because  Muriho  had  surrounded  the  settlement  with  protective  medicine 
called  orokoba.  Muriho  then  passed  the  protective  circle  of  medicine  all  the  way  around 
the  mountain  of  Chamuriho  and  installed  his  own  ancestral  spirits  in  those  places.  There 
were  five  spirits  in  all,  each  had  a  name,  specific  powers,  appeared  in  the  form  of  a 
different  snake  and  were  placed  in  each  stream  where  they  are  still  appealed  to  today. 
The  water  in  those  streams  became  bitter  so  that  the  Abahengere  were  unable  to  drink  it 
and  had  to  leave  the  mountain  of  Chamuriho.  .  .  .  Muriho  went  on  chasing  them  out  by 
putting  medicine  in  the  water  to  make  it  unfit  to  drink  and  after  they  left  each  successive 
place  he  would  pass  the  orokoba,  the  circle  of  protective  medicine,  so  that  they  would  not 
return  to  live  in  those  caves.  He  chased  them  all  the  way  to  Lake  Victoria.   When 
Muriho  was  sure  that  his  enemies  would  not  return  he  went  home  and  made  a  plan  to 
complete  the  authority  that  he  had  gotten  for  himself.  He  went  to  the  mountain 
Chamuriho  and  did  the  ritual  purification  called  ikimweso,  in  order  to  bless  these  acts  of 
courage  and  to  protect  his  new  settlement  established  on  the  mountain  Chamuriho.  By 


31  For  a  discussion  of  firstness  as  a  principle  of  legitimacy  see  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place. 
Chapters  4  and  5;  and  Kopytoff,  "The  Internal  African  Frontier,"  pp.  52-61. 


340 

this  time  the  prophet  Muriho  had  many  followers  and  had  married  eight  wives,  who  were 
given  to  him  as  gifts  of  thanks  for  his  actions.  After  this,  once  more,  he  had  to  use  his 
powers  and  his  medicine  to  drive  out  spirits  and  encircle  the  land  with  protective 
medicines,  so  that  they  would  not  return.32 

The  mountain  where  oral  tradition  says  that  Muriho  lived  is  today  called  Chamuriho.  the 
place  of  Muriho.  Chamuriho  is  the  tallest  mountain  in  the  area.  The  Germans  used  it  for  one  of 
their  heliograph  stations.  Approaching  Chamuriho  from  the  west,  the  small  hills  and  tightly  packed 
settlements  of  Zanaki  suddenly  spread  out  to  the  great  Serengeti  plains  at  the  base  of  Chamuriho. 
The  mountain  marks  a  boundary  between  the  lakes  and  hill  peoples  of  the  west  and  those  who  live 
on  the  interstices  between  hill  and  vast  plain,  to  the  east.    Ikizu  still  make  offerings  on  Chamuriho 
and  know  it  as  the  origin  spot  and  most  powerful  erisambwa  of  the  Ikizu.  Most  of  the  other 
important  Ikizu  rituals  either  begin  or  end  here.  The  Ikizu  claim  the  land  because  Muriho  planted 
their  emisambwa  at  specific  places  to  guard  the  land.  [See  Figure  7-5:  Ikizu  Sites  at  Chamuriho 
and  Gaka.] 
Nata  and  Ngoreme  Ritual:  Mediating  the  Forces  of  the  Wilderness 

The  Nata  ritual  at  the  emisambwa  sites  illustrates  the  ongoing  role  of  these  spirits  in 
mediating  the  dangerous  but  fertile  boundary  between  wilderness  and  culture  which  makes 
habitation  possible.  When  a  problem  arises  the  whole  community  comes  to  ask  the  lineage  elders 
to  do  the  sacrifices  at  Gitaraga  so  that  they  might  have  rain.  Anyone  can  come  along  but  only  the 
lineage  of  Abene  O'Gitaraga  will  do  the  sacrifices.  When  they  go  to  Gitaraga  only  men  and  one 
young  woman  go.  taking  along  a  black  sheep.  The  young  woman  carries  a  gourd  full  of  water  and 
dresses  in  traditional  skins  and  beads.  When  they  get  to  Gitaraga  they  clean  out  and  refill  the  rain 
pots.  Elders  kill  the  black  sheep  and  cut  it  in  half  from  head  to  tail.  The  half  with  the  head  is  for 
Gitaraga  and  the  other  half  for  his  wife  Nyaheri,  at  another  nearby  site.  The  group  roasts  and  eats 


!  Mturi,  "Historia  ya  Ikizu.' 


Mtemi  Adamu  Matutu,  Warioba  Mabusi,  Ntabusogesi  Nying'asa,  Wilson 
Wanusu,  Godfrey  Mayai  Matutu,  Mturi  Wesaka,  Joseph  M.  Nyaganza,  Ikota  W. 
Mwisagita,  Kibiriti  Kekang'a,  Makongoro  Wambura,  P.M.  Mturi,  Ikizu  elders  at 
the  grave  of  Nyakinywa,  Gaka,  31  August  1995 


Figure  7-5:  Ikizu  sites  at  Chamuriho  and  Gaka 


342 
the  meat  at  the  site.  Then  a  young  man  climbs  the  tree  (omusangura)  near  to  the  grave  of 
Gitaraga  and  pours  water  over  the  head  of  the  young  woman  who  is  bent  over  below  the  tree.  The 
others  cut  branches  from  the  tree  and  wave  them  while  the  youth  pours  water.  They  also  sing 
songs.  As  this  is  happening,  a  lineage  elder  asks  Gitaraga  to  send  rain.    The  same  thing  happens 
at  the  other  Nata  site,  Geteku:  the  elders  propitiate  both  male  and  female  emisambwa,  pour  water 
out  to  imitate  the  rain,  sacrifice,  roast  and  eat  an  animal.  At  this  site  women  are  specifically  there 
to  sing  and  dance  the  eghise.  If  the  erisambwa  is  happy  with  the  ritual,  the  beat  of  a  drum  sounds 
(ambere).33 

In  Ngoreme,  the  emisambwa  of  Kimeri  and  Nsoro  are  two  springs  up  on  the  hill  behind 
Maji  Moto.  The  Gitare  lineage  cleans  the  springs  periodically.  They  take  tobacco,  milk  and  honey 
for  the  prayer,  the  women  take  flour  and  the  men  a  white  tasseled  goat.  The  women  draw  lines  on 
the  ground  with  flour  and  the  men  spit  the  mixture  of  honey  and  milk  to  the  four  corners  and  onto  a 
stone  that  they  walk  around  as  they  invoke  the  spirit.  Elders  said  that  the  rain  would  start  before 
they  reached  home.  They  do  not  kill  the  goat  there  but  take  it  back  home  with  them.  They  also 
bring  leaves  from  certain  trees  at  the  site  home  for  other  rituals.  At  circumcision  time  the  initiates 
come  there  to  get  water  and  white  mud  for  the  ceremonies.34  The  Gitare  perform  these  rituals  in 
times  of  trouble,  such  as  lack  of  rain,  ill  health,  infertility  or  threat  of  enemies,  rather  than  at 
regular  intervals.  They  visit  the  emisambwa  regularly  at  the  initiation  of  a  new  age-  or  generation- 
set.  The  new  set  goes  there  to  receive  the  blessing  of  the  spirits  for  a  prosperous  period  when  their 
age-set  is  in  power. 


13  The  most  important  informants  on  the  Nata  emisambwa  were  from  Gabuso  Shoka, 
Mbiso,  30  May  1995;  Mokuru  Nyang'aka  and  Keneti  Mahembora,  Gitaraga  and  Nyichoka,9 
February  1996;  Makuru  Magambo,  Geteku,  9  March  1996;  Mahiti  Kwiro,  Mchang'oro,  19 
January  1 996  (Nata  o"). 

34  Interview  with  Reterenge  Nyigena,  Maji  Moto,  23  September  1995  (Ishenyi  if). 


343 

These  rituals  reenact  the  relationship  of  people  and  land.  The  young  fertile  woman 
standing  beneath  the  tree  represents  the  land  receiving  from  above  the  male  spirit  rain.  The  women 
dance  the  eghise  to  please  the  spirit  who  blesses  the  land  with  rain.  The  people  bring  the  products 
of  their  labor  on  the  land  as  farmers  (flour),  herders  (goat  and  milk),  and  hunter/gatherers  (honey) 
and  offer  it  back  to  the  spirit  that  has  made  prosperity  possible.  In  turn  they  take  the  powerful 
things  of  the  wilderness  (leaves,  clay,  water),  now  made  safe  for  use  in  the  civilized  world  by  the 
spirit  of  the  land,  back  to  perform  community  rituals. 

People  recognize  prohibitions  commonly  associated  with  emisambwa  sites.  Where  there 
are  pools  or  springs,  women  can  only  draw  the  water  using  traditional  vessels  like  gourds.  They 
may  not  use  metal  or  plastic  buckets,  nor  anything  that  is  red.  The  forest  surrounding  these  sites 
never  burns  nor  can  it  be  cut.35  Each  of  these  items  marks  the  emisambwa  as  spirits  associated 
with  the  wilderness,  whose  power  is  mediated  by  the  ancestors. 
The  Ikoma  Machaba  Erisambwa:  Domesticating  the  Ancestral  Spirits  of  Others 

The  Ikoma  erisambwa  of  mobile  elephant  tusks,  rather  than  a  fixed  place,  demonstrates  the 
adaptability  and  flexibility  of  these  concepts  through  which  people  gained  possession  of  the  land 
through  the  spirits  of  the  ancestors.  Here  a  relationship  to  the  land  could  only  be  claimed  by 
appropriating  the  ancestral  spirits  of  the  Tatoga  herders.  Although  the  Ikoma  lineages  have  their 
own  emisambwa  sites,  these  have  become  subordinate  to  the  collective  Ikoma  erisambwa-^  large 
set  of  elephant  tusks  known  as  the  Machaba.  Relative  dating  by  generation-set  places  the  story  of 


35  Interview  with  Sochoro  Kabati,  Nyichoka,  2  June  1 995  (Nata  <f). 


344 

how  the  Ikoma  got  these  tusks  in  the  middle  time  period  and  around  the  mid-nineteenth  century.36 

[See  Appendix  for  other  versions]: 

Then  later  the  rain  slopped  again  and  they  called  everyone  together  to  take  action,  along 
with  the  Ishenyi  people.   They  met  to  decide  where  to  go  to  get  a  prophet  who  would  help 
them.   They  decided  to  go  south  to  the  Tatoga.  the  Bachuta,  at  Ngorongoro  Crater,  in 
Mbulu.   They  went  to  beg  him  for  help  and  he  gave  them  their  erisambwa,  the  Machaba 
(which  is  named  after  the  Tatoga  prophet  himself).  It  was  to  be  for  both  but  the  Ishenyi 
were  unable  to  carry  them.   The  prophet  gave  one  cow  to  the  Ikoma  and  one  to  the 
Ishenyi.   The  Ishenyi  were  not  happy  with  their  cow  because  it  was  so  thin  and  they 
wanted  the  Ikoma  cow  that  was  fat.   The  Ishenyi  had  more  people  and  so  thought  they 
should  have  the  fatter  cow.   They  took  the  Ikoma  cow  and  the  prophet  let  them  go  ahead 
and  do  it.   When  they  butchered  it.  they  found  it  was  thinner  than  the  other.   When  they 
got  the  erisambwa  of  the  Machaba  the  Ishenyi  could  not  carry  the  tusks.  Mwishenyi  said, 
"let  them  go  ahead  and  carry  it  home  and  we  will  take  it  from  them  there. "  They  came 
first  to  Ikoma  and  then  went  onto  Nyeberekera.  They  said  they  were  tired  and  would 
come  back  for  the  Machaba  later,  but  they  never  did.  It  stayed  in  Ikoma.   The  Machaba 
is  their  elder.  Anything  you  want  to  pray  for  he  can  grant.  It  is  a  Tatoga  erisambwa.37 

Another  version  varies  only  slightly. 

They  went  to  the  Tatoga  prophet,  east  in  a  crater  but  not  Ngorongoro.  another  one  near 
Mbulu  called  Mwigo  wa  Machaba.   There  was  a  lake  in  the  crater.  They  went  there 
because  they  had  a  problem  with  fertility.   The  Ishenyi,  who  were  more  numerous  than 
they,  came  along  too.   The  Ishenyi  slept  at  the  first  place  inside  the  gate,  the  Ikoma  slept 
outside  the  gate.   The  prophet  said  they  should  grab  a  sheep  as  they  jumped  over  the 
gate.  Ikoma  got  a  skinny  one  and  Ishenyi  a  fat  one  but  when  they  butchered  them,  the 
sheep  looked  the  same  and  when  they  were  cooked  the  Ikoma  one  was  fatter.  The  prophet 
tried  each  of  their  bows  and  shot  the  Ikoma  arrow  far  off  and  said  they  should  follow  it. 
He  prepared  the  things  that  they  should  take  along  with  them  (mbanoraj  and  showed 
them  the  path  to  take  when  they  saw  vultures  up  ahead.   The  youth  ran  ahead  to  get  the 
prize.   The  first  to  get  there  was  Mayani  (a  Gaikwe  clan  member  of  Ikoma)  who  took  the 
top  (right)  tusk  of  the  elephant  and  second  was  a  youth  of  the  Ikoma  Himurumbe  clan 
who  took  the  lower  (left)  tusk.   The  Ishenyi  wanted  to  take  it  from  them  but  the  prophet 


36  While  most  informants  would  not  date  the  Machaba  story  one  elder  said  that  the  Ishenyi 
were  at  Nyigoti  (Mang'ombe  Morimi,  Issenye  Iharara,  26  August  1 995)  which  would  put  it  during 
the  period  of  late  nineteeth  century  disasters,  others  dated  it  to  the  time  when  the  Ishenyi  were  still 
at  Nyeberekera,  just  before  the  disasters  (Morigo  Mchombocho  Nyarobi,  Issenye,  28  October 

1 995  and  Machota  Sabuni,  Issenye,  1 4  March  1 996).  Tatoga  informants  dated  it  to  the  time  of  the 
prophet  Saigilo's  father  which  would  also  date  it  to  the  mid-nineteenth  century  period  just  before 
the  disasters  (c.  1 850- 1 870).  The  fact  that  they  went  to  the  Tatoga  prophet  because  of  infertility 
problems  would  suggest  that  the  disasters  had  already  begun. 

37  Interview  with  Machota  Sabuni,  Issenye,  14  March  1996  (Ikoma  tf). 


345 

had  said  not  to  fight.   They  tried  to  take  it  away  but  could  not  lift  it  or  move  it.   The 
Ikoma  were  at  Tonyo  at  that  time™ 

At  all  important  communal  rituals  the  Ikoma  bring  out  the  Machaba  tusks.  The  people 
receive  a  blessing  by  touching  the  tusks.  The  Ikoma  clans  are  divided  into  two  moieties,  Rogoro 
(east)  and  Ng'orisa  (west).  Each  moiety  guards  one  tusk.  Elders  tell  many  stories  of  times  in 
which  the  Machaba  were  hurt  or  taken  and  the  bad  consequences  of  that  action.  The  colonial 
government  tried  to  take  them  as  well,  but  failed  and  brought  them  back.39 

The  Machaba  story  also  defines  the  relationship  between  the  Ikoma  and  Ishenyi,  both 
going  together  to  find  prophecy  concerning  their  lack  of  fertility.  This  story  explains  why  the 
Ishenyi  are  such  a  small  group  today  and  the  Ikoma  relatively  larger.  The  Nata  have  a  version  of 
this  story  in  which  they  go  along  too  and  the  prophet  gives  them  a  set  of  buffalo  horns  that  were 
later  lost  when  one  group  failed  to  pass  them  on  at  the  proper  time.  The  Machaba  story  stands 
alongside  the  origin  stories  as  a  way  of  explaining  the  relationship  between  western  Serengeti 
peoples.  Yet  given  the  time  period  of  this  story  (c.  1870)  it  may  also  commemorate  the  formation 
of  Ishenyi  and  Ikoma  ethnic  identities  as  ritual  communities  related  to  particular  emisambwa. 

In  Ikoma  the  clans,  rather  than  the  lineages,  control  the  emisambwa,  the  Machaba.  The 
Gaikwe  (Ng'orisa)  have  the  right  hand,  upper  or  male  tusk  which  confirms  this  clan  as  first- 
comers,  similar  to  their  status  in  the  origin  stories  as  the  clan  of  first  man.  The  Himurumbe 
(Rogoro  or  "east")  control  the  female  side  or  left  tusk,  often  related  to  first  woman  from  Sonjo  (to 
the  east).  One  elder  confirmed  that  the  Himurumbe  clan  was  also  Asi,  or  hunter/gatherer  in  origin. 


(Ikoma  <f) 


38  Interview  with  Bokima  Giringayi,  Mbiso,  26  October  1995  (Ikoma  <f). 
Interview  with  Mabenga  Nyahega  and  Machaba  Nyahega,  Mbiso,  1  September  1995 


346 
These  clans  have  special  ritual  functions  when  they  bring  out  the  Machaba  and  they  also  keep  the 
tusks,  in  separate  places,  one  located  in  the  east  and  one  located  in  the  west. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  contradiction  to  all  other  western  Serengeti  emisambwa  theory,  the 
Machaba  are  not  ancestral  spirits  of  the  Ikoma  but  of  Tatoga  origin.  This  brings  the  Ikoma  into  a 
very  special  relationship  with  the  Tatoga.  One  Ikoma  elder  said  that  the  Tatoga  were  "people  of 
the  oath  (ring'a),"  or  "our  parents."40  The  Ikoma  commemorate  the  Tatoga  role  as  spiritual  parents 
in  ritual  practice,  as  described  in  the  next  chapter.  In  one  version  of  the  origin  story  the  first  Ikoma 
man  from  Sonjo  came  because  a  Tatoga  prophet  told  him  to  follow  the  animals  until  he  found  a 
place  where  lions  lived,  he  should  then  stay  at  that  place.41  The  Machaba  story  seems  to  mark 
another  era  of  negotiation  and  interaction  between  Bantu-speakers  and  Dadog-speakers  long  after 
the  original  period  of  settlement. 

Because  the  Machaba  is  a  Tatoga  spirit,  it  is  a  mobile,  rather  than  a  located  erisambwa. 
The  Ikoma  have  domesticated  this  spirit  and  appropriated  its  power  by  fixing  it  to  the  land.42  The 
Machaba  erisambwa  dwells  in  the  tusks  rather  than  a  physical  feature  of  the  land.  The  spirit 
represented  by  the  tusks  is  a  Tatoga  prophet  from  Ngorongoro.  The  next  chapter  will  describe  the 
rituals  to  encircle  and  protect  the  land  carried  out  by  the  generation-set.  The  Ikoma  generation-set 
fixes  the  tusks  to  the  land  by  carrying  the  Machaba  in  their  ritual  walk  to  seal  the  boundaries  of  the 
land.  In  addition,  they  cannot  take  the  Machaba  across  the  Grumeti  River,  which  Ikoma 
acknowledge  as  their  "traditional"  territorial  boundary.  When  the  British  took  the  Machaba  across 


40  Interview  with  Sabuni  Machota,  Issenye,  14  March  1996  (Ikoma  <f\  he  was  an 
important  informant  on  all  aspects  of  the  Machaba. 

41  Interviews  with  Mabenga  Nyahega,  Bugerera,  5  September  1995;  Moremi  Mwikicho. 
Sagochi  Nykipegete,  Kenyatta  Mosoka,  Robanda,  12  July  1995  (Ikoma  <f). 

42  For  this  process  in  other  parts  of  the  Lakes  Region  see  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place. 
Chapter  5. 


347 
the  Grumeti  their  car  broke  down  and  the  Machaba  were  out  of  the  tin  house  (where  the  officer 
stored  them)  in  the  morning.  When  one  of  the  keepers  of  the  Machaba  moved  them  across  the  river 
his  whole  family  began  to  sicken  and  die  until  he  moved  them  back.45 

Thus,  the  Machaba  represent  a  further  cultural  elaboration  of  the  polysemous  category  of 
emisambwa  spirits  and  their  guardianship  over  the  land  and  the  health  of  the  people.  The  Ikoma 
are  the  people  farthest  east  and  farthest  out  on  the  plains.  The  village  of  a  Robanda  clusters 
around  a  hill  which  rises  out  of  an  otherwise  flat  and  featureless  plain.  The  ecological  setting 
suggests  that  the  only  way  to  prosper  on  this  kind  of  land  is  to  appeal  to  the  spirits  of  those  who 
own  the  grasslands,  the  Tatoga  herders.  Nevertheless,  the  Ikoma  fix  and  domesticate  mobile 
Tatoga  power  by  an  Ikoma  understandings  of  the  relationship  between  land  and  people. 
Nineteenth  Century  Settlement  Patterns 

The  cultural  understanding  of  the  places  listed  in  oral  traditions  about  the  pre-disaster 
period  not  only  provides  insight  into  the  sequences  of  relationships  between  early  and  later  settlers 
to  the  land,  but  also  sheds  light  on  the  kinds  of  settlements  occupied  during  the  nineteenth  century. 
Because  these  traditions  only  provide  glimpses  into  individual  settlements,  reconstructing  patterns 
or  forming  generalities,  without  a  master  narrative,  is  difficult.  Nevertheless,  I  use  evidence  about 
specific  settlement  sites  in  conjunction  with  ethnographic  and  linguistic  evidence  to  reconstruct 
some  idea  of  what  settlements  were  like  in  the  nineteenth  century. 
Abandoned  Settlement  Sites  and  the  Patronage  of  "Big  Men" 

Some  places  in  the  list  of  place-names  are  not  emisambwa  but  primarily  old  settlement 
sites  or  what  the  Nata  call  ebimenyo  (literally  "built  places").    Traditions  distinguish  these  sites 


Interviews  with  Kimori  Gamare,  Bugerera,  15  July  1995  (Nata/Ikoma  ?);  Nyaruberi 
Kisigiro,  Morotonga,  12  July  1995  (Ikoma  <f);  Sabuni  Machota,  Issenye,  14  March  1996  (Ikoma 


348 
from  the  emisambwa  sites  by  arguing  that,  although  people  remember  specific  ancestors  and  events 
of  the  past  at  those  sites,  they  do  not  propitiate  the  spirits  there  by  sacrifice  nor  do  these  spirits 
have  power  over  the  health  of  the  land  and  its  people.  Elders  from  different  lineages  may  recite 
these  settlement  site  names  differently,  given  that  they  would  remember  those  of  their  own  lineage. 
While  all  elders  fairly  consistently  name  the  emisambwa  sites,  they  disagree  on  the  ebimenyo  sites. 
Elders  speak  in  most  detail  about  the  sites  more  commonly  known  that  seem  to  have  been  the  most 
prosperous  settlements  of  important  or  wealthy  individuals. 

People  often  name  places  after  the  well-known  individuals  who  lived  there,  without  formal 
title  but  with  charismatic  ability  to  attract  people  as  a  "speaker"  (omukinalabakina, 
omwerechi/abawerechi,  omugambi/abagambi).  A  speaker  in  western  Serengeti  tradition  is  a  man 
whom  people  respect  for  his  ability  to  speak  the  mind  of  the  community  with  wisdom  and  fluency.44 
These  men  may  have  had  wealth  to  back  up  these  claims  but  they  measured  their  wealth  in  people 
whom  they  could  attract  through  extensive  relations  of  reciprocity  rather  than  in  things.  They  were 
men  with  many  "children"  and  large  homesteads.  The  place-names  Magita  and  Wamboyi  in  the 
Nata  list  refer  to  such  wealthy  men  and  their  settlements. 

Local  languages  use  the  term  omwame  (or  omonibi  particularly  for  cattle  wealth)  to  refer 
to  a  wealthy  man.  Many  conversations  over  the  research  period  concerning  the  definition  of  wealth 
convinced  me  that  people  value  wealth  in  crops  or  livestock  only  in  so  far  as  it  generates  people  as 
wives,  children  or  dependents.  Men  aspire  to  the  respect  that  wealth  brings  when  they  are  able  to 
feed  a  large  crowd  of  people  at  a  feast,  a  community  ritual  or  a  dance.45  All  wealth  is  not  equal 


44  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  pp.  1 99-200,  demonstrates  the  connection  between  the 
power  of  speech  and  healing  or  divination,  or  more  generally  speech  as  creative  power. 
"Introduction." 

45  Interviews  with  Mashauri  Ng'ana,  Issenye,  2  November  1995  (Ishenyi  cf);  Sarya 
Nyamuhandi  and  Makanda  Magige,  Bumangi,  10  November  1995  (Zanaki  d%  dealt  with  these 


349 
and  only  the  wealth  generated  by  the  sweat  of  farming  and  herding  is  called  umwame,  used  to 
produce  a  large  lineage.  The  wealth  from  the  mines  or  from  hunting  elephants  is  illegitimate  wealth 
with  which  one  can  never  build  a  homestead.46 

The  wealthy  men  of  settlements  remembered  in  oral  tradition  are  lineage  elders  who 
represented  a  period  of  prosperity.  People  still  remember  these  men  and  the  places  where  they  lived 
because  they  forged  networks  of  reciprocity  over  a  large  region.  A  wealthy  man  was  one  who 
"fed"  his  people  in  times  of  trouble  and,  in  turn,  commanded  respect,  labor  and  support.  In  the 
uncertain  environment  of  the  western  Serengeti  these  lateral  links  to  wealthy  men  provided  security 
and  resources  for  building  prestige  throughout  the  region.  A  wealthy  man  was  an  omwame 
because  of  his  informal  ability  to  control  widespread  and  diverse  networks  of  security  through  his 
wealth. 

The  word  mwame  is  an  old  Lakes  Bantu  word  from  the  root  -yaami,  meaning  "chief."47  In 
the  early  period  of  Great  Lakes  Bantu  (500  B.C.  to  500  A.D.)  settlement  these  leaders  held  their 
position,  in  part,  because  of  their  ability  to  distribute  wealth.48  Vansina  describes  similar  "big 
men"  (named  mukijni/)  in  the  Equatorial  tradition  whose  authority  lay  in  their  ability  to  attract 
followers  through  their  wealth.  Historical  linguists  have  established  the  ancient  "link  between 
leadership  and  the  exchange  of  goods"  through  political  terminology  generated  from  the  words  for 
"gift,"  "to  give  away,"  or  "to  divide"  throughout  Bantu-speaking  Africa.4'  The  difference  between 


topics  in  particular. 

46  Interview  with  Philemon  Mbota,  Mugumu,  17  November  1995  (Kuria  o"). 

47  Schoenbrun,  Etymologies.  #261. 

48  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  p.  183;  See  also  Ehret,  Classical  Age.  Chapter  5.  Miller 
uses  a  similar  model  to  explain  the  slave  trade,  Miller,  Way  of  Death. 

49  Vansina,  Paths  in  the  Rainforest,  p.  74. 


350 
Vansina's  "big  men"  in  Equatorial  tradition  and  the  Lakes  Bantu  use  of  the  word  mwaami  was  that 
in  the  Lakes  region  these  leaders  achieved  their  role,  in  part,  as  lineage  elders.50 

The  use  of  the  term  mwame  in  the  western  Serengeti  represents  a  variation  on  an  ancient 
bundle  of  political  culture  and  practice  in  response  to  an  environment  where  resources  were 
extensively  available  in  plentiful  but  marginal  land  rather  than  intensively  controlled  for  exclusive 
use.  Here  the  mwame  was  not  a  chief  but  a  wealthy  man,  who  was  the  leader  of  a  (at  least 
purportedly)  lineage-based  settlement.  His  extensive  and  informal  links  throughout  the  area  forged 
by  his  wealth  were  more  important  than  a  concentration  of  followers  at  home.  The  word  for  a  poor 
person  (omuhabe)  is  the  same  as  the  word  used  for  an  orphan  or  a  person  without  family,  affirming 
the  central  role  of  descent  idioms  in  elaborating  theories  of  "wealth-in-people."  Elders  were  at  loss 
to  give  me  the  words  for  "patron"  or  "client"  because  the  concepts  did  not  exist,  except  in  reference 
to  the  late  nineteenth  century  practice  of  capturing  slaves,  in  which  case  they  used  the  Suguti  term 
for  slave  (omuseese).*' 

The  Zanaki  called  the  powerful  rainmaker  from  the  clan  territory  of  Busegwe,  the  mwami, 
which  is  also  derived  from  the  word  for  a  wealthy  man.  In  the  colonial  years  the  Zanaki 
successfully  argued  that  this  was  a  chiefly  title.  Indeed  many  aspects  of  the  Zanaki  mwami's 
power  were  chiefly-other  clan  territories  brought  him  or  her  tribute  in  goods  or  labor  and  clans 


50  Schoenbrun.  A  Green  Place,  p.  183.  Ehret,  Classical  Age.  For  the  ethnography  of  "big 
men"  elsewhere  see,  J.  P.  Singh,  Politics  of  the  Kula  Ring:  An  Analysis  of  the  Findings  of 
Bronislaw  Malinowski  (Manchester:  Manchester  University  Press,  1971,  first  published  1962); 
Douglas  L.  Oliver,  A  Solomon  Island  Society:  Kinship  and  Leadership  among  the  Siuai  of 
Bougainville  (Boston:  Beacon  Press,  1955). 

51  Various  sessions  with  Nyamaganda  Magoto  over  the  course  of  1995  to  fill  out  the 
Cultural  Vocabulary  list.  Seese-"a  wild  unruly  animal,  usually  a  dog,  sometimes  a  jackal," 
Schoenbrun,  personal  communication. 


351 
throughout  Zanaki  respected  his  or  her  word.52  However,  1  suspect,  given  the  use  of  the  term 
throughout  the  Mara  Region,  that  mwami,  as  a  title  of  chiefly  office  rather  than  a  generic  term  for 
a  rich  man,  was  reintroduced  in  the  nineteenth  century  from  across  Lake  Victoria.  Busegwe 
tradition  says  that  the  first  mwami  came  from  the  Mugango  peninsula  on  the  lakeshores,  as  an 
immigrant  in  the  line  of  the  great  female  rainmaker  Muse  from  Buhaya.  The  rainmaker  lineage 
claims  kinship  with  the  mukama  (chief)  from  Kerewe  Island,  also  with  origins  across  the  lake.53 
Ruri  elders  on  the  Mugango  peninsula  said  that  the  Busegwe  must  return  here  to  make  the  powerful 
raindrum  used  by  the  mwami?*  The  mwami  lineage  of  Busegwe  included  powerfully  respected 
rainmakers  who  began  assuming  the  authority  of  chiefship  only  in  the  late  nineteenth  century  and 
in  the  context  of  colonialism.  Immigrants  from  across  Lake  Victoria  seem  to  have  brought  the 
meaning  of  the  term  mwami  as  a  chief,  rather  than  a  wealthy  man,  as  a  tool  for  asserting  the 
authority  of  their  lineage.  On  the  other  hand,  the  shift  of  mwami  from  a  wealthy  man  to  a  chief 
may  just  as  easily  have  occurred  as  an  internal  innovation  in  the  context  of  nineteenth  century 
societal  stress  and  increasing  hierarchical  accumulations  of  wealth  from  the  caravan  trade.  The 
connections  to  the  coast  and  across  the  lake  may  in  that  case  have  underpinned  the  access  to  wealth 
that  the  Zanaki  used  to  transform  the  rainmaker  into  a  chief.55 


52  Benjamin  Mkirya,  Historia.  Mila  na  Desturi  za  Wazanaki  (Ndanda,  Tanzania: 
Benedictine  Publications  Ndanda-Peramiho,  1991),  pp.  45-55. 

53  Hans  Cory,  "Report  on  the  pre-European  Tribal  Organization  in  Musoma  (South  Mara 
District  and  ...  Proposals  for  adaptation  of  the  clan  system  to  modern  circumstances),"  1945, 
CORY#  173,  EAF,  UDSM.  See  also  an  evaluation  of  the  Zanaki  mwamiship,  Kemal  Mustafa, 
"The  Concept  of  Authority  and  the  Study  of  African  Colonial  History,"  Kenya  Historical  Review 
Journal  3.1  (1975):  55-83. 

54  Interview  with  Daudi  Katama  Maseme  and  Samueli  Buguna  Katama,  Bwai,  1 1 
November  1995  (Ruri  <f). 

Thanks  to  David  Schoenbrun  for  this  alternate  interpretation,  personal  communication. 


352 
It  also  makes  sense  that  where  chiefly  authority  began  to  develop  in  the  Mara  Region 
(Zanaki,  Ikizu  and  among  the  Lakes  people)  rainmakers  assumed  this  power  through  the  obugabho 
tradition  (discussed  in  the  last  chapter).  This  word  is  derived  from  the  old  Lakes  Bantu  root, 
-gabira,  or  "to  divide  up,  distribute,"  usually  in  the  sense  of  one  who  gives  big  feasts  or  gives 
things  away  generously.56  Mara  languages  use  the  verb  kugaba  only  in  reference  to  the  division  of 
inheritance  and  the  noun  form  only  in  reference  to  ritual  specialists  such  as  prophets  and 
rainmakers.  It  may  be  then  that  those  most  closely  connected  to  the  "big  man"  tradition  described 
by  Vansina  were  the  prophets  and  rainmakers,  abagabho,  who  distribute  a  different  kind  of  wealth, 
in  knowledge.  However,  in  the  Mara  Region  obugabho  was  not  a  gendered  term  and  some  of  the 
most  famous  rainmakers,  like  Muse  (Zanaki)  and  Nyakinywa  (Ikizu)  were  women.  Vansina's 
characterization  of  big  men  would  thus  have  to  be  revised.  In  other  parts  of  the  Lakes  region 
people  conceived  of  political  and  spiritual  or  healing  power  as  separate  categories  in  the  two  offices 
of  the  chief  and  the  prophet.  In  the  western  Serengeti,  without  political  centralization,  the 
categories  were  not  distinct.57 

The  association  of  "big  men"  with  the  distributive  power  of  prophecy  is  evident  in  some 
settlement  sites  that  are  not  emisambwa  sites  and  yet  represent  wealthy  men  or  women  who 
controlled  powerful  "medicines."    In  Nata  one  of  the  important  settlement  sites  is  at  a  hill,  named 
after  a  man  called  Riyara.  Elders  said  that  Riyara  was  a  prophet  who  had  control  over  bees  that  he 
kept  in  a  cave  here.  When  a  conflict  emerged,  the  Nata  warriors  came  to  Riyara,  who  gave  them  a 
small  wooden  box  with  bees  and  other  medicines  inside.  On  the  battlefield  they  released  the  bees 
against  their  enemies.  The  bees  are  still  at  the  place  of  Riyara  and  someone  in  his  lineage  inherits 


56  Schoenbrun,  Etymologies.  #164. 

57  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  pp.  194-201. 


353 
the  power  of  his  medicine  bundle.  [See  Figure  7-4:  Nata  Sites,  Gitaraga  and  Riyara.  p.  333.] 
Medicine  bundles  for  protection  in  war,  ekitana,  are  commonly  used  and  inherited  through  the 
lineage.  The  prophet  Riyara  links  this  medicine  bundle  to  a  bee  hive  in  a  cave  at  Riyara  and  so 
places  it  spatially.  Important  Nata  generation  and  age-set  rituals  must  use  honey  from  the  bees  at 
Riyara  even  today.  People  do  not  make  sacrifices  there  because  this  is  not  an  erisambwa,  instead 
they  ask  Riyara,  whose  spirit  dwells  there,  to  calm  the  bees  so  that  they  can  take  the  honey.  Only 
Nata  people  can  take  honey  there,  because  the  others  do  not  know  how  to  call  on  Riyara  to  calm 
the  bees.  Other  ebitana  of  the  Nata  are  place-fixed  in  that  the  person  in  the  lineage  who  is  chosen 
to  keep  the  ekitana  must  not  cross  the  river  boundaries  of  Nata.58 

These  ebimenyo  or  settlement-sites  recounted  in  oral  tradition  may  also  be  associated  with 
the  age-set  or  generation-  set  which  lived  there,  and  some  important  events  of  the  time.  The 
remembered  sites  were  usually  prosperous  with  lots  of  food  and  people.  Elders  remember 
Torogoro  and  Site  because  these  settlements  produced  so  much  food  that  they  had  lots  of  leisure 
time  to  dance.  The  Abamaina  generation  danced  so  much  that  the  youth  pounded  the  dance  field  at 
Torogoro  into  a  depression  that  one  can  still  see  today. 

Elders  say  that  some  settlements,  such  as  the  ones  as  Sang'anga  and  Kyasigeta  for  the 
Nata,  were  settled  long,  long  ago,  abandoned  and  resettled  around  the  time  that  the  Germans  began 
to  build  Fort  Ikoma  in  that  area.  At  that  time  a  woman  at  Sang'ang'a  used  the  ekitana  from  Riyara 
to  protect  against  the  Maasai  with  bees.  She  had  a  drum  in  her  loft  that  would  sound  when 
enemies  were  near.  She  took  the  drum  outside  and  stripped  off  her  own  clothes  as  she  released  the 


58  The  main  information  on  Riyara  from  a  trip  to  Riyara  with  Makuru  Nyang'aka,  Sochoro 
Kabati,  Barichera  Machage,  Nyichoka  to  Riyara,  7  March  1996  (Nata  &). 


354 
bees.59  Her  medicine  was  so  powerful  that  when  the  Germans  first  began  to  build  their  fort  at 
Sang'ang'a  every  morning  they  would  awake  to  find  their  foundations  torn  down.  They  finally 
gave  up  at  that  spot  and  built  at  Nyabuta,  Fort  Ikoma.  The  history  of  re-occupation  of  settlements, 
of  settlement  names  used  in  other  settlements  and  the  telescoping  of  time  makes  it  almost 
impossible  to  differentiate  the  settlements  chronologically. 

The  spaces  of  these  settlement  sites  represent  the  spaces  of  small  scale  communities  as 
points  on  a  landscape.  Elders  can  identify  almost  every  settlement  site  according  to  the  lineage  or 
clan  that  lived  there,  without  reference  to  ethnic  group.  Since  wealthy  men  and  ritually  powerful 
women,  held  authority,  in  part,  because  they  were  lineage  elders,  traditions  identify  their 
settlements  according  to  lineage.  These  settlements  seem  to  be  separate  communities,  inhabited 
during  approximately  the  same  time  period,  who  were  linked  to  each  other  by  networks  of 
redistribution,  across  what  are  now  ethnic  boundaries.  By  naming  and  remembering  settlements  of 
prosperous  men  and  times  of  plenty,  people  identify  themselves  with  the  same  processes  of 
reciprocity  between  land  and  people  that  made  prosperity  possible. 
Settlement  Patterns:  the  Oruberi 

These  stories  about  particular  settlements  are  consistent  with  the  testimony  of  elders 
concerning  settlement  patterns  before  the  disasters.  The  people  I  talked  to  described  settlements  in 
the  pre-crisis  era  as  a  relatively  concentrated  collection  of  patrilineally  or  matrilineally  related 
homesteads  called  an  oruberi.  Further  confirmation  of  this  pattern  comes  in  the  identification  of 
nearly  all  past  settlements  with  particular  lineages.    One  person  said  that  the  homesteads  were 


59  Interview  on  the  ekitana  of  Mantarera  with  Sochoro  Kabati,  Nyichoka,  2  June  1995 
(Nata  cf). 


355 
close  enough  to  each  other  that  people  could  hear  a  shout  from  the  adjacent  homestead.60  People  of 
the  same  clan  grouped  their  settlements  within  one  area,  or  on  one  set  of  hillsides,  called  the  ekyaro 
or  territory.  A  brush  fence  often  surrounded  the  oruberi  that  contained  four  to  ten  or  more 
homesteads.  Elders  contrasted  this  pattern  with  the  much  more  highly  concentrated  settlements  and 
stone  forts  at  the  height  of  the  Maasai  raids.  Without  archeological  evidence,  to  tell  how  far  before 
the  disasters  this  pattern  might  have  extended  is  impossible. 

A  common  grazing  area  called  the  ekerisho,  always  lay  near  the  oruberi."  It  is  not  clear 
whether  farmers  always  grazed  their  livestock  near  to  the  oruberi  or  whether  this  was  another 
change  that  resulted  from  the  time  of  raids.  In  any  case  elders  remember  no  other  pattern  and 
grazing  near  to  the  village  is  consistent  with  the  strategy  for  maintaining  trypanosomiasis  immunity 
discussed  in  Chapter  5  and  is  a  wide-spread  regional  pattern.  Members  of  the  oruberi  grazed  their 
livestock  together  and  farmed  in  areas  often  many  hours  walk  from  the  oruberi  called  the  ahumbo 
fields.62  Each  family,  and  each  wife,  had  their  own  ahumbo  fields  that  were  adjacent  to  each  other 
and  surrounded  by  a  brush  fence.  Young  people  were  left  at  the  fields  during  the  night  to  guard 
against  wild  animals.  They  stayed  in  temporary  houses  called  ekeburu  during  the  farming  season. 
The  old  and  the  very  young  stayed  back  at  the  oruberi,  along  with  enough  youth  to  guard  the  cattle 


60  Interviews  with  Surati  Wambura.  Morotonga.  13  July  1995  (Ikoma  S);  Jackson 
(Bcncdicto)  Mang'oha  Maginga,  Mbiso,  18  March  1995  (Nata  <f);  Mariko  Romara  Kisigiro, 
Burunga,  31  March  1995  (Nata  <?).  Much  of  this  information  is  pieced  together  from 
conversations  which  contrasted  the  fort  settlements  of  the  disasters  with  this  early  pattern  and  the 
contrast  to  present  village  structure. 

61  See  F.hret.  Classical  Age,  for  a  sense  of  the  great  time  depth  here. 

°2  An  early  German  report  states  of  the  "Washashi  and  Wangorimi,"  "the  fields  in  some 
cases  are  several  hours' journey  from  the  houses."  Geographical  Section,  A  Handbook  of  German 
East  Africa,  pp.  97. 


356 
in  case  of  a  raid.  Economic  cooperation  and  mutuality  within  the  oruberi  were  as  important  as 
within  the  homestead. 

People  discussed  the  ideal  oruberi  of  the  past  as  a  homestead  on  a  larger  scale.  The 
oruberi  fence  had  one  gate  for  livestock  and  a  secret  backdoor  for  emergency  escape,  just  like  the 
homestead.  Elders  compared  the  brush  fence  surrounding  the  oruberi  to  the  homestead  fence, 
using  the  same  word  (orubago).  By  definition  everyone  in  the  oruberi  was  part  of  the  same 
patrilineage.  as  they  would  be  in  the  ideal  homestead.    Yet  just  like  a  homestead,  many  people 
were  incorporated  that  did  not  share  a  genealogical  connection.  The  ways  that  communities 
incorporated  strangers  in  the  past  demonstrate  how  the  homestead  model  makes  allowances  for 
people  not  genealogically  related.  Lineal  descent  was  the  idiom  through  which  western  Serengeti 
peoples  conceptualized  the  relationships  within  one  settlement. 

The  settlement  structure  of  villages  today,  even  with  the  vast  changes  of  the  past  century, 
represents  the  ideal  of  lineage-based  settlement.  These  changes  include  the  reformation  into 
concentrated  age-set  settlements  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century;  the  movement  back  to 
dispersed  settlements  oriented  around  wealthy  men  in  the  colonial  period;  and  finally  the  imposition 
by  the  independent  government  of  Tanzania  of  concentrated  "Ujamaa"  villages  in  the  1970s.63  In 
spite  of  this  history,  organization  of  most  villages  in  western  Serengeti,  whether  "Ujamaa"  or  not, 
tends  to  revolve  around  the  relationships  of  a  couple  of  key  families.  The  spatial  organization  of 
the  village  often  situates  lineage-related  families  in  the  center,  with  those  related  by  friendship  or 
patronage  to  those  families  on  the  periphery. 


B  "Ujamaa"  was  a  nationwide  scheme  instituted  after  the  " Arusha  Declaration"  in  1 967  to 
deploy  "African  Socialism"  by  resettling  everyone  in  planned  villages  rather  than  dispersed 
settlements. 


357 

The  present  day  village  of  Mbiso  in  Nata  is  a  good  example  of  these  ideal  patterns  in 
practice."  Magoto  Mosi,  the  father  of  my  host  in  Nata.  founded  this  village.  His  original 
rectangular,  tin-roofed  house,  sits  at  the  crossroads  of  the  village,  on  the  truck  route  to  Arusha. 
Musoma  and  Mugumu.  The  rest  of  the  village  grew  out  from  that  point  with  his  sons'  houses 
closest  to  his  and  his  daughters',  who  married  within  the  community,  farther  out.  Many  people  in 
the  village  came  there  because  they  respected  Magoto  and  because  his  prosperity  had  generated 
many  relationships  of  reciprocity,  relationships  he  considered  friendships.  Almost  everyone  in  the 
village,  whether  of  his  clan/lineage  or  not,  can  trace  a  relationship  of  some  kind  back  to  Magoto 
himself.  The  village  grew  up  around  the  personal  patronage  and  influence  of  a  "big  man." 

The  internal  spatial  structure  of  the  village  differentiates  itself  into  lineage  and  age-set 
based  categories.  Almost  everyone  in  the  village  is  of  the  age-set  cycle  of  Bongirate,  reflecting 
changes  in  the  residence  patterns  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Bongirate  of  Magoto's  clan, 
Moriho,  live  at  the  east  end  of  the  village,  while  Bongirate  of  the  Getiga  clan  inhabit  the  west  end 
of  the  village.  A  few  families  of  the  Saai  age-set  cycle,  who  came  in  because  of  association  with 
Getiga  clan  members  of  the  Bongirate  age  cycle,  live  on  the  west  end  of  the  village.  A  number  of 
Getiga  clan  members  from  ikoma  also  joined  fellow  clan  members  at  the  west  end  of  the  village. 
Quite  a  mix  of  people  came  in  at  the  time  of  "Ujamaa"  from  the  settlement  of  Sibora  that  they 
abandoned  because  of  its  designation  as  a  game-controlled  area  by  the  government.  Sibora  people 
were  all  Bongirate  and  so  moved  into  the  east  end  of  the  village,  of  whatever  ethnic  group  or  clan. 
The  exception  to  this  pattern  is  the  enclave  of  school,  court,  police  and  other  government  workers 
living  in  the  government  housing  section  on  the  west  side  of  the  village. 


This  information  is  based  on  an  informal  village  survey  that  I  did  with  Nyamaganda 
Magoto  in  late  1995  in  which  he  and  others  named  the  inhabitants  of  each  house  in  the  village, 
their  clan,  age-set.  relation  to  Magoto.  occupation  and  other  relevant  information. 


358 

These  diverse  people  who  moved  to  Mbiso  because  of  personal  ties  to  Magoto  found  a 
place  for  themselves  by  settling  near  to  those  with  whom  they  shared  age-set,  clan  or  lineage 
membership.  People  related  both  through  Magoto's  mother's  family  and  his  father's  family  claimed 
kinship  as  the  basis  for  moving  to  the  community.  Since  most  Nata  people  are  related  to  each  other 
in  multiple  ways,  these  settlers  used  kinship  to  assert  their  strongest  claim  to  a  reciprocal 
connection  with  Magoto.  Structurally,  then,  the  village  is  a  lineage-based  settlement,  but  the  logic 
of  those  who  decided  to  move  was  based  on  personal  patronage. 

Considering  these  more  flexible  ideas  about  how  people  understand  their  relationships  to 
each  other  and  how  they  come  to  congregate  in  one  area,  we  must  also  question  the  assumption  of 
strict  lineage-based  settlement  in  the  past.  Because  local  languages  derive  the  names  for  lineage 
from  the  model  of  the  homestead— gateway  (ekehita),  house  (anyumba),  hearth  (rigiha),  we  might 
more  usefully  think  of  the  understood  relationship  between  peoples  within  one  settlement  as  an 
extension  of  the  homestead  model.65  People  may  have  congregated  together  in  one  settlement 
because  the  presence  of  an  influential  man  assured  them  that  they  could  find  prosperity  and 
security  there.  Yet  the  formal  ways  in  which  they  explained  their  choices  and  related  to  others 
within  the  settlement  were  based  on  the  idiom  of  lineage  and  later  age-set. 
Abasimano:  The  Incorporation  of  Strangers 

While  elders  said  that  everyone  in  an  oruberi  claimed  one  lineage,  the  underlying 
philosophy  of  people  and  land  in  the  western  Serengeti  was  not  exclusive.  Because  land  was 
plentiful,  and  people  scarce,  communities  gave  inclusiveness  high  priority.  According  to  local 
testimony  specific  mechanisms  existed  to  incorporate  individual  strangers  (abasimano)  and  even 


65  Kuper  does  this  in  his  analysis  of  the  Zulu  state  as  representing  deep  continuities  with 
the  house  model  rather  than  in  terms  of  lineage.  Kuper,  "The  House  and  Zulu  Political  Structure;" 
Schoenbrun,  "Gendered  Histories,"  pp.  470-480. 


359 

stranger  clans  into  the  group.  Their  incorporation  rendered  them  natives  (abibororu.  meaning 
"those  who  were  native  born").  Wealthy  elders  incorporated  hard  working  strangers  into  their  own 
lineages  or  grafted  the  stranger  lineage  onto  their  own.  These  strangers  accepted  initiation  into  the 
local  system  of  titles  and  took  an  oath  not  to  leave  the  land  or  betray  their  adopted  people. 

Lineage  and  genealogical  relatedness  was  the  idiom  through  which  people  understood  their 
rights  and  obligations  to  each  other  but  it  was  their  common  residence  that  united  them  and  made 
them  one  people.  The  children  of  an  omosimano,  or  stranger,  are  ommbororu  (abibororu).  or 
"native  born,"  and  not  differentiated  from  their  peers  of  native  born  parents.  At  issue  is  not  blood 
or  biological  inheritance  but  where  a  person  was  born.  These  devices  quickly  erase  the  origins  of 
abasimano  and  few  signs  of  it  remain  for  their  descendants.  The  family  cannot  discuss  their 
stranger  origins  until  a  couple  of  generations  have  passed.  While  Nata  genealogies  disguise  this 
diversity,  almost  everyone  can  identify  some  abasimano  ancestors.  Many  people  declared  that  they 
were  "pure"  Nata  but  when  I  questioned  them  more  closely  they  would  tell  me  stories  of  a 
grandmother  or  a  great-grandfather  coming  from  another  place.  The  structure  of  genealogies 
completely  erases  stranger  origins  by  incorporating  them  into  existing  lineages. 

People  not  only  tolerate  and  incorporate  strangers  but  also  value  them  highly.  The  life 
histories  of  elders  today  provide  evidence  for  inferences  about  strangers  in  the  past."  Although 
most  elders  contracted  their  marriages  within  the  immediately  surrounding  localities,  some  took 
stranger  wives  because  of  friendships  between  their  fathers  and  men  of  other  localities.  Other 
women  fled  their  homes,  sometimes  with  young  children,  exiled  because  of  pregnancy  before 
circumcision  or  witchcraft  accusations.    Nata  men  sought  stranger  wives  because  their  children 


66  Each  informant  that  I  interviewed  was  also  asked  about  their  own  life  history.  This 
information  generalizes  from  many  of  those  histories  and  from  specific  conversations  particularly 
with  the  Magoto  family  on  strangers.  Informal  discussions  in  Ikoma  on  stranger  wives  confirmed 
these  ideas. 


360 
would  then  inherit  from  their  father  rather  than  their  maternal  uncle.67  In  Nata  the  children  of  an 
omosimano  wife  inherit  equally  with  their  paternal  uncles  at  the  death  of  their  grandfather.  A 
stranger  wife  carries  on  the  homestead  of  her  husband,  which  his  brothers  do  not  inherit.  Neither 
do  they  inherit  his  widow,  as  is  normally  the  case.  Stranger  wives  also  represent  important  in-law 
connections  outside  the  community.  These  are  useful  on  trips,  in  trade  and  to  gain  support  in 
political  conflicts.  Nata  respect  and  fear  an  omosimano  wife  for  her  outside  connections  and 
strong  internal  power  at  inheritance.  The  liabilities  of  marrying  an  outsider  are  that  she  may  be 
culturally  and  linguistically  inept  and  cause  embarrassment  to  the  family.  Witchcraft  accusations 
most  often  fall  to  the  stranger  wife. 

Another  common  way  in  which  the  community  incorporated  abasimano.  particularly 
during  the  period  of  disasters  was  as  abagore  or  "people  who  were  bought."  This  was  an 
important  mechanism  for  coping  with  famine  in  the  past.  Droughts  were  often  local  and  when  a 
family  ran  out  of  food  their  only  option  might  be  to  take  a  child  to  a  neighboring  group  where  they 
had  connections  and  leave  the  child  in  exchange  for  food.  If  the  child  was  a  girl,  the  food  would  be 
considered  as  bridewealth,  if  a  boy,  as  sale.  These  children  were  not  treated  as  slaves  but  as 
members  of  the  family  and  incorporated  as  other  abasimano  children.  Chief  Megasa  bought 
Rotegenga,  who  later  succeeded  him  as  chief,  from  Simbete  parents  during  a  famine,  yet  few 
questioned  his  ability  to  represent  Nata  because  of  his  origins. 

The  mechanisms  for  the  incorporation  of  strangers  worked  a  bit  differently  in  Ngoreme. 
reflecting  the  diverse  histories  of  the  region.  The  Ngoreme  do  not  use  the  term  abasimano  at  all  or, 
if  used,  it  refers  to  slaves.  The  term  for  people  of  "pure  blood"  (whose  parents  were  both 
"Ngoreme").  was  kicheneni.  in  contrast  to  the  Nata  and  Ikoma  emphasis  on  birth  place.  Certain 


'  Also  discussed  by  Huber,  Marriage  and  Family,  pp.  95-96. 


361 
Ngoreme  rituals  of  the  lineage  require  a  native  kicheneni  only,  whereas  elsewhere  in  western 
Serengeti  children  of  strangers  may  participate  in  these  rituals.  The  Zanaki,  Kuria  and  Lakes 
peoples  have  a  specific  word  for  slave  (ommeese/abaseese)  that  is  also  used  for  these  strangers. 
The  word  literally  means  "dog"  and  suggests  a  very  different  treatment  of  strangers  than  in  Ikoma 
and  Nata.  They  also  commonly  used  the  term  for  "someone  who  is  bought."*"  The  reasons  for  this 
pronounced  difference  in  attitude  may  be  a  result  of  higher  population  densities  among  the  Lakes 
and  highland  peoples  and  thus  a  greater  need  to  control  wealth  within  the  lineage.  It  may  also  be  a 
result  of  closer  interaction  with  the  coastal  caravan  slave  trade  that  operated  around  the  lake  from 
Buganda  through  Ukerewe  to  the  ports  in  Sukuma. 

Many  lineage  or  clan  histories  base  their  narratives  on  the  arrival  of  a  stranger  and  his 
incorporation  to  form  a  new  section  of  the  territory.  Western  Serengeti  people  valued  strangers  in 
the  homestead  as  wives  and  sons  and  also  honored  them  as  great  and  powerful  ancestors.  This  was 
part  of  the  strategy  of  wealthy  men  to  incorporate  many  people  as  his  dependents.  Among  the 
important  prophets  of  the  past,  Gitaraga  of  the  Nata  was  a  stranger,  who  arrived  as  a  child  with  the 
implements  of  rainmaking  in  his  hands.  A  man  without  children  adopted  him  so  that  the  lineage 
would  not  die.69  Elders  say  that  the  woman  who  makes  the  medicine  bundle  of  the  bees  at  Riyara 
(Materera)  must  remain  an  omosimbe  (an  independent  woman)  but  take  a  stranger  omotware  (male 
wife).  The  spirit  propitiated  at  Nyichoka  was  a  stranger  wife.  When  the  community  needed  to 
consult  a  prophet  they  often  went  far  away  to  find  one  who  was  efficacious.  The  relationship  of  the 


68  Ngoreme  Dictionary,  Iramba  Parish,  n.d.   Interviews  with  Zabron  Kisubundo 
Nyamamera  and  Makang'a  Magigi,  Bisarye,  9  November  1995  (Zanaki  cf);  Sarya  Nyamuhandi 
and  Makanda  Magige,  Bumangi,  10  November  1995  (Zanaki  tf);  Daudi  Katama  Maseme  and 
Samueli  Buguna  Katama,  Bwai,  1 1  November  1995  (Ruri  cf);  Elfaresi  Wambura  Nyetonga. 
Kemgesi,  20  September  1995  (Ngoreme  cf);  Bhoke  Wambura  (Ngoreme  ?)  and  Atanasi  Kebure 
Wambura  (Ngoreme  <f),  Maburi,  7  October  1995. 

69  Interview  with  Mahiti  Kwiro,  Mchang'oro,  19  January  1996  (Nata  <f). 


362 

Tatoga  prophets  to  Ikoma  is  one  in  which  strangers  have  become  "parents"  with  ritual  authority  in 
some  of  the  most  important  Ikoma  ceremonies  to  maintain  the  health  of  the  land.  In  each  of  these 
situations,  the  incorporation  of  the  power  of  strangers  was  considered  efficacious  to  the  health  of 
the  local  community. 

This  ethnographic  and  linguistic  evidence,  although  not  conclusive,  suggests  that  there  is 
continuity,  at  least  from  the  nineteenth  century  to  the  present,  in  the  organization  of  settlements  on 
the  basis  of  a  lineage  idiom.  Yet  what  brought  people  together  in  these  diverse  settlements  was  the 
patronage  networks  of  "big  men"  and  mechanisms  for  incorporating  strangers.  Some  of  the  key 
terms  from  which  I  reconstruct  these  patterns  such  as  oruberi  (settlement),  omwame  (wealthy 
man),  omosimano  (stranger)  can  be  argued  on  the  basis  of  the  comparative  method  to  have  been 
innovations  by  Mara  speakers  in  the  last  500  years.  Recent  ethnography  provides  models  for  how 
these  institutions  might  have  functioned  in  the  past.  The  evidence  from  both  these  sources  is 
consistent  with  the  oral  traditions  concerning  individual  settlement  sites  dating  to  the  period  prior  to 
the  disasters. 

Continuity  and  Relationship  to  the  Land  in  the  Context  of  Mobility 

The  last  piece  of  the  puzzle  concerning  nineteenth  century  settlement  and  the  relationship 
of  people  to  the  land  is  how  the  patterns  just  described  fit  into  the  context  of  settlement  mobility. 
In  the  last  chapter  I  argued  that  western  Serengeti  people  adapted  to  a  marginal  environment  by 
moving  their  farming  settlements  fairly  frequently  over  distances  travelled  in  a  day  or  two.  If,  as  I 
argue  in  this  chapter,  people  maintained  their  relationship  to  the  land  through  the  ancestors  located 
at  particular  places,  then  was  it  possible  for  people  to  move  into  lands  not  controlled  by  the  spirits 
of  their  ancestors?    If  people  moved  as  individuals  or  in  small  family  groups  the  mechanisms  of 
incorporation  described  above  could  easily  accomodate  their  assimilation  into  a  new  settlement. 
However,  there  are  also  examples,  both  in  oral  tradition  and  in  recent  times,  of  larger  groups  of 


363 
people  moving  into  new  lands  to  start  their  own  settlements.  The  Ikoma  story  of  the  Machaba 
erisambwa  demonstrates  how  mobile  spirits  solved  this  problem.  Yet  many  other  cases  exist  where 
people  resolved  the  problem  by  accommodating  the  new  spirits  of  the  land,  establishing  their  own 
spirits  or  moving  back  to  older  sites. 

People  may  have  moved  frequently  but  their  relationship  to  the  land  constrained  their 
movements.  Those  whose  ancestors  inhabited  the  land  as  emisambwa  ritually  controlled  it.  A 
family  who  was  not  living  in  an  area  in  which  their  lineage  was  responsible  for  propitiation  of  the 
spirits  had  to  establish  reciprocal  relationships  with  those  who  "owned  the  land."  Good  reasons 
existed  for  doing  this  but  people  were  ever  mindful  of  returning  to  the  places  where  they  had  a 
connection  to  the  land.  Philip  Mayer  argued  that  among  the  Gusii,  "the  lineage  attracts  the  return 
of  its  own  members  because  of  its  association  with  patrimony,  protection,  and  the  influence  of 
ancestor  spirits."™  People  did  not  take  lightly  permanent  migration  to  new  areas,  which  meant  the 
establishment  of  new  emisambwa  to  protect  the  land  and  its  people.  It  was  only  under  spiritual 
direction  by  ritual  means  that  people  were  willing  to  undertake  migration  to  the  land  of  others. 

Two  recent  example  of  larger  groups  of  people  moving  and  establishing  themselves  in  new 
land  provide  possible  models  for  these  patterns  in  the  nineteenth  century.  These  stories  also 
illustrate  continuity  in  ideas  about  leadership  and  the  relationship  to  the  land  that  I  have  discussed 
in  relation  to  the  mid-nineteenth  century.  Some  have  argued  that  because  local  societies  lost 
political  control  with  colonialism  they  also  lost  the  ability  to  generate  new  innovations  on  these  old 
principles  of  social  action.71  Yet  these  examples  suggest  that  incredible  continuity  remains  despite 
an  utterly  changed  historical  context. 


70  Mayer,  The  Lineage  Principle,  p.  3 1 

71  Vansina,  Paths  in  the  Rainforest,  pp.  245-248. 


364 

The  first  case  is  of  the  Nata  patriarch  Magoto  who  moved  to  Ikizu  in  1932  and  back  to 
Nata  in  1964.  The  second  is  the  move  of  Kuria  Nyabasi  from  North  Mara  into  the  Mugumu  area 
of  the  western  Serengeti  in  the  1950s.  Although  these  are  both  cases  taken  from  the  colonial  period 
they  seem  to  reflect  the  same  concerns  about  land  and  settlement  discussed  in  relation  to  oral 
traditions  about  the  nineteenth  century,  before  the  disasters.  These  cases  illustrate  cultural 
continuity  in  the  ways  that  people  have  settled  and  found  prosperity  on  the  land. 
Magoto  Mosi  and  the  Nata  Moves  to  Mugeta  (1932-64) 

During  the  late  1 920s  and  early  1 930s  sleeping  sickness  became  epidemic  in  the  western 
Serengeti  and  the  colonial  officers  were  concerned  about  the  dramatic  decrease  in  the  Nata 
population.  They  sent  out  a  Tsetse  Fly  officer  to  investigate  the  causes.  Chief  Rotegenga  was 
adamant  that  the  cause  of  population  decline  was  death  from  sleeping  sickness  but  the  officer 
began  to  suspect  otherwise.  He  concluded  that  something  else  had  driven  the  people  to  move  out  of 
Nata,  which  had  in  turn  encouraged  the  return  of  bush  and  attracted  the  tsetse  fly.  He  left  without 
ever  solving  the  problem  of  why  so  many  Nata  decided  to  leave.72 

Back  in  Nata  1  heard  the  other  side  of  the  story.  During  this  time  (1 920's-  early  30's)  the 
Bongirate  age-set  cycle,  of  whom  Magoto  Mosi  was  a  part,  felt  oppressed  by  Chief  Rotegenga  (of 
the  Busaai  cycle)  and  had  many  conflicts  with  him.  Rotegenga  had  already  forced  Magoto  to  leave 
Nata  earlier,  after  having  openly  defied  the  authority  of  the  Chief.  In  addition  this  was  a  time  of 
famine.  Magoto  Mosi.  known  as  an  omukina,  or  a  speaker,  called  together  the  Bongirate  of  Nata 
and  any  others  not  happy  with  the  political  situation.  He  convinced  them  that  it  was  time  to  move. 
They  secured  land  and  permission  from  the  neighboring  Ikizu  chief,  Makongoro,  and  moved  to 
Mugeta. 


72  H.G.  Caldwell,  "Report  on  Sleeping  Sickness  in  Musoma  District,  July  and  August 
1932,"pp.  1-7,  215/463,  TNA. 


365 

A  friend  and  fellow  labor  migrant  in  Nairobi  introduced  Magoto  and  the  Nata  delegation  to 
Chief  Makongoro.  Makongoro  heard  their  request  and  promised  to  make  Magoto  mwanangwa 
(headman)  of  the  new  area  at  Mugeta  if  Magoto  could  get  lots  of  Nata  to  move  to  Ikizu.  Chief 
Rotigenga  prevented  the  first  people  to  move  in  1932  from  taking  out  their  livestock  until  Magoto 
and  his  men  went  to  Musoma  and  got  the  District  Commissioner  to  intervene.  Both  chiefs  were 
competing  for  the  right  to  claim  these  people  as  their  own.  Most  people  came  to  Mugeta  between 
1 933  and  1 934,  when  Magoto  was  mwanangwa  (headman).  When  the  Nata  heard  of  his  position, 
even  more  moved  to  Mugeta,  including  some  Ishenyi  and  Ngoreme,  who  came  seeking  sanctuary. 
Estimates  of  the  number  of  people  to  move  to  Mugeta  in  the  1930s  vary  from  200  to  400  people, 
along  with  their  livestock.  By  1938  Magoto  had  too  large  a  herd  of  livestock  to  stay  in  Mugeta. 
He  decided  to  move  again,  out  on  the  plains,  near  to  an  Ishenyi  friend.  Magoto  moved  two  more 
times,  following  his  growing  herd  and  trade  with  the  Tatoga. 

Finally,  in  the  1 956  Magoto  decided  it  was  time  to  move  back  to  Nata.  Magoto's  son, 

Nyamaganda,  in  a  biography  of  his  father,  recreated  the  speech  his  father  gave  in  Mugeta  to  the 

gathered  Nata  men: 

The  time  has  come  to  return  our  youth  to  their  home  in  Nata,  we  elders  are  getting  old, 
some  of  our  sons  have  children  and  even  grandchildren.  If  we  die  first  who  will  show 
them  the  place  where  they  were  born  and  the  names  of  the  places  where  we  have  built 
and  the  places  where  our  fathers  lived?  The  thing  that  we  came  here  to  get.  God  has 
helped  us  to  get  in  abundance,  that  is  cattle,  goals  and  sheep,  and  further.  He  has 
blessed  us  with  people.  All  of  this  wealth  we  must  return  to  our  homes  in  Nata" 

The  move  happened  slowly  and  it  was  not  until  1 963  that  Magoto  established  the  village  of  Mbiso 

on  the  crossroads  of  the  Musoma/Arusha/Mugumu  road.  Mbiso  was  a  good  place  to  live  because 


73  Mwalimu  Nyamaganda  Magoto  Mosi,  "Historia  ya  Mzee  Magoto  Mossi  Magoto  Katika 
Maisha  Yake,"  unpublished  manuscript,  Natta,  1996.  Other  information  about  Magoto  was 
collected  by  talking  to  and  living  with  his  family  in  Nata.  Formal  interview  with  Nyamaganda 
Magoto,  Bugerera,  3  March  1995,  and  Faini  Magoto,  Mbiso,  6  March  1995  (Nata  d-). 


366 

of  the  respect  that  Magoto  carried  and  people  began  to  move  there.  When  the  moves  of  "Ujamaa" 
came  in  1977  people  from  outlying  areas  congregated  at  Mbiso. 

Magoto  only  had  formal  authority  during  the  few  years  he  served  as  mwancmgwa  in 
Mugeta.  Yet  in  his  informal  capacity  as  a  "speaker"  he  was  responsible  for  a  large  migration  of 
people  to  Mugeta  and  back,  following  him  because  of  his  charismatic  leadership.  People 
considered  him  a  man  of  wisdom  and  when  he  spoke  they  listened.  His  power  was  based  on  an 
extensive  network  of  reciprocal  relationships  beyond  that  of  lineage  and  clan.  Magoto  had  been  an 
orphan  who  went  to  live  with  his  mother's  people  as  a  young  man.  This  entailed  changing  age-set 
cycle  as  well  as  clan.  He  had  friendships  developed  during  his  youth  when  he  traded  in  Sukuma, 
collected  arrow  poison  in  Kuria  and  did  migrant  labor  in  Kenya.  As  he  grew  wealthy  in  cattle,  he 
used  these  cattle  to  help  the  sons  of  his  friends  to  go  to  school  or  to  begin  their  own  herds.  These 
informal  ties  of  patronage  made  Magoto  a  trusted  person.  Issues  of  politics  and  power  conditioned 
mobility.  Nevertheless,  in  the  end  Magoto  had  to  bring  his  children  back  where  they  had 
connections  to  the  ancestors  and  to  the  land. 

Magoto  represents  a  combination  of  old  and  new  ideas  about  authority  and  leadership.  His 
achievement  of  wealth  through  livestock  is  a  phenomenon  of  the  early  colonial  period.  The  formal 
title  of  headman  is  also  a  colonial  element.  However,  the  methods  of  historical  linguistics  date  the 
informal  leadership  of  the  "speaker"  back  to  the  time  of  early  Lakes  Bantu  speakers.74  He  later 
gained  the  power  of  "medicines"  when  he  was  initiated  into  the  highest  eldership  title  of  the  Nata  as 
an  omorokingi.     His  relationship  to  the  land  within  a  settlement  pattern  of  mobility  is  congruent 
with  the  evidence  presented  in  this  chapter  for  the  nineteenth  century.  Magoto  eventually  moved 


74  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  pp.  1 99-200,  demonstrates  the  connection  between  the 
power  of  speech  and  healing  or  divination.  As  is  evident  in  the  example  of  Magoto  the  power  of 
speech  was  linked  to  both  political  and  prophetic  roles. 


367 
back  to  Nata,  but  many  other  leaders  did  not  move  back  and  had  to  establish  relations  to  the  land 
in  a  new  place.  The  next  story  provides  a  present  day  model  for  those  who  did  not  return  to  land 
they  once  knew  that  is  congruent  with  evidence  about  nineteenth  century  settlement  patterns. 
Establishing  a  New  Land:  The  Kuria  Move  to  Mugumu  (1956-61) 

Some  Kuria  families  from  the  Nyabasi  clan  territory  in  North  Mara  moved  south  over  the 
escarpment  across  the  Mara  River  beginning  in  1 956  to  establish  themselves  close  to  what  is  now 
the  town  of  Mugumu  and  capital  of  Serengeti  District.  During  this  time  people  in  the  fertile 
highlands  of  the  escarpment  were  beginning  to  suffer  from  land  shortage  and  younger  sons  had  to 
find  new  land  for  their  cattle  and  fields.  Yet  Nyabasi  elders  do  not  cite  these  material  factors  as  the 
reason  for  the  move. 

The  testimonies  of  Nyabasi  elders  agree  that  they  came  to  Mugumu  because  their  prophet 
Gesogwe  prophesied  the  move  near  the  end  of  the  German  period.  They  were  not  able  to  go  at  that 
time  because  Maasai  raids  made  the  area  too  dangerous.  The  prophecy  said  that  they  would  keep 
moving  until  they  reach  the  mountain  Gaoga,  in  the  northern  extension  of  the  Serengeti  National 
Park.  There  they  would  encounter  the  Maasai  and  end  their  expansion.  Although  the  park  has 
precluded  this  goal,  the  Kuria  today  keep  pressure  along  the  whole  northwestern  boundary  of  the 
park." 

The  origin  story  of  the  Nyabasi  says  that  they  once  lived  at  Ikorongo  in  South  Mara,  now 
Ngoreme.  Their  name  relates  them  to  the  Asi,  hunter/gatherers  who  figured  in  the  Nata  and  other 
emergence  stories  told  in  Chapter  4  and  5.  One  Nyabasi  elder  said  that  their  ancestor  was  an  Asi 
hunter,  who  came  to  North  Mara  and  traded  arrow  poison  for  cattle  until  he  became  rich  and 


s  Interviews  with  Kisenda  Mwita  and  Hezekia  Sarya,  Matare,  15  March  1996  (Kuria  <?). 


368 
founded  the  Nyabasi  clan.76  The  Ishenyi  emergence  story  says  that  when  the  Ishenyi  dispersed 
throughout  the  region  some  moved  to  Kuria  and  became  the  Iregi,  now  known  as  the  Kuria 
territory  of  Bwiregi  which  is  a  neighbor  to  Nyabasi.  Clearly,  important  links  existed  between 
South  and  North  Mara  before  the  formation  of  Kuria  ethnicity. 

Nyabasi  elders  say  that  the  Mugumu  area  was  then  open  space,  the  hunting  area  of  the 
Ikoma,  Nata  and  Ngoreme.  All  three  chiefs  gave  them  permission  to  settle  and  divided  the  area  so 
that  each  could  benefit  from  tax  revenue.  The  Kuria  immigrants  suspected  that  the  western 
Serengeti  peoples  welcomed  them  as  an  eastern  shield  against  Maasai  raids.  People  did  not  live  in 
the  Mugumu  area  then,  in  part,  because  it  was  a  corridor  for  raids  from  Loliondo.  The  colonial 
government  had  already  begun  to  settle  Maragoli  and  Luo  immigrants  from  Kenya  in  this  area  as 
well.  The  Kuria  intermarried  with  the  Maragoli  until  they  returned  to  Kenya  at  "Ujamaa." 

The  dream  prophet  (omoroli)  Mbota  decided  it  was  time  to  fulfill  the  prophecy  of  Gesogwe 
and  led  the  Nyabasi  immigrants  to  Mugumu.77  He  had  no  power  to  order  people  to  go,  but  as  with 
Magoto,  where  he  went,  people  followed.  It  took  one  or  two  days  to  move  everything  from 
Nyabasi  to  Mugumu,  sleeping  one  night  in  Ngoreme.  The  head  of  the  homestead  and  some  young 
men  preceded  the  others  by  at  least  a  year  to  prepare  a  place  and  harvest  a  crop.  It  took  two  years 
to  complete  the  move,  with  the  cattle  coming  last.  The  advance  group  found  friends  already  in  the 
area  to  help  them  choose  a  place  to  settle.  After  they  had  chosen  a  spot,  the  immigrants  marked  the 
trees  around  the  perimeter  of  the  area  as  an  indication  of  possession.  After  one  family  settled,  their 


76  Interview  with  Sira  Masiyora,  Nyerero,  17  November  1995  (Kuria  cf). 

77  Kjerland,  "Cattle  Breed,"p.  140,  says,  "the  seers  instructed  people  how  to  move  and  told 
them  where  to  go  and  when."  In  her  questionnaire  on  moves  back  to  Kebaroti-from  the  Zebra 
people-70  out  of  74  in  survey  claimed  their  parents  moved  according  to  the  words  of  the  seers. 
The  four  who  didn't  mention  it  were  youngest  respondents.  Twenty-four  named  seers  were  listed, 
according  to  each  lineage. 


369 

lineage,  clan  or  dependents  tended  to  settle  around  them  on  the  basis  of  personal  patronage.  Today 
people  use  clan  or  lineage  designations  to  identify  all  of  the  Kuria  villages  around  Mugumu.78 

The  Nyabasi  settled  in  Mugumu  do  not  intend  to  go  back  to  Kuria  country  in  North  Mara. 
No  land  is  available  for  settlement  there  and  they  have  become  ritually  independent  from  North 
Mara.  Kuria  elders  said  they  did  not  have  emisambwa  located  in  a  place  but  depended  on  their 
prophets.  When  they  arrived  in  Mugumu,  the  prophet  gave  them  medicine  to  spread  around  the 
boundaries  to  make  the  land  good.  They  also  sacrificed  an  animal.  Among  the  Kuria  it  is  the 
secret  council  of  the  injama  who  are  responsible  for  the  land.  The  new  injama  formed  in  Mugumu 
carried  some  of  the  old  secrets  from  Nyabasi  but  now  has  new  secrets  for  the  new  land.  The 
boundaries  that  the  new  injama  established  with  the  medicines  of  the  prophet  are  secret  and  known 
only  to  them,  they  do  not  correspond  with  tax  boundaries."  The  Kuria  have  established  possession 
of  a  new  land  through  the  moral  prescription  of  the  prophet  and  ritual  control  of  the  land.80 

Conclusion 

The  Kuria  case  demonstrates  the  ongoing  potency  of  ideas  about  settlement  and  possession 
of  the  land.  The  relationship  between  particular  places,  their  spirits  and  certain  peoples  undergoes 
a  constant  reconfiguration  in  a  context  of  mobility.  People  know  that  their  relationship  to  the  land 
is  good  when  they  prosper  and  grow.  People  discard  relationships  that  lose  their  efficacy  for  ones 
that  are  successful.  People  gather  around  "big  men"  who  bring  prosperity  by  their  wisdom  and 


78  Interview  with  Kisenda  Mwita,  Hezekia  Sarya,  Matare,  15  March  1996  (Kuria  <f). 

79  Interview  with  Philemon  Mbota,  Matare,  27  January  1995  (Kuria  <f).  Philemon,  now  a 
Mennonite  Church  pastor,  is  the  son  of  the  prophet  Mbota  who  brought  the  people  from  Nyaba; 

80  This  is  a  highly  controversial  and  politicized  topic  in  Serengeti  district  today,  the 
Ngoreme,  Ikoma  and  Nata  have  a  very  different  interpretation  of  the  Kuria  migrations. 


basi. 


370 
leadership.  Good  crops,  expanding  herds  and  many  people  are  signs  that  the  land  has  blessed  the 
people. 

The  place-names  that  people  remember  in  oral  traditions,  either  as  emisambwa  or 
settlement  sites,  are  a  result  of  the  last  reconfiguration  of  those  relationships  to  the  land,  perhaps  in 
the  mid-nineteenth  century.  Yet  they  represent  social  processes,  if  not  the  particular  settlements,  of 
longer  duration.  As  part  of  the  tribal  paradigm  introduced  in  the  colonial  period  it  became 
important  to  establish  an  ancient  history  in  order  to  claim  legitimacy.    One  Ngoreme  historian, 
who  had  his  account  mimeographed  by  the  Catholic  mission  in  Iramba,  dated  these  settlement  sites 
to  the  fourth  century  A.D.  When  asked  how  he  arrived  at  this  date  he  said  that  it  seemed  "far 
enough  back."81  New  chronologies  push  back  the  dates  of  oral  traditions  that  were  intended  for 
other  purposes.  These  places  are  important  not  because  they  establish  the  most  ancient  claims  to 
the  land  but  because  they  establish  connections  to  the  ancestors  who  still  control  the  land  and  thus 
the  health  of  its  people. 

To  prosper  on  the  land  people  must  maintain  a  right  relationship  with  it,  through  ritual  and 

memory.  The  peoples  of  the  western  Serengeti  continue  to  recite  these  place-names  because 

without  the  identification  of  people  and  land  they  cannot  prosper  there.  They  possess  the  land  by 

the  propitiation  of  ancestors  who  have  become  synonymous  with  the  land  as  emisambwa.  They 

remember  the  "big  men"  with  their  extensive  networks  of  people  and  the  places  where  they  lived  to 

connect  themselves  with  that  prosperity.  It  is  a  form  of  patronage  in  which  the  patron  is  dead  but 

his  spirit  keeps  "feeding"  the  people.  Because  of  the  importance  of  this  identification  of  land  and 

people,  oral  traditions  pass  on  these  place-names  to  the  next  generation.  As  Magoto  said: 

If  we  die  first,  who  will  show  them  (our  sons)  the  place  where  they  were  born  and  the 
names  of  the  places  where  we  have  built  and  the  places  where  our  fathers  lived? 


"  Interview  with  Philipo  Haimati,  Iramba,   15  September  1995  (Ngoreme  <?). 


371 

These  sites,  each  with  their  own  history  "read"  on  the  landscape,  represent  all  of  the 
various  groups  of  people  that  the  emerging  ethnic  identities  of  the  late  nineteenth  century.  The 
historian  better  understands  these  lists  of  place-names  as  historically  important  places  in  the  local 
politics  of  ritual  and  power  rather  than  sequential  settlements  in  a  "tribal"  migration  history. 
Narrators  created  a  unified  ethnic  history  by  joining  the  histories  of  unlike  units  of  lineages,  clans, 
generation  and  age-sets  and  identification  with  powerful  prophets  or  "big  men."  In  the  early 
colonial  period  the  pointillist  history  of  settlements  became  a  territorial  history  of  the  "tribe."  The 
land  of  many  smaller  ebyaro  (territories)  became  the  administrative  boundaries  of  colonial  tribes. 
By  coopting  the  identification  of  places  and  thus  the  histories  that  they  represent,  oral  traditions 
helped  to  create  ethnic  identities  out  of  an  amalgam  of  other  kinds  of  identities 

The  pointillism  of  settlement  sites  does  not  necessarily  mean  that  they  were  isolated  from 
each  other.  Social  identity  was  multiple  and  situational.  One  person  may  have  lived  in  a 
settlement  of  his  patrilineage,  but  visited  the  prophet  of  another  settlement  for  advice,  asked  for 
help  from  a  "big  man"  of  another  and  shared  a  generation  or  age-set  name  with  people  in 
settlements  all  across  the  region.  Clan  groupings  of  settlements  into  the  ekyaro  (territory), 
responsible  for  maintenance  of  the  land,  participated  in  networks  of  alliance  with  peoples  of  the 
same  clan  name  all  across  the  region.    From  the  traditions  of  the  "floating  gap"  period  nothing 
indicates  that  these  larger  regional  connections  necessarily  corresponded  with  ethnic  identity.  One 
can  imagine  a  map  not  of  fixed  ethnic  blocks  or  territories  but  of  smaller  communities,  dependent 
upon  an  identification  with  the  land,  whose  connections  radiated  out  in  complex  networks  of 
affiliation  and  identity  all  across  the  region  and  beyond. 

The  next  chapter  adds  further  to  the  understanding  of  the  relationship  between  land  and 
people  by  exploring  the  territorial  unit  which  linked  individual  settlements  into  one  ekyaro.  The 
ekyaro  was  formally  clan-based  but  it  was  the  generation-set  that  performed  the  rituals  necessary 


372 
to  "cool  the  land"  and  provide  for  its  internal  security.  While  the  form  of  social  identity  explored  in 
this  chapter  was  that  of  the  lineage,  that  of  the  generation-set  and  its  historical  development  in  the 
region  is  explored  in  the  next  chapter. 


CHAPTER  EIGHT 

THE  WALK  OF  THE  GENERATION-SET: 

THE  RITUAL  DEFINITION  OF  TERRITORY 

This  chapter  looks  at  testimonies  concerning  rituals  rarely  performed  anymore  by  the 
generation-set  to  protect  the  land  and  its  people.  An  analysis  of  these  rituals  demonstrates  that 
people  defined  themselves  territorially  even  where  the  land  encompassed  by  that  territory  was  not  a 
fixed  unit.  Each  time  the  generation-set  performed  these  rituals  it  defined  anew  the  territorial 
identity  of  a  people  united  by  their  ritual  relationship  to  the  land.  These  findings  challenge 
historians  and  anthropologists  to  rethink  their  analyses  of  precolonial  African  society  based  on 
either  the  assumption  of  a  lack  of  territorial  identity  or  the  definition  of  territory  in  terms  of  a 
kinship  group. 

While  the  last  chapter  explored  oral  traditions  about  particular  lineage-based  settlements  in 
the  mid-nineteenth  century,  this  chapter  examines  the  space  of  the  larger  clan  territory,  or  the 
ekyaro,  that  encompassed  a  number  of  settlements  in  one  area  during  the  same  period.    As  with 
emergence  stories  and  migration  traditions,  these  rituals  in  Ikizu,  Nata,  Ishenyi  and  Ikoma  have 
become  the  rituals  of  the  ethnic  group  and  legitimate  present  claims  to  a  territory.  However,  they 
also  represent  much  older  concepts  about  the  relationship  of  land  and  people  that  suggest  further 
how  communities  formed  the  territorial  identity  that  allowed  for  internal  cohesion  in  a  context  of 
expansion  and  mobility  in  the  mid-nineteenth  century  before  the  disasters. 

Nineteenth  century  western  Serengeti  peoples  used  the  homestead  images  of  houses  and 
gateways  to  organize  themselves  into  settlements  and  territories  but  they  united  these  disparate 
peoples  through  an  egalitarian  and  inclusive  relationship  to  the  land.  Although  individual  lineages 

373 


374 
carried  out  the  sacrifices  to  ancestral  spirits  of  the  land,  the  generation-set  representing  all  mature 
men  regardless  of  lineage  or  clan  membership  performed  the  most  important  rituals  to  "cool  the 
land."  Because  people  across  the  Mara  Region  used  the  same  system  of  generation-set  names  they 
could  move  into  new  clan  territories  and  participate  as  equals  with  their  own  generation-set.  The 
generation-set  fostered  the  community  consensus  necessary  for  the  health  of  the  land  and  its  people. 

The  generation-set,  or  rikora  in  power  maintained  the  relationship  to  the  land,  or  the 
ekyaro,  by  the  ritual  of  walking  over  the  land  (kukerera)  every  eight  years  and  spreading  the 
medicine  of  protection  and  rain,  assuring  fertility  and  security,  or  "cooling  the  land."  As  1 
discussed  in  the  last  chapter,  a  right  relationship  to  the  land  and  the  ancestors  who  inhabited  it  was 
necessary  for  prosperity  and  growth.    The  rikora  was  responsible  for  the  health  of  the  land  and 
identified  with  the  land.  Many  elders  made  this  connection  clear  by  asserting  that  because  the 
rikora  no  longer  walked,  the  land  was  ruined.  The  well  being  of  the  land  was  synonymous  with  the 
collective  well  being  of  its  people. 

This  chapter  probes  the  social  identity  of  the  generation-set  and  its  ritual  relationship  to  the 
land  over  time.  It  postulates  that  the  words  for  the  unique  type  of  generation-set  organization 
found  here  dates  back  to  100  B.C.  -  400  A.D.  when  East  Nyanza  Bantu-speakers  adapted  to  the 
drier  lands  of  the  interior  by  learning  from  agro-pastoral  Southern  Nilotic-speakers.  The  institution 
of  the  generation-set  provided  an  ideal  device  for  creating  community  consensus  around  the 
inclusive  territorial  principle  of  a  relationship  to  the  land  rather  than  around  the  exclusive  principle 
of  lineage. 

Although  the  ritual  practices  of  the  generation-set  seem  to  be  fairly  stable,  the  territory 
defined  by  this  ritual  walk  has  varied  over  time.  For  example,  the  territorial  unit  of  communal 
identity  enclosed  by  the  ritual  walk  shifted  from  that  of  the  clan  to  the  age-set  during  the  period  of 
the  disasters  and  then  to  the  ethnic  group  during  the  colonial  period.  The  core  images  of  these 


375 
rituals,  including  enclosure,  binding,  covering  and  mediation  of  outside  forces  remain  the  same 
despite  incredible  geographical  variation  in  ritual  practices.    1  trace  the  shifting  and  contested 
meaning  of  ekyaro  territory  established  by  the  seemingly  timeless  ritual  practice  of  "walking  the 
land"  (kukerera).  The  rituals  described  in  this  chapter  represent  the  unification  of  clans  into  one 
age-set  cycle  or  one  ethnic  group.  1  argue  that  generation-set  rituals  used  the  same  symbols  before 
the  disasters  to  unify  diverse  lineages  into  one  clan  territory. 

Although  social  hierarchy  did  exist-in  the  form  of  inequalities  in  wealth,  gender,  seniority, 
expertise,  lineage  or  clan  membership-the  generation-set  leveled  these  differences,  at  least  between 
men  of  one  generation.  The  rituals  to  "cool  the  land"  reinforced  the  communal  authority  of  the 
generation-set  over  other  forms  of  emergent  political  authority  such  as  "big  men,"  rainmakers, 
prophets  or  lineage  elders.  By  promoting  the  "youth"  as  the  "generation-set  in  power"  the  elders 
masked  their  own  authority  in  controlling  the  actions  of  the  youth.  The  "generation-set  in  power" 
was  the  visible  hand  to  carry  out  the  will  of  the  elders  who  directed  them  from  beyond  the  public 
gaze.  By  this  device,  the  elders  fostered  community  consensus  by  silencing  discussion  on  the  basic 
inequalities  of  seniority  and  gender.  These  rituals  represented  and  reinforced  the  authority  of 
elders,  based  on  the  principle  of  generational  seniority,  as  the  form  of  authority  responsible  for 
protecting  and  healing  the  land  and  its  people. 

Finally,  I  use  the  generation-set  rituals  representing  the  core  images  of  enclosure  and  the 
mediation  of  outside  forces  as  the  basis  for  looking  at  the  concept  of  territory  and  territorial 
identity  over  time.  Although  1  have  already  shown  that  western  Serengeti  people  had  various  ways 
of  conceptualizing  the  spatial  relations  of  their  various  social  identities,  they  employed  the  core 
spatial  images  of  enclosure  to  define  an  identity  with  the  land  independent  of  lineage  ideologies. 
Historical  evidence  suggests  that  people  used  these  concepts  of  enclosure  to  define  territories 
containing  different  social  units  in  different  time  periods.  1  conclude  this  chapter  by  looking  at  how 


376 
western  Serengeti  narrators  employ  these  concepts  of  territory  to  define  newer  kinds  of  ethnic  and 
national  boundaries  and  the  identities  that  they  enclose.  The  generation-set  rituals  best  express 
these  common  understandings  about  boundaries  and  an  identity  linked  to  the  land  that  operated 
across  the  Mara  Region. 

Generation-Set  Ritual  and  the  Middle-Time  Frame 

1  discuss  the  generation-set  rituals  of  "cooling  the  land"  within  the  middle  time  frame  of 
indigenous  history.  One  might  argue  that  we  should  treat  the  generation-set  rituals  as 
representative  of  the  longue  duree,  because  the  generational  principles  of  growth  and  healing  seem 
to  be  quite  ancient.  However,  although  the  generation-set  system  itself  is  very  old  in  the  region,  the 
rituals  themselves  cannot  be  dated.  Oral  testimony  recounts  the  transfer  of  many  generation-set 
functions  and  ritual  to  the  age-set  during  the  period  of  disasters.  These  testimonies  indicate  that 
before  the  disasters  the  generation-set  alone  was  responsible  for  the  rituals  to  protect  the  land  and 
its  people.  The  unit  of  land  around  which  the  generation-set  walks  is  the  ekyaro,  but  the  definition 
of  ekyaro  changed  in  the  late  nineteenth  century  from  the  territory  of  a  clan  to  that  of  an  age-set. 
Perhaps  before  the  nineteenth  century  the  generation-set  walk  encompassed  a  different  social  unit. 
Thus,  without  more  evidence,  I  can  only  convincingly  discuss  these  rituals  in  relation  to  the  period 
immediately  preceeding  the  late  nineteenth  century  disasters. 

1  also  treat  the  generation-set  rituals  in  the  middle  time  frame  (or  "floating  gap")  of 
indigenous  history  because  that  is  where  elders  themselves  place  these  narratives.  Western 
Serengeti  elders  say  that  the  generation-set  rituals  are  very  old  but  that  they  began  after  the 
descendants  of  the  first  parents  had  multiplied  to  the  point  that  they  needed  separate  territories  and 
before  the  period  of  disasters.  Few  local  traditions  describe  the  origin  or  development  of 
generation-sets.  One  informant  said  that  the  ancestors  formed  the  generation-sets  to  unite  all  the 


377 
clans  in  one  land.1  Kuria  testimonies  stated  that  the  Saai  and  Chuuma  generation-set  cycles  were 
named  after  the  wives  of  Mukuria,  their  ethnic  group  founder.2  Kuria  in  the  province  of 
Nyamongo  call  two  twin  hills  the  "hill  of  Chuuma"  and  the  "hill  of  Saai,"  suggesting  a  territorial 
origin  for  the  two  groups.3  These  cryptic  stories,  like  the  place-name  lists  in  the  last  chapter, 
indicate  that  elders  understand  them  as  belonging  to  the  middle  period  between  the  emergence 
stories  and  the  historical  recollections  of  the  disasters. 

In  elder's  testimonies,  the  generation-set  and  its  ritual  represent  the  concern  for  "repetitive 
social  processes."  as  Spear  described  traditions  of  the  middle  period.4    In  Braudel's  terms  the 
middle  period  concentrates  on  the  slow  but  perceptible  rhythms  of  social  time.5  By  setting  the 
discourse  on  territory  and  boundaries  squarely  in  this  middle  time  frame  of  history,  western 
Serengeti  narrators  are  putting  it  out  of  the  reach  of  overt  political  debate.  Claims  to  land, 
territorial  identity  and  the  social  authority  of  elders  presented  in  the  context  of  the  middle  period 
become  unquestioned  "tradition." 

However,  I  argue  that  these  rituals  are  more  than  simply  an  "invention  of  tradition"  to 
legitimate  the  present  social  order,  or,  in  this  case,  specific  rights  to  a  territory.  Scholars  from 
many  disciplines  understand  ritual  as  a  symbolic  text  whose  meaning  they  decode.  Social 
historians  and  historical  anthropologists  have  analyzed  rituals  by  looking  at  their  changing  meaning 


1  Interview  with  Kirigiti  Ng'orogita  8  June  1995  (Nata  <f).  This  man  is  the  last  surviving 
leader  from  the  Saai  generation  cycle  who  knows  the  rituals. 

2  Abuso,  A  Traditional  History  pp.  1 6- 1 7.  This  is  because  the  two  cycles  of  the 
generation-set  (Saai  and  Chuuma)  are  often  refered  to  using  the  prefix  Mwanya-  indicating  the 
houses  of  two  wives. 

3  Ruel,  "Kuria  Generation  Classes,"  p.  20. 

4  Spear,  "Whose  History?,"  pp.  165-181;  and  Spear,  Kenya's  Past,  p.  47. 
'  Braudel,  The  Mediterranean,  p.  xiv. 


378 
within  particular  historical  contexts."  Sociologists  and  anthropologists  have  seen  ritual  as  a  means 
of  communicating  shared  values  and  dealing  with  internal  conflict.7  All  try  to  interpret  the 
meaning  of  rituals  beyond  their  alleged  purpose.  While  each  of  these  approaches  provides  insight 
that  contributes  to  the  following  analysis,  they  all  deny  the  claim  by  participants  that  these  rituals 
commemorate  past  events  rather  than  present  structures. 

Yet  Connerton  argues  that  "if  there  is  such  a  thing  as  social  memory,  we  are  likely  to  find 
it  in  commemorative  ceremonies,"  which  he  defines  as  rituals  that  ostensibly  reenact  the  past.8 
Through  an  analysis  of  ritual  language  and  gesture  in  Europe  he  shows  that  the  structure  of  ritual 
in  "commemorative  ceremonies"  builds  in  a  certain  invariance  because  of  the  performative, 
formalized,  and  stylized  language  on  which  the  reenactment  depends.  Those  who  perform  rituals 
do  so  as  members  of  a  group  that  habituates  them  to  certain  bodily  practices  reserved  for  ritual, 
passed  down  with  little  variance  from  the  past.  While  anyone  can  narrate  oral  traditions,  only 
members  of  the  group  can  perform  the  rituals.  The  positions  and  gestures  of  the  body  in 
performance  form  the  mnemonic  system  of  core  spatial  images  around  which  rituals  are  elaborated. 
Performers  understand  these  actions  as  reenactments  of  past  prototypical  actions.  Ritual  suspends 
linear  time  and  reconnects  people  with  their  past  by  reenacting  the  past.  The  ritual  performance  of 


The  literature  on  ritual  is  vast  and  sophisticated.  See  M.  Bloch,  From  Blessing  to 
Violence:  History  and  Ideology  in  the  Circumcision  Ritual  of  the  Merina  of  Madagascar 
(Cambridge:  Cambridge  University  Press,  1986);  and  Newbury,  Kings  and  Clans. 

7  E.  Durkheim,  Elementary  Forms  of  Relipinns  life  (London:  Allen  and  Unwin,  1 954); 
Victor  Turner,  The  Forest  of  Symbols:  Aspects  of  Ndemhu  Ritual  (Ithaca:  Cornell  University 
Press,  1967);  Max  Gluckman,  Rituals  of  Rebellion  in  South-F.ast  Afri™  (Manchester:  Manchester 
University  Press,  1954). 

8  Connerton,  How  Societies  Remember  p.  71 . 


379 
the  "commemorative  ceremony"  conveys  and  sustains  "an  image  of  the  past"  through  which  a 
community  understands  its  identity.' 

In  western  Serengeti  ritual,  the  definition  of  the  land  encircled  by  the  generation-set.  the 
ekyaro,  changed  according  to  the  historical  context.  However,  the  relationship  between  people  and 
land  embodied  in  ritual  remained  stable  as  the  core  spatial  images,  analogous  to  that  of  oral 
tradition,  but  inscribed  in  bodily  practice.  These  core  spatial  images  include  those  of  the  enclosure, 
binding,  covering  and  mediation  of  outside  forces,  all  of  which  serve  to  define  the  boundaries  of 
social  identity  and  group  cohesiveness  within  a  territory. 

We  know  that  the  core  images  of  enclosure  ritual  are  old  because  they  are  found  in 
generation-set  rituals  throughout  the  Mara  Region  and  cannot  be  traced  to  recent  innovations.  The 
language  of  generation-sets  reconstructed  through  historical  linguistics  is  demonstrably  old.  The 
variations  in  each  ethnic  group  suggest  that  each  group  elaborated  a  given  set  of  rituals  from  an 
older  pattern.  If  western  Serengeti  people  adopted  these  rituals  in  the  last  century  we  would  expect 
them  to  reflect  relations  between  generations  at  that  time.  As  1  demonstrate  in  Chapter  10,  during 
the  early  colonial  years  young  men  gained  autonomy  from  the  authority  of  their  elders  by 
accumulating  their  own  cattle  wealth  through  hunting,  trading,  and  raiding.  The  new  generation  of 
wealthy  men  established  their  own  networks  of  patronage  outside  of  the  channels  controlled  by 
elders.  The  historical  context  of  class  differentiation  and  the  autonomous  authority  of  young  men 
is  not  represented  in  the  principles  of  egalitarian  responsibility  to  the  land  and  the  authority  of 
elders  over  juniors  embodied  in  the  rituals  of  the  generation-set.  Although  these  images  seem  to  be 


9  Ibid,  p.  70,  41-71.  See  also  Renee  L.  Tantala,  "Verbal  and  Visual  Imagery  in  Kitara 
(Western  Uganda):  Interpreting  'the  Story  of  Isimbwa  and  Nyinamwiru,"'  in  Paths  Toward  the 
Past:  African  Historical  Essays  in  Honor  of  Jan  Vansina.  eds.  W.  Robert  Harms,  Joseph  C.  Miller, 
David  S.  Newbury,  and  Michelle  D.  Wagner  (Atlanta:  African  Studies  Association  Press  1994) 
pp.  223-243. 


380 
quite  old,  in  this  chapter  I  reconstruct  the  meaning  of  generation-set  rituals  in  the  period  right 
before  the  disasters  because  narratives  about  the  rituals  refer  to  this  period  and  because  it  is 
impossible  to  know  how  these  rituals  might  have  functioned  before  this  period. 

Age-Organization 

Because  the  generation-set  carries  the  memory  of  concepts  concerning  territorial  identity  in 
the  bodily  practice  of  ritual,  we  must  first  understand  the  ways  in  which  people  have  used  the 
social  logic  of  "age"  and  "generation"  to  organize  social  relationships  before  turning  to  their  ritual 
function.  In  the  anthropological  literature  the  generic  terms  "age-organization"  or  "age-system" 
describe  social  organization  based  on  age,  generation  or  both.  The  term  "age-grade"  refers  to  the 
nearly  universal  tendency  toward  peer  grouping,  while  "age-set"  or  "generation-set"  is  only  used 
where  persons  are  grouped  into  hierarchically  ordered  sets  with  specific  social  responsibilities  as  a 
unit.  Some  anthropologists  use  the  term  "class"  interchangeably  with  "set."  "Age-set"  recruitment 
is  based  on  age  at  initiation,  while  "generation-set"  recruitment  is  determined  at  birth  by  the  father's 
set.  In  an  age-set  system,  a  boy  and  his  uncle  could  be  in  the  same  set  if  they  were  the  same  age, 
while  this  is  impossible  in  a  generation-set  system.  "Age  or  generation-set  cycles"  are  systems  in 
which  a  cycle  of  successive  names  is  assigned  to  each  group  as  it  is  formed  over  time.10  Peoples  in 
the  western  Serengeti  have  used  the  logic  of  organizing  social  relationships  on  the  basis  of  both  age 
and  generation,  although  historically  the  relative  importance  and  function  of  each  have  varied. 

The  western  Serengeti  rikora  (generation-set)  and  its  rituals  belong  mainly  in  the  male 
domain.  Although  women  seldom  undergo  circumcision  anymore,  in  the  past  women  joined  an 
age-set  at  circumcision  and  had  their  own  initiation  names,  different  from  the  boys.  When  they 
married,  they  became  part  of  the  age-set  of  their  husband.  Before  they  married,  young  women 


10  P.  T.  W.  Baxter  and  Uri  Almagor,  "Introduction,"  Age.  Generation  and  Time:  Some 
Features  of  East  African  Age  Organisation  (New  York:  St.  Martin's  Press,  1978),  pp.  1-2. 


381 
enjoyed  public  dances  with  their  age-set  peers.  Women  acquired  a  generation-set  name  from  their 
fathers  at  birth  but  did  not  participate  in  most  of  the  generation-set  rituals  or  leadership,  nor  did 
they  maintain  a  parallel  age  structure.  A  woman's  generation-set  determined  legitimate  marriage 
partners-with  someone  of  her  own  or  an  alternate  generation,  never  with  someone  of  her  father's  or 
children's  generation."  Despite  the  absence  of  women  in  these  rituals,  the  generational  principles 
expressed  in  the  rituals  draw  on  the  female  symbols  of  inside  space,  the  enclosed  womb,  water  and 
fertility.'2 
The  History  of  Age-  and  Generation-Sets  in  the  Mara  Region 

The  Mara  Region  is  somewhat  unique  in  East  Africa  since  social  relations  based  both  on 
age  and  generation  can  be  identified  and  the  region  does  not  conform  to  the  stereotypical 
parameters  of  societies  that  emphasize  age-organization.  Anthropologists  in  Africa  have  most 
often  studied  age-organization  in  relation  to  Nilotic-  or  Cushitic-  speaking  pastoral  peoples.  Mara 
peoples  are  not  only  Bantu-speaking  but  agriculturalists,  surrounded  by  peoples  who  have  no 
generation-set  systems,  cyclical  or  otherwise.  Using  a  model  of  diffusion,  Bischofberger  was  at  a 
loss  to  explain  how  the  Mara  peoples  acquired  this  system. I3    Mara  age  organization  also 
confounded  the  typological  classification  of  early  anthropologists.  P.  H.  Gulliver  attempted  to 
classify  age  organization  into  three  types,  1 )  those  like  the  Maasai  and  Sonjo  with  a  linear  age- 
based  system,  2)  those  like  the  Nandi,  Kipsigis  and  Luyia  with  a  cycling  age-based  system,  and  3) 
those  like  the  Jie,  Pokot,  Tatoga,  and  Kikuyu  with  a  non-cycling  generation-based  system.  The 
Mara  Region  had  a  linear  age-based  system,  like  the  Maasai  ( I ),  that  is  subordinate  to  a 


"  Interview  with  Mwenge  Elizabeth  Magoto,  Mbiso,  6  May  1995  (Nata  9). 

12  For  an  analysis  of  the  symbols  of  wombs  and  enclosures  see  Boddy,  Wombs  and  Alien 
Spirits,  pp.  47-8 1 . 

11  Bischofberger,  The  Generation  Classes,  pp.  99-102. 


382 
generation-based  system,  like  the  Jie  (3),  but  using  many  of  the  same  eight  cycling  age-set  names 
oftheNandi(2).H 

These  earlier  typologies  and  characterizations  treat  age-sets  and  generation-sets  as  if  they 
were  discrete  models  that  were  uniformly  adopted  in  different  times  and  places.  The  examples 
from  Mara  show  that  age  and  generation  are  principles  of  social  logic  that  people  applied  in 
different  ways  in  different  historical  contexts  according  to  their  needs.  The  system  of  age-  and 
generation-sets  in  the  Mara  Region  developed  not  by  a  process  of  diffusion  from  outside  sources 
but  by  drawing  on  a  common  substratum  of  inherited  generative  principles  from  both  Great  Lakes 
Bantu  and  Southern  Nilotic  societies.  Mara  peoples  used  those  principles  in  a  variety  of  historical 
contexts  to  create  institutions  that  met  their  needs.  In  the  context  of  the  late  nineteenth  century 
disasters  western  Serengeti  people  used  these  old  principles  of  age-organization  to  create  unity  and 
cohesion  in  the  midst  of  chaos. 

The  cycling  generation-set  names  used  throughout  the  Mara  Region  have  a  long  history. 
As  I  noted  in  Chapter  4,  the  evidence  of  loan  words  in  East  Nyanza  Bantu  languages  concerning 
livestock,  non-kin  relations  and  the  homestead  from  Mara  Southern  Nilotic  languages  suggests  that 
East  Nyanza-speakers,  moving  into  the  unfamiliar  environment  of  the  interior,  used  common  age- 
sets  and  the  comradeship  of  peers  to  improve  their  livestock  expertise  and  to  develop  new  kinds  of 


14  P.  H.  Gulliver,  "The  Age-Set  Organization  of  the  Jie  Tribe,"  Journal  of  the  Roval 
Anthropological  Institute  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  83  (1953),  pp.  147-168  and  Bischofberger, 
The  Generation  Classes,  pp.  75-81.  For  other  analyses  of  age-set  organization  in  East  Africa  see,' 
P.  H.  Gulliver,  "Turkana  Age  Organization,"  American  Anthropologist  60  ( 1 958):  900-922;  J.  g' 
Peristiany,  'The  Age-set  System  of  the  Pastoral  Pokot:  The  Sapana  Initiation  Ceremony."  Africa 
21  (1951):  188-206;  Robert  A.  LeVine  and  Walter  H.  Sangree,  "The  Diffusion  of  Age-Group 
Organization  in  East  Africa:  A  Controlled  Comparison,"  Africa  32,  2  (April  1 962):  97- 1 1 0;  J.  J. 
de  Wolf,  "The  Diffusion  of  Age-Group  Organization  in  East  Africa:  A  Reconsideration,"  Africa 
50,  3  (1980):  305-310.  For  age-groups  in  the  Mara  Region  see,  E.  C.  Baker,  "Age-Grades  in 
Musoma  District,  Tanganyika  Territory,"  Man  27  (1927):  221-224;  and  E.  C.  Baker,  "Age- 
Grades  in  Musoma  District,  Tanganyika  Territory."  Man  (April  1953):  64. 


383 
homesteads  built  around  the  livestock  corral.  Sometime  before  approximately  400  A.D.,  East 
Nyanza-speakers  adopted  the  cycling  age-set  names  used  today  as  generation-set  names,  perhaps  to 
facilitate  their  relationships  with  pastoralists  already  familiar  with  the  environment.'5 

The  generation-set  system  that  is  found  all  over  the  Mara  Region,  including  the  Lakes 
people  who  speak  Suguti  languages  and  the  Kuria  who  speak  North  Mara  languages,  divides  the 
eight  cycling  Southern  Nilotic  names  into  two  cycles,  (Mwanya)Chuuma  and  (Mwanya)Saai. 
Each  of  these  divisions  has  a  cycle  of  four  names  used  for  each  generation  in  succession.  The 
ceremonies  for  passing  on  authority  to  a  new  generation  take  place  first  among  the  Saai  cycle  of 
the  Saai  generation  followed  by  the  Chuuma  cycle  of  the  Mairabe  generation  and  then  back  to  the 
Saai  cycle  of  the  Nyambureti  generation  and  so  on.  Elders  say  that  it  takes  100  years  to  complete 
the  cycle. 

Saai  Cycle         Chuuma  Cycle 

Saa'  Mairabe  (Ngorongoro  among  Kuria  and  Ghibasa  among  lkizu) 

Nyambureti        Gini 

Gamunyere        Nyangi 

Maina  Chuuma 

Ehret  reconstructed  six  of  these  names  and  their  standard  order  in  pre-Southern  Nilotic 
speech  communities:   l)Sae  2)Gorongoro  3)  Unknown  4)  Gini  5)  Unknown  6)  Nyangi  7) 
Maina  8)  Cuma.    Because  these  six  common  names  are  not  derivable  from  Southern  Nilotic  or 
Bantu  words,  he  postulates  that  pre-Southern  Nilotic  speakers  adopted  the  names  from  Eastern 
Cushitic-speakers  with  whom  they  had  contact  on  the  Ethiopian  borderlands  as  early  as  the  first 


"  Enret>  Southern  Nilotic  History,  p.  46,  shows  that  the  Kuria  generation-set  names  could 
not  have  come  from  later  Kalenjin  sources  because  of  the  sound  changes  and  thus  attests  them  to 
interactions  with  Mara  (Victoria)  Southern  Nilotic-speakers  in  the  late  pre-Southern  Nilotic  times. 
All  East  Nyanza  languages  share  the  same  generation-set  names. 


384 
millennium  B.C.  There,  Pre-southern  Nilotic-speakers  who  had  age-set  systems  adopted  a  cycling 
system  along  with  these  names,  and  also  circumcision  and  clitoridectomy.  East  Nyanza  speakers 
adopted  the  names  of  Nyambureti,  Mairabe  (replacing  Ngorongoro)  and  Gamunyere  at  a  later  time. 
Ehret  argues  that  the  (Curia  did  not  adopt  the  cycling  names  from  their  Southern  Nilotic  Kalenjin 
speaking  neighbors  to  the  north  but  more  likely  from  the  earlier  Mara  Southern  Nilotic-speakers  in 
the  region.'6  A  number  of  groups  in  East  Africa  use  these  cycling  names,  including  Nandi  and 
Kikuyu. 

Although  East  Nyanza  Bantu-speakers  adopted  cycling  age-set  names  from  Southern 
Nilotic-speakers,  they  adapted  the  system  to  fit  their  own  needs.  The  evidence  of  historical 
linguistics  shows  that  the  earliest  Great  Lakes  Bantu  speakers  (C.  500  B.C.)  practiced 
circumcision  and  initiation.  East  Nyanza  speakers,  already  practicing  some  type  of  age- 
organization  would  have  been  receptive  to  elaborations  that  linked  them  to  existing  pastoral 
communities  in  the  region.  In  the  western  Lakes  region,  age-set  institutions  were  lost  with  the 
centralization  of  political  and  religious  authority  and  the  emergence  of  clientship.  Schoenbrun 
postulates  that  the  continued  importance  of  age-organization  occurred  in  those  places  of  the  Great 
Lakes  Region,  such  as  Mara,  where  political  and  religious  hierarchies  did  not  develop  as  a  means 
for  cutting  across  lineage-based  identities  to  create  alliances."  From  earliest  times,  age- 
organization  formed  the  basis  for  unifying  local  communities  of  diverse  origins. 

Although  Mara  peoples  now  use  the  eight  cycling  Southern  Nilotic  names  as  generation-set 
names,  one  cannot  tell  whether  they  adopted  the  names  as  part  of  a  generation-  or  an  age-set 
system.  The  word  used  for  the  generation-set  throughout  the  Mara  Region  today  is 


16  Ibid,  p.  45. 

"  Schoenbrun,  A  Good  Place,  pp.  1 76-77.  "Mara,  Luhyia,  Forest  and  Rwenzori  branches 
of  Great  Lake  Bantu  have  maintained  these  institutions,"  p.  176. 


385 

rikora/amakora  derived  from  the  Bantu  root  meaning  to  grow,  gokora,  implying  that  (although  the 
names  of  each  generation  were  adopted  from  Southern  Nilotic-speakers)  the  generation-set  system 
itself  was  a  local  innovation  around  the  generational  principles  of  growth,  fertility  and  successional 
development."  There  is  no  evidence  to  suggest  that  the  cycling  Southern  Nilotic  names  were  ever 
used  in  the  Mara  Region  except  in  reference  to  relationships  based  on  generation. 

The  word  used  in  the  Mara  Region  for  age-set,  saiga,  is  derived  from  the  Dadog  word  for 
age-set,  saigeida,  presumably  adopted  from  Tatoga  neighbors  who  practice  a  non-cycling 
generation-set  system."  Although  western  Serengeti  people  may  have  adopted  this  word  at  any 
time,  right  up  to  the  nineteenth  century,  it  seems  to  date  to  an  earlier  period  since  the  Gusii,  who 
were  not  in  direct  contact  with  the  Tatoga  in  the  nineteenth  century,  also  use  this  word  (esaiga)  for 
the  house  of  young  unmarried  men.20  As  I  noted  in  Chapter  4,  the  fact  that  the  Tatoga  dropped  the 
Southern  Nilotic  cycling  age-set  names,  sometime  after  1000  A.D.,  while  their  Bantu-speaking 
neighbors  kept  the  names  seems  to  indicate  a  period  of  differentiation  and  separation  between 
herding  and  farming  communities,  where  institutions  that  had  unified  these  communities  no  longer 
took  priority.  However,  this  also  seems  to  be  the  same  time  when  Bantu-speaking  hill  farmers 
adopted  a  linear  age-set  system,  called  saiga,  in  addition  to  the  older  cycling  generation-set  system 
to  maintain  these  useful  relationships  with  herders  across  ecological  zones. 


18  In  the  Suguti  language  of  Kwaya  -kukura,  but  not  in  Kuria.  Augustino  Mokwe  Kisigiro, 
"Nata-Swahili  Dictionary,"  n.d.,  author's  collection,  The  word  kukerera,  for  the  walk  of  the 
generation-set  is  likely  a  prepositional  form  of  kukila  a  proto-Great  Lakes  Bantu  word  meaning, 
"to  overcome,  surpass,  heal,  unify."  The  prepositional  form  implies  an  object,  in  this  case  the  land 
and  all  that  it  stands  for.  David  L.  Schoenbrun,  personal  communication. 

19  Each  circumcision  set  within  the  saiga  are  called  siriti. 

20  LeVine  and  LeVine,  "House  Design,"  p.  162. 


386 

From  this  scarce  evidence.  I  have  tentatively  concluded  that  the  generation-set  system  in  its 
present  form  predated  the  age-set  system  in  its  present  form  and  was  based  on  generational 
principles  of  growth  brought  by  Lakes  Bantu-speakers  as  they  moved  into  the  Mara  Region.  On 
the  basis  of  the  words  associated  with  the  institutions  alone,  the  generation-set  names  were  adopted 
before  the  name  for  the  age-set,  saiga.  Obviously  both  ways  of  organizing  relationships  are  quite 
old  in  the  region  and  both  have  been  used  in  various  ways  over  the  past  millennium. 

Western  Serengeti  peoples  rarely  practice  the  rituals  of  the  generation-set  any  longer,  in 
large  part,  because  of  events  during  the  colonial  period.  During  the  years  after  the  Germans  fled 
the  region  and  before  the  British  took  administrative  control,  generation-sets  in  territories 
throughout  the  region  rose  up  and  overthrew  the  chiefs  appointed  by  the  Germans.  When  the 
British  came  in,  they  reinstated  the  German  chiefs  and  outlawed  the  organization  of  elders  known 
to  them  as  the  "baGini"  (which  is  a  generation-set  name)  on  accusations  of  witchcraft.2'  The 
Musoma  District  Books,  compiled  between  1916  and  1927,  record  under  the  Native  Court  at 
Nagusi  (Ishenyi)  that  saiga  (or  age-set)  "is  forbidden."22  The  colonial  officers  were  not  clear  about 
the  distinction  between  age-  and  generation-sets  and  may  have  feared  the  military  connotations  of 
age-sets.  Government  persecution  forced  age-organization  to  function  underground  since  its  rituals 
were  still  considered  necessary  for  prosperity  on  the  land. 


1  E.  C.  Baker,  "System  of  Government,  Extracts  from  a  report  by  R.  S.  W.  Malcolm," 
Sheet  51 ,  followed  by  page  2,  "Major  Coote  took  the  part  of  the  Chiefs  and  in  an  attempt  to 
improve  the  administration  in  1919,  the  Bagini  were  suppressed."  General  Meeting  at  Musoma 
2/6/1919.  MDB. 

22  Musoma  Sub-District  1916-1927,  p.  59,  MDB,  TNA.  Note  this  is  a  different  and 
earlier  version  of  the  Musoma  District  Books  than  is  on  micro-film  and  available  in  the  United 
States  through  CAMP.  This  earlier  version  is  only  available  at  the  TNA  as  far  as  I  know. 


387 

Few  people  living  today  have  participated  in  generation-set  rituals.  The  Ikoma  have  not 
performed  the  generation-set  walk  since  1 978  and  the  Ishenyi  since  1 950. 23    The  next  Nata 
generation,  Chuuma,  has  lost  all  of  the  elders  who  know  the  rituals  and  so  must  learn  the  rituals 
from  the  Chuuma  of  Ikizu  if  they  decide  to  renew  the  ritual  practice.  Saai  rituals  and  secrets  are 
kept  separately  from  the  Chuuma,  so  that  the  same  generation-set  cycle  in  different  ethnic  groups 
shares  the  same  rituals.24  No  rikora  leaders  remain  in  either  cycle  today.  In  Nata,  Ikoma  and 
Ishenyi  the  generational  names  under  each  cycle  have  fallen  out  of  use  and  only  a  few  of  the  oldest 
men  can  remember  any  of  them  at  all.  One  Nata  informant  told  me  that  Gamunyere  and 
Nyambureti  were  simply  used  as  names  for  greeting  rather  than  being  generation-set  names. 

In  Ikizu  the  Gini,  of  the  Chuuma  cycle,  was  the  last  rikora  to  walk,  around  1940.  Ikizu 
elders  say  that  the  rikora  does  not  walk  anymore  because  the  last  colonial  Ikizu  chief,  Makongoro, 
would  not  allow  it.  He  gained  the  chiefship  from  his  uncle  Chief  Matutu  after  a  controversial 
succession  struggle.  However,  he  was  not  invested  with  the  primary  symbol  of  office,  the  ndezi,  a 
cowry  and  leather  bracelet.  Some  say  that  since  Makongoro  usurped  the  ulemi  by  force  and  was 
not  properly  installed  with  the  ndezi,  he  could  not  allow  the  rikora  to  walk.  The  rikora  walk  is 
part  of  blessing  the  land  at  the  installation  of  a  new  mtemiP    In  the  Ikizu  emergence  story  the  first 
woman,  Nyakinywa,  as  mtemi  rainmaker,  had  to  make  compromises  to  her  authority  by  allowing 
the  generation-set  to  continue.  Makongoro  would  not  let  the  rikora  walk  because  they  represented 
a  powerful  rival  to  his  authority  and  a  threat  to  his  legitimacy.  By  telling  me  these  stories  the  Ikizu 


21  Interviews  with  Mang'ombe  Morimi,  Issenye  Iharara,  26  August  1995  (Ishenyi  <f);  and 
Moremi  Mwikicho,  Sagochi  Nykipegete,  Kenyatta  Mosoka,  Robanda,  12  July  1995  (Ikoma  d% 

24  Interview  with  Kirigiti  Ng'orogita,  Mbiso,  8  June  1995  (Nata  <f). 

25  Interview  with  Ikota  Mwisagija  and  Kiyarata  Mzumari,  Kihumbo,  5  July  1995  (Ikizu 


388 

elders  asserted  an  older  communal  authority  embedded  in  the  generation-set  and  the  control  of 
elders  over  it,  standing  against  the  authority  of  the  chief. 
The  Historical  Priority  of  Generational  Principles 

The  variation  in  age-organization  throughout  the  Mara  Region  presents  a  complicated  and 
intricate  puzzle  to  fit  together.  Yet  behind  this  complexity  lies  a  simple  logic  of  generational 
authority  and  communal  unity  in  relation  to  the  land.  Out  of  these  underlying  principles  the 
variations  and  combinations  of  age-  and  generation-sets  developed. 

One  of  the  most  difficult  problems  in  understanding  Mara  age-organization  is  to  untangle 
age-  and  generation-sets  that  have  a  complicated  and  intertwined  history.  Overall  a  regional 
pattern  exists  of  two  parallel  institutions,  age-  and  generation-sets,  in  operation  simultaneously. 
Young  people  joined  the  linear  age-set  system  when  they  were  circumcised  at  the  time  of  puberty. 
Circumcision  ceremonies  took  place  every  couple  of  years  in  separate  ebyaro  (territories)  and 
several  groups  of  initiates  were  combined  to  form  one  age-set.  Each  age-set  took  a  unique  name 
that  referred  to  an  important  event  or  characteristic  of  the  time  when  they  were  circumcised.  Since 
circumcision  ceremonies  were  highly  visible  and  festive  events,  news  of  the  chosen  age-set  names 
spread  rapidly  and  initiates  all  across  the  region  adopted  the  same  age-set  names. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  person  acquired  his  generation-set  at  birth  according  to  the 
generation-set  of  his  father.  A  person's  generation-set  name  followed  the  sequence  in  the  cycle, 
according  to  whether  his  father  was  from  the  Chuuma  or  Saai  cycle.  A  ceremony  took  place  when 
the  generation-set  that  held  power  was  ready  to  retire  and  pass  on  authority  to  the  next  generation. 
These  took  place  in  approximately  the  same  year(s)  throughout  the  region,  although  the  last 
generation  has  been  decades  late  to  retire  in  many  areas. 

The  question  then  is  how  these  two  parallel  systems  related  to  each  other  historically.  R. 
G.  Abrahams  argues  that,  because  age  and  generation  systems  operate  on  different  principles, 


389 
societies  that  use  both,  must  logically  give  one  priority  over  the  other.26    Gulliver  notes  that 
generation  systems  are  only  possible  where  the  primary  function  of  age  organization  is  not 
military,  since  a  generation-based  system  does  not  ensure  that  all  young  men  will  be  recruited  at 
their  prime.27  The  age-set  is  a  useful  tool  for  societies  that  promote  the  ethos  of  a  warrior  class 
while  the  generation-set  is  concerned  with  the  orderly  succession  of  generational  growth  and 
authority.  The  warrior  class  of  an  age-organized  society  often  gains  a  fair  amount  of  autonomy 
from  their  elders  and  prestige  while  a  generational  system  is  usually  more  firmly  under  the  control 
of  the  elders.28 

Although  western  Serengeti  peoples  practiced  either  age-  or  generation-sets  or  both  since 
the  distant  past,  oral  testimonies  and  the  evidence  of  comparative  ethnography  seem  to  indicate 
that,  at  least  by  the  nineteenth  century,  the  system  of  cycling  generation-sets  predominated.    With 
the  advent  of  the  disasters  age-set  structure  took  on  a  new  and  more  dominant  position  among  the 
easternmost  peoples,  exposed  to  Maasai  raids  and  to  the  influence  of  Maasai  culture.  The  demands 
for  military  expertise  made  age-sets  more  valuable  at  that  time.  Yet  even  as  age-sets  became  more 
dominant  in  the  nineteenth  century,  they  were  incorporated  into  a  cycling  system  that  retained  the 
organizing  principles  of  generation  with  the  outward  ethos  of  the  age-set.29 


26  R.  G.  Abrahams,  "Aspects  of  Labwor  Age  and  Generation  Grouping  and  Related 
Systems,"  in  P.  T.  W.  Baxter  and  Uri  Almagor,  editors,  Age.  Generation  and  Time:  Some  Features 
of  East  African  Age  Organisation  (New  York:  St.  Martin's  Press,  1978),  pp.  37-68. 

27  Gulliver,  "Turkana  Age-Organization,"  p.  921. 

28  See  Berntsen's  discussion  of  the  increasing  autonomy  and  power  of  the  warriors  over  the 
elders  in  Maasailand,  "Pastoralism,  Raiding  and  Prophets,"  pp.  225-227,  310-317;  Galaty, 
"Maasai  Expansion,"  pp.  75-86 

29  See  Chapter  9  for  more  details  on  the  new  age-set  system. 


390 
People  of  the  Mara  Region  seem  to  have  derived  the  great  variation  in  age-organization 
that  exists  today  from  a  common  set  of  generational  principles  identifying  people  with  the  health  of 
the  land.  Oral  testimonies  associate  these  principles  with  generation-  rather  than  age-sets  in  the 
past.  Among  the  Lakes  peoples,  or  the  Suguti  language  group,  the  memory  of  these  generation-set 
names  survives  but  has  entirely  fallen  out  of  use  with  more  extensive  contact  and  influence  from 
around  the  lake  in  the  nineteenth  century.  Their  surviving  age-organization  is  more  like  age- 
grades,  without  specific  institutional  responsibility,  although  they  do  practice  initiation  and 
circumcision.  Ruri  elders  along  the  lake,  however,  still  remember  the  eight  named  generation-sets 
that  once  "ruled  the  land"  and  functioned  in  protecting  the  crops,  providing  rain  and  keeping  out 
disease.30  Among  the  Kuria  and  Zanaki  peoples,  who  are  farther  inland,  generation-sets  remained 
the  dominant  form  of  age-organization.  Elders  from  among  the  peoples  living  farthest  east, 
Ngoreme,  Nata,  Ikoma  and  Ishenyi,  all  acknowledged  that  generation-sets  are  "senior"  to  age-sets, 
although  age-sets  began  to  perform  the  generation-set  rituals  and  take  over  many  of  their  functions 
during  the  nineteenth  century  disasters.  During  the  disasters,  the  Ngoreme  divided  each  generation 
into  age-sets  and  the  Nata,  lkoma,  Ishenyi  derived  the  age-cycles  of  the  late  nineteenth  century 
from  generational  principles.3'    All  these  variations  have  in  common  the  ritual  precedence  given  to 
generational  principles. 

The  generational  principle  also  takes  precedence  in  everyday  interactions.  Greetings  are 
structured  on  the  generational  relationships  of  the  pair  greeting  each  other  (i.e.,  grandmother, 
mother,  daughter,  granddaughter).  At  any  gathering  of  people,  even  today,  participants  arrange 


30  Interviews  with  Daudi  Katama  Maseme  and  Samueli  Buguna  Katama,  Bwai   1 1 
November  1995  (Ruri  <f). 

31  Interviews  with  Sochoro  Kabati,  Nyichoka,  2  June  1995  (Nata  <f);  Kirigiti  Ng'orogita 
Mbiso,  8  June,  1 995  (Nata  cf).  Both  of  these  informants  are  Mwanyasaai.  which  was  the  only 
generation  to  "walk"  in  Nata  memory. 


391 
themselves  in  groups  for  eating  and  socializing  according  to  generation  and  gender.32  A  ritualized 
apportionment  of  meat  corresponds  to  gender  and  generation.  A  common  verbal  game  is  to  argue 
over  whether  one  should  be  greeted  according  to  someone's  generation  or  someone's  chronological 
age.  Because  of  the  lack  of  total  correspondence  between  generation  and  age  a  young  person  may 
demand  a  greeting  of  respect  from  an  old  man,  whose  father  was  equivalent  in  generation  to  the 
younger  man. 

The  generation-set  integrates  clans  within  the  ethnic  group  or  the  age-set  cycle  and  also 
serves  an  integrative  function  on  a  regional  scale.  Ethnic  groups  across  the  entire  region  use  the 
same  generation-set  names,  while  they  base  the  particular  ceremonies  on  the  individual  ekyaro  or 
clan  territory.  The  generation-set  unites  the  larger  region  with  one  set  of  names  and  generations. 
Because  people  at  approximately  the  same  stage  in  life  use  the  same  generation  names  across  the 
region  one  can  travel  and  receive  hospitality  over  a  wide  geographical  area  based  on  norms  of 
relationship  between  generation-sets."  Age  ceremonies  were  also  once  regionally  coordinated. 
Elders  say  that  both  age-  and  generation-set  ceremonies  take  place  in  succession,  moving  from  east 
to  west.  After  the  Maasai  and  Sonjo  perform  their  age-set  ceremonies,  the  Ikoma  follow,  then  the 
Ishenyi,  the  Nata,  and  the  Ikizu.  The  generation-set  ceremonies  to  maintain  the  health  of  the  land 
take  place  after  the  age-set  ceremonies  but  coordinated  with  them  in  the  same  year,  assuring  the 
success  of  the  new  age-set.34 

Generation-sets  function  differently  in  each  ethnic  group  today  and  take  on  slightly 
different  forms.  In  Nata  and  Ikizu  the  two  generation-set  cycles  crosscut  clans  and  lineages  so  that 


32  Discussed  for  the  Kuria  by  Ruel,  "Kuria  Generation  Classes,"  pp.  30-3 1 . 

33  Ibid,  p.  32. 

34  Interviews  with  Sochoro  Kabati,  Nyichoka,  2  June  1 995  and  Kirigiti  Ng'orogita,  Mbiso 
6  June  1995  (Nata  <f). 


392 
each  cycle  would  be  found  in  each  clan.  Here  the  generation-set  functions  as  a  unifying  device 
between  the  clans.  In  Ngoreme  and  Ishenyi  each  clan  territory  or  ekyaro  has  only  one  rikora  and 
Ngoreme  is  divided  territorially  into  Saai  and  Chuuma  generation-set  cycles.  The  age-cycle 
territory  unifies  a  number  of  clans  but  corresponds  to  only  one  of  the  generation-set  cycles.  In  this 
configuration  one  generation-set  cycle  unifies  clans  within  the  age-set  cycle  territory,  rather  than 
the  ethnic  territory. 

Peoples  in  the  Mara  Region  and  throughout  East  Africa  have  used  age-organization  in 
countless  ways  and  in  countless  forms.  Rather  than  understanding  them  as  a  specifically  defined 
institution  we  should  see  them  as  tools  by  which  individuals  accomplish  the  important  tasks  of 
society.  Generation-sets  survive  only  because  they  continue  to  perform  important  ritual  functions 
that  protect  the  people  and  the  land.35    Although  Mara  people,  as  well  as  anthropologists,  enjoy  a 
debate  on  the  political  or  military  functions  of  the  rikora,  studying  the  one  function  of  ritual,  which 
has  survived  as  secret  and  vital  information  for  maintaining  prosperity,  seems  more  important  for 
the  historian.  By  performing  rituals  to  protect  the  health  of  the  land,  the  generation-set  inscribed 
on  the  ground  a  specific  territory  (ekyaro)  and  they  expressed  the  identity  of  the  people  who  lived 
within  those  boundaries. 

Scholars  writing  on  age-  and  generation-sets  in  East  Africa  have  extensively  investigated 
the  political  and  military  functions  of  age-organization  and  have  paid  little  attention  to  their  ritual 
role  in  relation  to  land  and  health.36  Colonial  administrators  and  early  anthropologists  established 
this  precedent  with  their  concern  to  identify  local  structures  of  political  and  military  control  in 


35  Baxter  and  Almagor,  "Introduction,"  Age.  Generation  and  Time,  p.  24. 

36  Ibid,  pp.  1-3. 


393 
areas  where  no  chiefs  existed.37  The  few  academic  writings  on  generation-sets  in  the  Mara  Region 
extend  their  analysis  beyond  the  military  and  political  function  of  age-organization,  but  fail  to 
make  the  connection  between  generation-set  ritual  and  a  communal  identity  related  to  the  land. 
Bischofberger,  writing  on  the  Zanaki,  concluded  that  the  generation-set  had  political,  social  and 
ritual  functions,  with  the  overall  effect  of  integrating  the  kinship-based  Zanaki.38  Bishofberger 
mentions  that  the  Zanaki  generation-sets  were  responsible  for  rituals  that  would  assure  the  well- 
being  of  the  ekyaro,  but  could  elaborate  no  further.39  However,  whether  these  scholars  emphasize 
the  political/military/ritual  role  or  the  more  diffuse  organization  of  daily  social  interaction,  they  do 
not  situate  age-organization  in  a  specific  relationship  between  land  and  people,  critical  to  prosperity 
and  the  ongoing  continuity  of  the  generations.40 

Although  the  elders  ultimately  controlled  the  generation-set,  the  rituals  of  the  generation- 
set  in  relation  to  the  land  created  the  social  cohesion  and  identity  necessary  for  political  authority 


37Tanganyika  government  anthropologist,  Hans  Cory,  wrote  that  the  "supreme  power"  in 
Ikoma  was  the  "warrior  age-grade,"  that  was  "divided  into  three  military  units."  After  they  retired 
from  warriorhood,  the  elders  constituted  a  "chama"  under  the  leadership  of  a  "mukina"  who 
"managed  the  civil  affairs  of  the  respective  military  units  only."  Although  Cory  admitted  to  his 
lack  of  information  on  the  political  functioning  of  the  "age-grade  system  in  pre-European  times"  he 
assumed  that  it  was  "best  adapted  to  meet  military  emergencies"  and  was  thus  now  "obsolete." 
Hans  Cory,  "Report  on  the  pre-European  Tribal  Organization  in  Musoma  (South  Mara  District 
and  ...  Proposals  for  adaptation  of  the  clan  system  to  modern  circumstances."  1945,  CORY  #173 
EAF,  UDSM. 

38  Bischofberger.  The  Generation  Classes  p   100-101.  Mustafa,  "The  Concept  of 
Authority,"  pp.  55-83.  Ruel  saw  generation-sets  among  the  Kuria  as  "embodying  a  systematic 
pattern  of  relationships  which  serves  to  determine  the  status  of  any  individual  person  vis-a-vis 
others."  He  preferred  to  see  generation-sets  as  "social  categories"  rather  than  "corporate  groups." 
Ruel,  "Kuria  Generation  Classes,"  p.  17,  33.  Here  he  refers  mainly  to  the  relational  norms  between 
generations:  those  in  adjacent  classes  have  a  relationship  of  respect  and  deference  while  in  alternate 
or  the  same  class  one  of  joking  and  intimacy. 

39  Bischofberger,  The  Generation  Classes,  pp.  1 1-16. 

40  This  is  due  in  large  part  to  the  reluctance  of  Mara  peoples  to  talk  about  the  nature  of 
these  secret  rituals. 


394 
to  function.  Baxter  and  Almagor  explain  that  age  organization  is  always  subordinate  to  the 
corporate  authority  of  lineage  or  kinship-based  organization,  which  controls  property  relations 
through  older  family  heads.  They  posit  that  scholars  have  overemphasized  the  political/military 
function  of  age-organization.  For  these  scholars,  age-  or  generation-sets  function  as  "agents  of 
force"  rather  than  "controllers  of  force,"  and  act  as  "agents  of  force"  only  when  community 
consensus  occurs.  Age-sets  perform  critical  tasks  but  are  not  the  source  of  authority.  All  age- 
organizations  exist  in  coordination  with  other  types  of  social  organization.  If  elders  controlled 
productive  resources,  including  labor,  in  these  societies  then  age  organization  was  a  powerful  tool 
in  their  hands.41    To  say  that  age-organization  does  not  have  political  power  is  not  to  weaken  its 
importance,  nor  should  one  conclude  that  age-organization  must  have  had  more  political  power  in 
some  pristine  "tribal"  past.  The  ritual  function  of  generation-sets  was  a  powerful  political  force  on 
its  own  terms. 

Scholars  in  this  region  have  found  it  difficult  to  identify  the  ways  in  which  Mara  peoples 
used  the  principles  of  generation  to  express  a  ritual  relationship  to  the  land,  in  part,  because  of  the 
secret  nature  of  these  rituals.  Outsiders'  knowledge  of  these  rituals  would  endanger  the  health  of 
the  land  and  its  people  by  opening  it  to  malevolent  intervention.  In  Nata,  Ikoma  and  Ishenyi  1  had 
difficulty  learning  anything  about  the  rikora  except  that  it  existed.  The  details  about  the 
generation-set  rituals  are  second  only  in  secrecy  to  the  eldership  title  secrets  about  which  initiates 
swear  an  oath  of  silence.  Elders  usually  answered  my  questions  about  generation-set  ritual  with 
vague  and  generalized  descriptions  of  the  generation-set  walk  as  analogous  to  the  solidarity  walks 
of  today.    Similarly,  Zanaki  elders  told  Bischofberger  that  the  Zanaki  rikora  in  power  would 
"walk  around"  to  keep  in  shape  and  strengthen  the  solidarity  of  the  group.  Each  cycle  would  do 


""  Baxter  and  Almagor,  "Introduction,"  Age.  Generation  and  Time,  pp.  10-19 


395 
this  walk  separately,  wearing  traditional  skins,  carrying  sticks  and  stopping  to  eat  at  generation-set 
members'  houses.42  Secrets  are  another  way  of  putting  the  discourse  on  territory  and  identity  into 
an  unquestioned  category  of  "tradition"  and  removed  from  public  debate.  The  elders  who  control 
these  secrets  assert  authority  over  the  definition  of  territory  and  a  place-oriented  identity. 
The  Rituals  of  Healing  the  Land  and  the  Retirement  Ceremony 

The  main  task  of  the  generation-set  ritual  is  to  maintain  the  health  of  the  land.  I  describe 
these  rituals  in  the  "ethnographic  present"  because  that  is  the  way  elders  told  them  to  me.  Most 
elders  whose  accounts  appear  here  participated  in  these  rituals,  some  as  leaders.  Yet  they  did  not 
describe  the  particular  "walk"  that  they  observed.  Rather,  they  gave  me  a  general  account  of  a 
"traditional"  walk  formed  from  their  own  experience  and  the  stories  they  heard  of  other  walks. 
This  was  a  deliberate  narrative  strategy  to  place  these  stories  in  the  middle  time  frame  of  social 
process  and  outside  the  flow  of  historical  events.    Connerton  argues  that  in  order  for  these 
"commemorative  ceremonies"  to  reenact  the  past  they  must  move  into  "ritual  time"  where  an  event 
is  indefinitely  repeatable.43  Elders  enhance  the  authority  of  the  ritual  by  portraying  their  own 
contingent  experience  of  the  ritual  as  a  timeless  pattern.    1  describe  these  rituals  with  commentary 
to  point  out  what  1  believe  to  be  the  meaning  behind  these  rituals  in  their  historical  context. 

The  practice  of  this  ritual  among  the  seven  ethnic  groups  from  whom  1  have  accounts 
varies  extraordinarily  around  several  central  themes.  Ideally,  every  eight  years  in  Nata  and  Ikoma, 
the  men  who  are  in  the  "ruling  generation"  of  the  two  cycles,  Chuuma  and  Saai,  alternately  walk 
around  the  boundaries  of  the  land,  kukerera.  The  walk  takes  place  together  with  the  age-set 
ceremonies  as  a  way  of  preparing  for  their  "rule."  In  Ikizu  and  Zanaki,  where  no  cycling  age-sets 


42  Bischofberger,  The  Generation  Classes,  pp.  65-67. 

43  Connerton,  How  Societies  Remember,  p.  66. 


396 
exist,  the  walk  is  part  of  the  retirement  ceremony  of  the  generation-set  every  20-30  years.44  In 
Ishenyi  and  Ngoreme  the  walk  takes  place  in  symbolic  terms,  around  a  tree  or  at  a  feast.  Yet  in 
each  case  the  bodily  practice  of  the  walk  physically  inscribes  the  boundaries  of  social  identity  in 
space.  The  appropriation  of  territory  through  ritual  control  over  the  land  secures  the  health  of  the 
land  and  the  people.  The  ritual  creation  of  enclosed  space  defines  a  territory  and  the  identity  of 
those  who  live  there  as  one  people.'" 

The  walk  in  all  its  variation  focuses  on  passing  the  orokoba  or  the  medicine  of  protection 
around  the  land.  The  leaders  of  the  generation-set  literally  plant  medicine  bundles  in  the  soil  at 
intervals  around  the  land  or  in  the  bark  of  certain  trees  that  they  slash.  This  medicine  protects  the 
land  from  enemies  and  disease  and  ensures  its  fertility.  Either  a  prophet,  sometimes  from  a  distant 
land,  prepares  this  medicine  or  the  generation-set  itself  keeps  and  passes  on  the  medicines.  In  either 
case  the  job  of  the  rikora  (generation-set)  is  to  walk  around  the  land  and  encircle  it  with  protective 
medicines.  The  walk  also  preserves  the  peace  of  the  land,  it  "cools  the  land,"  and  makes  it 
productive.  The  "coolness"  of  the  land  assures  the  health  and  well-being  of  the  people.    The 
generation-set  achieves  this  goal  by  different  methods  in  each  of  the  ethnic  groups  but  the  basic 
principles  remain  the  same-the  ritual  acts  of  binding  and  enclosing  ensure  safety  and  health.  The 
word  kukerera  is  likely  a  prepositional  form  of  a  proto-Great  Lakes  Bantu  word  (kukila)  meaning 
"to  overcome,  surpass,  heal,  unify."  The  prepositional  form  implies  an  object,  in  this  case,  the  land 
and  all  that  it  stands  for.46  I  describe  the  rituals  of  each  ethnic  group,  as  elders  narrated  them  to 


44  Interview  with  Kirigiti  Ng'orogita,  Mbiso,  8  June  1995  (Nata  <?).  For  the  Zanaki, 
Benjamin  Mkirya,  Historia,  Mila  na  Desturi  za  WaranaH  (Peramiho:  Benedictine  Publications 
Ndanda.  1991),  p.  33. 

45  See  Robert  J.  Thornton,  Space.  Time,  and  Culture  among  the  Iraqw  of  Tanzania  fNev 
York:  Academic  Press.  1980),  p.  19. 

David  L.  Schoenbrun,  personal  communication. 


397 
me.  I  emphasize  those  aspects  of  the  rituals  of  each  ethnic  group  that  demonstrate  how  these 
rituals  function  to  create  territorial  identity  and  group  cohesion  under  the  authority  of  the  elders. 

In  these  narratives  the  ritual  unifies  diverse  clans  into  one  ethnic  or  age-set  territory, 
ekyaro.  In  previous  chapters  I  showed  that  clan  territories,  known  in  the  past  as  the  ebyaro,  were 
the  largest  functional  unit  before  the  disasters  of  the  late  nineteenth  century.  One  can  imagine  that 
western  Serengeti  people  might  have  used  these  same  rituals  in  the  pre-disaster  era  to  unite  diverse 
lineages,  or  people  of  diverse  origins,  into  one  ekyaro. 
Ikizu:  Uniting  Clans  Lands  Under  the  Communal  Authority  of  the  Elders 

The  ritual  walk  in  Ikizu  unites  the  various  clan  lands  that  make  up  Ikizu  by  asserting  the 
communal  authority  of  the  generation-set  elders.  The  Ikizu  walk  begins  at  a  point  in  the 
westernmost  part  of  the  land  and  moves  east,  each  night  the  abanyikora  (new  generation-set 
members)  feast  and  sleep  at  a  different  clan  center,  hosted  in  a  wealthy  man's  homestead.  On  the 
third  day  they  pause  at  the  tree  called  Sarama  mo  Mogongo  and  send  a  small  delegation  to  the 
mlemi  rainmaker's  house  to  get  the  medicines  of  rain  (omoshana)  [See  Figure  8-1 :  Sites  of  the 
Ikizu  Walk,  for  a  photo  of  the  Sarama  mo  Mogongo  tree  and  the  present  mlemi  at  Nyakinywa's 
cave].  The  mlemi.  as  a  descendant  of  first  woman  who  brought  rain,  sends  his  delegate  to  oversee 
the  rain  medicine  but  does  not  participate  in  the  walk.  The  Ikizu  prophet  (omunase),  as  a 
descendant  of  first  man  who  made  fire,  provides  the  medicine  of  protection  and  the  medicine  for  the 
new  fire.  The  whole  group  arrives  for  the  ceremonial  climax  near  Chamuriho  Mountain  in  the 
easternmost  part  of  Ikizu,  where  Muriho  first  claimed  the  land  by  planting  the  spirits  of  his 
ancestors,  emisambwa. 

The  ceremonies  at  Chamuriho  Mountain  feature  the  ekimweso  or  the  sanctitlcation 
ceremony  of  the  fire  to  pass  on  authority  from  one  generation  to  another.  The  older  generation 
retires  and  the  new  generation  builds  a  new  fire,  with  the  medicines  of  the  prophet,  after  all  Ikizu 


398 


Mtemi  Adamu  Matutu,  Gaka,  31  August 
1 995,  at  the  cave  of  Nyakinywa 


Kinanda  Sigara,  Kihiri  Mbiso  and  son,  Sarama,  20  July  1995,  standing  at  the  tree  of 
Sarama  mo  Mogondo 


Figure  8-1:  Sites  of  the  Ikizu  Walk 


399 

extinguish  their  homestead  fires.  The  elders  sacrifice  a  white  goat  and  cut  its  hide  into  strips  that 
the  new  generation-set  wear  on  their  middle  fingers  smeared  with  butter.'"  When  the  ceremonies 
finish,  the  new  generation-set  that  has  just  taken  power  retraces  their  steps  back  east  to  complete 
the  circle.  They  spread  the  medicines  for  healing  and  rain  and  distributing  the  new  fire  to  all  the 
homesteads  as  they  go.  This  act  renewed  the  peace  of  the  land. 

Although  the  Ikizu  walk  holds  many  elements  in  common  with  rituals  around  the  region,  in 
Ikizu  the  walk  takes  on  a  particularly  salient  political  meaning.  The  elders  use  the  walk  at  once  to 
assert  the  unity  of  clan  lands  and  to  claim  their  own  communal  authority  over  the  rainmaker  and 
the  prophet.  The  walk  evokes  the  emergence  story  to  legitimize  the  authority  of  the  elders  as  the 
representatives  of  Muriho  (who  first  established  possession  of  the  land)  over  first  woman 
Nyakinywa  (the  rainmaker  chief)  and  first  man  Isamongo  (the  prophet).  The  elders  spatially 
represent  their  interpretation  of  the  political  make-up  of  Ikizu  through  the  walk.    The  generation- 
set  pauses  in  each  of  the  clan  lands  of  Ikizu.    The  walk  does  not  even  approach  the  seat  of  the 
ulemi  in  Kihumbu,  except  to  obtain  the  rain  medicine.  The  rikora  (generation-set)  takes 
responsibility  for  healing  the  land  rather  than  the  "chief."  The  prophet,  too,  provides  the  protection 
and  fire  medicines  but  does  not  participate  in  the  ceremony.  The  walk  of  the  rikora  embodies  all 
these  issues  of  contested  forms  of  authority  in  Ikizu.  Through  this  ritual,  the  elders  reassert  their 
control  over  potentially  powerful  sources  of  authority  in  the  prophet  and  the  rainmaker.  The 
generation-set  is  their  tool,  protected  by  its  association  with  timeless  "tradition"  and  the  high  stakes 
of  ensuring  health  and  fertility. 


"  Interview  with  Ikota  Mwisagija  and  Kiyarata  Mzumari,  Kihumbo,  5  July  1995  (Ikizu 
cf);  Mturi,  "Historia  ya  Ikizu  na  Sizaki." 


400 
Ishenvi:  Variation  on  the  Theme  of  Territorial  Unity 

Ishenyi  elders  testify  that  here  the  walk  of  the  rikora  consists  only  of  a  symbolic  walk 
around  a  certain  tree  (msingisi  or  msari)n  to  prepare  for  the  initiation  of  a  new  age-set  into  power. 
The  clans  (hamate)  of  Ishenyi  are  divided  into  two  moieties,  with  each  moiety  representing  one 
generation-set  cycle,  either  Saai  or  Chuuma,  who  carry  out  the  ritual  separately.  By  contrast,  in 
Nata,  Ikoma  and  Ikizu  each  clan  claims  members  of  both  rikora  cycles.  In  Ishenyi  the  rikora  did 
not  crosscut  and  unify  the  clans.  However,  it  did  unify  the  age-set  territories  that  developed  by  the 
end  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  replace  clan  territories.  Age-set  territories  contained  many  clans  in 
both  generation-set  cycles,  each  time  the  generation-set  would  walk  it  covered  the  entire  age-set 
territory.49 

The  Ishenyi  ritual  holds  many  elements  in  common  with  generation-set  ritual  across  the 
region.  The  ceremony  to  install  the  new  age-set  takes  place  at  the  homes  of  the  newly  chosen 
leaders,  lasting  for  eight  days  of  feasting,  singing  and  dancing.    As  in  Ikizu,  the  new  age-set  cuts 
strips  of  hide  from  the  ritually  slaughtered  animal  and  wears  them  on  their  fingers  (ebeshona). 
Generation-set  elders  bless  all  the  people  in  the  ceremony,  who  then  extinguish  all  of  the  homestead 
fires  in  the  ekyaro  and  light  them  from  the  new  ceremonial  fire  started  by  twirling  a  stick  in  a 
board  (just  as  first  man  lit  a  fire).  The  generation-set  encircles  the  land  with  the  medicines  of 
protection  or  rain  according  to  need.  The  age-set  obtain  rain  medicines  (amusera)  from  the 
rainmaker  that  they  mix  with  milk  and  flour.  The  age-set  leaders  spread  the  medicines  with  a  cow's 


48  Interview  with  Mashauri  Ng'ana,  Issenye,  2  November  1995  (Ishenyi  <f\  Each 
particular  kind  of  tree  used  in  rituals  has  a  symbolic  significance. 

49  Main  interviews  on  the  Ishenyi  kerera  were:  Mang'ombe  Morimi,  Issenye  Iharara,  26 
August  1995;  Rugayonga  Nyamohega,  Mugeta,  27  October  1995;  Morigo  Mchombocho 
Nyarobi.  Issenye,  28  September  1995;  and  Mashauri  Ng'ana,  Issenye,  2  November  1995  (Ishenyi 
c). 


401 
tail  as  one  leader  moves  east  and  another  west  around  the  boundaries  of  the  ekyaro?"  [See  Figure 
8-2:  Rikora  Leaders.] 
Nata:  Generational  Growth  through  the  Mediation  of  Outside  Forces 

In  Nata  the  age-set  ritual,  has  taken  over  much  of  the  work  of  the  generation-set.  The 
ritual  symbolizes  the  generational  principles  of  fertility  and  growth  and  occurs  regularly  every 
eight  years.  When  it  is  time  for  these  ceremonies  to  take  place,  the  elders  chose  the  leaders 
(abachama)  of  the  new  age-  or  generation-set  and  send  these  youths  on  various  errands.  The 
youths  go  outside  Nata,  north,  south,  east  and  west,  to  collect  the  ritual  ingredients  that  the  elders 
mix  together  and  sprinkle  as  a  blessing  on  the  new  age-set.  These  ingredients  include  water  from 
Lake  Victoria,  honey  from  Riyara,  excrement  of  an  unweaned  child,  livestock  manure,  and  millet 
or  other  grains.  They  also  choose  a  young  unblemished  black  bull  for  sacrifice.  Finally,  the  new 
age-set  builds  a  ritual  fence  around  the  homestead  of  their  leader  where  the  ceremony  will  take 
place. 

At  the  culmination  of  the  ceremony  the  head  of  the  homestead  (the  father  of  the  new  age- 
set  leader)  takes  a  black  cow  or  wildebeest  tail,  eghise,  as  the  symbol  of  his  elderhood,  and 
sprinkles  a  mixture  of  the  ingredients  brought  from  outside,  along  with  the  stomach  contents  of  the 
slaughtered  bull,  on  the  new  set  as  they  stand  in  a  circle  with  their  wives,  rubbing  it  on  the  breasts 
of  the  women.  Since  the  new  age-set  entered  their  age-set,  saiga,  eight  years  after  circumcision 
they  were  often  married  with  children.  As  the  ritual  father  sprinkles  he  prays  that  the  youth  might 
'have  children,  abundant  livestock,  good  harvests  and  rain'  during  the  "rule"  of  their  saiga. 


50  Interview  with  Rugayonga  Nyamohega,  Mugeta,  27  October  1995  (Ishenyi  if).  Two 
children  who  wet  their  beds  accompanied  the  two  leaders  and  actually  did  the  work  of  spreading 
the  medicine. 


402 


403 

This  ritual  unifies  the  clans  of  Nata— with  one  clan  moiety  represented  at  the  ceremony  by 
the  symbol  of  a  bell  on  the  neck  of  a  young  black  bull  and  the  other  by  an  old  heart-shaped  trade 
hoe  from  the  Sukuma  Rongo  clan.  The  bell  and  the  hoe  are  symbols  of  productivity  that  the  elders 
pass  on  to  the  next  generation.  The  elders  cut  the  hide  of  the  sacrificed  bull  into  strips  that  the 
eight  (aba)chama  leaders  wear  on  the  middle  finger.  At  the  ceremony  the  two  leaders,  one  from 
each  clan  moiety,  stand  together  on  another  hide,  with  the  longest  strip  of  the  slaughtered  bull  hide 
stretched  between  them.  An  elder  cuts  the  strip  in  half  and  declares  them  blood-brothers, 
baragumu.  After  feasting  and  dancing  all  night,  they  move  on  the  next  morning  to  feast  at  the 
homestead  of  the  other  clan  moiety  leader.51 

Although  the  above  paragraphs  describe  a  Nata  age-set  ceremony,  the  important  exchanges 
embodied  in  it  are  generational.  The  fathers  (rather  than  the  retiring  age-set)  choose  the  new 
leaders,  perform  the  blessing,  cut  the  hide  strip  between  the  leaders,  and  pass  on  the  clan  symbols. 
In  fact,  the  retiring  age-set  has  no  part  in  this  ceremony  and  no  ritual  marks  their  passing.  In  the 
restructured  Nata  age-set  system  of  the  nineteenth  century  each  age-set  cycle  lived  in  a  different 
territory,  which  meant  that  they  hand  over  authority  to  a  group  physically  removed  from 
themselves.  Elders  describe  the  relationship  between  adjacent  age-sets  as  one  of  animosity.  A 
mock  battle  of  sticks  takes  place  well  before  the  ceremony  so  that  the  new  age-set  "drives  out"  the 
old.52    Conflict  must  not  enter  the  rituals  themselves.  Furthermore,  although  elders  characterized 
the  age-set  as  the  defense  against  cattle  raids,  all  of  the  age-set  ceremony  symbols  concern  peace, 


51  The  most  important  interviews  for  information  on  Nata  saiga  ritual  were:  Mang'oha 
Machunchuriani  (Mwekundu,  elders  who  make  preparations  for  the  Saiga  ceremony),  Mbiso,  24 
March  1 995;  Sochoro  Kabati  (Kang'ati  of  the  Gikwe  for  the  Bongirate  Saiga),  Nyichoka,  2  June 
1995,  Kirigiti  Ng'orogita  (Rikora  Mchama),  Mbiso,  8  June  1995;  Mang'oha  Morigo  (Kang'ati  of 
the  Moriho  for  the  Bongirate  Saiga),  Bugerera,  24  June  1 995  (Nata  cf). 

52  This  is  also  the  case  with  Tatoga  generation-sets. 


404 
productivity  of  land  and  people  and  prosperity.  The  ritual  blessing  of  both  women  and  men  alike 
also  suggests  that  the  concern  is  primarily  with  fertility  and  not  war.  In  short,  the  age-set 
ceremonies  seem  to  have  coopted  the  symbolic  content  of  the  generation-set,  leaving  it  with 
responsibility  for  the  walk,  kukerera,  alone.  Nata  elders  said  that  the  rikora,  or  generation-set,  is 
"bigger"  or  "senior"  to  the  age-set,  with  authority  over  the  land  that  was  fundamental  to  everyone's 
well-being.  They  claimed  that  the  saiga  or  age-set  "ruled"  the  land  but  also  portrayed  it  as  a 
"game"  of  youth.53 

The  spatial  symbols  of  the  ritual  represent  the  mediation  of  external  forces  to  protect  the 
internal  community.  Youths  leave  Nata  territory  to  collect  the  symbols  of  prosperity  outside  the 
community,  and  they  return  with  these  things,  bringing  them  inside  the  ritual  homestead  fence. 
Just  as  first  man  came  from  the  wilderness  and  civilized  the  home  by  bringing  fire,  the  symbolic 
reenactment  of  this  movement  assures  prosperity.  The  Nata  generation-set  walk,  kukerera,  also 
involves  collecting  things  from  many  places  outside  Nata  used  to  make  the  medicine  for  the  land. 
Elders  said  that  these  things  brought  health  to  the  people,  fertility,  wealth  in  livestock  and  abundant 
harvest  of  crops. 

The  Nata  generation-set  walk  itself  is  a  communal  ritual  that  requires  the  participation  of 
all  for  the  medicine  to  work.  The  institution  of  the  generation-set  emphasizes  the  equality  of  all 
those  within  one  generation  and  the  authority  of  the  elders.  Everyone  walks  with  the  generation-set 
all  around  Nata.  In  the  colonial  days  the  walk  concluded  at  the  chiefs  house  to  feast  on  the  last 
day.  Elders  considered  it  an  honor,  and  also  a  huge  expense,  to  entertain  the  rikora  during  the 
walk.  The  host  provided  meat  from  his  own  herd  and  made  enough  beer  for  everyone.54  The 


55  Interview  with  Sochoro  Kabati.  Nyichoka,  2  June  1 995  (Nata  <?). 

54  Interview  with  Mang'oha  Machunchuriani,  Mbiso,  24  March  1995  (Nata  <?). 


405 
community  held  "big  men"  accountable  by  requiring  them  to  "feed"  the  people  in  return  for  their 
respect  and  support.  In  Nata  during  the  last  walk  one  man  refused  to  have  the  rikora  come  to  his 
house  and  his  generation  subsequently  cursed  him. 
Ikoma:  Appropriating  Tatoga  Spirits  to  Protect  the  Land 

The  Ikoma  use  the  Machaba  tusks,  as  their  erisambwa  obtained  from  a  Tatoga  prophet,  in 
the  generation-set  rituals  to  unify  the  territory.  The  Tatoga  prophet  of  the  lineage  of  Gambareku, 
of  the  Relimajega  clan  carries  the  Machaba  at  the  head  of  the  walk.  He  makes  the  medicine,  the 
orokoba  of  the  Machaba,  that  the  age-set  plants  around  the  land,  and  serves  as  an  Ikoma  age-set 
leader."  The  Ishenyi  also  use  the  Tatoga  in  their  age-  and  generation-set  ceremonies.  A  Tatoga 
prophet  of  the  rairunaking  clan  of  Gaoga  serves  as  the  top  leader  of  the  age-set,  fully  functional  in 
the  most  intimate  of  Ishenyi  ritual  matters.  This  prophet  also  provides  the  medicines  for  rain  and 
to  bless  the  new-year's  seeds.56  The  Ishenyi  reliance  on  the  Tatoga  is  a  result  of  having  killed  their 
own  prophet,  Shanyangi,  at  Nyeberekera.    Both  Ishenyi  and  Ikoma  acknowledge  the  first-comer 
status  of  the  Tatoga  in  their  rituals  to  appease  the  land. 

The  Ikoma  ritual  also  spatially  symbolizes  the  unity  of  the  clans  into  one  land.  The 
Ng'orisa  clan,  which  controls  the  male  tusk,  begins  the  walk  where  the  tusk  is  kept  in  the  west  and 
the  Rogoro  clan  begins  at  the  place  where  the  female  tusk  is  kept  in  the  east.  They  circle  the  land 
and  meet  in  the  center,  each  going  through  the  homesteads  of  the  members  of  their  clans.  Each 


55  Interview  with  Machota  Sabuni,  Issenye,  14  March  1996  (Ikoma  <f).  The  last  time  the 
Machaba  appeared  in  Ikoma  ritual  was  in  1994. 

56  Interview  with  Stephen  Gojat  Gishageta  and  Girimanda  Marisha  Gishageta,  Issenye,  28 
March  1 996  (Tatoga  tf). 


406 
night  they  feast,  dance  and  sleep  at  a  different  and  chosen  compound  in  the  different  clan 
settlements.57 
Ngoreme:  Generational  Passing  and  the  Authority  of  Elders 

The  Ngoreme  generation-set  rituals  emphasize  the  generational  authority  of  elders.    Here 
no  rikora  walk  exists  but  the  generation-set  still  functions  in  the  protection  of  the  land.    Each 
rikora  carries  out  its  function  within  a  particular  ekyaro— defined  here  as  clan  territory,  local 
community  or  the  territory  of  an  age-set  cycle.  When  the  sons  of  most  of  the  rikora  mature 
(having  their  own  wives,  children  and  homestead)  it  is  time  for  the  generation  in  power  to  retire. 
These  men  have  already  completed  the  eldership  ceremonies  and  carry  the  black  tail  as  a  symbol  of 
their  eldership.  They  decide  together  that  it  is  time  to  retire  and  then  at  another  communal 
ceremony  of  the  ekyaro  they  pass  on  the  symbols  of  their  office. 

The  public  symbol  of  this  transfer  of  generational  authority  is  the  spatial  arrangement  of 
generations  at  a  public  feast  and  the  division  of  meat,  as  is  common  across  the  region.  When  the 
elders  are  ready  to  retire,  they  allow  the  young  men  to  eat  the  meat  of  the  back,  omugongo,  at 
communal  gatherings.  At  any  feast  people  sit  in  groups  according  to  generation  and  gender  and  eat 
the  appropriate  kind  of  meat.  The  oldest  retired  men  sit  separately  by  the  grain  storage  bins  and 
eat  the  softest  parts  of  the  cow  like  the  lungs  (sarara).  The  ruling  elders  sit  inside  the  cattle  corral 
and  eat  the  back  meat  (omugongo)  and  the  head.  The  young  men  in  their  esega  or  age-set  status 
sit  together  outside  the  cattle  corral  and  eat  the  chest  meat,  legs  or  the  hump  (sukubi).5'  The  spatial 
position  of  the  elders  inside  the  cattle  corral  and  their  possession  of  the  best  cut  of  meat  is  a  sign  of 
their  dominant  authority  in  generational  affairs.  They  are  the  "back"  of  society,  leaving  the  youth 


57  Machota  Sabuni,  Issenye,  14  March  1996  (Ikoma  if).  The  Ikoma  were  some  of  the 
most  reluctant  to  talk  about  the  rikora  and  keep  secret  much  of  this  information. 

58  Interview  with  Mwita  Maro,  Maji  Moto,  29  September  1995  (Ngoreme  d"). 


407 
to  do  the  physical  work.  The  young  men  most  poignantly  sit  expectantly  outside  the  corral.  The 
oldest  men  become  like  women  as  they  sit  at  the  granaries,  where  young  women  undergo 
circumcision.  They  also  eat  some  softer  internal  organs  that  are  the  portion  of  women, 
corresponding  to  her  inside  and  enclosed  space.  A  common  method  of  putting  a  young  man  in  his 
place  is  for  an  elder  to  ask  if  he  has  'tasted  the  back  meat'  yet. 

Elders  mark  the  passing  of  generational  authority  by  the  exchange  of  several  objects.  At 
retirement  the  Ngoreme  elders  give  the  new  generation  the  horn  that  calls  the  rikora  together  for  a 
meeting  or  sounds  the  alarm  in  times  of  danger.  Each  clan  (hamate)  has  its  own  horn  of  the 
rikora.  [See  Figure  8-2:  Rikora  Leaders]  They  make  this  instrument  from  the  long  horn  of  the 
oryx  or  greater  kudu  with  special  medicines  embedded  in  the  strips  of  buffalo  and  lion  hide 
wrapped  around  the  horn.  Each  time  the  generation-set  passes  on  the  horn  they  slaughter  a  bull 
and  use  the  hide  to  renew  these  wrappings.  The  tight  binding  of  medicines  with  hide  strips  employs 
the  same  symbolic  logic  as  the  encircling  of  the  land  with  medicines  of  protection  or  the  wrapping 
of  medicine  bundles  of  protection  for  war.    The  retiring  generation-set  passes  on  the  horn  to  the 
ritual  care  of  the  first  son  born  to  their  members,  the  omotangiP  Ritual  horns  are  common 
symbols  of  generational  authority  throughout  the  region.60 

The  last  thing  that  the  retiring  generation  passes  on  in  Ngoreme,  at  least  among  the  Saai  of 
Bumare,  is  the  generation-set  medicines  called  the  omugongo  wa  mwensi,  or  the  protection 
medicine  of  the  generation.  The  omotangi,  or  the  firstborn  of  the  generation,  receives  this  along 


The  most  important  Ngoreme  interviews  on  these  rituals  were,  Nsaho  Maro,  Kenyana, 
14  September  1995;  Mwita  Maro,  Maji  Moto,  29  September  1995  (Ngoreme  <f)  who  kept  the  horn 
for  the  Iregi  of  Bumare  and  was  the  aba  Maina  mlangi,  having  obtained  the  horn  in  1 957  he  was 
well  overdue  to  pass  it  on  to  the  abaSaai. 

60  Each  Ishenyi  clan  also  had  a  horn  (enchobe)  which  was  passed  on  as  the  older 
generation  retired.  Rugayonga  Nyamohega,  Mugeta,  27  October  1995  (Ishenyi  if). 


408 
with  the  horn.  Elders  consider  this  medicine  more  powerful  than  the  medicine  of  the  horn  and  in 
Bumare  the  last  group  of  retiring  elders  refused  to  pass  on  these  medicines.  I  assume  that  the 
Ngoreme  rikora  uses  this  medicine  to  protect  the  land.  In  this  variation  the  rikora  itself  passes  on 
the  secret  medicine,  rather  than  going  to  a  prophet  to  obtain  it.61 
Kuria.  Zanaki  and  Tatoga:  Recurrent  Symbols  of  Generational  Growth 

Generation-set  rituals  draw  on  a  common  set  of  symbols  recognized  throughout  the  Mara 
Region,  beyond  what  1  have  defined  as  the  western  Serengeti  and  beyond  East  Nyanza  Bantu- 
speakers.  The  Kuria,  Zanaki  and  Tatoga  also  practice  generation-set  rituals  using  the  same 
symbols.  Kuria  generation  ceremonies  resemble  Ngoreme  ones  because  they  both  commemorate 
and  normalize  rather  than  confer  or  effect  a  collective  change  in  the  status  of  its  members.    When 
the  younger  generation  is  ready  to  establish  their  own  homesteads  separately  from  their  fathers, 
their  fathers  perform  a  ceremony  called  "going  to  the  enclosure"  in  which  they  build  a  symbolic 
homestead  and  ritually  bless  their  sons  and  their  sons'  cattle  and  wives.    At  the  end  of  the  eight- 
day  ceremony,  each  homestead  lights  a  ritual  fire.  "Sons"  could  not  take  individual  eldership  titles 
until  their  "fathers"  promoted  the  entire  generation.  The  generation  only  acts  as  a  defined  social 
group  with  its  own  corporate  identity  in  a  ritual  context.  The  southern  Kuria  territories  perform  a 
similar  egekereero  or  "retirement"  ceremony  in  which  a  tree,  usually  a  fig  species  (makereero),  is 
identified  with  the  retiring  generation.  Elders  do  not  allow  the  presence  of  a  stranger  in  the  ekvaro 
during  this  ceremony.62  The  recurrent  symbols  of  regeneration  and  growth  appear  in  the  tree,  the 
symbolic  homestead,  the  blessing  of  cows  and  wives,  and  the  passing  on  of  things  from  father  to 


61  Paulo  Maitari  Nyigana  and  Ibrahim  Mutatiro  Kemuhe,  Maji  Moto,  29  September  1995 
(Ngoreme  tf). 

62  Ruel.  "Kuria  Generation  Classes,"  p.  21-28. 


409 
son.  Both  closing  the  ekyaro  boundaries  to  strangers  and  enclosing  the  symbolic  homestead  with  a 
fence  defines  a  territorial  identity. 

The  Zanaki  generation-set  retirement  ceremony  takes  place  every  twenty  or  more  years  in 
each  ekyaro  or  clan  territory  at  the  emisambwa  sites  of  sacred  groves  or  large  rocks.  There  the 
retiring  generation  forms  a  circle,  with  the  new  generation  behind  them.  They  take  off  the  skins 
that  they  wear  around  their  waists  and  tie  them  over  their  shoulders  as  retired  elders  normally 
dress.  Their  last  act  is  to  cut  another  opening  in  the  symbolic  homestead  fence  for  the  youth.  The 
retiring  elders  give  the  new  generation  secret  medicines  (emigongo),  including  a  horn  (ekombyo). 
The  Zanaki  generation-set  in  power  also  perform  a  ritual  if  the  land  is  in  an  unhealthy  state 
(okutura  ekiaro).  The  elders  bless  the  gathered  people  with  a  mixture  of  a  sacrificial  goat's 
stomach  contents,  millet,  and  water.  Each  homestead  extinguishes  their  fires  and  the  generation-set 
lights  a  new  fire  by  twirling  a  stick  from  the  mirama  tree  on  a  piece  of  ivory  and  distributes  it  to 
each  homestead.  Then  they  pass  the  orokoba  protection  medicines  around  the  land.63 

Finally,  the  Tatoga  practice  of  linear  generation-sets,  called  saigeida,  share  many  ritual 
symbols  with  their  neighbors.  When  the  new  saigeida  comes  into  power,  they  build  a  large  bonfire 
over  which  the  new  initiates  must  walk.  Elders  said  that  one  Tatoga  prophet,  Gishageta,  used  spit 
and  a  "cowhide  rope"  in  his  prophecy.  He  embedded  his  medicines  in  certain  kinds  of  trees  to 
ensure,  fertility,  prosperity,  rain  and  protection.  Another  Tatoga  rainmaker  killed  a  black  sheep 
and  gave  everyone  the  strips  of  skin  to  wear  on  the  middle  finger  of  their  right  hand.  The 
Relimajega  clan  controlled  protection  medicine  against  the  Maasai.  An  Isimajek  informant  said  that 


63  Mkirya,  Historia.  Mila  na  Desturi.  pp.  39-43,  59-62.  Interview  with  Zabron  Kisubundo 
Nyamamera,  Bisarye,  9  November  1995  (Zanaki  cf). 


410 
during  the  circumcision  ceremonies  they  put  strips  of  hide  on  their  fingers.64  All  these  are 
examples  of  a  shared  symbolic  world  of  ritual  between  farmers  and  herders.  Neither  seems  to  be 
"imitating"  the  other,  rather  through  generations  of  living  side  by  side  they  have  developed  a 
common  ritual  language,  each  adopted  to  a  specific  lifestyle  and  historical  circumstances. 

Interpreting  the  Walk 
Because  the  rituals  of  the  rikora  seem  to  be  based  on  very  old  generational  principles  in 
relation  to  the  land,  rather  than  introduced  after  the  period  of  disasters,  we  can  then  interpret  the 
core  spatial  images  of  bodily  practice  as  they  might  have  applied  to  the  historical  context  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  before  the  disasters.  Connerton  argues  that  the  rituals  of  "commemorative 
ceremonies"  are  relatively  invariable  over  time.  Similarly,  Maurice  Bloch  in  his  analysis  of 
circumcision  ritual  among  the  Imerina  of  Madagascar  shows  that  little  change  has  taken  place  in 
the  internal  content  of  this  ritual  over  a  period  of  two  hundred  years,  yet  the  "functional"  role  of 
this  ritual  changed  often  over  that  time.65  The  three  previous  chapters  have  reconstructed  a  picture 
of  economic  subsistence,  homestead,  settlement  and  territorial  patterns  as  they  might  have  existed 
in  the  nineteenth  century.  1  analyze  the  symbolic  content  of  the  rituals  to  illustrate  how 
communities  might  have  used  these  rituals  (which  we  know  to  be  old)  in  the  nineteenth  century  to 
form  a  communal  territorial  identity  in  relation  to  the  land. 


64  Interview  with  Stephen  Gojat  Gishageta  and  Girimanda  Marisha  Gishageta,  Issenye,  27 
July  1995  (Tatoga  cr).  MarundeGodi,  Juana  Masanja,  Mayera  Magondora,  Manawa,  24 
February  1996  (Isimajega  <f). 

65  Bloch,  From  Blessing  to  Violence.  See  also  Feierman's  analysis  of  the  concepts  of 
"healing  the  land"  and  "harming  the  land"  reinterpreted  in  changing  historical  contexts  of  Shambaa 
in  Tanzania.  Feierman,  Peasant  Intellectuals. 


411 
The  Space  of  the  Walk:  The  Ekvaro 

The  space  of  the  walk  is  coterminous  with  the  ekyaro  or  the  "land,"  which  defines  the 
imagined  community,  embodied  in  the  act  of  kukerera.  The  ekyaro  is  not  a  fixed  unit.  In  ordinary 
speech  the  ekyaro  refers  to  anything  from  the  local  community  to  the  nation  state.  Whereas  in 
Ikizu  the  space  of  the  walk  corresponds  to  the  united  clan  territories,  in  Ishenyi  elders  define  the 
ekyaro  as  the  age-set  territory  that  developed  in  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
Ngoreme,  Kuria  and  Zanaki  all  define  the  old  ebyaro  as  the  autonomous  units  of  clan  territory.66 
The  generation-set  of  each  ekyaro  performs  their  rituals  separately.  The  smaller  ethnic  groups  of 
Nata  and  Ikoma  today  define  ekyaro  as  the  entire  ethnic  territory.  They  also  call  the  age-set 
territories  ebyaro.  In  effect  people  define  the  ekyaro  situationally  as  the  land  over  which  they  have 
control  by  a  ritual  definition  of  its  boundaries.  The  heart  of  the  concept  is  the  relationship  between 
people  and  land  rather  than  a  fixed  unit.  Yet,  I  interpret  the  ekyaro  as  a  "territory"  because  it  was 
defined  as  an  enclosed  and  bounded  area  of  land. 

The  space  of  the  rikora  walk  changed  according  to  the  shifting  definitions  of  group 
boundaries.  Ikizu  was  one  of  the  few  ethnic  groups  in  the  Mara  Region  with  an  emerging 
institution  of  chiefship  when  the  Germans  arrived.  The  utemi  rainmaker  "chief  united  the 
heterogeneous  clans  and  lineages  into  one  land,  ekyaro.    Before  the  utemi  each  clan  territory  might 
have  performed  their  own  generation-set  ceremonies.  However,  in  these  rituals  the  generation-set 
asserts  its  authority  over  the  mtemi  to  represent  a  united  Ikizu.  In  Ikoma,  Ishenyi  and  Nata  where 
the  generation-set  now  walks  over  the  ekyaro  of  the  ethnic  group,  a  change  in  the  definition  of 
ekyaro  occurred,  from  clan  land  to  age-set  cycle  land  to  ethnic  group  land. 


66  Ruel,  "Kuria  Generation  Classes,"  p.  15.  Ruel  estimated  that  the  Kuria  ebyaro  of  the 
past  consisted  of  between  3,000  and  10,000  people,  which  is  about  the  size  of  all  of  Nata  or  Ikoma 
or  Ishenyi  today. 


412 

If  we  accept  the  evidence  presented  in  Chapters  6  and  7  concerning  cian  territories  and 
lineage  settlements,  then  the  ekyaro  defined  by  the  generation-set  in  the  nineteenth  century  before 
the  disasters  was  the  clan  territory  of  loosely  affiliated  lineage  settlements  within  one  group  of  hills 
and  separated  from  each  other  by  empty  wilderness  bush  area.  Within  a  context  of  settlement 
mobility  and  scarcity  of  people  rather  than  land,  each  ekyaro  would  be  competing  to  attract 
newcomers  to  open  more  land.  Wealthy  men  could  provide  security  and  extensive  regional  clan 
networks  with  access  to  a  variety  of  resources  that  would  ensure  prosperity.  The  mechanisms  for 
incorporating  strangers  as  native  born  were  also  well  in  place.  The  problem  that  remained  was 
how  to  unite  these  diverse  peoples  into  a  territorial  unit  with  a  sense  of  communal  identity. 
Western  Serengeti  peoples  used  the  generation-set  to  overcome  the  divisions  inherent  in  lineage- 
based  settlement  structures  to  form  territories. 

The  generation-set  walk  functioned  to  unify  the  ekyaro.  Nata  elders,  while  reticent  about 
the  details  of  the  generation-set  walk,  emphasized  it  as  a  ritual  for  all  of  Nata-"it  brings  Nata 
together."  Bischofberger  states  that  the  Zanaki  generation-sets  integrated  the  autonomous  clans. 
Although  Ikizu  was  also  divided  into  smaller  territorial  ebyaro  of  the  clans,  the  generation-set  walk 
symbolically  brought  together  all  of  Ikizu  in  the  space  of  the  walk.  Nata  elders  said  that  the  saiga, 
or  age-set,  divided,  while  the  rikora  unified.  The  main  work  of  the  rikora  was  to  bring  together  the 
clans  and  the  age-sets.6'    Ruel  states  that  Kuria  generation-set  designations  in  a  communal  setting 
emphasize  solidarity  and  responsibility  to  the  larger  group  rather  than  division  and  divergent 
interests.68 


67  Interviews  with  Sochoro  Kabati,  Nyichoka,  2  June  1995;  Kirigiti  Ng'orogita,  Mbiso, 
June  1995  (Nata  tf). 

68  Ruel,  "Generation  Classes,"  p.  33. 


413 

The  walk  identified  the  rikora  itself  with  the  ekyaro  or  the  land.    A  Nata  elder  said  that 
rikora  leaders  could  not  move  outside  Nata.69  Some  elders  described  the  walk  encircling  the 
boundaries  of  the  ekyaro,  while  others  said  that  it  passed  through  the  homesteads.  This  may  have 
varied  from  place  to  place  and  according  to  the  advice  of  the  prophet  who  prepared  the  protection 
medicine.  Ngoreme  call  the  ceremony  for  the  new  Ngoreme  age-set  kwilaberi  asega.  Kwitaberi  is 
derived  from  the  verb  -itaberi,  "to  bless  the  land."  This  term  explicitly  connects  the  initiation  of  a 
new  age-set  (asega)  with  the  prosperity  of  the  land.™    The  ekyaro,  the  land,  defined  the  identity  of 
a  people.  When  I  asked  elders  what  the  ethnic  group  names  meant,  most  said  that  they  referred  to 
a  place.71  They  could  not  abstract  group  identity  from  its  grounded  context  in  the  land. 

The  walk  of  the  generation-set  formed  and  was  formed  by  communal  consensus.  The 
ritual  health  of  the  land  was  dependent  upon  this  consensus.  To  carry  out  this  large-scale  ritual, 
the  elders  mobilized  the  whole  community  and  each  did  their  part-prophets  and  rainmakers 
provided  medicines,  wealthy  men  provided  food,  women  prepared  food  and  beer,  elders  and  youth 
cooperated  in  the  preparations  and  the  huge  investment  of  time  and  energy  in  the  process.  The 
walk  itself  was  symptomatic  of  the  state  of  relationships  in  the  community  and  thus  the  health  or 
"coolness"  of  the  community. 
The  Symbols  of  the  Walk:  the  Orokoba  and  the  Fire 

The  symbols  of  the  walk,  the  orokoba  and  the  fire,  are  central  to  the  core  spatial  imagery 
that  defines  ekyaro  or  territorial  identity.  The  images  of  encircling  to  form  protective  boundaries, 
binding  up  exterior  forces  to  control  their  power,  and  covering  the  land  with  the  smoke  of 


69  Interview  with  Sochoro  Kabati,  Nyichoka,  2  June  1995  (Nata  tf). 

70  Interview  with  Nsaho  Maro,  Kenyana,  14  September  1995  (Ngoreme  <f). 

71  Interview  with  Mang'oha  Morigo,  Bugerera,  24  June  1995  (Nata  tf). 


414 
purification  all  indicate  how  people  have  understood  the  forces  necessary  for  the  health  of  the  land 
and  its  people.  The  spatial  images  of  enclosure  and  boundaries  are  different  from  those  of 
gendered  homestead  spaces,  interstitial  ecological  niches,  clan  pathways,  or  nodes  in  a  network  of 
relationships  because  they  represent  different  kinds  of  social  identity.  The  territorial  identity  of 
enclosure  creates  a  sense  of  cohesiveness  for  a  diverse  and  mobile  population  living  together  on  the 
same  land. 

The  term,  orokoba,  used  for  the  medicine  that  the  rikora  passes  around  the  land,  is  a 
symbolically  charged  word  evoking  the  spatial  images  of  enclosure,  binding  and  interiority.    An 
orokoba  means  literally  a  cowhide  thong  or  rope  but  its  meaning  is  multivalent  and  contextual. 
People  use  the  leather  thong  for  tying  a  cow  to  milk  and  so  associate  it  with  productive  labor.    The 
rope  is  made  from  hide  and  thus  suggests  the  hide  as  the  exterior  cover,  boundary  or  enclosure  of 
the  animal.  That  the  hide  thong  is  used  to  tie  things  up  connects  it  to  medicines  for  neutralizing 
malevolent  power. 

Elders  also  used  the  term  orokoba  to  refer  to  the  strips  of  hide  from  the  sacrificed  animals 
that  the  generation-set  members  wear  on  their  fingers  during  the  ceremony.  This  symbol  of  unity 
and  solidarity  is  widespread  in  East  Africa,  not  respective  of  language  group  or  culture.  The 
boundary  ceremony  of  the  Iraqw  reported  by  Thornton  makes  extensive  use  of  strips  of  hide  in  this 
manner.72  In  the  western  Serengeti,  one  kind  of  blood-brotherhood  is  formed  having  each  partner 
hold  the  end  of  an  orokoba  between  them  that  is  ritually  cut  by  an  elder.  They  are  then  true 
brothers  in  that  they  cannot  steal  from  each  other,  sleep  with  the  other's  wife,  or  form  marriages 
between  their  children.  As  described  above,  the  leaders  of  the  Nata  age-set  representative  of  each 
clan  moiety  perform  this  ceremony. 


72  Thornton,  Space.  Time,  and  Culture,  pp.  88-97. 


415 

In  Nata  orokoba  also  means  the  matrilineage,  your  mother's  kin,  and  seems  to  be 
symbolically  compared  with  the  unbroken  line  (rope)  of  inheritance  through  the  mother's  side.  The 
Ngoreme  dictionary  defines  orokoba  as  "the  umbilical  cord."71    Local  understandings  of 
conception  give  precedence  to  genetic  inheritance  through  the  mother.  When  elders  consider  a 
potential  marriage  partner,  they  investigate  his  or  her  mother's  side  for  inheritable  disease,  mental 
illness  or  character  flaws.  People  describe  the  closest  kind  of  relationship  between  people  as  that  of 
"one  womb."  Men  contribute  to  the  growth  of  the  fetus  by  "feeding  it"  through  intercourse,  rather 
than,  primarily,  by  supplying  its  substance.  Men  become  fathers  by  the  exchange  of  bridewealth 
rather  than  by  a  biological  function.74  In  the  rare  and  drastic  case  where  brothers  of  one  womb 
disagree  and  can  no  longer  be  reconciled,  lineage  elders  perform  a  ritual  in  which  they  pass  an 
orokoba  through  the  wall  of  the  maternal  house,  each  brother  holding  one  end  of  it.  The  thong  is 
cut  in  half.  The  house,  anyumba,  now  divides  them  rather  than  unites  them  as  "children  of  one 
womb."" 

The  rikora  was  not  the  only  group  to  use  orokoba  medicine.  Certain  lineages  possessed  an 
orokoba  in  the  form  of  an  ekitana  or  a  medicine  bundle  for  protecting  homesteads  from  theft  or 
illness  or  to  protect  young  men  when  they  went  after  cattle  thieves.76  The  medicine  was  always 


73  Maryknoll  Fathers,  Iramba  Parish,  Ngoreme-English  Dictionary,  n.d. 

74  For  the  importance  and  interpretation  of  folk  models  of  procreation  see,  Poewe, 
Matrilineal  Ideology,  pp.  4-7;  and  Anita  Jacobson-Widding,  ed.,  The  Creative  Communion: 
African  Folk  Models  of  Fertility  and  the  Regeneration  of  Life  I  Uppsala:  Almqvist  and  Wiksell 
International,  1990). 

75  Interview  with  Nyawagamba  Magoto,  Musoma,  25  November  1995  (Nata  cf). 

6  Ekitana  from  the  root  -tana,  "to  overcome,  wear  out,  bewilder,"  the  noun  form  perhaps 
meaning  "medicine  providing  protection  from  violence."  David  L.  Schoenbrun,  personal 
communication. 


416 
protective  rather  than  destructive.  An  individual  homestead  or  an  entire  village  hired  the  owner  of 
the  ekitana  to  come  and  pass  the  orokoba  for  protection  against  witchcraft,  cattle  theft  or  disease. 

When  elders  spoke  of  the  medicine  that  the  rikora  passes  around  the  land  for  its  protection 
and  healing  as  orokoba  they  evoked  these  other  related  meanings.  They  passed  the  orokoba 
around  and  encircled  the  land— containing  it  as  the  womb  contains  those  linked  by  one  maternal 
orokoba.  Just  as  the  hide  of  the  goat,  it  marks  the  exterior  boundary.  Another  word  for  clan  lands 
(ekyaro)  in  Nata  is  orokoba?1  The  meaning  here  seems  to  be  the  land  around  which  the  orokoba 
was  passed,  the  ekyaro.  It  referred  not  to  the  lands  farmed  or  "owned"  by  the  clan,  but  to  the  land 
over  which  the  clan  had  ritual  control  by  means  of  the  orokoba.  In  all  of  the  rituals  described 
above  the  image  of  encircling  and  containing  was  repeatedly  used  (passing  of  rain  and  protection 
medicines  on  the  boundaries  of  the  land,  strips  of  hide,  fence  enclosures,  the  medicines  wrapped 
around  the  horn,  the  walk  of  encirclement). 

The  power  of  the  orokoba  is  in  binding,  surrounding  or  encircling.  Brad  Weiss  discusses 
the  use  of  protection  medicines  in  Haya  which  bind  (okuzinga  in  Haya).  Wedding  ceremonies,  new 
houses,  as  well  as  death  itself  must  undergo  "binding  rites"  to  ensure  protection  and  peace.'8 
Schoenbrun  describes  old  Lakes  Bantu  ideas  about  medicines  that  bind  up  malevolent  power  to 
control  it,  evident  in  the  common  practice  of  the  tight  binding  of  various  substances  together  in 
medicine  bundles  and  charms.    In  many  Bantu  languages  heat  is  associated  with  witchcraft  while 
coolness  is  associated  with  peace  and  prosperity.  Yet  the  control  of  heat  through  binding  is  also 
necessary  to  activate  medicines  of  healing.  The  Nata  word  used  to  describe  people  or  land  that  is 
whole  and  healthy  is  buhoro  that  comes  from  the  Lake  Bantu  root  word  -podo,  meaning  quietness, 


11  Interview  with  Nyamaganda  Magoto,  Cultural  Vocabulary  list,  Mbiso  and  Bugerera, 
1995-1996  (Nata  <f). 

78  Weiss,  The  Making  and  Unmaking,  p.  39. 


417 
cold  water,  and  good  health.79  The  orokoba  works  to  "cool  the  land"  by  tying  up  the  powers  of 
disorder.  Thus  the  orokoba  evokes  both  the  idea  of  the  containment  of  the  womb  or  the  homestead 
and  the  rope  that  ties  up  potential  danger.  Dangerous  forces  are  neutralized  by  tying  up  their 
symbolic  representations  in  medicine  bundles  or  horns.  The  power  of  the  wilderness  or  outside 
forces  is  civilized  by  bringing  them  inside.  The  control  and  containment,  rather  than  the  isolation, 
of  outside  forces  make  the  land  and  its  people  productive. 

However,  an  encirclement  or  enclosure  without  an  opening  is  associated  with  death.  The 
prosperity  of  the  homestead  depends  on  its  gateway  that  leads  to  the  outside.  The  term  for  the 
extinction  of  a  lineage  group  in  Kuria  is  to  be  "stopped  up"  or  "blocked  off."  Elders  perform  the 
ritual  "piercing"  or  opening  of  a  cow's  stomach  and  sprinkling  the  stomach  contents  as  the  central 
act  in  any  ceremonial  sacrifice.  All  western  Serengeti  peoples  pierce  and  elongate  the  holes  in  their 
ears,  which  is  also  the  mark  of  an  adult.  Ruel  reports  that  the  Kuria  derisively  call  an  adult 
without  pierced  ears  "a  shut  in"  or  "a  blocked  thing."  Things  that  are  completely  closed  in  are 
potentially  dangerous  (an  unpierced  gourd,  a  calf  born  with  skin  covering  its  openings). 
Circumcision  itself  is  an  act  of  opening  or  cutting.  The  community  must  be  enclosed  for  protection 
but  dies  without  linkages  to  the  outside,  for  wives,  dependents  and  security.  A  healthy  community 
mediates  the  dangers  of  outside  forces  by  controlling  its  boundaries.80 

The  spatial  metaphor  of  outside/inside  is  operational  in  all  these  rituals  by  using  the 
stomach  contents  of  the  slaughtered  animal  (inside),  the  hide  strips  placed  on  everyone's  fingers 
(outside),  the  building  of  ceremonial  homesteads  (inside)  and  fences  (outside).  Weiss  connects  the 


Schoenbrun,  Etymologies.  #335  and  in  personal  communication. 

80  Malcom  Ruel,  "Piercing,"  June  1 958,  Makerere  Institute  of  Social  Research.  Conference 
Papers  (1954-1958).  For  an  in  depth  analysis  of  "blockage  and  flow"  in  Rwanda  see,  Christopher 
C.  Taylor,  Milk.  Honev  and  Money:  Changing  Concepts  in  Rwandan  Healing  (Washington: 
Smithsonian  Institution  Press,  1992),  pp.  11-12. 


418 
ideas  of  binding  and  interiority  to  the  physical  space  of  the  house.  Inferiority  is  used  to  define 
close  social  relations-people  of  one  house  or  one  womb.  The  construction  of  the  house  itself 
serves  as  a  metaphor  for  "binding"  as  the  circular  rings  on  the  roof  are  bound  around  the  house.81 
Ritual  inscribes  boundaries  and  identity  on  the  land  as  well  as  on  people's  bodies. 

The  images  of  fire  to  purify  and  cover  with  smoke,  too,  have  rich  and  multivalent  meaning 
in  ritual.  Fire  was  the  civilizing  gift  of  first  man,  but  brought  from  the  outside.  The  fire  or  the 
hearth  is  what  constitutes  the  moral  center  of  a  house.  Lighting  a  fire  established  a  household  in  its 
own  right.82  People  fear  the  purifying,  transforming  fire  of  the  blacksmith  and  compare  the  smithy 
with  the  womb  of  the  woman.  Elders  build  a  fire  to  see  if  the  time  is  auspicious  for  any  act,  if  the 
smoke  goes  straight  up,  success  will  follow.  When  the  new  Nata  saiga  goes  to  Riyara  to  gather 
honey  for  their  ceremony  they  first  build  a  fire  to  see  if  the  time  is  right.83 

Elders  use  fire  ritually  in  many  contexts,  apart  from  the  generation-set  fire,  for  purification 
and  blessing.  Ishenyi  elders  light  the  ritual  fire,  ikoroso,  for  a  single  clan  (hamate)  or  a  single 
homestead  when  confronted  with  the  problems  of  death,  sickness  or  infertility.84    The  prophet 
instructs  the  elders  to  make  the  ikoroso  fire  in  the  wilderness  from  certain  kinds  of  trees  found 
there  and  to  add  the  prescribed  medicines.  Elders  said  that  the  smoke  from  the  fire  "covered"  the 


81  Weiss,  The  Making  and  Unmaking,  p.  47. 

Ibid,  pp.  29-31,  51-52,  describes  the  Haya  ceremony  for  blessing  a  new  house  which 
involves  lighting  the  fire  for  the  first  time  by  the  father  or  a  senior  agnate.  These  fires  too  have 
medicines  to  protect  the  house  made  from  specific  trees. 

83  Interview  with  Makuru  Nyang'aka,  Sochoro  Kabati,  and  Barichera  Machage  Barichera 
Riyara,  7  March  1 996  (Nata  tf). 

84  Interviews  with  Mang'ombe  Morimi,  Issenye  Iharara,  26  August  1995;  Mashauri 
Ng'ana,  Issenye,  2  November  1995  (Ishenyi  <?). 


419 
whole  land  for  its  purification.85  Rikora  leaders  perform  the  ekimweso  fire  ceremony  in  Ishenyi  to 
bless  the  land  (ekyaro)  as  a  whole.  Ikoma  call  this  ritual  the  shishiga  and  perform  it  when 
prescribed  by  a  prophet.86    In  Ngoreme  elders  make  the  ikoroso  fire  from  particular  trees  (esebe, 
omoreto.  omorama)  that  grow  at  the  erisambwa  site.87 

Water  from  emisambwa  springs  is  also  used  in  the  rituals  to  bless  the  land.88  Water  was 
the  gift  of  first  woman,  while  fire  was  the  gift  of  first  man.  Both  are  transformative  and 
transitional  symbols  used  to  mediate  the  boundaries,  the  inside/outside  dichotomies  of  the  orokoba, 
the  womb  and  the  house.  A  fundamental  ritual  act  in  these  ceremonies  of  purification,  protection 
and  sanctification  is  the  sprinkling  of  a  mixture  of  contents  (water,  milk,  honey,  millet  flour,  etc.) 
onto  the  gathered  people  as  a  blessing  and  a  prayer  for  fertility  (komusa).  The  sprinkling  covers 
the  bodies  outside,  its  boundaries,  with  the  symbolic  things  of  sustenance  and  life  from  the  inside. 
Elders  say  that  the  smoke,  like  water,  covers  and  protects  the  participants  in  these  rituals.  Weiss 
points  out  that  fire  and  smoke  are  often  used  in  binding  rites,  both  to  surround  a  house  and  to  drive 
off  malevolent  forces.89 

These  symbols  operate  on  all  levels  from  the  individual  homestead  to  the  territorial  ekyaro. 
It  is  this  contextual  aspect  that  makes  these  symbols  so  powerful.  Testimonies  compare  the  health 


85  Interview  with  Rugayonga  Nyamohega,  Mugeta,  27  October  1995  (Ishenyi  <f).  Each 
homestead  extinguishes  its  fires  and  a  new  one  is  ceremonially  lit  with  medicines  and  distributed. 
Elders  ritually  slaughter  a  goat  and  sprinkle  its  stomach  contents  over  the  people  (komusa),  then 
they  light  the  new  fire  and  distribute  it  to  each  homestead. 

86  Interviews  with  Mashauri  Ng'ana,  Issenye,  2  November  1995  (Ishenyi  <f);  Bokima 
Giringayi,  Mbiso,  26  October  1995  (Ikoma  cf). 

87  Interview  with  Paulo  Maitari  Nyigana  and  Ibrahim  Mutatiro  Kemuhe,  Maji  Moto,  29 
September  1 995  (Ngoreme  if). 

88  Interview  with  Nyambeho  Marangini,  Issenye,  7  September  1995  (Ishenyi  <f). 

89  Weiss,  The  Making  and  Unmaking,  pp.  48-50. 


420 
of  the  homestead  to  the  health  of  the  larger  territory.  They  symbolically  equate  the  enclosure  of  the 
womb,  the  homestead  fence  and  the  orokoba  around  the  land.  These  ritual  practices  create  an 
identity  embedded  in  a  bounded  territory  controlled  by  elders.  People  use  the  same  symbolic 
language  throughout  the  region  to  express  these  concepts  of  territorial  identity. 
The  Leaders  of  the  Walk:  The  Chama 

Peoples  throughout  the  Mara  Region  call  the  leaders  of  the  generation-  and  age-set 
(aba)chama,  usually  numbering  eight  members  in  all,  with  one  top  leader  whose  job  it  is  to  "guard 
the  land."    The  secret  council  of  Kuria  elders  is  called  the  injama.  The  Ikizu  call  every  member  of 
the  rikora  in  power  an  (omo)chama  while  the  Nata  use  this  term  only  for  the  eight  chosen  leaders. 
An  Ikoma  elder  said  that  these  leaders  are  responsible  for  anything  that  concerns  the  land—rain, 
disease,  peace,  war,  and  hunger.  Chama  is  derived  from  an  old  Bantu  word  (-yama)  with  wide 
use,  usually  meaning  a  group  that  works  together  or  a  council.  The  Kikuyu  elders'  lodge  and  the 
Maasai  elders  meeting  are  both  called  the  kiama.  Because  of  the  dominant  position  of  Maasai  in 
the  Rift  Valley  in  the  nineteenth  century,  most  obviously  manifested  in  their  age-set  organization, 
one  wonders  if  the  Maasai  adopted  the  word  chama/kiama  from  their  Kikuyu  Bantu-speaking 
neighbors  and  then  Mara-speakers  adopted  it  from  the  Maasai  in  the  nineteenth  century.90 

The  requirements  for  and  character  of  the  generation-  or  age-set  leader  indicate  that  Mara 
peoples  gave  the  generational  principles  of  growth  and  peace  priority  over  the  warrior  ethic  most 


90  Interviews  with  Mashauri  Ng'ana,  Issenye,  2  November  1995  (Ishenyi  tf);  and 
Rugayonga  Nyamohega,  Mugeta,  27  October  1995  (Ishenyi  o").  In  Kiswahili,  kuchunga  nchi. 
Among  the  abachama  there  were  specialists  with  other  names.  The  Ishenyi  ekereri,  whose  job  it 
was  to  "guard  the  land,"  led  both  the  age-  and  generation-set  and  had  eight  abachama  from  each 
clan  to  support  him."  The  Nata  chose  eight  abachama  for  the  generation-set  in  power  and  eight 
abachama  for  each  age-set,  four  from  each  clan  moiety  and  a  leader,  kangati  or  omotiro,  from 
each.  Another  Ishenyi  rikora  official  was  the  omusamu  who  prepared  the  meat  on  sticks  over  the 
fire  for  the  ceremony.  Interviews  with  Mang'ombe  Morimi,  Issenye  Iharara,  26  August  1995; 
Nyambeho  Marangini,  Issenye,  7  September  1 995  (Ishenyi  <?). 


421 
often  associated  with  age-sets.  The  generation-set  leader's  body  must  be  unblemished,  without 
scar,  sore  or  disability."  His  parents,  children  and  wife  must  be  alive  and  healthy.  He  must  be  a 
man  of  good  character  and  of  peace.  Once  he  is  chosen,  no  one  was  allowed  to  see  him  naked, 
even  to  bathe.  He  could  not  touch  blood,  handle  raw  meat,  drink  water  other  than  spring  water,  or 
take  lovers  outside  his  homestead.  His  wife( wives)  observes  similar  prohibitions.  His  father  must 
be  native  born,  but  his  mother  may  be  a  stranger. 

The  age-set  leader  could  never  fight  and  on  a  raid  took  up  the  rear  position.  Instead  of 
carrying  a  weapon,  the  kang'ali  ("leader"  from  the  verb  to  walk  ahead)  carries  a  long  stick, 
orulanya,  as  the  sign  of  peace.  He  had  only  to  lay  the  stick  between  two  people  to  stop  them  from 
fighting.  Some  say  that  even  the  Maasai  respected  the  orutanya.92    The  leader  of  the  rikora 
commanded  more  respect  than  the  leader  of  the  age-set.  Far  from  the  warrior  hero,  he  was  a  man 
of  peace,  embodying  the  peace  of  the  land.  Elders  said  that  the  ongoing  work  of  both  the 
generation-set  and  the  age-set,  in  the  east,  was  to  "guard"  the  land.  Although  some  suggested  that 
this  task  included  a  military  function,  in  fact,  neither  the  saiga  nor  the  rikora  functioned  as  a 
military  regiment.  When  a  raid  occurred,  every  able-bodied  man  took  up  the  chase.  Those  in  their 
saiga  might  have  gone  ahead  but  did  not  organize  separately  from  every  other  man  on  the  chase.93 


91  The  ritual  leaders  of  the  Maasai  age-set  also  had  to  have  a  "pure"  body  and  come  from  a 
"pure"  family,  he  was  a  "man  of  peace"  and  stayed  in  the  rear  during  a  raid.  Berntsen, 
"Pastoralism,  Raiding  and  Prophets,"  pp.  79-81 

92  Although  this  description  comes  from  interviews  with  Nata,  the  qualifications  for  rikora 
leadership  were  the  same  in  all  the  groups  I  interviewed  and  the  long  stick  a  universal  symbol  of 
leadership,  called  the  ekinara  in  Ishenyi.  Interviews  with  Mang'oha  Machunchuriani,  Mbiso,  24 
March  1995;  Sochoro  Kabati,  Nyichoka,  2  June  1995;  Kirigiti  Ng'orogita,  Mbiso,  9  June  1995 
(Nata  cf);  Mang'ombe  Morimi,  Issenye  Iharara,  26  August  1 995.  Rugayonga  Nyamohega, 
Mugeta,  27  October  1995  (Ishenyi  <r).    Berntsen,  "Pastoralism,  Prophets  and  Raiding."p.  202,  the 
Maasai  delegations  to  see  the  prophets  went  unarmed  with  a  long  black  stick  as  the  sign  of  peace. 

93  Interview  with  Mang'oha  Morigo,  Bugerera,  24  June  1995  (Nata  <?). 


422 

Besides  the  (aba)chama  of  the  generation-set  and  the  age-set  in  each  clan  territory,  the 
Ngoreme  have  (abajchama  for  the  ekilana  or  orokoba,  sometimes  called  the  (aba)chama  of  the 
land  or  ekyaro,  and  the  (abajchama  of  the  rain.  These  people  serve  as  agents  to  carry  out  the 
orders  of  the  elders,  prophet  or  rainmaker,  rather  than  constituting  the  authority  itself.    Elders  said 
that  the  most  important  attribute  for  the  job  was  the  ability  to  keep  the  medicines  secret.  The 
(aba)chama  swore  an  oath  of  secrecy.  Some  of  these  occupational  (aba)chama  served  for  one 
year,  others  for  a  lifetime.  They  had  to  meet  the  requirements  and  prohibitions  enumerated  above 
for  other  (aba)chama.94 

The  Ngoreme  pattern  makes  explicit  the  role  of  the  generation-set  as  "agents  of  force" 
rather  than  "controllers  of  force."  When  the  colonial  government  began  looking  for  leaders,  they 
elevated  those  in  the  role  of  (aba)chama  to  chiefs.  No  wonder  then  that  the  colonial  administrators 
found  the  Ngoreme  chiefs  to  be  powerless  and  swayed  by  public  opinion.  In  these  cases  the  most 
visible  people  carrying  out  these  rituals  were  not  the  ones  with  authority.  The  community  ritually 
endowed  the  generation  and  age-set  leaders  as  visible  symbols  and  representatives  of  community 
consensus.  However,  it  was  the  authority  of  the  elders,  the  generation  of  fathers,  that  controlled 
their  actions. 

Territories  and  Boundaries: 
The  walk  of  the  generation-set  ritually  created  the  space  of  a  bounded  and  enclosed 
territory  and  the  territorial  identity  of  the  people  contained  within  those  boundaries.  To  appreciate 
this  local  concept  of  territory  and  territorial  identity  defined  by  ritual  space,  we  must  find  a  more 


94  Interviews  with  Paulo  Maitari  Nyigana,  Maji  Moto,  29  September  1995;  Isaya  Charo 
Wambura,  Buchanchari,  22  September  1995;  Nsaho  Maro,  Kenyana,  14  September  1995 
(Ngoreme  <f).  The  abachama  of  the  orokoba  passed  the  protection  medicine  on  behalf  of  the 
prophet  who  provided  the  medicine  (omogitana),  the  abachama  of  the  rain  passed  the  rain 
medicine  (omusano)  on  behalf  of  the  rainmaker  (omogemba). 


423 
nuanced  understanding  of  territory  than  the  traditional  academic  understanding  of  territory  as  "the 
ecological  locus  of  use  or  the  political  limits  of  domination  and  sovereignty."95  Without  chiefs  or 
kings,  people  did  not  define  their  territory  by  centralized  political  authority.  In  Chapter  5  we  saw 
that  the  ecological  landscapes  over  which  western  Serengeti  people  ranged  as  hunters,  herders  and 
farmers  covered  the  whole  Serengeti-Mara  ecosystem,  certainly  not  defined  territorially.  One 
could  argue  that  the  homestead  image  also  defines  a  political  unit  without  centralized  authority  and 
the  hills  define  an  interstital  ecology.  However,  these  definitions  presume  the  prior  assumption  of 
how  these  spaces  were  constituted  in  the  first  place. 

Robert  Thornton's  definition  of  territory-as  the  symbolic  differentiation  of  space  and  the 
appropriation  of  that  space  into  a  structure  of  meaning,  so  that  it  may  be  represented  as  a  coherent 
and  enduring  image-is  a  more  useful  place  to  begin.96  This  definition  does  away  with  the  false 
dichotomy  so  often  posed  by  anthropologists  and  historians  between  "the  social  definition  of 
territory"  (assumed  to  be  the  precolonial  African  model)  or  the  "territorial  definition  of  society" 
(assumed  to  be  the  western  imperialist  model).97  This  dichotomy  goes  back  more  than  a  hundred 
years  to  the  work  of  early  anthropologists,  Maine  and  Morgan,  who  distinguished  between  kinship 
and  territory  as  two  "mutually  inconsistent  modes  of  social  organization."  The  functionalist 
anthropologists  used  this  premise  to  hypothesize  that  kinship  was  logically  prior  to  territory  and 
that  kinship  was  the  basis  for  territorial  groupings.  The  point  made  by  Thornton  is  that  people 
must  first  imagine  and  create  the  space  of  the  territory,  whether  the  society  is  organized  on  the 


'  Thornton,  Space.  Time  and  Culture,  p.  19. 
''  Ibid. 


97  Christopher  Gray,  Modernization  and  Cultural  Identity:  The  Creation  of  National  Space 
in  Rural  France  and  Colonial  Space  in  Rural  Gabon.  Occasional  Paper  No.  21  (Bloomington. 
Indiana:  Indiana  Center  on  Global  Change  and  World  Peace,  February  1 994),  pp.  37-38. 


424 
basis  of  proximity  or  kinship.  People  imagine  and  represent  boundaries  and  the  territories  they 
enclose  through  the  performance  of  ritual  and  the  practice  of  everyday  routines.98 

Yet  space  can  be  appropriated  in  a  number  of  ways  that  do  not  imply  a  bounded 
"territory."  Chapter  7  demonstrated  a  conceptualization  of  space  defined  by  the  sites  of  ancestors, 
emisambwa,  who  acted  as  guardians  of  the  land.  These  sites  are  often  located  in  places  well 
removed  from  the  settlements  in  which  people  now  live.  The  core  spatial  images  were  those  of 
networks  radiating  out  from  fixed  points  on  the  land.  Chapter  6  described  the  regional  pathways  of 
knowledge  controlled  by  clans  that  constituted  a  radically  different  appropriation  of  space  reaching 
over  vast  distances  of  geographical  and  social  space.  Chapter  5  suggested  that  space  was  also 
defined  in  terms  of  the  ecological  zones  in  which  people  practiced  certain  economic  subsistence 
patterns.  Yet  these  too  were  not  enclosed  territories  but  interstitial,  interdependent  spaces  existing 
within  a  regional  economic  system.  Ethnic  groups,  clans,  lineages,  generation  and  age-sets  each 
appropriated  space  in  a  different  way  and  formed  their  identity  in  relation  to  those  socially  created 
landscapes. 

For  the  western  Serengeti  the  only  appropriation  of  space  that  can  usefully  be  called  a 
"territory"  is  the  ritual  creation  of  the  bounded  and  enclosed  space  of  the  ekyaro.  Although  the 
ekyaro  was  by  definition  a  clan  territory,  the  social  unit  used  to  create  a  territorial  identity  was  the 
egalitarian  generation-set.  Kinship  was  not  the  basis  for  a  territorial  grouping.  The  concept  of  an 
enclosed  and  bounded  territory  was  a  different  way  of  appropriating  space  and  used  to  contain 
different  social  units  that  were  defined  territorially  over  time.  The  geographer  Robert  Sack  makes 
a  distinction  between  various  social  conceptions  of  space  and  "territory,"  which  he  defines  as  the 


98  This  debate  discussed  in  Thornton,  Space.  Time  and  Culture,  pp.  8-16.  Refers  to  Sir 
Henry  Sumner's  work,  Ancient  Law  (1861)  and  Lewis  Henry  Morgan's  work,  Ancient  Society 
(1877);  See  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place.  Chapters  4-6. 


425 
geographical  area  over  which  an  individual  or  group  asserts  authority  and  control.99  I  put  less 
emphasis  on  the  control  of  these  areas  since  all  appropriations  of  space  involve  the  authority  of  a 
particular  social  group.  I  prefer  to  understand  territory  in  the  western  Serengeti  as  the 
geographical  area  appropriated  by  a  social  group  using  the  core  spatial  images  of  enclosure  and 
boundaries.  While  many  kinds  of  social  identities  define  themselves  in  relation  to  the  land  only  a 
territorial  identity  conceptualizes  space  in  terms  of  bounded  units  of  land. 
"Tribal"  Boundaries  and  Territory 

Elders  today  use  the  core  spatial  images  of  an  enclosed  territory  embodied  in  the 
generation-set  rituals  of  walking  the  land  to  define  "tribal"  boundaries.  They  employ  these  older 
concepts  of  territory  to  conceive  of  the  newer  kinds  of  ethnic  territories  that  gained  prominence  in 
the  colonial  period.  These  boundaries  of  ethnic  territories  enclosed  the  space  of  a  variety  of  social 
identities  such  as  clan,  lineage,  age-  and  generation-set  that  now  made  up  the  emerging  ethnic 
identities. 

When  I  asked  elders  to  show  me  their  territorial  boundaries,  they  were  quick  to  respond 
with  both  the  "traditional  tribal"  and  the  "colonial"  sets  of  ethnic  boundaries.  Nata  elders  said  that 
their  "traditional  tribal"  boundaries  were  the  Grumeti  River  with  the  Ikoma  (east),  first  the 
Sanchate  and  then  the  Tirina  River  with  the  lkizu  (west),  the  Morega  or  the  Somoche  River  with 
the  Ngoreme  (north)  and  the  Mbalageti  River  with  the  Sukuma  (south).  Elders  described  the  old 
lkoma  boundaries  as  the  Orangi  River  with  the  Maasai  (east),  the  Grumeti  River  with  the  Nata 
(west),  Bangwesi  mountain  with  the  Ngoreme  (north)  and  the  Mbalageti  River  with  the  Sukuma 


99  Robert  David  Sack,  Human  Territoriality:  Its  Theory  and  History  (Cambridge: 
Cambridge  University  Press,  1986),  p.  19. 


426 
(south).100  These  boundary  recitations  follow  a  formula  in  which  boundaries  are  defined  by  1)  the 
ethnic  identity  of  who  was  on  the  other  side  of  the  boundary,  2)  a  cardinal  direction,  and  3)  a 
physical  feature  that  marked  the  boundary  such  as  a  river  or  a  mountain. 

The  "traditional"  boundaries  indicated  by  elders  usually  followed  physical  features  such  as 
rivers,  mountains  or  long  stretches  of  impenetrable  bush.""  These  wilderness  tracts  of  a  no-man's- 
land  often  correspond  to  the  boundaries  of  tsetse  fly  bush  characterized  by  John  Ford  as  the 
grenzewilderness.m  The  colonial  files  assert  that  a  35-mile  wide  belt  of  tsetse  fly  bush  separated 
the  Maasai  seasonal  grazing  areas  on  the  western  edge  of  the  Serengeti  plains  from  the  farming 
peoples  to  the  west  in  the  Musoma  district.  During  the  Ikoma  sleeping  sickness  outbreak,  colonial 
officers  documented  that  tsetse  infested  bush  surrounded  Ikoma,  extending  for  30  miles  to  the 
Ngoreme  boundary  to  the  north,  and  to  the  south  across  the  Mbalageti  River  to  the  Sukuma 
boundary.103  Given  the  tradition  of  bush  control  discussed  in  Chapter  5,  this  evidence  may  suggest 
that  tsetse  bush  was  allowed  to  remain  and  demarcate  social  boundaries.  Schoenbrun's  work 
shows  that  from  earliest  times  Lakes  Bantu-speakers  carved  out  their  farming  communities 


100  Interviews  with  Jackson  Mang'oha  Maginga,  Mbiso,  18  March  1995;  Mahiti  Kwiro, 
Mchang'oro,  19  January  1996  (Nata  tf);  Pastor  Wilson  Shanyangi  Machota,  Morotonga  12  July 
1995  (Ikoma  cf). 

101  See  Hans  Cory,  "Land  Tenure  in  Bukuria, "  Tanganyika  Notes  and  Records  23  (1947): 
70-79;  Prazak,  "Cultural  Expressions,"  p.  97. 

102  Ford,  The  Role  of  Trypanosomiases. 

103  From  H.  J.  Lowe,  Senior  Veterinary  Officer,  Northern  Province  to  Provincial 
Commissioner  in  Arusha,  6  March  1931,  Land  and  Mines,  Chiefdoms'  Boundary  Dispute  Files, 
North  Mara  District,  83,  3/127,  TNA;  J.F.  Corson,  M.O.,  Ikoma,  15  April  1927,  "Third  Note  on 
Sleeping  Sickness,"  Extracts  of  Report  by  District  Veterinary  Officer,  1926-29,  Provincial 
Administration  Monthly  Reports,  Musoma  District,  215/P.C./1/7,  TNA. 


427 
between  uninhabited  buffer  zones  of  tsetse  bush  wilderness.104  Because  rivers,  mountains  and 
tsetse  bush  represented  barriers  to  easy  communication,  people  developed  a  sense  of  territorial 
identity  within  the  boundaries  of  their  daily  interactions  and  routines.  They  perceived  the  peoples 
on  the  other  side  of  these  wilderness  boundaries  in  stereotypical  terms  and  in  relation  to  idealized 
cardinal  directions. 

Oral  testimonies  show  that  the  concept  of  the  "other"  was  integrally  tied  to  these 
wilderness  boundaries.  People  create  boundaries  in  relation  to  what  is  outside  those  boundaries 
and  their  identity  in  relation  to  someone  else.  Oral  testimonies  most  often  define  communal,  now 
ethnic,  identity  in  contrast  to  the  "people  of  the  wilderness"  (Nyika)  or  the  Maasai  and  Asi  who  live 
outside  civilized  space.  Elders  consistently  identified  Maasai  herders  and  Asi  hunters  with  the 
animals  of  the  wilderness,  "who  go  here  and  there  without  a  home."  The  plains  and  bush  areas 
were  outside  possible  homestead  space  and  full  of  danger,  from  both  wild  animals  and  uncivilized 
people.105  Civilization  meant  a  ritual  relationship  with  the  land  that  transforms  it  from  wilderness 
to  home.  Anyone  who  is  outside  the  boundaries  is  by  definition,  the  stereotypical  "other." 

Oral  testimony  and  ethnography  reflect  this  understanding  of  boundaries  as  wilderness 
tracts  and  portray  boundaries  as  dangerous  and  liminal  places.  Elders  spoke  of  boundaries  as  the 
place  where  they  disposed  of  polluted  things.  If  an  uncircumcised  girl  became  pregnant,  she  was 
forced  to  flee  over  the  boundaries  or  pollute  the  whole  land.  In  the  past  the  Ikizu  generation-set 
leaders  took  breech  babies  or  those  whose  top  teeth  came  in  first  out  to  the  wilderness,  over  the 


104  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  pp.  126  -128;  David  L.  Schoenbrun,  "Social  Aspects  of 
Agricultural  Change  between  the  Great  Lakes,  AD  500  to  1000,"  Azania.  29/30  (1994-1995)- 
270-282. 

105  Interview  with  Mang'oha  Morigo,  Bugerera,  24  June  1995  (Nata  tf)  says  theNdorobo 
walk  around  like  wild  animals  following  the  herds.  Kiyarata  Mzumari,  Mariwanda,  8  July  1995, 
says  that  the  plains  were  a  fearsome  place  because  of  the  danger  of  Maasai,  lions  and  buffalo. 


428 
boundary  with  Nata  or  Zanaki,  and  left  them  there.  The  Zanaki  generation-set  leaders  were 
responsible  to  care  for  the  boundaries  and  had  to  dispose  of  the  polluted  Kuria  bodies  deposited 
across  their  side  of  the  boundary.  Court  cases  in  the  colonial  files  describe  dead  bodies  being 
found  on  the  boundaries,  in  fact  on  the  colonial  boundary  stone,  between  two  ethnic  groups. I06 

Today  villages  on  the  boundaries  of  two  ethnic  groups  are  often  the  frontier  refuge  for 
young  men  in  trouble  who  go  there  to  gain  a  new  identity.  These  places  have  bad  reputations  as 
the  home  of  outlaws  and  people  without  respect  for  traditional  authority.  While  I  was  in  the 
region,  the  clinic  at  one  of  these  boundary  villages  treated  many  arrow  and  gunshot  wounds  from 
encounters  in  cattle  raids  and  other  theft  on  the  boundaries.  A  German  tourist  was  shot  in  another 
of  these  frontier  villages.  These  villages  contain  people  of  mixed  ethnic  background  and  a 
preponderance  of  young  people,  living  outside  the  bounds  of  normal  society  and  morality.  R.  E.  S. 
Tanner's  colonial  study  of  cattle  theft  in  the  Musoma  District  showed  that  the  majority  of  theft 
cases  occurred  "along  uninhabited  district  borders."107 

The  boundaries  that  elders  described  for  the  old  Nata  territory  were  enormous,  enclosing 
approximately  3,600  square  kilometers.  The  colonial  census  in  1 948  lists  the  population  of  Nata  at 
only  1,519,  giving  a  density  of  less  than  a  half  person  per  square  kilometer.  Even  if  one  would  add 
in  the  Ishenyi  (2,428)  and  lkoma  (4,474)  populations  of  the  time  the  density  would  still  only  be  a 


106  Interviews  with  Zamberi  Masambwe,  Gisuge  Chabwasi,  Mariwanda,  22  June  1995 
(Ikizu  (f);  Zabron  Kisubundo  Nyamamera  and  Makang'a  Magigi,  Bisarye,  9  November  1 995 
(Zanaki  <?).  Criminal  Case  No.  92  of  1 93 1 ,  Villagers  of  Watende  living  in  Bunjari,  9  September 
1 93 1 ,  Native  Affairs,  Collective  Punishments  and  Prosecution  of  Chiefs,  1 926-3 1 ,  246/P  C  /3/4 
TNA. 

107  R.  E.  S.  Tanner,  "Cattle  Theft  in  Musoma  1958-59,"  Tanzania  Notes  and  Records.  65 
(March  1966):  31-32. 


429 
little  more  than  two  people  per  square  kilometer.'08  Using  these  figures  to  estimate  precolonial 
populations  is  nearly  useless  of  course  because  of  the  huge  loss  of  population  and  migration  during 
the  late  nineteenth  century.  Yet  it  does  give  us  the  sense  of  the  vast  tracts  of  land  and  small 
number  of  people  in  question.  Even  today  the  population  density  of  Serengeti  District  is  only  10.2 
people  per  square  kilometer. "" 

Obviously  the  Nata  definition  of  its  territory  depended  neither  on  "the  ecological  locus  of 
use"  nor  "the  political  limits  of  domination  and  sovereignty.""0  What  made  it  "Nata"  territory  was 
that  elders  used  the  older  concepts  of  bounded  territory  to  enclose  a  space  that  included  the 
variously  conceived  spaces  of  a  number  of  social  groups  that  now  made  up  Nata,  filling  the  need 
for  a  defined  "traditional  tribal  territory"  in  the  colonial  context.  These  boundaries  had  to  be 
extensive  to  include  all  of  the  sites  of  the  emisambwa  still  propitiated  by  Nata  lineages,  the 
boundaries  of  the  ekyaro  defined  by  the  walk  of  the  rikora  and  to  exclude  those  who  were  different 
across  the  dangerous  wilderness  boundaries.  This  Nata  territory  includes  the  land  used  to  hunt,  to 
gather  arrow  poison  or  to  trade  with  the  Asi  or  Tatoga.  Although  the  Nata  never  occupied  all  of 
this  land  at  once  by  habitation,  they  claim  this  land  as  Nata  territory  by  claiming  all  of  their  past 
interactions  within  this  landscape.  The  Nata  generation-set  never  walked  around  these  extensive 
boundaries,  it  was  confined  to  the  area  in  which  people  lived.  However,  Nata  elders  use  the  same 


108  East  African  Population  Census,  1948,  African  Population  of  Musoma  District,  East 
Africa  Statistical  Department,  Nairobi,  1  October  1948,  African  Population  by  Chiefdom,  1948, 
Secretariat  Files,  40641,  TNA.  In  the  Native  Affairs  Census  of  1 926  the  Ikoma  Federation  was 
listed  with  a  total  population  of  1 4,799-Nata  1,923,  Ikoma  8,664  and  Issenye  4,212.  In  Native 
Affairs  Census  1926-29,  246/P.C  73/21,  TNA. 

109  The  population  density  of  Serengeti  District  is  the  lowest  in  the  Mara  Region  but  its 
growth  rate  at  8.3  is  the  highest  in  the  region,  reflecting  a  large  in  migration  for  open  farmland  and 
mining.  Mara  Regional  Statistical  Abstract  1 993  (Dar  es  Salaam:  President's  Office,  Planning 
Commission.  Bureau  of  Statistics,  June  1995),  pp.  2,  12. 

"°  Thornton,  Space.  Time  and  Culture,  p.  19. 


430 
core  spatial  images  of  enclosure  employed  by  the  walk  of  the  generation-set  to  appropriate  this 
larger  landscape  with  which  they  have  formed  a  relationship  to  create  a  "tribal"  territory  in  the 
colonial  context. 

Because  these  new  colonial  territories  enclosed  the  space  of  various  social  identities  that 
had  existed  previously  there  was  considerable  overlap  and  boundaries  were  disputed.  The  same 
lineages  and  clans  were  now  part  of  different  ethnic  groups,  but  maintained  claims  to  the  same 
ancestral  places.  Age-set  territories  of  what  were  now  different  ethnic  groups  overlapped.  A 
Ngoreme  elder  who  lived  on  the  present  boundary  with  Nata  said  that  Ngoreme  used  to  include  all 
of  what  is  today  Ishenyi  and  Nata,  and  much  of  Ikizu,  bordering  at  the  Mara  River  to  the  north 
with  the  Kuria  and  to  the  east  with  the  Maasai.  A  Nata  elder  however  said  that  Nata  used  to  border 
the  Kuria  at  the  Mara  River  and  with  the  Ngoreme  at  the  Ikorongo  mountains.  The  overlap  in 
territory  of  these  two  statements  is  enormous.1"    Yet  because  these  representations  of  past 
boundaries  refer  to  a  combination  of  various  concepts  of  space  operational  at  different  times  that 
were  not  exclusive,  they  overlapped  in  various  ways.  Both  accounts  were  valid  depending  on  how 
boundaries  were  defined.  Other  boundaries  have  become  rigid  and  highly  contested.  Some  versions 
of  the  emergence  story  separate  the  territory  of  Ikizu  between  the  territory  of  first  man,  Isamongo 
(Ikitang'anyi),  and  the  territory  of  first  woman,  Nyakinywa  (Buraze).  Elders  recited  the 
boundaries  of  those  two  halves  of  Ikizu  in  great  detail,  naming  the  landmarks  (villages,  springs, 
trees,  rocks,  hills)  around  the  perimeter  of  each."2 


'"  Interviews  with  Mwita  Magige,  Mosongo,  9  September  1995  (Ngoreme  <f);  Mayani 
Magoto,  Bugerera,  18  February  1995  (Nata  cf). 

112  Interviews  with  Kiyarata  Mzumari,  Jackson  Witari,  Musa  Matabarwa,  Webiro  Zeze 
Mariwanda,  8  July  1995  (Ikizu  d-). 


431 

During  the  colonial  period  these  older  concepts  of  territory  easily  accommodated  and  used 
new  ideas  about  exclusive  "tribal"  territory.  The  elders  who  told  the  story  about  the  Kuria  moves 
to  Mugumu  said  that  the  injama  passed  an  orokoba  around  the  boundaries  of  the  new  land  to 
ensure  possession.  These  boundaries  did  not  coincide  with  the  colonial  tax  boundaries  and  only  the 
Kuria  elders  on  the  secret  council  of  the  injama  knew  where  they  lay."3  Yet  the  Kuria  in  Mugumu 
also  recognized  and  defended  the  administrative  boundaries  that  defined  their  right  to  live  in  this 
territory.  Many  elders  across  the  region  worked  with  colonial  officials  to  define  the  "tribal" 
boundaries.  Once  the  new  boundaries  were  set  on  administrative  maps  the  elders  defended  and 
contested  these  boundaries  by  drawing  on  the  authority  of  "tradition."  A  Sizaki  protest  to  the 
Governor  said,  "there  are  no  exceptions  to  these  boundaries  since  everyone  recognized  them  since 
the  almighty  Creator  made  all  things  on  this  earth,  before  the  Germans  came  to  Africa.""4 

What  was  different  about  these  two  concepts  of  territory  was  that  western  Serengeti 
territories  were  flexible  units  that  were  defined  anew  each  time  the  land  was  ritually  walked  over 
while  the  colonial  concept  of  territory  was  a  fixed  unit  of  land.  In  the  western  Serengeti,  territories, 
both  the  boundaries  themselves  and  the  social  groups  contained  within  the  boundaries,  shifted  over 
time  while  colonial  territories  assumed  the  occupation  of  a  "tribe."  Recent  scholarship  has  taken 
this  contrast  in  concepts  of  territory  to  mean  that  if  precolonial  African  territorial  boundaries  were 
flexible,  situational,  multiple  and  shifting,  they  were  not  meaningful  or  enduring  indications  of 
identity.  They  theorized  that  if  people  were  constantly  moving  they  could  not  form  an  attachment 
to  the  land.  Kopy  toff  describes  this  African  "attitude"  as  a  "relative  indifference  to  rootedness  in 


113  Interview  with  Pastor  Philemon  Mbota,  Mugumu  Matare,  27  January  1995  (Kuria  cf), 
the  son  of  the  Prophet  Mzee  Mbota  who  came  from  Nyabasi  to  Mugumu. 

"4  From  the  Askari  wa  Jeshi  la  Kikozi  cha  46-36-26TT  KAR,  South  East  Asia  to  Bwana 
Gavana  DSM.  December  1  1944,  Native  Chiefs,  Musoma,  p.  23,  Secretariat  Files  29626,  TNA. 


432 
physical  space,  together  with  an  indifference  to  a  permanent  attachment  to  a  place  .  . .    African 
space  is,  above  all,  social  space.""5  Yet  the  western  Serengeti  rituals  of  walking  the  land  show 
that  place  did  matter  and  that  a  people's  identity  was  deeply  tied  to  the  ways  in  which  they  had 
appropriated  and  created  the  space  around  them,  whether  territorial  or  not.  People  understood  the 
ekyaro  as  the  land  that  they  ritually  controlled,  intimately  linked  to  their  own  health  and  well 
being.  However,  this  space  was  not  fixed  and  immutable  through  time  nor  did  it  always  enclose 
the  same  social  unit. 

The  Germans  began  transforming  local  ideas  about  territory  into  western  concepts  of  land 
as  exclusive,  measured  and  fixed  units  through  the  process  of  selling  land  to  the  few  private 
entrepreneurs  and  missions  that  wanted  to  obtain  land.  The  Seventh  Day  Adventists  bought  land 
from  the  Germans  in  many  places  in  the  region.  Each  transaction  involved  an  elaborate  series  of 
steps,  including  a  visit  to  the  site  to  ensure  that  no  one  held  claims  against  it  and  that  compensation 
had  been  provided  for  natives.  The  boundaries  were  marked  with  stones  (with  bottles  buried  under 
the  stones)  and  maps  were  drawn  so  that  the  land  transfer  could  be  registrated  in  court."6  The 
Germans  took  this  process  seriously  as  foundational  to  the  creation  of  civilization.  Rather  than 
randomly  grabbing  land  for  the  European  newcomers,  the  German  officers  made  doubly  sure  of  its 
"ownership"  and  use  before  granting  it  as  Crown  land. 


1,5  Kopytoff,  "The  Internal  African  Frontier,"  p.  22.  Christopher  Gray,  "The  Disappearing 
District:  The  Decline  of  Precolonial  Space  in  Southern  Gabon  1850-1940,"  a  paper  presented  at 
the  American  Historical  Association,  January  10,  1998,  pp.  18,  also  argues  that  district  identity 
was  "almost  always  overriden  by  clan  and  lineage  identity"  and  that  "territory  was  defined  socially 
as  there  was  no  real  ownership  tie  to  the  land  per  se  and  territoriality  was  merely  one  strategy 
among  others  to  enhance  the  wealth  of  one's  lineage  or  clan." 

1 "  All  land  was  regarded  as  Crown  land  unless  individuals  could  claim  private  ownership 
or  current  occupation.  The  idea  of  a  plot  of  farmland  permanently  cultivated  was  a  new  concept. 
Landkommissions  Adventisten  Mission  Magita,  1909-1912,  G  15/499;  SDA  Busegwe  File.  1909- 
1913,  G  45/34  LR,  TNA.  Special  thanks  to  Simon  Heck  who  provided  German  translation 
assistance  in  the  archives. 


433 
Disputes  over  Colonial  Boundaries  and  Colonial  Maps 

The  coexistence  of  these  different  ideas  of  territory  and  the  ability  of  local  people  to  use 
the  definition  of  boundaries  to  enclose  various  kinds  of  social  units  is  evident  in  the  inordinate 
amount  of  paperwork  in  the  colonial  files  concerning  disputes  over  "tribal"  territory.  To  settle 
these  disputes  colonial  officers  went  to  the  land  in  question  and  asked  the  elders  on  each  side  of  the 
dispute  to  walk  over  the  boundaries,  indicating  the  traditional  boundary  markers.  They  drew 
sketch  maps  and  placed  them  in  the  district  files  for  future  reference.  Where  no  obvious  and 
agreed  upon  rivers  or  hills  marked  a  boundary,  the  conflict  often  revolved  around  earlier  colonial 
definitions  of  boundaries.  The  elders  argued  over  which  tree  "Bwana  Baker"  set  as  the  boundary 
marker  and  who  had  been  present  at  the  original  marking. 

The  determination  of  territorial  boundaries  was  most  important  to  the  colonial  chiefs 
because  they  could  collect  taxes  and  demand  labor  only  from  the  people  within  their  territory. 
Thus,  chiefs  initiated  the  boundary  disputes  and  the  colonial  officers  experienced  continual 
frustration  from  these  obvious  efforts  at  "land  grabbing."  One  colonial  officer  reported,  "there  are 
to  my  knowledge  seventy-four  latent  boundary  disputes  in  Musoma  District,  nearly  all  of  them 
fostered  and  exasperated  by  the  chiefs  ...  not  more  than  six  in  which  the  people  evince  any 
interest  at  all."  This  report  claimed  that  the  inhabitants  did  not  care  what  the  country  was  named 
since  they  intermarried,  lived  and  farmed  next  to  each  other  across  "sub-tribal"  boundaries."7 

The  people  within  these  territories,  however,  seemed  to  have  had  their  own  ideas  about 
boundaries  and  acted  on  them  to  the  great  displeasure  of  colonial  officers  and  chiefs  alike."8 


117  Annual  Report  1933,  Musoma  District,  Native  Affairs  Section,  p.53,  Annual  Reports, 
Native  Affairs  Section,  Lake  Province,  215/924/2,  TNA. 

118  Because  of  the  great  loss  of  South  Mara  files  in  the  National  Archives,  unfortunately, 
most  of  these  examples  of  colonial  boundary  disputes  come  from  Kuria  and  Luo  (recently 
assimilated  from  Bantu  Suguti-speakers)  related  peoples  in  North  Mara.  I  do  not  believe,  however, 


434 
Chiefs  often  complained  that  people  who  moved  into  a  new  territory  continued  to  pay  taxes  to  their 
former  chiefs,  of  their  own  ethnic  origin.  When  questioned  in  court  the  defendants  said  that 
although  they  recognized  that  this  was  legally  the  territory  of  another  chief,  in  fact,  it  was 
uninhabited  wilderness  area  and  that  no  one  representing  that  chief  was  anywhere  around.  They 
therefore  felt  free  to  give  their  tax  to  their  former  chief."9  These  people  acted  on  the  old  concept 
that  the  wilderness  boundary  areas  between  groups  constituted  a  zone  of  a  no-man's-land  that 
settlers  could  open,  make  into  habitable  and  civilized  space  and  claim  for  their  own  group. 

Within  the  older  concept  of  territory  it  only  made  sense  that  these  settlers  on  the  wilderness 
frontier  would  pay  their  taxes  or  offerings  of  patronage  to  the  "big  man"  with  whom  they  had 
already  established  ties  of  reciprocity.    In  the  court  case  cited  above,  the  migrants  from  Buturi 
might  have  had  debts  of  patronage  to  the  Chief  of  Buturi  that  they  reciprocated  by  the  payment  of 
taxes.  They  would  have  had  no  former  connections  to  the  Chief  of  Shirati  and  thus  no  reason  to 
pay  the  tax  to  him.  These  testimonies  seem  quite  close  to  the  older  pattern  of  expansion  in  which 
young  people  moved  out  into  the  wilderness  frontiers  while  maintaining  ties  to  their  home 
communities.120  In  each  of  these  court  cases  people  refused  to  pay  their  taxes  to  the  chief  legally  in 
control  of  the  territory  because  they  defined  the  place  where  they  settled  as  a  wilderness  boundary 


that  the  issues  would  have  been  significantly  different  in  South  Mara,  had  I  the  documents  to  prove 
it. 

'"  From  Omukama  of  Buturi  in  Buhacha  to  the  ADO  in  Tarime  24  June  1935;  From 
ADO  in  North  Mara  to  DO  Musoma,  3  November  1932;  Native  Court  Testimony,  Girango  A 
Court,  3 1  March  1 938;  From  the  ADO  Tarime  to  DO  Musoma,  4  April  1 940;  From  Marwa  Igina 
Usimbiti  Kumuge  14  March  1948;  Land  and  Mines,  Chiefdoms'  Boundary  Dispute  Files,  North 
Mara  District,  83/3/127,  TNA. 

120  See  Kopytoff,  "The  Internal  African  Frontier,"  The  African  Frontier,  pp.  7-23,  on 
frontier  movements. 


435 
area.  Colonial  reports  tell  of  people  deliberately  building  on  the  boundaries  of  their  chiefdoms  or  in 
the  wilderness  areas  of  neighboring  chiefdoms  in  order  then  to  make  territorial  claims.121 

The  colonial  boundary  dispute  files  also  demonstrate  the  extent  to  which  people  still 
equated  their  relationship  to  the  land  with  their  identity  as  a  people.  In  a  long  letter  addressed  to 
the  Governor,  the  Kiseru  Area  Council  complained  that  the  District  Officer  arbitrarily  changed  the 
boundaries  of  their  chiefdom,  leaving  170  Kiseru  taxpayers  who  occupied  the  "lands  of  their 
ancestors,"  under  the  authority  of  "another  tribe  which  is  different  from  ours."  The  Council 
appealed  for  the  return  of  "the  children,  wives  and  elders  who  were  taken  away  from  us."  In 
another  telling  phrase  the  chief  said  that  his  people  in  the  disputed  area  had  been  "given"  another 
"tribe"  which  was  unlike  their  own.122  The  council  expressed  its  outrage  against  the  separation  of 
territorial  residence  from  its  moorings  in  communal  identity.  It  was  impossible  to  conceive  of 
living  on  your  ancestral  land  but  owing  allegiance  to  "others"  outside.  The  council  characterized 
these  people  as  having  been  "taken  away"  or  "given"  a  new  "tribe"  because  of  the  change  in 
authority  over  the  territory  in  which  they  resided.  Later  court  evidence  demonstrated  that  the 
customs  of  these  peoples  in  question  were  not  so  different  and  that  they  had  been  intermarrying  for 
quite  some  time.  The  colonial  officer  concluded  that  the  Kiseru  Council  elders  were  leading  the 
people  in  this  agitation  because  they  would  stand  to  lose  most  from  the  deal. I23  However,  the 
existence  of  multiple  boundaries  defining  multiple  sets  of  relationships  allowed  these  people  both  to 


121  From  Wakibara  Nyamuhika  from  Suba  Kukabwa  8  May  1947,  Land  and  Mines, 
Chiefdoms'  Boundary  Dispute  Files,  North  Mara  District,  83/3/127,  TNA. 

122  From  the  Kiseru  Area  Council  to  the  Chief  Secretary  and  Governor  of  Tanganyika 
Territory  with  copies  to  the  DC  and  PC,  24  November  1 949,  Land  and  Mines,  Chiefdoms' 
Boundary  Dispute  Files,  North  Mara  District,  83/3/127,  TNA. 

123  Report  from  DC  North  Mara  to  PC  Mwanza  1  February  1950,  Land  and  Mines, 
Chiefdoms'  Boundary  Dispute  Files,  North  Mara  District,  83/3/127.  TNA. 


436 

express  outrage  in  being  transferred  to  a  "foreign  tribe"  while  still  living  in  their  ancestral  land  and 
also  intermarry  and  share  a  common  culture  with  those  across  the  boundaries. 

All  these  examples  of  colonial  interaction  demonstrate  that  earlier  ideas  about  territory  and 
the  need  for  maintaining  the  ritual  health  of  the  land  operated  side  by  side  with  newer  ideas  about 
territory.  At  times,  the  colonial  officers  and  the  chiefs  used  the  same  language  but  with  very 
different  meanings.  At  other  times,  the  chiefs  and  elders  appropriated  the  colonial  meaning  of 
territory  for  use  in  local  struggles  over  prestige  and  authority.  They  seemed  equally  at  ease 
walking  out  the  boundaries  of  the  "tribal"  territory  with  the  District  Officer  and  walking  the 
medicines  of  the  orokoba  over  the  land  with  the  generation-set.  The  flexible  nature  of  the  ekyaro 
adapted  itself  to  colonial  definitions  without  negating  its  previous  and  still  situationally  important 
definitions. 
Nverere's  Mwenge:  The  National  Space  of  the  Ekvaro 

People  in  the  Mara  Region  have  extended  the  concept  of  the  ekyaro  as  the  ritually 
maintained  territory  of  a  people  to  construct  a  national  identity  in  present  day  Tanzania. 
Mwalimu  Julius  K.  Nyerere,  the  first  president  of  independent  Tanganyika  and  later  Tanzania, 
comes  from  the  Mara  Region,  Zanaki,  Butiama.  He  is  the  son  of  the  second  colonial  chief  of 
Butiama,  Nyerere  Burito  (ruled  1912-1942),  and  the  half-brother  of  Edward  Wanzagi  Nyerere,  the 
last  colonial  chief  of  Butiama  and  of  the  reunified  Zanaki  Federation  (ruled  1952-61). I24  In  spite  of 
his  training  and  later  his  baptism  as  a  secondary  school  student  in  the  Catholic  Church,  Nyerere 
grew  up  with  the  concepts  of  the  ritual  health  of  the  land  as  a  member  of  the  generation-set. 


124  Biographical  accounts  of  Nyerere  include,  Judith  Listowel,  The  Making  of  Tanganyika 
(Chatto  and  Windus,  London,  1965);  Kemal  Mustafa,  "The  Development  of  Ujamaa  in  Musoma: 
A  Case  Study  of  Butiama  Ujamaa  Village"  (M.A.  Thesis,  University  of  Dar  es  Salaam,  1975); 
Mustafa,  "The  Concept  of  Authority";  William  Edgett  Smith,  Nyerere  of  Tanzania.  (Victor 
Gollancz:  London,  1973). 


437 
During  my  stay  in  the  region,  1  heard  many  stories  about  the  auspicious  signs  surrounding 
Mwalimu  Nyerere's  birth,  his  inheritance  of  prophetic  powers  through  his  lineage  and  his  use  of 
these  in  the  politics  of  state.  Given  his  background  in  generational  authority  it  is  no  wonder  that 
Julius  Nyerere  was  one  of  the  first  and  only  African  presidents  to  retire,  which  he  did  using  the 
Zanaki  word  for  the  retirement  of  the  generation-set,  kunyatuka. 

The  two  most  important  symbols  of  national  unity  instituted  by  Mwalimu  Nyerere  are  the 
torch  on  top  of  Mount  Kilimanjaro  and  annual  "walk"of  the  torch  or  mwenge  around  the  nation  of 
Tanzania.  Each  year  since  the  Arusha  Declaration,  the  torch,  mwenge,  is  set  on  the  back  of  a 
truck  and  escorted  throughout  the  nation  by  soldiers  and  political  dignitaries  of  each  region  through 
which  it  passes.  All  other  vehicles  must  clear  the  road  and  wait  as  the  long  line  of  new  white  land 
cruisers  and  army  vehicles  passes.  Disrespect  for  this  convoy  can  incur  serious  consequences  as  a 
national  offense.  Different  routes  are  chosen  each  year  so  that  the  torch  passes  through  as  many  of 
the  remote  rural  areas  as  possible  in  a  few  years  time.  The  mwenge  always  returns  to  the  place 
that  it  started  at  the  end  of  its  "circular"  tour.  Planning  the  passing  of  the  torch  begins  months 
prior  to  its  arrival  by  the  collection  of  local  "donations,"  the  preparation  of  a  feast,  arrangements 
for  songs  and  dances  by  local  school  children,  speeches  by  political  officials  and  the  attendance  of 
crowds  along  the  roads  to  cheer  it  on.  The  torch  is  a  symbol  of  national  unity  and  its  journey 
around  the  nation  an  attempt  at  building  new  symbols  of  national  identity. 

The  issue  of  the  mwenge  figured  highly  in  the  political  debate  surrounding  the  presidential 
elections  in  1995.  Opposition  candidates  called  it  an  example  of  the  misappropriation  of  funds 
better  spent  on  development.  Others  denounced  it  as  a  scheme  by  local  dignitaries  for  redirecting 
funds.  Observers  in  other  regions  told  me  that  many  people  found  the  whole  institution  less  than 
convincing.  Yet  people  in  the  Mara  Region,  by  contrast,  seemed  to  understand  and  support  the 
mwenge  institution.  1  heard  the  mwenge  discussed  as  an  orokoba  for  the  nation.  Some  claimed 


438 
that  the  mwenge  contained  medicines  that  were  spread  across  the  land  for  protection  and  healing. 
It  was  Nyerere's  medicine  through  his  prophetic  line.  The  torch's  fire  symbolized  the  spread  of  the 
new  fire  to  each  homestead  throughout  the  ekyaro.  One  local  interpretation  said  that  just  as  the 
new  generation  extinguished  the  old  fire  of  the  previous  generation,  so  the  new  fire  protects  the 
authority  of  those  who  rule.  The  medicine  of  the  mwenge  "puts  out"  the  opposition  to  the  authority 
of  the  nation.  People  said  that  these  things  had  to  be  kept  secret,  just  as  the  rituals  of  the  walk  of 
the  generation-set  were  secret,  to  protect  the  nation.  All  of  this  is  highly  suggestive  and 
unsubstantiated  since  I  was  not  able  to  discuss  motivation  and  intent  with  Nyerere  himself.  It  is 
nevertheless  significant  that,  whether  Nyerere  understood  the  mwenge  as  an  orokoba  or  not,  many 
people  in  the  Mara  Region  do.  It  is  an  indication  that  these  older  ideas  about  land,  healing  and 
territory  are  still  functioning  alongside  newer  ideas  about  administrative  boundaries  and 
nationalism. 

Conclusion 
All  these  stories,  from  the  walk  of  the  rikora  in  the  nineteenth  century  to  the  ride  of  the 
mwenge  in  the  twentieth  century,  indicate  a  'symbolic  differentiation  of  space  and  the  appropriation 
of  that  space  into  a  structure  of  meaning'  that  creates  a  communal  identity  in  reference  to  the  land. 
Yet  this  appropriation  of  space  is  different  from  the  others  explored  in  previous  chapters  because 
its  core  spatial  images  are  those  of  enclosure  and  boundaries,  defined  here  as  a  "territory." 
Western  Serengeti  territory  has  encompassed  the  clan  ekyaro,  the  age-set  cycle  and  the  ethnic 
group  depending  on  the  historical  context.  Lineages,  clans,  generation-sets  and  age-sets  each 
define  their  identity  in  relation  to  the  land  in  a  different  way.  During  the  colonial  years  some  of 
these  different  definitions  were  combined  to  enclose  the  new  territorial  units  of  the  ethnic  group. 
The  concept  of  territory  was  used  to  create  "tribal"  units  in  the  colonial  years  but  in  the  process 
assimilated  the  colonial  idea  of  fixed  territorial  units. 


439 

Each  kind  of  appropriation  of  space,  related  to  a  different  set  of  social  identities,  also 
implied  the  locus  of  social  authority  used  to  control  it.  The  "fathers"  or  elders  of  the  generation-set 
in  power  had  authority  over  the  territory  as  representatives  of  communal  consensus.  Even  though 
these  rituals  are  seldom,  if  ever,  performed  anymore,  the  narratives  about  the  walk  of  the  rikora 
told  by  the  elders  reinforces  their  dwindling  communal  authority  and  reasserts  them  as  the 
legitimate  carriers  of  "tradition"  and  the  health  of  the  land. 

The  stories  about  the  generation-set  and  its  walk,  the  healing  of  the  land  and  the  definition 
of  boundaries  all  belong  to  this  middle  period  of  history  that  identifies  repetitive  social  processes 
that  are  subject  to  change  but  at  an  incremental  level.  Although  the  generation  no  longer  walks,  the 
ideas  about  healing  the  land  remain  and  people  have  found  new  ways  to  express  these  concerns  in 
the  new  contexts  of  national  life.  The  idiom  of  timelessness  in  which  they  discuss  these  issues 
obscures  the  fact  that  these  are  central  issues  of  land  and  territory  that  are  highly  contested. 

By  exploring  these  ideas  of  territory  through  the  rituals  of  the  generation-set.  we  can 
imagine  how  these  same  concepts  were  applied  to  the  clan-based  ekyaro  territory  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  In  the  context  of  plentiful  land  but  few  people,  settlements  attracted  new  settlers  and 
integrated  them  into  an  inclusive  territorial  identity  through  the  reenactment  of  these  rituals. 
Generation-sets  were  not  corporate,  property-owning  groups,  but  they  embodied  communal 
consensus  and  an  identity  with  the  land  that  was  necessary  for  the  prosperity  of  those  who  lived  as 
neighbors. 

The  narrative  now  turns  to  the  period  of  historical  remembrances  of  the  late  nineteenth 
century  in  which  the  issues  of  land  and  territory  remain  an  important  focus  for  understanding  the 
dislocations  of  that  period.  The  various  forms  of  precolonial  social  identity  discussed  up  to  this 
point  form  the  basis  for  analysis  of  late  nineteenth  century  transformations. 


PART  FOUR: 
SOCIAL  TRANSFORMATION  IN  THE  LATE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


440 


CHAPTER  NINE 

THE  GENERATION  OF  DISASTERS  (1870-1895): 

CHANGING  FORMS  OF  AGE-ORGANIZATION 

The  generation-set  maintained  a  ritual  relationship  to  the  land,  bringing  protection  and 
healing  to  the  territories  of  local  lineage-based  settlements  in  the  nineteenth  century.  When  this 
protection  failed  how  did  people  cope  in  the  face  of  large-scale  environmental  and  human  disaster? 
How  did  western  Serengeti  people  imagine  their  past  to  cope  with  the  present  in  the  context  of  the 
loss  of  loved  ones  due  to  sickness  and  hunger,  the  loss  of  a  significant  part  of  the  next  generation 
due  to  widespread  infertility,  the  loss  of  the  resources  for  survival  due  to  the  breakdown  of  a 
regional  economy,  the  loss  of  control  over  boundaries  due  to  the  encroachment  of  Maasai 
hegemony,  and  the  loss  of  control  over  the  environment  due  to  the  spread  of  bush?  The  disasters 
suffered  by  people  of  the  western  Serengeti  were  similar  to  crises  across  East  Africa  during  this 
period.  While  describing  the  disasters  in  detail  because  local  people  felt  them  so  horribly,  the 
emphasis  here  is  on  the  creative  response  of  peoples  of  the  western  Serengeti  to  these  problems. ' 

This  chapter  analyzes  the  historical  memories  of  the  "generation  of  disasters"  (C.  1870- 
1895)  and  how  that  generation  responded  to  these  crises  by  reworking  existing  social  relationships 
and  patterns  of  settlement.  In  particular,  they  reconfigured  the  older  institution  of  age- 
organization  into  territorially  based  units  that  provided  the  means  for  both  the  unification  and  the 
enlargement  of  scale  required  for  the  later  emergence  of  ethnic  identities.  These  larger  scale 


'  For  an  account  of  the  environmental  disasters  in  Tanzania  see:  Iliffe,  A  Modern  History. 
Chapter  5;  Kjekshus,  Ecology  Control:  Giblin,  "Famine,  Political  Authority  and  Foreign  Capital." 
For  a  critique  of  the  "degradation  narrative"  see  McCann,  "Introduction,"  An  Environmental 
History:  and  Leach  and  Mearns,  The  Lie  of  the  Land. 


441 


442 
territories  combined  settlements  organized  around  the  lineage  idiom  and  linked  them  together  in 
loose  networks  of  reciprocity.  It  was  during  the  period  of  disasters  preceding  the  colonial  era  that 
western  Serengeti  people  formulated  the  basic  ethnic  identities  that  exist  today  within  the  space  of 
age-set  cycle  territories,  although  the  advent  of  colonial  rule  solidified  ethnic  identity  into 
territorially  based  administrative  units. 

Transformations  in  identity  came  as  a  response  to  severe  dislocations  of  population  and  of 
economic  subsistence  patterns.  Numerous  refugees  from  farming  communities  fled  the  region, 
moving  as  far  south  as  Sukuma.  At  the  same  time  incoming  Maasai,  who  gained  dominance  over 
the  regional  system  of  economic  interaction  by  controlling  pastoral  resources  and  developing  units 
of  social  organization  through  which  to  expand  that  control,  drove  a  large  portion  of  the  Tatoga 
herders  as  far  south  as  Tabora.  The  Maasai  raided  western  Serengeti  farmers  to  gain  more 
livestock,  particularly  after  cattle  disease  swept  through  their  herds  between  1880  and  1890.  The 
Asi  hunters  who  had  been  so  important  in  the  previous  set  of  regional  relations  gradually  became 
clients  of  the  dominant  Maasai  and  moved  farther  east  as  the  farmers  moved  farther  west.  These 
events  shattered  the  previously  existing  regional  economic  system  and  left  the  farmers  particularly 
vulnerable  to  famine  and  epidemics  of  disease  introduced  from  outside  that  swept  over  the  land. 
The  reorganization  of  lineage-based  settlements  into  age-set  territories,  however,  enabled  people  to 
reformulate  the  interdependent  economic  strategies  of  woodlands,  hills,  and  grasslands. 

Chapter  3  described  the  main  events  and  transformations  of  the  period  of  disasters  and  the 
effects  of  those  changes  on  oral  tradition.  This  chapter  looks  more  closely  at  how  these 
transformations  in  social  identity  came  about  and  how  people  made  creative  use  of  the  older 
generative  principles  of  social  organization  to  effect  these  changes.  While  Chapter  3  portrays 
western  Serengeti  people  as  victims  of  famine,  epidemic,  and  raid,  this  chapter  highlights  their 


443 
agency  in  forming  communities  that  not  only  coped  with  the  disasters  but  forged  strategies  that  led 
to  prosperity  in  the  next  generation. 

In  this  chapter  I  first  show  how  the  ethnic  groups  of  the  eastern  part  of  this  region  (Ikoma, 
Ishenyi,  Nata  and  Ngoreme)  reformulated  generation-sets  into  age-set  cycles  more  responsive  to 
the  need  for  mobilizing  young  men  in  raids.  Reorganized  age-sets  resulted  in  a  new  way  of 
calculating  time  and  in  a  new  way  of  organizing  territorial  settlements.  These  changes,  in  turn, 
indicate  a  massive  transformation  of  social  identity  at  the  time  of  disasters.  Through  an 
exploration  of  age-set  lists,  I  demonstrate  how  western  Serengeti  people  maintained  continuity  with 
the  past  in  the  face  of  radical  change.  Elders  explicitly  tell  about  the  generation  that  was  divided 
into  territorial  age-sets.  At  the  same  time,  their  age-set  lists  project  the  age-set  cycle  names  of  the 
late  nineteenth  century  back  in  time  before  the  disasters.  I  look  next  at  the  concentration  and 
fortification  of  settlements  as  a  response  to  raids  and  the  need  for  boundary  formation  in  times  of 
societal  stress. 

The  section  on  western  Serengeti  response  to  Maasai  hegemony  details  the  effects  of 
raiding  and  also  peaceful  interaction  with  the  Maasai.  As  a  result  of  Maasai  raiding,  Sonjo 
refugees  settled  in  the  western  Serengeti  and  brought  with  them  the  direct  experience  of  living 
closely  with  the  Maasai.  Origin  stories  emphasized  Sonjo  ancestors  because  of  their  value  as 
cultural  translators  during  the  period  of  disasters.    Western  Serengeti  people  both  resisted  and 
accomodated  the  imposition  of  a  Maasai  regional  hegemony.  They  formed  new  age-sets  out  of 
admiration  for  the  powerful  Maasai  warrior  ethos  but  maintained  the  regional  continuity  of  the 
older  generation-sets.  The  territorialization  of  age-sets  allowed  western  Serengeti  farmers  to 
respond  to  the  disasters  by  spreading  out  both  their  risks  and  their  opportunities  when  the  former 
regional  system  of  economic  interdependence  broke  down.  The  larger-scale  identity  of  cycling  age- 
set  territories  became  the  basis  for  ethnic  identity  in  the  early  colonial  years. 


444 
Age-Set  Reorganization 

The  most  important  transformations  of  this  period  resulted  from  changes  in  age-set 
structure,  particularly  among  the  most  easterly  groups  of  Nata,  Ishenyi,  Ikoma  and  Ngoreme.  The 
preexisting  linear  age-set  system  (subordinate  to  a  cycling  generation-set  system)  was  changed  into 
a  cycling  age-set  system  that  largely  took  over  the  functions  previously  assigned  to  the  generation- 
set.  I  demonstrate  these  transformations  by  showing  how  these  changes  are  represented  in  the  lists 
of  age-sets  provided  by  elders  today.  Although  elders  explicitly  tell  stories  about  the 
reorganization  of  generation-sets  into  age-sets,  their  age-set  lists  project  the  continuity  of  cycling 
age-set  names  back  before  the  period  of  disasters.  This  chapter  rests  on  the  basic  knowledge  of 
age-organization  laid  out  in  the  last  chapter. 
Time:  Age  Organization  and  Dating 

As  I  showed  in  Chapter  3,  the  effects  of  the  diasters  were  so  widespread  and  severe  that 
remembered  history  begins  here.  Men  living  today  heard  the  stories  of  the  disasters  from  their 
grandfathers  and  grandmothers  who  lived  through  them.  Although  western  Serengeti  narrators 
now  tell  all  history  as  ethnic  history,  it  is  only  beginning  in  the  "generation  of  disasters"  that  one 
can  confidently  speak  about  the  existence  of  ethnic  groups  called  Nata,  Ikoma  or  Ishenyi.  Western 
Serengeti  peoples  used  age-set  territories  to  formulate  ethnic  group  identity  and  ethnic  histories 
during  this  period  of  stress. 

Beginning  with  this  generation,  the  historian  can  offer  a  sequence  of  relative  dates  based 
on  age-  and  generation-set  lists.  African  historians  have  long  recognized  that  they  can  use  lists  of 
age-set  names  to  establish  a  relative  historical  chronology.  Elders  in  societies  that  use  age 
organization  can  list  the  names  of  successive  age-groups  working  back  from  the  present  to  the  past 


445 

and  using  a  consistent  interval  of  years  between  each  group  (eight  years  in  this  case).2  However, 
these  lists  express  ideological  concerns  as  much  as  they  narrative  relative  chronology.  Even  after  a 
careful  analysis  of  the  historical  development  of  these  lists,  they  can  provide  only  a  relative 
sequence  of  events.'  The  lists  that  I  collected  among  five  Bantu-speaking  groups  in  this  area  were 
fairly  consistent,  at  least  back  to  mid-nineteenth  century.  Narrators  place  the  stories  from  mid- 
nineteenth  century  on  by  reference  to  a  particular  age-set,  thus  making  it  possible  to  order  events  in 
a  relative  chronology.  However,  elders  often  elide  events  that  happened  "a  very  long  time  ago,"  or 
during  the  "generation  of  settlement,"  into  the  time  of  the  first  remembered  age-  or  generation-set, 
around  mid-nineteenth  century.  As  discussed  in  the  last  two  chapters,  the  telescoping  device  allows 
narrators  to  condense  a  long  period  of  time  into  the  memories  of  one  generation  occurring  in  the 
middle  time  frame  of  indigenous  history  and  acts  as  a  bridge  between  the  older  and  more  recent 
time  periods. 

When  narrating  age-set  lists,  elders  seamlessly  weave  the  abrupt  changes  in  social 
organization  that  clearly  occurred  during  the  period  of  disasters  into  the  ongoing  flow  of  time 
through  the  birth  and  death  of  generations.  The  encirclement  and  boundary  formation  necessary 
for  healing  the  land  in  a  time  of  stress  depended  on  continuity  with  the  past  to  ensure  that  the 
medicines  of  the  land  and  the  propitiation  of  ancestors  as  guardians  of  the  land  would  be  effective. 
Elders  said  that  the  age-set  names  recurred  in  a  cycle  every  third  generation,  a  claim  that  enabled 


2  Jacobs,  "A  Chronology,"  pp.  10-31.  For  a  critique  of  dating  by  this  method  see  Berntsen, 
"Pastoralism,  Raiding  and  Prophets,"  pp.  83-93.  See  also  John  Lamphear,  The  Traditional  History 
of  the  Jie  of  Uganda  (Oxford:  Clarendon  Press,  1976),  pp.  17-60. 

'  For  a  Maasai  construction  of  time,  "spiralling  upwards  with  age,"  see  Paul  Spencer, 
"Becoming  Maasai,  Being  in  Time,"  in  Being  Maasai:  Ethnicity  and  Identity  in  East  Africa,  eds. 
Thomas  Spear  and  Richard  Waller  (Athens:  Ohio  University  Press,  1993),  pp.  140-156.  See  also 
the  critique  of  king  lists  for  chronology,  Henige,  "Oral  Tradition  and  Chronology,"  pp.  371-389; 
Wrigley.  Kingship  and  State.  Chapter  2. 


446 
them  to  project  the  names  back  infinitely  into  the  past.  This  device  allowed  people  to  imagine  the 
ongoing  continuity  of  age-sets  as  an  inheritance  from  the  past.  The  lists  of  particular  age-set 
names  which  they  provided,  however,  did  not  usually  go  any  earlier  than  mid-nineteenth  century, 
and  elders  specifically  discussed  the  reorganization  in  age-sets  necessitated  by  the  disasters.4    The 
remembered  age-sets  before  the  disasters  (C.  1 850-1 890)  were  usually  generation-set  names  or 
linear  age-set  names  assimilated  into  an  age-cycle  pattern.  Elders  never  explained  how  the  names 
from  age-set  cycles  that  were,  by  their  own  account,  invented  in  response  to  the  disasters  could  be 
applied  to  age-sets  in  the  eighteenth  century  or  even  before.    They  were  willing  to  overlook  these 
inconsistencies  in  order  to  establish  a  necessary  link  with  the  past  by  placing  these  fundamental 
changes  in  an  understanding  of  continuous  and  repetitive  time. 

The  sense  of  continuous  time  and  generational  authority  over  its  orderly  passage  permeates 
idealized  description  of  age-set  organization.  In  theory,  each  age-set  or  saiga  would  "rule"  for 
eight  years  before  the  next  group  would  take  over.  While  the  senior  cycle  "ruled"  the  next  waited 
to  "enter  their  saiga,"  having  already  been  initiated  during  the  last  cycle  The  third  and  most  junior 
cycle  began  circumcision  of  a  new  set,  culminating  in  the  mass  circumcision  ceremony  of  the 
kigori.  The  practical  functioning  of  age-sets  was  much  more  flexible  than  its  rules  suggest,  and 
elders  with  authority  over  the  ceremonies  that  promoted  new  age-sets  could  delay  them  at  will  in 
order  to  remain  in  power  longer.  Other  acts  could  prolong  the  interval  between  age-sets  for  more 


4  Some  of  the  few  other  works  on  the  Mara  Region  have  taken  these  names  back  to  the 
beginning  of  the  18th  century.  See  Anacleti,  "Pastoralism  and  Development,"  pp.  14-15. 1  would 
argue  that  there  is  no  evidence  to  support  these  longer  lists,  some  of  which  anachronistically  use 
event-oriented  praise  names  (example,  abaSanduka)  as  cycling  names.  Their  dates  were  also  based 
on  initiation  at  circumcision,  while  local  understandings  date  each  saiga,  or  age-set  to  eight  years 
after  circumcision  when  they  are  said  to  "enter,  or  step  on,  their  age-set"  (gutaacha  asaiga). 


447 
than  eight  years.5  The  incoming  saiga  fought  for  its  position  in  a  mock  battle  with  sticks;  if  it  lost, 
the  incoming  saiga  waited  another  year  to  take  power.  If  the  prophet  whom  the  elders  consulted 
before  the  ceremony  said  that  the  time  was  not  auspicious,  elder  could  delay  gutaacha  asaiga.1' 
Because  western  Serengeti  people  synchronized  the  ceremonial  cycle  of  age-sets  regionally,  a  delay 
in  the  ceremonies  of  one  group  would  delay  the  others.  Elders  said  that  the  more  easterly  Ikoma 
saiga  was  always  ahead  of  the  equivalent  Nata  saiga  by  a  few  years.'  The  system  also  depended 
on  a  cycle  of  other  rituals  necessary  for  the  health  of  the  new  saiga.  The  installation  of  the  new 
saiga  must  take  place  before  the  rikora,  or  generation-set,  could  begin  its  walk  to  cool  the  land, 
which  must  itself  be  completed  before  the  kigori  circumcision  ceremonies  could  take  place. 
Because  of  all  these  contingencies,  age-set  lists  can  provide  only  a  relative  and  idealized,  as 
opposed  to  an  absolute,  chronology,  and  only  for  the  period  of  the  late  nineteenth  century  onward.. 
Age-set  Lists  and  Regional  Chronology 

A  comparison  of  age-  and  generation-set  lists  throughout  the  region  demonstrates  how  the 
most  easterly  peoples  reformulated  generation-sets  into  age-set  cycles  and  projected  these  new 
names  back  in  time.  They  did  this  by  including  what  were  generation-set  names  and  praise  names 
of  linear-age-sets  from  an  earlier  period  into  the  list  of  the  new  cycling  age-sets. 

Because  age-  and  generation-sets  throughout  the  region  often  used  the  same  names  at 
approximately  the  same  time,  correlating  the  age-  and  generation-set  lists  of  different  ethnic  groups 
is  possible.  From  these  age-  and  generation-set  lists  I  have  reconstructed  a  relative  chronology  of 


5  Eight  is  the  most  perfect  number  in  this  area  and  it  is  not  surprising  that  it  is  also  used  for 
the  ideal  saiga  rule. 

6  Interview  with  Megassa  Mokiri,  Motokeri,  4  March  1995  (Nata  tf).  One  Nata  saiga  was 
delayed  when  a  raid  was  imminent  to  keep  the  more  experienced  men  in  power. 

7  Comparison  to  Kjerland's  Kuria  list  shows  that  they  were  also  "ahead"  of  Nata  age-sets. 
Kjerland,  "Cattle  Breed,"  Appendix. 


448 
successive  age-sets  that  covers  the  entire  region.  [See  Figure  9-1 :  Chronology  of  Generations.] 
Note  that  the  most  easterly  ethnic  groups  (Nata,  Ikoma  and  Ishenyi)  divide  the  age-sets  into  three 
cycles:  Busaai,  Bongirate,  and  Borumarancha  Each  of  these  has  three  recurring  names  (not  so 
obvious  on  the  chart  because  the  names  mainly  recur  in  the  later  colonial  period),  making  the  age- 
set  name  of  a  man  the  same  as  his  great-grandfather,  if  they  were  both  of  the  same  cycle.  The 
Busaai  age-set  comes  into  their  saiga  (gutaacha  asaiga)  first,  followed  by  Bongirate,  then 
Borumarancha,  and  finally  returning  to  Busaai  to  start  the  cycle  again,  with  each  cycle  "ruling"  for 
eight  years.  The  first  age-sets  in  this  new  cycling  system  are  those  with  the  same  names  as  the 
larger  cycle,  the  Busaai,  Bongirate  and  Borumarancha,  dating  to  approximately  1 870- 1 895  ("the 
generation  of  disasters"). 

Groups  to  the  north  and  west,  Ngoreme,  Kuria,  Ikizu,  and  Zanaki  still  follow  the  older 
generation-set  system  that  consists  of  two  generation  cycles,  each  with  four  recurring  names.  The 
age-set  system  for  these  groups  (groups  who  continued  to  give  primary  importance  to  the 
generation-set)  remained  the  linear  type,  with  a  unique  praise-name  chosen  for  each  new  group. 
The  cycling  age-set  names  of  Ikoma,  Nata  and  Ishenyi  developed  from  the  cycling  generation-set 
system  and  thus  can  be  correlated  with  generation-set  names  in  other  ethnic  groups. 

The  correlation  of  age-  and  generation-set  names  across  ethnic  boundaries  provides 
evidence  for  the  change  from  a  linear  age-set  system  to  a  cycling  age-set  system  among  the  Ikoma, 
Nata  and  Ishenyi.  Although  Ikoma,  Nata  and  Ishenyi  elders  list  the  age-set  names  before  the 
disasters  within  the  three  age-set  cycles,  these  names  often  correspond  with  linear  age-set  names 
among  groups  that  kept  the  linear  age-set  system  (Maase,  Ngirabhe).  Even  after  the  Ikoma, 
Ishenyi  and  Nata  adopted  the  cycling  age-set  system  they  continued  to  use  the  regional  linear  age- 
set  names  as  praise  names  (Sanduka,  Romore,  Kambuni).  Other  age-set  names,  listed  before  the 
institution  of  age-set  cycles,  are  generation-set  names  (Maina,  Saai,  Nyange)  assimilated  into  the 


449 

Chronology  of  Generations,  Western  Serengeti,  Tanzania 


Generations 


Cycling  Age-Sets  (Saiga)  of 
Ikoma,  Nata  and  Ishenyi 


Cycling  Generation-Sets 
(Rikora)  of  Ngoreme,  Kuria 

Ikizu  and  Zanaki 


Bongirate    ziorumarancha 


Monyasaai 


Monyachuuma 


Praise  Names 
Kuria  Nyabasi 


(c.  1820) 


>baNyanyange 

(abaNyange) 

(c.  1828) 


abaGamunyere     :-abaGinj  ~- — 


-1 .  Gesetwi™ 


abaOrumati 

(abaHonga) 

(c.  1836) 


abaNyangi 


abaTing'ori 
(0.  1844) 


abaMasna 


2  Kehanga 
(1844,46,48) 
3  Gesambiso 
(1851,53,55) 


the  Generation; 
of  Settlement 

(c   1845) 


abaNgirabhe 

(abaWaina) 

(c.  1852)- 


abaGhuma 


abaMatara 

[abaMegona) 

ic   186C 


4  Ngibabe 
(1858,60.62). 

5  Machare 
(1865,  67:69> 


abaMasura 
(c  1868) 


abaSaai 


The  Generation 

of  Disasters 

(1870) 


abaSaai 
(c.  1876) 


abaNgirate 

(abaMaase) 

(c  1884) 


abaMairabe 

(abaNgorongoro) 

(abaShirianyi) 


(C1892) 


6  Getiira 
(1872.74,76) 

7.  Maase 
(1879,81.83) 

8.  Nginogo 
(1886.88,90) 


TWGeneratibn- ' 

of  Opportunity' 


abaKihocha- ' 
(c  1900J' 


-  -9.-  Komore-"  . 

.-_{T893,  9 

10  Nginaro 

^190Gr92f94f- 

ilLTaBISSorigo, 

-t^M  1907^-09^:: 


Kuria  Nyabasi  list  from  Kirsten  Alsaker  Kjerland,  "Cattle  Breed,  Shillings  Don't:  the  Belated 
Incorporation  of  the  abaKuria  into  Modern  Kenya"  (Ph.D  Dissertation,  University  of  Bergen,  I995), 
Appendix,  using  dates  at  the  time  of  circumcision. 
Dates  of  Cycling  Age-Sets  at  the  time  of  entering  their  Saiga,  ideally  eight  years  after  circumcision. 


Figure  9-1 :  Chronology  of  Generations 


450 
three  age-set  cycles.  It  seems  that  elders  took  the  linear  age-set  and  cycling  generation-set  names 
before  the  disasters  and  represented  them  as  part  of  the  three  age-set  cycles  to  create  a  sense  of 
continuity. 

Narrators  of  cycling  age-set  lists  also  included  regional  praise  names  of  linear  age-sets 
after  the  disasters.  Both  cycling  and  linear  age-sets  tended  to  choose  the  same  praise  names 
throughout  the  region.    In  the  cycling  system  each  age-set  has  two  names.  The  first  name,  taken  at 
circumcision,  is  a  praise-name  referring  to  events  of  the  time.  The  second  name,  taken  at  the 
assumption  of  age-set  "rule"  eight  years  after  circumcision,  is  a  "traditional"  cycling  name  that 
would  have  been  the  name  of  their  great  grandfather's  age-set.  For  example,  the  praise  name  used 
across  the  region  in  the  nineteen-thirties  was  Sanduka,  which  refers  to  the  boxes  that  migrant 
workers  brought  home  filled  with  things  purchased  in  the  city.  The  age-set  name  from  the  1950s, 
Hobasi,  refers  to  the  "Habasha"  or  Ethiopians  of  Second  World  War  who  resisted  Italian  colonial 
domination.  Other  praise-names  included  Ngerecha  (English)  used  in  1960  and  Chabani 
(Japanese)  used  in  1 968.  The  same  praise-names  can  be  found  across  the  whole  region,  at  least 
from  about  1870  on,  as  indicated  by  the  inclusion  of  the  Kuria  linear  age-set  list  in  the  final  column 
of  the  chart.  This  regional  coordination  of  praise  names  does  not  mean  that  formal  institutional 
arrangements  operated  between  these  groups.  Rather,  it  signifies  only  that  they  were  aware  of  each 
other  and  found  practical  advantage  in  defining  themselves  as  age-mates. 

Western  Serengeti  people  understood  corresponding  age-  and  generation-sets  to  be  one 
"generation,"  even  if  their  dates  of  initiation  did  not  exactly  correspond.  They  worked  both 
generation-  and  age-sets,  either  cycling  or  linear,  into  a  regionally-based  understanding  of  time. 
The  textured  coding  on  the  chart  in  Figure  9-1  represents  this  understanding.  These  shared 
equivalencies  took  on  practical  importance  in  this  era  when  people  were  redefining  boundaries  and 
populations  were  in  flux.  Equivalent  age-  and  generation-set  understandings  allowed  for  the 


451 
incorporation  of  strangers  from  different  parts  of  the  region  and  the  formation  of  friendships  in 
other  areas  that  people  could  appeal  to  for  local  hospitality  in  times  of  hunger,  in  travel  or  for 
trade.  The  chart  that  I  have  drawn  represents  this  idealized  understanding  of  time  and  society, 
broken  into  discrete  blocks,  or  "rungs  of  a  ladder,"  across  the  regional  space  of  the  western 
Serengeti.8 

The  equivalencies  between  generation-sets  and  age-sets  were  possible  because  the  newer 
system  of  cycling  age-sets  was  an  innovation  on  and  still  corresponded  to  the  generation-set 
system.  For  example,  one  of  the  new  age-set  cycles  used  the  name  Saai,  which  is  also  a 
generation-set  cycle  name.  The  new  system  broke  up  the  larger  "generation"  into  three  smaller 
territorial  age-set  units.  These  smaller  units  made  it  easier  to  mobilize  young  men  for  raids  within 
a  localized  area.    A  system  based  strictly  on  the  principle  of  generation  brings  men  of  all  ages  and 
stations  of  life  into  one  set,  with  little  group  cohesion,  while  an  age-set  system  capitalizes  on  the 
fraternity  and  equality  inherent  in  the  age-cohort  and  competition  between  different  cohorts.' 
Whether  or  not  these  newly  reorganized  age-sets  were  effective  militarily,  they  appealed  to  young 
men  who  admired  the  dominant  power  of  the  Maasai  warrior  sets  who  seemed  to  raid  with 
impunity.  If  the  new  age-cycle  resulted  from  the  growing  power  of  young  men  and  offered  a 
solution  to  the  crises  of  the  times,  youth  ultimately  lost  to  elders  who  maintained  the  principles  of 
generational  authority  in  the  unbroken  assimilation  of  the  newer  age-cycles  into  a  generational 
pattern. 


8  Much  of  the  above  thinking  about  time  thanks  to  Richard  Waller,  "Making  and  Taking 
Time"  (Paper  presented  at  African  Studies  Consortium,  University  of  Pennsylvania,  4  October 

1 996),  and  in  personal  communication. 

9  See  Baxter  and  Almagor,  "Introduction,"  Age.  Generation  and  Time,  pp.  2-7. 


452 
Oral  Narratives  of  Age-Set  Reorganization 

The  clearest  evidence  for  these  changes  in  the  structure  of  age-sets  during  the  "generation 
of  disasters"  comes  from  oral  narratives  which  explicitly  tell  about  the  reorganization  of  age-sets. 
Elders  from  Ngoreme,  lkoma,  Nata,  and  Ishenyi  identified  the  age-set  of  Maina  (Ngirabhe), 
Matara  (Megona)  and  Masura  (C.  1850-75)  as  the  time  when  they  redefined  age-sets  into  cycles  or 
territorially-based  "associations."  A  Nata  elder  said  that  the  first  saiga  or  age-set  was  the  Maina, 
living  at  Site,  where  they  divided  into  the  three  cycles  of  Bongirate,  Busaai  and  Borumarancha.10 
An  Ishenyi  elder  confirmed  that  the  people  divided  into  cycling  age-sets  or  saiga  when  they  left 
Nyeberekera  or  after  they  got  to  Nyigoti,  which  would  also  have  been  at  the  time  between  the 
Maina  and  Saai  generations."  This  process  of  division  appears  clearly  in  an  Ishenyi  text  that 
reads,  "The  Amasura  gave  birth  to  the  Amatara  who  then  gave  birth  to  the  abaRumarancha, 
abaSaai  and  abaNgirati."12  In  the  idiom  of  the  fathers  and  sons,  the  generation-set  "gave  birth"  to 
the  three  new  age-cycles,  maintaining  the  continuity  of  time. 

Philipo  Haimati  uses  a  similar  generational  idiom  in  his  written  chronicle  of  Ngoreme 

history  to  describe  the  reorganization  of  age-sets  in  response  to  the  feeling  of  insecurity: 

Then  they  passed  a  law  that  each  father  should  not  have  all  his  sons  living  in  one 
homestead  in  one  village.  If  a  war  came  in  one  village  then  not  all  of  the  brothers  would 
be  killed  at  once.  So  they  combined  five  circumcision  sets  in  all  to  be  one  company  of 
soldiers,  one  age-set.   They  called  the  first  children  of  the  age-set  whom  they  circumcised 
the  Saai  and  gave  the  Saai  land  to  live  on  from  Maji  Moto  up  to  Busawe.   They  called 
this  land  Ikorongo.   The  Saai  called  themselves  by  another  praise  name  that  they  made 
up,  the  Mar  'osikeera.   They  gave  them  the  horn  and  the  drum.   The  age-set  made  their 
own  weapons.   These  were  the  first  company  of  soldiers.   The  second  year  they 
circumcised  other  children,  they  called  them  the  Amatara  to  whom  they  gave  the  land  of 


10  Interview  with  Kirigiti  Ng'orita,  Mbiso,  8  June  1995  (Nata  if). 

1 '  Interview  with  Morigo  Mchombocho  Nyarobi,  Issenye,  28  September  1 995  (Ishenyi  cf ). 

12  "Kikao  cha  Mila,  Desturi  na  Asili  ya  Kabila  la  Waishenyi  Kilichokutana  Tarehe 
6/6/1990,  Nyiberekera,  Ishenyi,"  copy  in  the  possession  of  the  present  author. 


453 

Kisaka.   They  called  themselves  the  Bongirate  and  were  given  the  horn  and  the  drum  and 
made  their  own  weapons.  In  the  third  year  they  circumcised  the  next  children  and  to 
whom  they  gave  the  same  names  of  Amataara  and  Abangirate,  hut  who  occupied  the  land 
of  Kewantena  and  Bumara ...    In  the  fourth  year  they  called  the  children  whom  they 
circumcised  Abagamutenya  and  they  gave  them  the  land  of  Ring  'wani  up  to  Masinki  to 
live  . . .    The  fifth  company  of  soldiers  was  called  the  Amasuura.  They  called 
themselves  the  Abarumarancha,  living  in  the  land  oflramba.   They  gave  them,  loo.  the 
horn  and  the  drum  and  they  made  their  own  weapons.  A  man  who  had  five  sons  made 
this  division,  following  the  circumcision  sets  ...    He  would  spread  them  out  among  the 
five  companies  as  they  circumcised  them  in  successive  years.  [.  .  .]  [Each  of  these 
companies  would  take  turns  ruling  the  whole  country,  when  they  would  become  too  old 
they  would  be  driven  out  by  the  younger  company  who  would  then  rule  in  their  turn.]  [.  . 
.]  At  that  time  each  lineage  lived  together  in  one  settlement.    They  built  forts  to  protect 
themselves  from  the  raids.   They  built  these  forts  with  high  walls  made  of  rocks.  In  this 
way  each  homestead  was  inside  the  big  wall  and  inside  each  homestead  were  the  houses. 
They  built  these  settlements  on  the  mountain  sides  and  they  went  down  toward  the  plains 
to  herd  and  farm.   The  lineages  lived  separately  because  they  despised  each  other.   Yet 
they  helped  each  other  when  it  was  necessary  and  fought  their  common  enemies.   They 
made  a  plan  together  to  strengthen  the  companies  of  youth  when  they  became 
circumcised.   There  were  five  companies  of  soldiers  and  each  had  more  than  2, 000 
men" 

The  above  story  depicts  a  conscious  reorganization  of  social  space.  Haimati  reconfigures 
the  pointillism  of  lineage-based  settlements  to  an  image  of  more  concentrated  settlements,  joined  in 
an  enclosed  and  bounded  territory  of  age-sets  and  linked  together  by  the  patrilineage  and  primarily 
connected  to  outsiders  by  the  affinity  of  age-mates.  The  emphasis  is  on  the  warrior  ethos  of  these 
"companies  of  soldiers"  but  the  logic  behind  this  formation  argues  that  the  spreading  out  of  the 
sons  of  one  man  in  different  areas,  linked  together  into  a  territory  for  mutual  support,  would 
preserve  the  patrilineage.  In  times  of  societal  stress,  the  concentration  of  lineages  and  clans  in  one 
territory  was  a  liability  rather  than  an  asset. 

Settlement  Reorganization 

The  reorganization  of  age-sets,  in  turn,  led  to  the  reorganization  of  settlements  on  the  basis 
of  age-set  rather  than  lineage.  In  an  era  of  societal  stress  settlements  became  concentrated  and 


13  Haimati  and  Houle,  "Mila  na  Matendo." 


454 
boundary  formation  took  on  increasing  prominence.  Philipo's  account  mentions  both  the 
reorganization  of  age-sets  into  territories  and  people  building  fortified  settlements  to  protect 
themselves  from  raids.  Western  Serengeti  people  were  victims  of  raiding  which  resulted  from 
competition  among  various  Maasai  groups  in  the  Rift  Valley  for  dominance.  Some  of  the 
peripheral  Maasai-related  groups,  such  as  the  Lumbwa,  after  experiencing  defeat,  began  raiding 
farmers.  These  pastoral  groups  also  began  encroaching  on  the  territory  of  hill  farmers  for  dry 
season  grazing.  Yet  oral  evidence  attests  that  the  threat  of  disease,  general  insecurity  and  the  need 
for  boundary  definition  were  equally  strong  motivations  for  the  concentration  of  settlements.  The 
medicine  for  protection,  orokoba,  worked  against  both  disease  and  raids;  its  power  lay  in  the  act  of 
encirclement  or  enclosure  of  the  land  against  external  danger.  Thus,  fortification  was  a  visually 
symbolic  "medicine"  for  protection  against  all  external  forces.  At  a  time  when  people  were 
reformulating  identity,  boundary  maintenance  was  increasingly  emphasized.  Western  Serengeti 
people  were  building  "walls"  and  boundaries  where  none  had  existed  before. 
Fortified  Settlements 

The  remains  of  these  stone  structures  all  over  the  Mara  Region  testify  to  the  movement 
into  more  concentrated  settlements  in  fortified  positions  on  the  hillsides.  Either  thick  rock  walls 
higher  than  a  man  surrounded  the  entire  village  (obugo  in  Ngoreme),  or  smaller  stone  enclosures 
(ruaki  in  Nata)  protected  women,  old  people  and  children  as  a  temporary  shelter  during  the  raids? 
[See  Figure  9-2:  Remains  of  Stone  Walls,  Ngoreme  Fortified  Settlements.]  The  German  explorer 
Baumann  described  an  Ngoreme  fortified  settlement  with  walls  two  meters  tall  and  almost  two 
kilometers  around.  One  entered  the  settlement  through  a  gate  locked  from  the  inside,  finding  a 
large  open  space  inside.14  White  Fathers  missionaries,  who  traveled  inland  briefly  in  1902  and 


14  Baumann,  Durch  Massailand.  p.  56. 


455 

. 

^yvT\^S 

H          «  .        ^S*d 

■ 

"**  A;- 

fe               •*  ^P^-'^ajST 

,\.\V-   - 

'    •  "^<? 

'-UMW^T^^tpi 

^ 

: 

IHHHH 

Figure  9-2:  Remains  of  Stone  Walls,  Ngoreme  Fortified  Settlements,  Nyansurumunti  Kisaka,  21 
September  1995 


456 
1904,  reported  that  Zanaki,  Ngoreme  and  Ikizu  people  lived  in  fortified  settlements  up  on  the  hills 
among  the  rocks."  The  German  traveler  Kollmann  (1899)  described  "Ushashi"  villages  up  in  the 
rocky  hillsides  surrounded  by  high  hedges  of  euphorbia  or  thorns.  Near  to  Ngoreme  he  found  even 
more  strongly  fortified  villages  with  stone  walls  five  feet  high  and  three  feet  wide.  Inside  the  walls 
a  virtual  labyrinth  of  euphorbia  and  thorn  hedges  divided  the  individual  homesteads.'6  An 
Ngoreme  elder  said  that  each  obugo  had  a  front  gate  that  was  guarded  and  a  secret  back  door  for 
escape,  the  walls  were  8-10  feet  high  and  had  holes  to  look  out  and  shoot  through." 

Another  kind  of  fortification  was  to  build  a  tembe  or  low  log  house,  covering  the  roof  with 
dirt,  in  the  style  of  the  Gogo  of  central  Tanzania.  This  prevented  the  Maasai  practice  of  burning 
thatch  roofs  during  a  raid  to  drive  the  inhabitants  out  into  the  open.  People  could  fortify  the  door 
of  a  tembe  from  the  inside  to  prevent  intrusion.  They  adopted  this  style  from  the  Tatoga  who 
brought  it  from  Mbulu  during  the  disasters.    The  Tatoga  themselves  began  building  tembe-sty\e 
houses  in  spite  of  their  preferred  mobile  lifestyle." 


15  Societe  de  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres  Blancs),  "Ukerewe,"  Chronique  Trimestrielle 
de  la  Societe  de  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  fPeres  Blancs).  24me  Annee,  No.  95  (July  1902):  281;  L. 
Bourget,  "Report  of  a  Trip  in  1904  from  Bukumbi  to  Mwanza,  Kome?  Ukerewe,  Kibara,  Ikoma- 
Mara  Region,  together  with  some  stories,"  N.p.  n.d.  M-SRC54  Sukuma  Archives,  Bujora, 
Mwanza,  Tanzania.  They  attributed  this  to  a  period  of  famine  to  intertribal  war  and  the  raids  of 
the  Maasai  and  Luo. 

16  Kollmann,  The  Victoria  Nvanza.  pp.  1 77-78.  Ushashi  is  the  Sukuma  name  given  to  all 
Mara  peoples,  this  is  still  used  as  a  derogatory  name  by  the  Sukuma  today. 

17  Interview  with  Elfaristi  Wambura  Nyetonge,  Kemgesi,  20  September  1995  (Ngoreme 
«■)■ 

18  Interview  with  Stephen  Gojat  Gishageta  and  Girimanda  Mwarhisha  Gishageta,  Issenye, 
27  July  1995  (Tatoga  o-);  Gilumughera  Gwiyeya  and  Girihoida  Masaona,  Issenye,  28  July  1995 
(Tatoga  <f)    The  tembe  style  is  an  ancient  form  of  architecture  brough  to  the  larger  East  African 
region  by  S.  Cushitic-speakers.  See  Ehret,  Classical  Age.  Chapter  2. 


457 

Fortified  and  concentrated  villages  were  found  from  western  Kenya  all  the  way  down  to 
Sukuma  and  Nyamwezi  during  this  period.  The  Sonjo  to  the  east  also  built  substantial 
fortifications  against  raids."  Although  previous  settlement  patterns  grouped  people  of  related 
lineages  in  one  area,  the  intense  concentration  of  settlements  during  this  period  seems  to  have  been 
a  temporary  response  to  stress.  During  the  early  colonial  period  people  moved  out  of  these 
concentrated  settlements.  The  lineage  idiom  still  united  the  inhabitants  of  one  fortified  settlement 
but  they  now  grouped  these  settlements  in  a  territory  defined  by  age-set  cycles  rather  than  by  clan. 
Concentrated  Settlements 

Scholars  have  interpreted  this  trend  toward  fortified  and,  more  generally,  concentrated 
settlements  throughout  East  Africa  during  the  late  nineteenth  century  as  a  response  to  the 
insecurities  of  the  caravan  trade,  lliffe  emphasizes  the  effect  of  firearms  in  causing  the  "ribbon-like 
settlements  along  the  trade  routes  to  give  way  to  fortified  villages."20  Yet,  as  I  showed  in  Chapter 
3,  the  caravan  trade  only  indirectly  affected  the  western  Serengeti.  No  important  trade  routes  or 
trade  centers  existed  in  this  region  where  concentrated  settlements  might  naturally  develop.  No 
powerful  trade  lords  like  Mirambo  forced  people  into  concentrated  settlements  with  the  threat  of 
arms  as  in  Nyamwezi.21 


"  For  western  Kenya  see  R.  T.  K.  Skully,  "Fort  Sites  of  East  Bukusu,  Kenya,"  Azania  4 
(1969):  105-1 14;  and  R.  T.  K.  Skully,  "Nineteenth  Century  SettlementFort  Sites  and  Related  Oral 
Traditions  from  the  Bungoma  Area,  Western  Kenya,"  Azania  14  (1979):  81-96.  For  Nyamwezi 
see  R.  K.  Burton,  The  Lake  Regions  of  Central  Africa  (London,  Longman,  Green,  Longman  and 
Roberts,  1860),  pp.  81-96.  For  Kuria  see  Cory,  "Land  Tenure  in  Bukuria,"  pp.  70-79.     For  Sonjo 
see  Gray,  The  Sonio.  pp.  33-34. 

20  lliffe,  A  Modern  History,  p.  75.  In  southern  Tanzania  the  unrest  caused  by  Ngoni 
incursions  from  the  south  were  responsible  for  concentrated  settlements. 

21  For  a  nationalist  biography  of  Mirambo  see,  Norman  Robert  Bennett,  Mirambo  of 
Tanzania.  1 840?- 1 884  (New  York:  Oxford  University  Press,  1971). 


458 

In  genera],  people  distrusted  concentrated  settlements  and  described  them  as  unhealthy  and 
potentially  dangerous  places.  So  powerful  reasons  must  have  existed  for  people  to  move  into 
concentrated  settlements.    Many  colonial  reports  described  the  increase  in  witchcraft  accusations 
with  the  concentration  of  settlement.  The  Mwanza  Senior  Commissioner  reported  that,  "natives 
have  been  advised  to  concentrate  ...  but  as  they  are  steeped  in  superstition  and  fear  of  witchcraft 
in  larger  communities,  refuse."22  During  the  colonial  years  western  Serengeti  people  resisted 
sleeping  sickness  measures  to  get  them  into  concentrated  settlements.  Although  the  colonial 
government  carried  out  these  campaigns  in  Sukuma  and  elsewhere,  schemes  within  the  Mara 
Region  ultimately  failed.23  Not  only  did  western  Serengeti  people  fear  witchcraft  but  the  fortified 
structures  themselves  represented  an  enormous  outlay  of  labor  for  people  who  were  accustomed  to 
building  their  houses  of  mud  and  thatch  in  a  few  days. 

The  concentration  of  settlements  contributed  to  ecological  collapse.  When  people  lived  in 
concentrated  settlements,  competition  for  accessible  farmland  increased,  causing  farmers  to 
overwork  the  soil.  Since  people  grazed  their  livestock  near  the  settlement,  concentrated  settlements 
also  resulted  in  overgrazed  pastures.  Where  farmers  and  herders  were  not  opening  up  new  land  for 
farming  and  settlement,  tsetse  bush  tended  to  encroach  into  once-clear  areas,  as  when  refugees  left 
for  Sukuma.24 

Scholars  elsewhere  have  postulated  that  concentrated  settlements  were  associated  with  the 
increased  authority  of  political  leaders  and  the  control  of  elders  over  young  people.  It  might  be  that 


22  Report  from  A.M.D.  Turnbull,  Senior  Commissioner,  Mwanza,  to  Game  Warden 
Kilossa,  28  March  1924,  vol.  1:  1923-29,  Game  Regulations,  215/P.C./14/I,  TNA. 

23  Report  by  District  Veterinary  Officer,  April  1927  and  Monthly  Reports,  1928,  1926-29 
Provincial  Administration,  215/P.C./1/7,  TNA. 

24  See  Iliffe's  analysis  for  all  of  Tanganyika,  A  Modern  History,  pp.  75-77,  163-167. 


459 
concentrated  settlements  were  a  way  elders  exploited  conditions  of  uncertainty  and  vulnerability  to 
reassert  their  authority  over  young  men  who  had  gained  some  autonomy  and  prestige  as  warriors 
or  as  traders  to  Sukuma.  Yet  the  elders  had  few  means  available  to  force  people  into  concentrated 
settlements  against  their  will.  In  a  situation  of  abundant  land  resources,  people  who  disagreed  with 
their  leaders  could  simply  leave  and  be  assured  of  a  welcome  in  any  of  the  other  neighboring 
settlements  (albeit  accepting  the  comparatively  weaker  position  of  a  newcomer). 

The  threat  of  Maasai  raiding  and  violence,  asserted  in  oral  narratives,  stands  as  the  most 
plausible  explanation  for  the  concentration  of  settlements.  Yet  the  relationship  with  the  Maasai  and 
their  threat  to  farming  communities  was  more  complicated  than  the  simple  enmity  expressed  by 
elders.  Although  the  immediate  threat  of  raids  was  most  palpable,  the  larger  threat  posed  by  the 
Maasai  was  the  loss  of  a  way  of  life  based  on  farming,  hunting  and  herding  inherited  from  the 
distant  past. 

Resistance  and  Accommodation  to  Maasai  Hegemony 

Beyond  individual  loss  of  life  and  property,  the  threat  of  Maasai  raids  represented  the 
imposition  of  an  entirely  new  economic  system  and  ethnic  map  in  the  greater  Rift  Valley.  As  noted 
in  Chapter  3,  the  Maasai  succeeded  in  dominating  this  region  by  developing  a  specialized  form  of 
pastoralism  that  forced  others  into  the  specialized  niches  of  farming  or  hunting.  Western  Serengeti 
peoples,  having  based  their  adaptation  to  this  region  on  a  combination  of  farming,  hunting  and 
herding  skills,  resisted  the  imposition  of  this  hegemonic  system  controlled  by  the  Maasai.  As  the 
Nyeberekera  story  told  in  Chapter  3  attests,  the  ultimate  threat  posed  by  raiding  was  that  the 
Maasai  would  drive  western  Serengeti  farmers  out  of  areas  now  claimed  by  Maasai  for  dry  season 
grazing.    The  immigration  of  Sonjo  refugees  to  the  western  Serengeti  as  a  result  of  Maasai  raids 
most  clearly  demonstrates  this  process. 


460 

Although  disease,  famine  and  subsequent  ecological  collapse  caused  more  loss  of  life  and 
dislocation  of  populations,  elders  say  that  the  reorganization  of  age-sets  and  the  fortification  of 
concentrated  settlements  was  the  result  of  Maasai  raiding.  I  argued  in  Chapter  3  that  the  most 
intense  period  of  raiding  occurred  after  the  disasters.  The  experience  of  these  later  raids  was  then 
projected  back  onto  narratives  of  raids  during  the  disasters  to  make  sense  of  an  unexplainable 
series  of  calamities.  Identifying  a  known  enemy  to  account  for  these  troubles  was  much  more 
acceptable  than  combating  the  intangible  forces  disease  and  drought.  Many  narratives,  such  as  the 
Ishenyi  story  of  leaving  Nyeberekera  told  in  Chapter  3,  attribute  both  disease  and  drought  to  the 
medicines  of  the  Maasai  prophets. 

In  this  section  I  show  that  because  of  both  admiration  and  fear  of  the  Maasai,  western 
Serengeti  people  welcomed  Sonjo  refugees  from  Maasai  raids  for  their  valued  experience  in  dealing 
with  the  Maasai.  The  impetus  for  reformulating  age-sets  in  the  western  Serengeti  may  have  come 
from  the  desire  of  young  men  to  imitate  the  power  of  the  Maasai  murran.  The  final  shape  given  to 
age-set  structure,  however,  was  based  on  older  generational  principles,  firmly  under  the  control  of 
elders. 
Sonio  Refugees  of  the  Disasters 

Intense  Maasai  raiding  on  both  sides  of  the  Serengeti  plains  (particularly  on  the  Sonjo 
side)  drove  refugees  in  both  directions  and  resulted  in  the  separation  of  these  two  communities. 
The  long-  term  interaction  of  hill  fanners  living  in  the  western  Serengeti  and  Sonjo  was  detailed  in 
Chapter  5.  During  the  period  of  disasters  western  Serengeti  settlements  moved  farther  to  the  west 
and  the  potentially  habitable  hill  sites  between  Sonjo  and  Ikoma  were  abandoned  to  the  Maasai. 
This  was  the  area  that  the  British  later  designated  as  Serengeti  National  Park  because  it  lacked 
permanent  inhabitants. 


461 

Today  the  six  Sonjo  villages  in  the  Loliondo  District  exist  as  islands  of  Bantu-speaking  hill 
farmers  surrounded  by  a  sea  of  Maasai  pastoralists.  Each  village  situated  on  a  hillside  or 
mountain  depends  on  springs  to  water  irrigated  fields  on  the  valley  floor  below.  The  village 
leaders,  known  as  mwanamaji  ("those  with  water")  control  the  allocation  of  water.  Each  village 
preserves  the  oral  traditions  of  their  origins  and  settlement  separately,  connected  only  by  the  epic 
cycle  of  stories  about  the  prophet  Khambageu.  In  the  nineteenth  century  a  complicated  set  of 
fortifications  surrounded  each  village.25  [See  Figure  9-3:  Sonjo  Fortified  Settlements.]  The  Sonjo 
practice  Maasai-style  linear  age-sets  and  know  nothing  of  generation-sets  or  cycling  age-set  names. 
However,  a  connection  with  the  western  Serengeti  is  suggested  by  the  fact  that  the  name  of  the  first 
age-set  which  elders  remember  is  Olnyamburete  about  eleven  age-sets  ago  (like  the  western 
Serengeti  generation-set  name,  Nyambureti).26  Perhaps  before  the  Maasai  came  the  Sonjo  did 
practice  a  generation-set  system  similar  to  the  western  Serengeti  version.  Today  the  Sonjo  dress 
and  outwardly  look  like  Maasai,  wearing  red  blankets  over  one  shoulder  and  adorning  themselves 
with  beaded  jewelry.  Sonjo  murran  (warriors)  always  carry  a  long  knife  at  their  side.  One  elder 
told  me  that  this  gear  was  necessary  for  safe  passage  across  Maasailand,  as  they  would  be 
indistinguishable  from  the  Maasai,  who  are  their  enemies. 

The  Sonjo  who  remain  in  the  Loliondo  district  have  become  assimilated  into  the  Maasai 
system  of  hegemony.  They  raise  only  goats  and  sheep,  hunt  little,  and  mainly  subsist  on 
agricultural  production  of  millet  and  beans.  Sonjo  is  the  name  given  to  them  by  the  colonial 
officers  after  the  "sonjo  bean."  The  Sonjo  call  themselves  Bantemi  after  the  nlemi  scar.  Scholars 
of  Maasai  history  have  shown  how  Sonjo  could  pass  the  ethnic  boundaries  of  economy  to  "become 


25  See  Gray,  The  Sonio  for  one  of  the  few  ethnographies  of  Sonjo. 

26  Ibid,  p.  88. 


Figure  9-3:  Sonjo  Fortified  Settlements,  Emmanuel  Ndenu,  Sale,  6  December  1995 


463 
Maasai"  if  they  gained  cattle,  while  those  who  lost  their  livestock  became  Ndorobo  hunters.  Both 
the  Ndorobo  and  Sonjo  now  follow  the  ceremonial  cycle  of  Maasai  age-sets.2'  The  strongest 
connection  between  Sonjo  and  the  western  Serengeti  seems  to  date  to  the  period  of  disasters.  In  my 
own  interviews  and  in  those  of  earlier  ethnographers,  Sonjo  elders  consistently  asserted  that  the 
"Ikoma"  (used  generically  for  western  Serengeti  peoples)  and  the  Sonjo  once  lived  as  neighbors  or 
as  one  people,  from  "one  womb."28     Elders  from  the  Sonjo  village  of  Samongo  told  stories  of  a 
village  called  Tinaga  to  the  north,  located  more  on  the  plains,  unlike  the  Sonjo  villages  of  today. 
The  eight  villages  (Yasi,  Tinaga,  Meje,  Buri,  Hajaro,  Hume,  Horane  and  Jema)  in  this  area  were 
collectively  known  as  Masabha  (of  the  north).29  When  the  Maasai  entered  this  area,  they  raided 
and  burned  the  Masabha  villages  and  destroyed  their  fields  and  granaries.  Without  a  means  of 
subsistence,  the  people  of  Tinaga  dispersed.  Some  went  to  Ikoma  and  others  moved,  as  Tinaga 
clan  mates,  into  other  Sonjo  villages  in  the  south.  One  elder  from  the  Tinaga  clan  said  that  the 
Maasai  and  Lumbwa  fought  with  the  Masabha  people  over  a  period  of  many  years  until  the 
Maasai  took  all  their  cattle  and  goats  and  destroyed  their  villages.30  Elders  from  the  village  of 
Samongo  claim  that  they  can  still  see  the  graves,  homestead  foundations  and  grindstones  at  the  site 


27  Alan  H.  Jacobs,  "The  Irrigation  Agricultural  Maasai  of  Pagasi:  A  Case  of  Maasai- 
Sonjo  Acculturation,"  Dar  es  Salaam,  Social  Science  Conference  (January  2-5,  1968):  1-12;  John 
L.  Berntsen,  "The  Maasai  and  their  Neighbors:  Variables  of  Interaction,"  African  Economic 
History,  2  (Fall  1976):  1-11. 

28  Henry  A.  Fosbrooke,  "Sections  of  the  Masai  in  Loliondo  Area,"  typescript,  1953, 
CORY  #259,  EAF,  UDSM;  Gray,  The  Sonjo.  pp.  11-15. 

29  Interviews  with  Peter  Nabususa,  Samonge,  5  December  1 995  (Sonjo  d-);  Marindaya 
Sanaya,  Samonge,  5  December  1 995  (Sonjo  cf ). 

30  Interview  with  Samweli  Ginduri,  Samonge,  6  December  1995  (Sonjo  <?). 


464 

of  Tinaga.31  The  Ngoreme  tell  of  ancestors  who  came  from  Masabha  and  also  from  Tinaga.32  One 
Ikoma  version  of  the  emergence  story  says  that  the  first  hunters  came  from  Sonjo  Tinaga  following 
the  wildebeest  migration  to  get  meat  during  a  famine.53    All  of  these  testimonies  indicate  a  western 
Serengeti  connection  with  specific  communities  in  Sonjo,  those  most  directly  in  competition  with 
the  Maasai  for  pastoral  resources. 

The  stories  of  the  prophet  Khambageu  also  tell  of  the  connection  between  Sonjo  and 
Ikoma.  Some  versions  of  the  Khambageu  story  say  that  he  came  from  the  west  in  Ikoma  and  that 
people  went  there  to  propitiate  his  spirit  until  only  a  generation  ago.34  Some  elders  say  that 
Khambageu  came  from  the  village  of  Tinaga  where  many  of  his  miracles  took  place.  He 
subsequently  cursed  Tinaga,  leading  to  its  destruction  by  the  Maasai.35  The  Khambageu  prophetic 
stories  resemble  the  Tatoga  miracle  stories  of  their  prophets.  Given  the  more  recent  history  of 


31  Interviews  with  Peter  Nabususa.  Samonge,  5  December  1995;  Samweli  Ginduri, 
Samonge,  6  December  1 995  (Sonjo  J).  The  Tinaga  site  was  visited  by  Gray,  The  Sonio.  p.  1 3. 

32  Interview  with  Nsaho  Maro,  Kenyana,  14  September  1995  (Ngoreme  cC).  Philipo 
Haimati,  handwritten  notebook  on  Ngoreme  history,  which  I  saw  on  14  September  1995,  says  that 
the  Ngoreme  came  from  Sonjo  "Nyahaba." 

33  Interview  with  Mzee  Taranka,  Bugerera,  10  May  1995  (Ikoma  <?). 

34  Interview  with  Emmanuel  Ndenu,  Sale,  6  December  1995  (Sonjo  <?). 

35  Gray,  The  Sonjo,  pp.  11-12.  Interviews  with  Peter  Nabususa,  Samonge,  5  December 
1995;  Marindaya  Sanaya,  Samonge,  5  December  1995  (Sonjo  <f);  Samweli  Ginduri,  Samonge,  6 
December  1995  (Sonjo  cf).  F.  G.  Finch,  "Hambageu,  some  additional  notes  on  the  God  of  the 
Wasonjo,"  Tanganyika  Notes  and  Records.  47  and  48  M9S7V  703-708-  H.  A.  Fosbrooke, 
"Hambageu,  the  god  of  the  Wasonjo,"  Tanganyika  Notes  and  Records.  35  (1955):  38-43;  E. 
Simenauer,  "The  Miraculous  Birth  of  Hambageu,  Hero-god  of  the  Sonjo,"  Tanganyika  Notes  and 
Records,  38  (1955):  23-30. 


465 

Sonjo  relations  with  the  Maasai,  the  Sonjo  may  have  developed  their  own  prophetic  institution  in 
the  nineteenth  century  to  combat  the  power  of  the  Maasai  prophets.36 

Refugees  not  only  moved  from  Sonjo  to  the  western  Serengeti  but  also  in  the  other 
direction.  Chapter  3  presented  the  story  of  the  dispersal  of  Ishenyi  people  to  Sonjo  from 
Nyeberekera.  Ishenyi  elders  said  that  at  the  time  they  lived  at  Nyeberekera  they  called  themselves 
the  Regata.  In  Sonjo  today  the  older  name  for  the  village  of  Sale  is  Rhughata.  An  elder  from 
Rhughata  claimed  their  origins  at  Jalati  and  Ngrumega  (perhaps  a  transliteration  of  the  Rivers 
Mbalageti  and  Grumeti  in  western  Serengeti)  and  that  the  praise  names  of  the  Rhugata  clans  names 
the  place  called  Nyankerekera  (perhaps  a  transliteration  of  the  Ishenyi  dispersal  place 
Nyeberekera).  The  original  ancestors  of  Rhugata  were  hunters  of  the  Sagati  clan,  a  clan  name  also 
found  in  Ishenyi  and  Ikoma.3'  Oral  traditions  from  Ikoma  and  Ngoreme  also  claim  origins  in  the 
Sonjo  village  of  Regata.  Migrations  seem  to  have  taken  place  in  both  directions  from  communities 
that  were  found  in  areas  later  claimed  by  the  Maasai. 

Dating  the  destruction  of  Tinaga  and  the  dispersal  to  Ikoma  is  difficult  because  elders  want 
to  assert  the  ancient  roots  of  this  connection.  One  elder  from  the  Tinaga  clan  said  that  this 
happened  in  the  time  of  his  grandfather  (C.  1 880).  Confirmed  dates  in  Maasai  history  help  to  set 
the  temporal  parameters  of  these  events.  Although  the  Maasai  may  have  been  present  in  the 
western  Serengeti  since  the  eighteenth  century,  expansion  based  on  a  specialized  form  of 
pastoralism  did  not  develop  until  the  nineteenth  century.  With  the  advent  of  prophetic  leadership  at 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  Maasai  began  a  period  of  increased  raiding  and  territorial 
expansion,  forcing  the  victims  of  these  raids  to  move  or  abandon  pastoralism.  The  earliest  victims 


16  See  David  M.  Anderson  and  Douglas  H.  Johnson,  eds.,  Revealing  Prophets:  Prophecy 
in  Eastern  African  History  (Athens:  Ohio  University  Press,  1 995). 

"  Interview  with  Emmanuel  Ndenu,  Sale,  6  December  1 995  (Sonjo  <f ). 


466 
of  this  expansion,  known  in  Maasai  tradition  as  the  pastoral  Lumbwa,  were  forced  to  recoup  their 
losses  by  raiding  Bantu-speaking  farmers  with  few  livestock.  Sonjo  traditions  often  tell  of  raids  by 
the  Lumbwa  rather  than  the  Maasai.  Between  1 850  and  1 890  the  Purko-Kisongo  under  prophetic 
leadership  completed  their  expansion  into  what  is  now  south-central  Tanzania.  It  was  probably 
during  this  period  that  Maasai  sections  on  the  periphery  of  the  central  Purko-Kisongo  cluster  near 
Mt.  Meru  began  seeking  control  over  pastoral  resources  in  the  western  Serengeti  and  Sonjo. 
Raiding  increased  dramatically  to  maintain  a  pastoral  way  of  life  after  1 890  when  the  rinderpest 
panzootic  destroyed  Maasai  herds.38 

Although  the  Sonjo  immigrants  were  too  few  in  number  to  change  western  Serengeti 
language  or  culture,  western  Serengeti  people  may  have  valued  Sonjo  immigrants  for  their 
knowledge  of  Maasai  culture.  This  might  account  for  the  attribution  of  Sonjo  as  the  place  of  origin 
and  the  home  of  first  man  or  first  woman.  Although  the  age-set  system  adopted  by  western 
Serengeti  people  at  this  time  was  a  local  innovation,  Sonjo  refugees  may  have  brought  compelling 
experience  with  the  warrior  ethos  and  Maasai-type  age-sets.  They  would  have  experienced  raids 
earlier  and  more  intensely  and  had  closer  contacts  with  the  Maasai  than  western  Serengeti  people. 
If  Sonjo  knowledge  provided  the  means  for  resisting  Maasai  raids  then  as  western  Serengeti  people 
formulated  new  ethnic  identities,  they  would  have  acknowledged  the  crucial  role  of  Sonjo  in  their 
own  emergence  as  a  people.  We  might  learn  something  about  the  value  of  these  Sonjo  immigrants 
by  looking  more  closely  at  the  ambivalent  relationship  between  western  Serengeti  peoples  and  the 
Maasai. 


!  Berntsen,  "Pastoralism,  Raiding  and  Prophets,"  pp.  1 12-143,  172,  224. 


467 
Relations  with  Maasai 

Narratives  of  the  disasters  concerning  the  Maasai  invariably  picture  them  as  the  arch 
enemy,  the  "other"  with  whom  no  relationship  of  peace  was  possible.  Western  Serengeti  people 
divide  the  peoples  of  the  larger  region  into  two  opposed  categories:  Bisa  (enemies)  and  Rema 
(farmers).  The  Maasai  and  sometimes  the  Asi  hunter-gatherers  were  in  the  "enemy"  category,  as 
those  who  live  in  the  wilderness  (Nyika).  This  way  of  categorizing  regional  relationships  does  not 
agree  with  the  way  that  Maasai  scholars  have  interpreted  mutually  exclusive  identities  in  reference 
to  "differential  access  to  resources"  and  economic  specialization.39    Western  Serengeti  people  were 
reluctant  to  give  up  their  agro-pastoral-hunting  economy  for  a  specialization  in  which  they  would 
become  subordinate  to  Maasai  pastoralists  who  controlled  a  system  that  defined  ethnicity  by 
economics,  largely  to  the  benefit  of  the  Maasai. 

The  western  Serengeti  understanding  of  Tatoga  as  "fathers"  defies  the  Maasai  hegemonic 
categories  of  farmers,  herders  and  hunters.  Although  the  Tatoga  were  not  "farmers"  they  were  not 
considered  to  be  "enemy"  and  cooperated  with  "farmers"  during  Maasai  raids.  If  a  Tatoga  killed  a 
Nata,  Ikoma  or  Ishenyi  it  was  just  like  killing  another  Tatoga,  rituals  of  purification  were 
performed  and  a  fine  paid  to  the  family.40  Many  of  the  western  Serengeti  peoples  considered  the 
Tatoga  as  their  spiritual  or  ritual  "fathers."  The  Ikoma  and  Ishenyi  peoples  gave  Tatoga  prophets  a 
prominent  place  in  the  most  important  rituals  of  "cooling  the  land,"  indicating  an  acknowledgment 


39  Spear  and  Waller,  Being  Maasai.  p.  6. 

40  Interview  with  Gilumughera  Gwiyeya  and  Girihoida  Masaona,  Issenye,  28  July  1995 
(Tatoga  <f ). 


468 
of  Tatoga  as  "first-comers"  on  the  land.41  The  western  Serengeti  farmers  allied  themselves  with 
other  pastoralists  to  resist  the  incursions  of  the  Maasai. 

The  relationship  of  western  Serengeti  people  to  the  Maasai  manifested  itself  in  ritualized 
form.  The  "farmers"  of  the  western  Serengeti,  the  Sonjo  and  the  Tatoga  pastoralists  practiced  an 
important  ritual  called  the  aghaso,  to  purify  and  reward  young  men  who  killed  a  lion,  leopard  or 
Maasai.42  The  first  man  (omwiti)  to  hit  the  lion  with  his  arrow  or  spear  and  the  next  two  men 
following  him  (omunoti)  received  honor  and  became  blood  brothers.  While  still  at  the  lion  kill  they 
cut  out  the  heart  of  the  beast,  the  small  tip  of  which  they  fed  to  the  killer  who  spat  it  out  three 
times,  ingesting  the  fourth  bite.  [See  Figure  9-4:  Maasai  Relations.]  The  killers  took  the  lion  skin 
and  the  claws  back  as  their  trophy  but  they  burnt  the  remainder  of  the  animal  corpse.  They  also 
took  Maasai  weapons  and  other  things  as  trophies.  As  the  group  came  into  the  village,  they  sang 
the  songs  of  the  aghaso.  When  the  village  heard  these  songs,  the  mother  of  the  killer  came  out  to 
greet  them,  throwing  sand  and  smearing  them  with  butter.  The  father  of  the  killer  gave  his  son  a 
cow.  The  next  morning  the  singing,  dancing  and  meat  feasting  began  and  lasted  for  eight  days  or 
even  a  month  during  which  time  the  killers  went  around  and  received  gifts  of  livestock  in  each 
home.43 


41  Sutton  cites  linguistic  and  oral  evidence  that  the  Tatog-  speaking  peoples  once  occupied 
the  Loita-Mara  plains  and  across  Serengeti  to  the  Crater  Highlands,  being  pushed  out  or  absorbed 
by  Maasai  expansion.  J.E.G.  Sutton,  "Becoming  Maasailand,"  in  Being  Maasai.  p.  48. 

42  Interview  with  Marindaya  Sanaya,  Samonge,  5  December  1995  (Sonjo  cf). 
Extraordinarily  similar  practice  by  the  Tatog  Barabaig  reported  by  G.  McL.  Wilson,  "The  Tatoga 
of  Tanganyika  (Part  II),"  Tanganyika  Notes  and  Records.  34  (1953):  35-56,  where  any  killing  of 
cattle  thieves  or  lions  may  be  used  to  collect  lots  of  cattle.  He  speculates  the  group  most  likely  to 
engage  in  this  activity  are  youngest  sons  without  other  outlets  for  status.  Among  the  Barabaig  the 
anointing  of  the  killer  with  butter  is  a  propitiation  of  the  ancestors  and  the  cattle  given  to  him 
equivalent  to  blood  compensation  offered  to  a  kinsmen. 

43  Among  the  Barabaig  the  killer  "adorns  himself  with  women's  ornaments,  which 
symbolize  that  he  is  like  a  woman  who  has  given  birth.  Killing  an  enemy  of  the  people  and  giving 


469 

The  killers  were  dangerous  and  liminal  characters-like  a  lion  of  the  wilderness.  During 
this  time  they  went  through  rituals  of  purification:  they  shaved  their  heads  and  smeared  them  with 
the  stomach  contents  of  a  sacrificed  sheep  and  they  could  not  eat  or  sleep  with  other  people.44 
This  ceremony  explicitly  categorized  Maasai  with  the  beasts  of  the  wilderness.  The  symbolism 
here  was  not  derogatory  but  of  respect  and  admiration.    The  killer  ingested  the  heart  of  the  beast  to 
internalize  the  qualities  of  courage  and  power.  One  elder  said  that  the  heart  is  the  place  of  courage, 
the  essence  of  the  beast,  by  eating  it  one  gains  that  courage.  The  bits  of  heart  that  they  spat  out 
were  an  offering  to  the  ancestors,  since  they  have  given  the  strength  for  this  feat.  As  in  so  many 
western  Serengeti  rituals,  they  brought  the  things  of  the  wilderness  within-the  fire  brought  into  the 
home  by  the  hunter,  the  things  of  power  brought  from  the  wilderness  to  perform  the  rituals  of 
enclosure.45  Yet  this  was  also  a  direct  act  of  resistance  to  Maasai  dominance.  As  one  informant 
said,  'the  Maasai  was  "boss"  then  and  the  aghaso  proved  our  triumph  over  them'.46  Western 
Serengeti  people  admired,  accommodated  and  resisted  the  Maasai. 


birth  is  symbolically  equated.  The  killer  of  an  enemy  must  observe  a  convalescence  period  (one 
month)  for  having  given  "birth,"  and  is  restricted  from  touching  food  or  doing  any  work."  Klima, 
The  Barabaig.  pp.  58-60.  Western  Serengeti  peoples  also  allow  women  who  are  courageous  in 
birth  to  dance  the  aghaso  with  the  men.  Interviews  with  Baginyi  Mutani  and  Mayenye  Nyabunga, 
Sanzate,  8  September  1995  (Ikizu  ¥). 

44  Interviews  with  Zamberi  Masambwe  and  Gisuge  Chabwasi,  Mariwanda,  22  June  1995 
(Ikizu  if);  Mang'oha  Morigo,  Bugerera,  24  June  1995  (Nata  d-);  Merekwa  Masunga  and  Giruchani 
Masanja,  Mariwanda,  7  July  1 995  (Tatoga  cf );  Elfaresti  Wambura  Nyetonge,  Kemegesi,  20 
September  1 995  (Ngoreme  &);  Zabron  Kisubundo  Nyamamera  and  Makang'a  Magigi,  Bisarye,  9 
November  1 995  (Zanaki  cf);  Marindaya  Sanaya,  Samonge,  5  December  1995  (Sonjo  <f). 

45  Related  to  the  analysis  of  "other"  in  the  Kramer,  Red  Fez,  p.  2,  Kramer  shows  how 
African  representation  of  the  European  "other"  in  sculpture  was  used  to  define  self;  and  Boddy, 
Wombs  and  Alien  Spirits,  p.  342,  Boddy  demonstrates  that  the  "zar"  possession  cult  in  Sudan 
fosters  an  "alien  world  at  the  heart  of  culture." 

46  Interview  with  Mang'oha  Morigo,  Bugerera,  24  June  1995  (Nata  <?). 


470 


Elia  Masiyana  Mchanake  and  Robi  Nyekisokoro,  descendants  of  the  founders  of 
Nguku  Ngoreme,  Saroti  and  Nyaboge  (Matiti's  daughter),  Borenga,  21  September 
1995 


Zamberi  Masambwe  and  Gisuge 
Chabwasi,  reenacting  the  Aghaso, 
Mariwanda,  22  June  1995 


Figure  9-4:  Maasai  Relations 


471 

In  spite  of  this  history  of  animosity  toward  the  Maasai,  evidence  of  interaction  and 

cooperation  also  exists.  The  first  raids  remembered  by  elders  began  in  the  1 870s,  while  interaction 

and  emulation  of  Maasai  culture  must  have  been  ongoing  much  before  this.  An  interdependent 

regional  economy  of  pastoralists,  farmers  and  hunter/gatherers  was  held  together  not  only  by  force, 

but  also  by  the  glue  of  common  cultural  understandings  and  social  interaction  with  frequent 

boundary  crossing.47  From  as  early  as  1800  the  Loitai  Maasai  expanded  from  the  Rift  Valley  to 

the  Loitai  hills  where  they  pushed  the  Siria  Maasai  up  to  the  Mara  River  in  Kuria  and  Ngoreme 

territory.48    Maasai  ancestors  often  appear  in  Ngoreme  and  Ikoma  genealogies.  Western  Serengeti 

people  still  propitiate  their  Maasai  ancestors  using  prescribed  Maasai  implements  and  cattle 

sacrifice.49  One  localized  emergence  story  in  Ngoreme  capsulizes  this  interaction: 

Saroti  was  Maasai  and  left  behind  when  others  moved  on,  at  the  hill  ofGisema.  He  built 
his  house  near  the  spring  ofKiru  and  lived  by  himself  for  many  years.   Then  one  day  he 
saw  smoke  coming  from  Nyibihori  and  went  to  see  who  it  was.   There  he  found  a  man 
named  Matiti.  his  wife  and  their  children.   They  became  friends  and  built  their  houses 
near  to  each  other.  Matiti  was  a  farmer  and  grew  millet,  he  taught  Saroti  to  farm. 
Saroti  married  Matiti's  daughter,  Nyaboge,  for  one  storage  bin  of  grain  during  a  time  of 
hunger.  She  cut  his  hair  and  shaved  his  head  to  make  him  acceptable  for  marriage. 
They  gave  birth  to  Kitang'ita,  Gogay,  and  Wandwe?" 


47  Spear  and  Waller,  Being  Maasai.  p.  2. 

48  Galaty,  "Maasai  Expansion,"  p.  72. 

49  For  Kuria  Maasai  clan  ancestors  also  reported  by  Cory,  "Land  Tenure  in  Bukuria,"  pp. 
71-72.  See  Raids  by  Masai,  1936,  vol.  1,  Secretariat  Files,  23384,  TNA,  on  a  scare  of  Maasai 
raid  because  a  woman  was  carrying  out  one  of  these  rituals  on  behalf  of  her  Maasai  ancestor  in 
Sukuma,  a  young  herd  boy  saw  the  proceedings  and  ran  to  alert  everyone  that  a  raid  was  in 
progress.  Interviews  with  Gabuso  Shoka,  Mbiso,  30  May  1995  (Nata  cf);  Bokima  Giringayi, 
Mbiso,  26  October  1995  (Ikoma  cf);  TetereTumbo,  Mbiso,  5  April  1995  (Nata  o");  Mwita 
Magige,  Mosongo,  9  September  1 995  (Ngoreme  d"). 

50  Interview  with  Elia  Masiyana  Mchanake  (Ngoreme  cf)  and  Robi  Nykisokoro  (Ngoreme 
?),  Borenga,  21  September,  1995.  There  are  variations  of  this  story,  including  that  they  met  on  a 
hunt  and  that  Saroti  ate  porridge  (ugali).  In  some  versions  of  this  story  Matiti  is  said  to  be  an 
Iregi,  the  clan  which  left  the  Nyeberekera  dispersal  center  in  the  Ishenyi  story.  Saroti  is  sometimes 
said  to  be  Maasai  only  in  that  he  was  a  "vagabond,  traitor  or  outcast"  his  origin  was  Gosi,  from  the 


472 

In  this  narrative  the  Maasai  pastoralist  takes  refuge  with  a  farming  patron,  marries  his 
daughter  and  founds  a  new  clan  territory  in  Ngoreme,  Nguku.  [See  Figure  9-4:  Maasai  Relations, 
p.  469.]  This  story  illustrates  the  permeability  of  the  ethnic  and  economic  boundaries  in  the  late 
nineteenth  century.  Nyaboge  made  Saroti  fit  to  join  the  community  by  cutting  his  hair,  presumably 
the  long  locks  of  a  Maasai  murran,  destroying  the  outward  marks  of  his  Maasai  identity  and 
removing  him  from  the  warrior  grade. 

The  symbiotic  relationship  of  the  Maasai  and  the  Ikoma,  farthest  to  the  east,  was  also 

significant.  During  the  rihaha  famine,  or  rinderpest  of  1 890,  the  Maasai  came  to  "sell"  their 

children  in  Ikoma  for  food.  Many  stayed  and  settled  near  Banagi  hill,  well  into  Ikoma  territory  and 

now  part  of  Serengeti  National  Park.  Ikoma  clans  adopted  young  Maasai  men  and  married  young 

Maasai  women,  establishing  in-law  relationships  of  long  duration.  When  the  Maasai  began  to 

recover  and  the  "Hunger  of  the  Feet"  hit  the  farming  peoples,  the  Ikoma  went  to  the  Maasai  for 

help.  The  Maasai  were  raiding  on  the  lake  during  this  time  and  used  their  Ikoma  friends  as  scouts 

who  knew  the  land  better.  Even  today  western  Serengeti  people  know  the  Ikoma  as  Maasai 

collaborators."  A  1933  report  from  the  Musoma  District  illustrates  this  close  relationships: 

.  .  .  you  must  remember  that  the  Waikoma  are  on  very  friendly  terms  with  the  Serengeti 
Masai.  For  many  years  the  Masai  have  brought  tails  of  wild  animals  for  exchange  with 
the  Waikoma  who  sell  them  in  Usukuma....  a  Maasai  can  always  rely  on  a  bed  and  a 
meal  when  he  visits  Ikoma.  No  doubt  many  of  them  act  as  guides  to  raiding  parties  . . . 


Shirati  area.  All  accounts  confirm  that  the  spring  at  Kiru  is  a  powerful  erisambwa  place.  And  all 
are  both  proud  and  embarrassed  of  this  important  Maasai  ancestor.  Interviews  with  Isaya  Charo 
Wambura,  Buchanchari,  22  September  1995  and  Charwe  Matiti,  Nyeboko  22  September  1995 
(Ngoreme  cf). 

51  Interviews  with  Mahewa  Timanyi  and  Nyambureti  Morumbe,  Robanda,  27  May  1995 
(Ikoma  ef);  Machota  Sabuni,  Issenye,  14  March  1996  (Ikoma  tf). 


473 

but  it  is  quite  useless  to  expect  the  Waikoma  to  abandon  friendly  relations  which  have 
survived  the  raids.51 

Maasai  dominance  also  resulted  in  the  development  of  a  common  regional  culture.  Elders 
say  the  Ikoma,  Nata  and  Ishenyi  practice  resembles  the  Maasai  in  dance,  ornamentation  and 
songs."  Although  western  Serengeti  youth  did  not  use  red  ochre  (a  characteristic  sign  of  the 
Maasai  murran)  in  everyday  ornamentation,  young  men  would  put  it  in  their  hair  in  special 
occassions-to  dance,  after  circumcision  or  for  cattle  raids.  When  the  White  Fathers  visited  the 
Ngoreme  in  1 904,  they  described  young  men  wearing  their  hair  in  butter  and  ochre-smeared  plaits 
as  the  Maasai.54  At  the  dances  held  at  the  full-moon  young  people  wore  rows  of  brass  or  wire- 
wrapped  anklets  and  bracelets,  beaded  headgear  and  ear  ornaments.  Mara  peoples  also  pierce  and 
elongate  their  earlobes,  as  did  the  Maasai.  Just  when  they  adopted  this  style  cannot  be  deduced 
from  the  available  evidence.  People  now  think  of  it  as  "traditional."55 

The  cultural  patterns  that  seemed  to  imitate  the  Maasai  were  so  widespread  that  the  early 
explorers  and  colonial  officers  mistook  western  Serengeti  people  to  be  Maasai.  German  explorers' 


52  Annual  Report  1933,  Musoma  District,  Annual  Reports,  Native  Affairs  Section,  Lake 
Province,  215/924/2,  TNA. 

53  Interview  with  Mang'oha  Morigo,  Bugerera,  24  June  1995  (Nata  <?). 

54  "Report  of  a  Trip  in  1904  from  Bukumbi  to  Mwanza,  Kome?  Ukerewe,  Kibara,  Ikoma  - 
Mara  Region,  together  with  some  stories,"  L.  Bourget,  Trip  Diary,  N.p.  n.d.,  1904,  M-SRC54, 
Sukuma  Archives,  Bujora,  Mwanza.  Interview  with  Machota  Sabuni,  Issenye,  14  March  1996 
(Ikoma  <?). 

55  E.  C.  Baker,  "Age-Grades  in  Musoma  District,  Tanganyika  Territory,"  Man  27,  151 
(1927):  223,  reports  that  the  Kuria  abaNgibabe  age  set  initiated  in  1858-62  in  Nyabasi  first  began 
piercing  the  tops  of  their  ears  for  the  insertion  of  small  sticks  as  ornaments.  It  would  be  interesting 
to  know  if  western  Serengeti  use  of  Maasai  ornamentation  differed  slightly  enough,  as  Klumpp  and 
Kratz  show  for  the  Okiek,  that  it  is  a  visual  display  of  both  submission  and  resistance  to  Maasai 
dominance,  Donna  Klumpp  and  Corinne  Kratz,  "Aesthetics,  Expertise,  and  Ethnicity:  Okiek  and 
Maasai  Perspectives  on  Personal  Ornament,"  in  Being  Maasai:  Ethnicity  and  Identity  in  East 
Africa,  eds.  Thomas  Spear  and  Richard  Waller  (Athens:  Ohio  University  Press,  1993),  pp.  195- 
222.  Unfortunately  there  are  few  of  these  ornaments  left  as  they  are  not  currently  in  use. 


474 
Baumann  and  Weiss  both  noted  the  similarity  between  these  peoples  and  the  Maasai  in  dress, 
ornamentation,  ear  piercing,  use  of  snuff  and  weapons.56  Present  day  Kuria  peoples  shown  the 
photos  taken  by  Weiss  of  Kuria  in  1904  could  not  believe  that  these  were  Kuria  ancestors  and  not 
Maasai."    [See  Figures  5-3  and  10-2  for  Weiss  photographs.]  The  encycleopedist  Schnee 
described  all  of  the  Bantu-speaking  peoples  of  the  Mara  Region  as  possessing  Maasai  "blood"  and 
similar  in  many  cultural  aspects.58  Early  German  notes  on  the  "tribes"  of  the  western  Serengeti 
catagorize  Ikoma  and  Nata  as  "lands  of  the  Maasai."59  The  early  map  of  native  caravan  routes 
from  Wakefield  shows  the  whole  region  inhabited  by  the  Maasai  "Lumbwa."60 

Whether  the  western  Serengeti  peoples  also  imitated  the  Maasai  in  cattle  raiding  is  a 
controversial  subject.  Elders  said  that  they  prohibited  cattle  raiding  of  any  kind  in  earlier 
generations.  Those  men  whom  they  knew  as  thieves  would  not  receive  local  hospitality  and 
became  like  outcasts,  without  hope  of  finding  a  woman  to  marry.  Many  people  told  me  that  wealth 
gained  from  theft  was  transient  wealth  that  the  thief  would  squander  and  never  use  to  build  a 
homestead,  the  prescribed  avenue  for  securing  social  respect.61  Elders  lamented  the  break  down  in 
authority  of  seniors  over  juniors  that  led  to  cattle  raiding  by  young  men  in  the  last  century. 
Western  Serengeti  peoples  are  eager  to  distinguish  themselves  from  the  Kuria  to  the  north  and  the 


56  Baumann,  Durch  Masailand.  pp.  57,  196-99,  246;  and  Weiss,  Die  Volkerstamme.  pp. 
244-5. 

57  Kjerland,  "Cattle  Breed,"  p.  123. 

58  Schnee,  Deutsches  Kolonial  Lexikon.  pp.  121,  679,  680-81. 

59  Musoma  District  [Notes  from  Musoma  District  Books  on  local  tribes  and  chieftains,  in 
German  [c.1912?]  Manuscript,  CORY  #348,  EAF,  UDSM. 

60  Wakefield,  "Wakefield's  Notes,"  pp.  303-339;  and  Wakefield,  "Native  Routes,"  pp.  742- 

747. 

61  Interview  with  Morigo  Mchombocho  Nyarobi,  Issenye,  28  October  1995  (Ishenyi  cf). 


475 
Maasai  to  the  east  for  whom  cattle  raiding  is  a  sign  of  manhood  and  a  legitimate  means  for  gaining 
wealth  to  marry.  The  elaborate  rituals  necessary  for  purifying  a  man  who  has  killed  anyone  except 
a  Maasai  in  battle  demonstrate  the  absence  of  a  warrior  ethos. 

It  seems  clear,  however,  that  western  Serengeti  age-sets  imitated  Maasai-style  raids  and 
dressed  up  like  Maasai  to  raid  on  the  lake  during  the  next  generation  of  the  Kihocha,  Kong'ota  and 
Kubhura  (1900-1916).  The  lakes  people,  being  afraid  of  Maasai,  would  not  give  chase  to  the 
raiders.  Many  stories  testify  that  Maasai  warriors  made  alliances  with  western  Serengeti  age-sets 
that  corresponded  to  their  own  (see  Chapter  10).  The  western  Serengeti  youth  would  allow  Maasai 
to  pass  for  raiding  on  the  lake  if  the  Maasai  would  give  them  some  cattle  on  the  return  trip.  These 
alliances  with  the  Maasai  were  short-lived.  One  age-set  would  make  an  alliance  that  the  following 
age-set  would  break..62 

Both  admiration  and  fear  of  the  Maasai  led  western  Serengeti  people  to  embrace  Sonjo 
refugees  who  came  with  the  experiences  of  living  in  closer  proximity  to  the  Maasai  and  in  direct 
conflict  with  the  Lumbwa  over  pastoral  resources.  Narrators  may  have  given  ancestors  from  Sonjo 
precedence  in  the  emergence  stories  because  of  the  vital  role  they  played  in  teaching  western 
Serengeti  people  how  to  cope  with  the  Maasai  threat. 
The  Imitation  of  Maasai  Age-Sets? 

Given  these  common  cultural  understandings  and  the  admiration  of  Maasai,  western 
Serengeti  peoples  might  be  expected  to  reconfigure  their  system  of  age-organization  during  this 
time  of  stress  by  imitating  the  Maasai,  who  had  so  successfully  used  age-set  organization  as  a 
mechanism  for  expansion.  Competition  between  Maasai  age-set  groups  led  to  the  advance  of  one 
group  at  the  expense  of  the  other.  The  combination  of  warrior  villages,  mass  age-set  ceremonies 


62  Interview  with  Machota  Sabuni,  Issenye,  14  March  1996  (Ikoma  a"). 


476 
and  constraints  by  elders  on  marriage  and  livestock  ownership  encourged  raiding  by  the  murran 
and  their  expansion  into  new  areas.63  Age-set  organization,  as  the  Maasai  practiced  it,  offered  a 
way  to  gain  access  to  a  wider  network  of  reciprocity  by  linking  age-mates  across  a  wide  region.64 
As  Galaty  put  it,  age  organization  was  a  framework  for  "creating  a  potent  force  out  of  a  widely 
dispersed  population."65  The  Maasai  system  celebrated  and  gave  a  place  of  honor  to  the  ethos  of 
youthful  prowess  and  aggression  necessary  for  organizing  conflict  and  its  resolution.  The  new  age 
system  was  clearly  appealing  to  young  men  who  admired  Maasai  murranhood  as  way  of  gaining 
respect  in  their  own  communities  dominated  by  elders.66 

In  fact,  many  elders  stated  that  their  saiga  system  was  "just  like  the  Maasai."  They  said 
that  their  age-set  names  and  times  of  initiation  corresponded  with  the  Maasai,  who  opened  a  new 
age-division  every  seven  years.67  The  Ikoma  waited  to  initiate  a  new  saiga  until  the  Maasai  did 
their  ceremony.  Then  the  saiga  ceremonies  would  move  from  east  to  west-Ikoma  to  Ishenyi  to 
Nata.  Maasai  and  Ikoma  or  Nata  warriors  of  the  same  age-set  would  cooperate  in  raids  or  form 
alliances.  The  coordination  of  age-set  rituals  and  naming  from  Maasailand  to  the  lake  is 
astonishing.  Regionally  coordinated  age-sets  were  both  a  means  for  incorporation  of  strangers  and 
a  passport  for  safe  travel  and  hospitality  among  age-mates.  The  ethos  of  age-set  warriors  also 
encouraged  conflict  between  age-sets  of  different  cycles  similar  to  Maasai  practice,  thus 


63  Galaty,  "Maasai  Expansion,"  pp.  82-84. 

64  Spear  and  Waller.  Being  Maasai.  p.  6. 

65  Galaty,  "Maasai  Expansion,"  p.  82. 

66  Ibid,  pp.  81-82. 

67  Interview  with  Morigo  Mchombocho  Nyarobi,  Issenye,  28  September  1995  (Ishenyi  a"). 


477 
reinforcing  the  boundaries  of  age-organization.68  The  word  for  individual  circumcision  sets  that 
would  be  combined  to  make  up  the  large  age-set,  sirili,  is  a  Maasai  loanword.69 

In  reality  however,  the  saiga  age-set  system  that  developed  in  the  second  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  in  response  to  disaster  was  clearly  an  original  western  Serengeti  innovation.  Its 
structure  bears  very  little  resemblance  to  the  Maasai  system,  a  straightforward  linear  age-set 
pattern,  divided  into  the  "right  and  left  hands"  without  cycling  names,™    In  the  western  Serengeti, 
Tatoga  neighbors  practiced  a  non-cycling  generation  system  called  saigeida.  which  suggests  a 
more  likely  source  for  the  Mara  innovation  than  borrowing  it  from  the  Maasai."  The  use  of 
cycling  names  and  sets  based  on  the  principles  of  generation,  with  the  outward  trappings  and 
ideology  of  age-sets,  was  an  innovation  that  both  respected  the  older  values  of  the  generation  and 
recognized  the  need  for  unity  and  mobilization  of  young  men. 

Although  elders  described  the  saiga  as  a  military  device  that  for  the  first  time  grouped  men 
of  a  similar  age  into  organized  units,  little  evidence  exists  to  support  claims  that  the  territorial  age- 
sets  functioned  as  military  regiments.  When  a  raid  took  place  all  available  and  able  men  joined  in 
the  chase.  Tbeyowe  or  alarm  call  is  an  important  institution  even  today  in  which  one  person 
sounds  the  alarm  with  a  particular  shout,  which  is  relayed  progressively  from  homestead  to 


68  Galaty,  "Maasai  Expansion,"  p.  83. 

Ibid,  p.  80.  The  Maasai  word  for  a  local  circumcision  group  isirit  is  also  used  by 
western  Serengeti  peoples,  siriti. 

70  Lamphear  reported  a  similar  change  from  a  generation  to  age-sets  among  the  Turkana, 
to  create  a  more  efficient  system  of  military  mobilization.  Among  the  Turkana  too,  the  Maasai 
system  was  not  accepted  wholecloth  and  many  generational  aspects  of  the  original  system  survived. 
John  Lamphear,  "Aspects  of 'Becoming  Turkana':  Interactions  and  Assimilation  Between  Maa-  and 
Ateker-Speakers,"  in  Being  Maasai:  Identity  and  Ethnicity  in  East  Africa,  eds.  Thomas  Spear  and 
Richard  Waller  (Athens:  Ohio  University  Press,  1994),  pp.  94-95. 

"  Saigeida  is  the  name  used  among  Tatoga  informants  in  the  Mara  region  and  is  also 
reported  for  the  Barabaig  Tatog  by  Wilson,  "The  Tatoga  of  Tanganyika  (Part  II),"  p.  42. 


478 
homestead  until  all  are  alerted.  If  someone  failed  to  answer  theyowe,  no  one  would  help  him  when 
raiders  stole  his  cattle  and  he  was  subject  to  serious  fines.  The  leader  of  the  age-set  was  a  man  of 
peace  rather  than  war  who  hung  back  during  a  battle  and  was  responsible  for  keeping  peace  among 
the  young  men.72  Military  leadership  under  a  powerful  and  unifying  prophet  never  developed  here 
as  it  did  among  the  Maasai,  Nandi  and  Turkana." 

The  western  Serengeti  saiga  did  engage  in  some  activities  that  emphasized  their 
comradeship  and  equality,  as  do  Maasai  age-regiments,  but  never  as  armed  encampments 
mobilized  for  aggression.  Age-mates  might  call  a  risaga,  or  work  party,  for  work  on  the  farm  or  in 
building.  The  Nata  practice  of  n'gombeya  baki  (cow  of  the  young  woman)  is  highly  reminiscent 
of  Maasai  murran  eating  meat  out  in  the  wilderness.  Here  the  saiga  in  power  would  capture  a 
young  woman  of  their  age-set  whom  her  father  could  only  redeem  with  a  cow  for  the  saiga  to  eat 
together.  When  one  of  their  age-mates  died  the  saiga  demanded  a  cow  from  the  family  as  their 
due.  Yet  they  more  commonly  shared  meat  in  inter-generational  groups  with  the  chest  meat  going 
to  the  saiga  and  other  cuts  going  to  each  of  the  other  generations,  rather  than  the  saiga  itself  eating 
the  entire  cow.'4    That  women,  as  wives,  continued  to  be  present  at,  and  crucial  to,  the  important 
saiga  ceremonies  provides  further  evidence  that  the  age-set  system  met  both  the  concern  of  the 
older  generational  system  with  the  fertility  of  the  land  and  the  concern  for  the  mobilization  of 
young  men. 


72  See  Chapter  8  for  description  of  age-  and  generation-set  leaders. 

73  See  Lamphear,  "Aspects  of  Becoming  Turkana",  p.  95-97;  Bob  J.  Walter,  Territorial 
Expansion  of  the  Nandi  of  Kenya.  1500-1905  r  Athens-  Ohio  University  Press,  1970). 

74  Interview  with  Megasa  Mokiri,  Motokeri,  4  March  1995  (Nata  <f);  Mang'oha  Morigo 
Bugerera,  24  June  1995  (Nata  cC). 


479 

The  organization  of  young  men  into  age-sets  and  the  ethos  of  warrior  prowess  also 
facilitated  collective  hunting  and  gathering  activities  in  a  response  to  the  disasters.  Elders  describe 
the  dangerous  journey  of  age-sets  into  the  wilderness  to  gather  arrow  poison  or  to  hunt."  They 
traded  the  products  of  the  wilderness  to  Sukuma  in  exchange  for  food.  The  large-scale 
commercialized  hunting  that  flourished  in  the  period  of  recovery  after  the  disasters  began  as  means 
for  survival  during  the  disasters.  In  the  context  of  reduced  livestock  herds  and  the  failure  of  crops 
due  to  drought,  young  men  contributed  to  the  domestic  economy  by  collective  hunting,  gathering 
and  trading  trips. 

Any  change  in  social  organization  and  settlement  resulted  from  a  struggle  between 
individuals  representing  different  and  conflicting  interests.  Some  have  argued  that  the  Maasai  age- 
system  supported  the  gerontocratic  power  of  senior  men  over  juniors  in  their  control  over  access  to 
women.76  Others  have  seen  the  adoption  of  age-set  organization  as  a  displacement  of  elders' 
centralizing  authority  by  young  men  gaining  power  in  military  activity.77    In  the  western  Serengeti 
the  new  age-cycle  system  offered  young  men  increased  autonomy  from  the  constant  supervision  of 
their  fathers  and  new  channels  for  gaining  respect  and  authority.  Nevertheless,  it  reinforced  the 
power  of  elders  by  widening  their  sphere  of  control,  and,  during  this  period  anyway,  did  not 
ultimately  allow  the  youth  to  realize  their  aspirations  of  autonomy. 

In  times  of  heightened  insecurity,  East  African  women  often  became  more  vulnerable  as 
the  objects  of  slave  raiders  or  captive  wives,  and  thus  more  dependent  on  the  protection  of  men.78 


75  Ibid 

76  Paul  Spencer,  "Becoming  Maasai,  Being  in  Time,"  p.  141. 

77  Lamphear,  "Aspects  of 'Becoming  Turkana,'"  p.94. 

78  See  Marcia  Wright,  Strategies  of  Slave  and  Women:  Life  Stories  from  East  and  Central 
Africa  (New  York:  L.  Barber  Press,  1993). 


480 
The  emphasis  on  an  ethos  of  male  military  strength  included  women  who  were  courageous  in  birth 
but  not  in  a  central  role.79  Women  were  important  as  objects  of  fertility  and  reproduction  in  a  time 
when  survival  was  at  stake,  but  this  did  not  necessarily  enhance  their  position  in  the  community. 
During  this  time  when  men  were  increasingly  mobile  and  boundary  definition  became  more 
important,  women  were  increasingly  confined  to,  and  consequently  came  to  represent,  the  bounded, 
enclosed  home.80  A  situation  in  which  leaving  the  boundaries  of  home  was  dangerous  increasingly 
restricted  women's  movements.  Elders  of  both  sexes  said  that  women  seldom  left  their  home  area 
except  if  escorted  by  men.  I  found  no  evidence,  as  in  Kuria  or  Kikuyu,  of  women  as  traders  during 
this  period  of  insecurity."  Although  the  move  of  sons  away  from  their  fathers'  territory  may  have 
allowed  women  to  settle  nearer  to  their  natal  kin,  it  may  equally  have  deprived  them  of  their 
mother-in-law  as  an  ally  among  strangers.  The  changes  of  this  period  do  not  seem  to  be  in  the 
interests  of  women,  although  it  may  have  given  them  the  opportunity  to  gain  closer  control  over  the 
day-to-day  management  of  local  community  relations,  while  men  focused  their  minds  outside  the 
community. 

Age-set  Territories:  The  Bounded  Space  of  Saiga 
The  most  dramatic  social  change  brought  about  by  the  transformation  of  age-set  structure 
was  the  territorialization  of  age-sets.  Up  to  this  time,  western  Serengeti  people  organized  their 
settlements  around  the  idiom  of  kinship  and  defined  territories  as  clan  land.  With  the  advent  of 
age-set  territories,  the  lineage  principle  was  not  negated  but  rather  used  in  a  different  way.  Now 


79  Interviews  with  Baginyi  Mutani  and  Mayenye  Nyabunga,  Sanzate,  8  September  1995 
(Ikizu  ?).  Women  who  have  been  courageous  in  birth  are  allowed  to  dance  in  the  aghaso  for  lion 
killers,  this  is  also  noted  for  Tatoga. 

80  See  Boddy,  Wombs  and  Alien  Spirits,  pp.  39,  1 09,  the  village  and  interior  space 
represented  as  female. 

81  Tobisson,  Family  Dynamics,  p.  89;  Hay,  "Local  Trade  and  Ethnicity,"  pp.  7-12. 


4X1 
lineages  became  the  means  for  linking  three  territorial  age-sets  into  a  cycle  which  defined  the  ethnic 
groups  of  Nata,  Ikoma  or  Ishenyi. 

What  made  this  reorganization  of  age-sets  so  important  for  the  transformation  of  social 
identity  was  that  it  corresponded  to  a  different  way  of  organizing  space.  The  core  spatial  images  in 
these  stories  of  nineteenth  century  transformation  are  those  of  enclosure  and  boundary  formation 
similar  to  that  of  the  rituals  to  "cool  the  land"  described  in  the  last  chapter.  Age-sets  rather  than 
clans  became  the  basis  for  organizing  settlements  into  enclosed  territories.  In  a  situation  of 
extreme  societal  stress,  communities  sought  to  protect  themselves  by  emphasizing  the  older 
concepts  of  enclosure  and  boundaries.  Yet  they  had  to  enclose  new  kinds  of  units  to  assure 
survival.  With  the  disintegration  of  the  regional  system  of  economic  interdependence  with  Asi 
hunters  and  Tatoga  herders,  clan  territories  were  too  small  to  ensure  economic  viability.  In 
addition  lineage-based  communities  were  far  too  exclusive  in  a  situation  that  demanded  regional 
networks  of  security  and  exchange.  Similarly,  Peter  Rigby  reports  for  the  Gogo  in  central 
Tanzania  that,  "it  only  requires  a  drought  or  famine  to  cause  the  complete  disintegration  of  the  old 
agnatic  groups  in  terms  of  residence."82  The  ritual  enclosure  of  the  age-set  territory  provided  both 
a  larger-scale  community  that  unified  lineage-based  clans  and  made  connections  with  age-sets 
region  wide. 

The  most  important  effect  of  the  territorial  move  to  age-set  settlement  was  to  cut  across  the 
ties  of  lineage  and  clan.  People  could  now  find  within  each  saiga  territory  all  of  the  clans  and 
lineages  that  had  previously  lived  in  separate  settlements.  Lineage  ceased  to  be  the  most  important 
idiom  for  residential  social  organization.    Juhani  Koponen  describes  the  common  experience  across 
German  East  Africa  of  a  slow  movement  away  from  lineage-based  settlements  in  stages,  ending  in 


1  Rigby,  Cattle  and  Kinship,  p.  148. 


482 
the  dispersal  of  fortified  settlements  in  the  colonial  period.  This  led  not  only  to  the  eventual 
dispersion  of  settlements  but  also  to  the  formation  of  settlements  on  other  principles  besides 
lineage-based  descent.83  David  W.  Cohen  and  Atieno  Odhiambo's  study  of  fortified  settlements  in 
western  Kenya  brings  into  question  the  earlier  assumption  of  lineage-based  settlements  by  showing 
that  their  inhabitants  were  related  by  strategic  alliances.84 
The  Development  of  Age-set  Territories 

Another  way  to  understand  these  larger  processes  is  that  lineage  was  now  used  as  the 
linkage  points  for  expanding  the  scope  of  affiliation  to  wider  ethnic  groupings,  based  on  settlement 
in  age-cycle  territories,  rather  than  organizing  individual  settlements.  According  to  the  testimony 
of  elders,  the  primary  response  to  raids  was  to  territorialize  age-sets.  Yet  elders  described  these 
changes  as  a  defense  mechanism  for  the  survival  of  a  lineage  rather  than  as  offensive  age-regiments 
equipped  for  battle.  In  order  for  a  man  not  to  lose  all  of  his  sons  in  one  raid  he  divided  them  out 
among  the  three  territorially  based  age-set  cycles.85    He  initiated  a  younger  son  into  a  different 
age-cycle  than  his  older  brother,  rather  than  waiting  another  sixteen  years  for  the  next  initiation  to 
come  around  in  his  home  territory.  This  allowed  each  son  to  enter  his  saiga  with  his  own  age- 
cohort,  when  he  was  most  fit  for  battle. 

Many  elders  confirmed  that  the  saiga  system  was  not  a  response  to  raids  but  to  the 
increased  need  for  wider  and  more  secure  networks  of  reciprocity.  A  father  dispersed  his  sons 
among  each  of  the  age-cycle  territories  so  that  the  family  would  always  have  a  place  of  refuge  and 
expanded  sources  of  information.  Other  elders  said  that  the  purpose  of  dividing  out  your  sons  to 


83  Koponen,  Development  for  Exploitation,  pp.  650-652. 

84  Cohen  and  Odhiambo,  Siava.  pp.  12-15. 

85  Interviews  with  Nyambeho  Marangini,  Issenye,  7  September  1995  (Ishenyief);  Philipo 
Haimati,  Iramba,  1 5  September  1 995  (Ngoreme  cC). 


483 
the  various  territories  was  to  maintain  peace  within  the  "tribe"  by  keeping  the  age-sets  from 
fighting  each  other.86 

Division  into  age-cycle  territories  was  a  response  to  adversity  by  spreading  out  risks,  as 
insurance  against  bad  times.  Because  drought  tended  to  be  localized,  crops  might  fail  in  one  area 
while  neighboring  areas  enjoyed  an  abundant  harvest.  Those  who  planted  on  the  black  cotton  soils 
of  the  plains  would  harvest  well  in  a  drier  season,  while  those  on  the  sandy  soils  of  the  hills  might 
lose  their  crop.  Elders  described  the  territorial  saiga  divisions  in  Nata  as  containing  different 
ecologies  and  subsistence  strategies-Busaai  in  the  hills  as  farmers  and  herders,  Bongirate  on  the 
plains  as  herders  and  hunters,  Borumarancha  in  the  bush  as  hunters  and  farmers.87  The  age-cycle 
territories  allowed  for  the  reformulation  of  an  interdependent  economy  of  survival  that  the  events  of 
the  disasters  had  destroyed. 

In  earlier  times,  western  Serengeti  farmers  who  lived  in  hill  settlements,  relied  on  Asi 
hunters  in  the  woodlands  and  Tatoga  herders  on  the  grasslands  as  their  insurance  against  bad 
times.  However,  as  the  Maasai  gained  dominance  in  the  region,  the  Asi  increasingly  entered  into 
client  relations  with  the  Maasai  and  moved  further  east  toward  what  is  now  Loliondo.88  The 
Tatoga  herders  came  under  more  pressure  than  the  farmers  from  Maasai  raids  since  they  were  in 
direct  competition  with  the  Maasai  for  pastoral  resources.  The  disasters  also  significantly  reshaped 


86  Interviews  with  Morigo  Mchombocho  Nyarobi,  Issenye,  28  September  1995  (Ishenyi 
cC);  Mwita  Magige,  Mosongo,  9  September  1 995  (Ngoreme  a"). 

87  Interview  with  Nyamaganda  Magoto,  Bugerera,  3  March  1 995  (Nata  a"). 

88  Geographical  Section,  A  Handbook  of  German  East  Africa,  pp.  98-99,  state  that  "during 
the  great  migration  of  the  Masai,  the  Wandorobbo  were  either  driven  out  or  forced  to  submit." 
They  differentiate  between  Ndorobo  that  speak  a  Maasai  language  and  those  in  the  Serengeti  who 
speak  a  different  language  for  which  the  "Washashi  in  Ikoma"  act  as  interpreters.  This  implies  a 
longterm  relationship  between  Ikoma  and  these  hunter/gatherers  who  had  only  recently  become 
clients  of  the  Maasai. 


484 
Tatoga  historical  consciousness.  One  Tatoga  elder  divided  his  list  of  generations  into  those  of  the 
founding  prophets  and  those  beginning  with  the  "great  hunger."  In  the  Ngorongoro  Crater  the 
Maasai  defeated  the  Bajuta  Tatoga  and  took  possession  of  the  Crater  around  mid-century.    Tatoga 
elders  tell  stories  of  how  the  great  prophet  Saigilo  warned  them  three  times  to  leave  the  region  until 
the  Maasai,  famine  and  disease  soundly  defeated  them  and  they  finally  followed  the  prophet  south 
to  Nyamwezi.    This  must  have  happened  just  prior  to  the  colonial  period  since  the  Germans  killed 
Saigilo's  son  Mahusa  in  Hanang'  among  the  Barabaig  Tatoga.89  Without  significant  populations  of 
either  Asi  hunters  or  Tatoga  herders  during  the  disasters,  the  less  mobile  farmers  were  left  to  work 
out  a  new  system  of  economic  survival  on  their  own. 
The  Development  of  Larger  Scale  Territorial  Identities 

When  lineage  ceased  to  be  the  basis  for  settlement,  saiga,  or  age-organization  became  the 
dominant  form  of  social  organization.  Many  settlements  of  this  period  included  both  Nata  and 
Ishenyi  of  the  same  saiga.  When  western  Serengeti  people  returned  from  Sukuma  after  the  famine 
Ishenyi  and  Nata  of  the  Busaai  cycle  settled  at  Nagusi,  while  Sibora  was  a  settlement  of  the 
Bongirate  from  all  ethnic  groups.  The  Germans  assigned  separate  "tribal"  chiefs  to  age-cycle 
territories  in  both  Ngoreme  and  Ishenyi  that  carried  over  into  the  British  period.  Some  elders  assert 
that  people  were  more  loyal  to  age-cycle  than  to  "tribe,"  getting  along  better  and  living  nearer  to 
people  of  the  same  age-cycle  than  to  others  of  their  own  ethnic  group  in  other  age-cycles.90 


89  Interviews  with  Stephen  Gojat  Gishageta  and  Girimanda  Mwarhisha  Gishageta,  Issenye, 
27  July  1995;  Gilumughera  Gwiyeya  and  Girihoida  Masaona,  Issenye,  28  July  1995  (Tatoga  tf); 
Marunde  Godi,  Manawa,  24  February  1 996  (Isamajega  <?).  For  a  popular  written  account 
recommended  to  me  by  Tatoga  elders,  see  Institute  for  Swahili  Research,  Zamani  Moaka  Siku  pp 
44-46. 

90  Explicitly  stated  in  interview  with  Rugayonga  Nyamohega,  Mugeta,  27  October  1995 
(Ishenyi  d"). 


485 

Placing  the  age-set  territories  on  a  map  shows  this  overlapping  of  ethnic  groups  by  age- 
cycle.  [See  Figure  9-5:  Map  of  Age-set  Cycles].  Nata,  Ishenyi,  and  to  a  lesser  extent  Ikoma, 
share  parts  of  the  same  age-cycle  territories.  Shall  we  then  conclude  that  the  separation  of  the 
age-cycles  into  "tribes"  was  only  an  innovation  of  the  colonial  period?  If  people  lived  together  as 
one  saiga  before  the  colonial  period  perhaps  they  had  no  sense  of  ethnic  identity.  However, 
evidence  supports  the  supposition  that  a  sense  of  ethnicity  was  developing  as  the  unity  of  Nata 
Busaai,  Bongirate  and  Borumarancha  as  opposed  to  Ishenyi  Busaai,  Bongirate  and  Borumarancha 
out  of  this  reformulation  of  age-sets  into  territories. 

Informants  described  this  change  as  "a  father  dividing  out  his  sons."  Their  use  of  the 
descent  idiom  is  crucial  to  my  interpretation  of  this  process.  If  a  man  had  "sons"  in  other 
territories,  he  would  still  be  responsible  for  participating  in  the  rituals  of  their  initiation  and  saiga 
ceremonies  outside  his  home  settlement,  ekyaro.  One  important  definition  of  social  identity  is  those 
who  do  ritual  together.  If  the  previous  ritual  community  had  been  the  local  lineage-based 
community,  then  the  saiga  system  would  have  expanded  the  ritual  community  to  all  three  age-cycle 
territories,  by  requiring  "fathers"  to  participate  in  the  rituals  of  their  "sons"  in  other  territories.  The 
multiple  relationships  of  many  fathers  and  their  sons  became  the  glue  that  held  together  these 
separate  territories  as  one  emerging  ethnic  group. 

Saiga  could  not  replace  the  primary  relationships  of  lineage  and  clan  that  were  tied  up  with 
issues  of  marriage,  property  and  inheritance."  Many  elders  described  the  saiga  as  a  "club"  of 
young  men  for  the  display  of  their  pride,  with  little  influence  on  the  issues  of  daily  life.  If  families 
still  worked  out  their  property  relations  through  the  patrilineage  then  sons  would  still  be  responsible 
to  "fathers"  in  other  territories.  The  division  of  "sons"  into  different  territories  was  thus  a  way  of 


"  See  Baxter  and  Almagor,  Age.  Generation  and  Time,  pp.  9-10. 


486 


Age-Cycle  Territories  (Saiga) 

c.1870-1895 
The  Generation  of  Disasters 


')    ^ 


Key 

*  Nat3  Burumarancha 

-  Ishenyt         f  ] 

Ikoma 


Busaai        Bongirate 


Bwanda 

•  Nyeberekera     r  S^S^- 

m 


Peter  Shetler  

Dove  Creek  Information  Services  k^-»^^-%^-» -*,■%-*  ^i.  ■*,■»,  *■».■%■».'*] 

IDRISI.  Adobe  Photoshop  and  Macromedia  Freehand  3Q  ^jd 


Figure  9-5:  Map  of  Age-Set  Cycles 


487 
expanding  the  influence  of  fathers.  For  example,  "sons"  in  Bongirate  would  not  raid  their 
"brothers"  in  Busaai,  and  they  would  be  responsible  for  feeding  their  "fathers"  in  Borumarancha. 

Yet  how  did  separate  Nata  or  Ishenyi  or  Ikoma  age-cycles  develop?  One  can  imagine  the 
scene  described  by  elders  when  these  new  age-set  "associations,"  offering  a  more  powerful  form  of 
cooperation  and  pride  for  young  men,  began  to  recruit  throughout  the  area  rather  than  in  their  own 
lineage-based  lands.  Young  men  ready  for  initiation  may  have  asked  their  fathers  to  allow  them  to 
go  there  and  join  the  new  fraternity,  participate  in  the  excitement  of  murranhood.  Fathers, 
beleaguered  by  crop  loss,  disease,  raids  and  loss  of  children  may  have  seen  the  benefits  of  tapping 
into  other  networks  and  sent  their  precious  remaining  sons  away,  gambling  on  their  survival.  If  the 
sons  wanted  to  join  the  Ngirate  association,  forming  in  various  places  of  the  region  in  the  same 
year,  they  would  have  chosen  the  one  nearest  and  most  accessible  to  their  homes.  This  in  turn 
would  have  facilitated  tighter  associations  between  people  of  previously  separate  and  only  loosely 
connected  settlements  within  the  area.  Over  time  these  multiple  connections  of  lineage-based 
relationship  would  have  knit  together  these  territories  into  the  enclosed  space  of  ethnicity. 

Neighboring  settlements  that  began  to  associate  with  each  other  by  their  participation  in 
the  same  saiga  groups  defined  their  boundaries  by  physical  features  of  the  land-rivers,  hills, 
impenetrable  wilderness  or  open  plains.  Thus  the  Ikoma,  Nata  and  Ngoreme  age-sets  used  the 
older  definition  of  territorial  boundaries  in  terms  of  the  division  between  civilization  and  wilderness 
to  form  new  kinds  of  units.  People  could  reach  each  of  the  age-cycle  territories  of  one  ethnic  group 
within  a  day's  walk,  without  crossing  open  areas  of  wilderness,  fording  rivers,  or  crossing 
mountains.  Age-cycle  territories  were  limited  in  size  depending  on  the  ability  of  fathers  to  attend 
the  rituals  of  their  sons.  We  can  envision  the  united  age-cycle  territories  of  Nata,  Ikoma  and  the 
former  Ishenyi  at  Nyigoti  as  separate  islands  of  hills  in  a  sea  of  open  plains  and  woodlands.  Early 
German  maps  identify  the  extensive  wilderness  between  Nata  and  Ngoreme  as  the  wilderness  of  the 


488 
Ndorobo  hunters.  This  ecological  boundary  helps  to  explain  the  larger  dialectical  language 
differences  between  Ngoreme  and  other  South  Mara  languages.92    After  the  Ishenyi  returned  from 
Sukuma,  they  settled  among  the  Nata,  in  territories  of  their  own  age-set  cycle,  receiving  their 
welcome  as  age-mates.  Yet  the  Ishenyi  maintained  a  sense  of  their  own  identity  as  refugees  from 
Nyeberekera  and  carved  out  their  own  age-cycle  territories.  They  continued  to  do  their  rituals 
separately  although  living  near  their  Nata  age-mates. 

As  the  age-sets  began  settling  together,  the  age-cycle  names  took  on  the  locational  prefix  - 
"bu,"  thus  producing  Busaai,  Bongirate,  Borumarancha.  Because  the  age-set,  rather  than  the 
lineage,  was  now  territorially  based,  it  had  to  take  over  responsibility  for  maintenance  of  the 
relationship  to  the  land,  just  as  the  generation-sets  had  done  before.  The  saiga  territories  rather 
than  the  lineage-based  hamate  now  became  known  as  the  ekyaro,  or  the  "land,"  carrying  the  sense 
of  ritual  control  over  the  land.  During  this  period  people  still  closely  identified  the  lineage  with  a 
particular  cluster  of  homesteads  within  the  ekyaro,  perhaps  now  represented  by  a  fortified 
settlement.93  Yet  for  the  first  time  people  also  began  to  identify  the  united  age-set  cycle  territories 
with  the  ekyaro  or  the  "land."  A  sense  of  larger-scale  ethnicity  began  to  emerge  out  of  the  saiga 
settlements  of  the  late  nineteenth  century. 

Ethnic  identity  developed  as  the  age-set  began  to  take  responsibility  for  maintaining  a 
ritual  relationship  with  the  land  in  the  larger  territory  of  the  three  cycling  age-sets.  As  an  Ishenyi 
elder  described  it,  those  in  their  saiga  were  responsible  for  the  health  of  the  land  in  all  three  of  the 
age-cycle  territories  within  their  own  ethnic  group.  It  was  up  to  the  abachama  (age-set  leaders)  to 


92  Refer  to  dialect  chaining  map  in  Chapter  4.  See  Chapter  8  for  more  indepth  discussion 
of  ecological  boundaries. 

93  Many  elders  in  the  eastern  areas  refer  to  the  saiga  cycle  as  the  ekyaro.  In  particular  the 
explicit  testimony  of  Mang'ombe  Morimi,  Issenye  Iharara,  26  August  1995  (Ishenyi  cf). 


489 
perform  the  rituals  for  protection  of  the  land  from  raids  or  disease,  to  spread  the  medicine  of 
rainmaking  and  to  consult  a  prophet  when  necessary.  In  the  same  way  that  the  rikora  or 
generation-set  carried  out  these  rituals  for  the  ekyaro  of  the  lineage  or  clan-based  hamate,  the 
saiga  now  began  to  perform  them  for  all  three  age-cycles  that  made  up  the  emerging  ethnic  group, 
or  the  ekyaro.'"  The  "rule"  of  the  saiga  has  more  meaning  as  ritual  responsibility  for  the  health  of 
the  land  and  its  people  than  for  war.  The  role  of  the  saiga  was  to  protect  the  community  but  that 
more  often  involved  taking  up  the  medicines  for  "cooling  the  land"  rather  than  taking  up  the 
weapons  of  war.95  The  ability  of  the  saiga  to  "encircle  the  land"  in  ritual  protection  constrained  the 
spatial  limits  of  the  emerging  ethnic  territory. 

According  to  Frederick  Barth,  ethnicity  serves  to  monitor  access  to  critical  resources.  This 
observation  explains  the  formation  of  saiga  territories  grouped  into  ethnic  units.  Saiga  territories 
ensured  permanent  access  to  a  wider  range  of  resources  than  was  previously  possible.  The 
disasters  threatened  the  survival  of  those  who  were  isolated.96  That  western  Serengeti  people  used 
the  idiom  of  age-sets  to  accomplish  this  is  not  surprising,  given  the  cultural  dominance  and 
admiration  of  the  Maasai  during  this  period.  Saiga  territories  were  a  way  of  widening  support  and 
protection  as  an  assurance  against  hunger,  a  means  of  reasserting  ritual  control  over  the  land  and 
gaining  access  to  resources,  including  information  crucial  to  survival  in  times  of  crisis.  It  linked  a 
variety  of  diverse  settlements  into  larger  territorial  groupings  by  spreading  out  the  members  of  any 
one  lineage,  while  maintaining  their  responsibilities  to  each  other.  Because  of  the  extent  and 


94  Interview  with  Morigo  Mchombocho  Nyarobi,  Issenye,  28  September  1 995  (Ishenyi  &). 

95  Interview  with  Mashauri  Ng'ana,  Issenye,  2  November  1995  (Ishenyi  cf)  says  this  most 
explicitly  as  the  "rule"  or  utawala,  in  Kiswahili,  of  the  saiga  being  their  responsibility  for  the 
uganga,  or  healing,  needed  for  the  land. 

96  Barth,  Ethnic  Groups  and  Boundaries,  pp.  18-19. 


490 
severity  of  the  disasters  people  had  to  begin  looking  beyond  their  settlements  and  closely  defined 
"land"  (ekyaro)  for  security.  The  networks  of  patronage  and  prophecy  that  previously  existed 
between  individual  settlements  were  not  enough  to  ensure  survival.  The  only  sure  method  of 
gaining  support  over  a  wider  region  was  to  construct  dense  networks  of  relationship  held  together 
by  the  loyalty  of  "sons"  who  could  not  betray  their  "fathers."  Western  Serengeti  people  seamlessly 
expanded  the  concept  of  ekyaro  from  the  lineage-based  settlement  to  include  the  ethnic  territory  in 
the  late  nineteenth  century. 

Because  western  Serengeti  people  formed  a  sense  of  ethnicity  within  the  cradle  of  age 
organization,  they  provided  it  from  its  inception  with  regional  ties  that  transcended  ethnic  identity. 
Age-set  identity  facilitated  all  kinds  of  regional  interaction  and  trade  only  realized  by  the  sons  of 
this  "generation  of  disasters."  I  have  called  theirs  "the  generation  of  opportunity,"  although  raiding 
and  famine  actually  increased.  This  generation  was  able  to  make  opportunity  out  of  disaster  by 
using  these  newly  formed  regional  networks  to  their  advantage. 

The  sense  of  ethnicity  that  evolved  out  of  the  space  of  age-cycle  territories  was  quite 
different  either  from  colonial  ideas  about  "tribe"  or  present-day  definitions  of  ethnicity.  The  map 
of  age-cycles  grouped  into  ethnic  units  is  still  a  long  way  from  the  colonial  "tribal"  map  shown  in 
Chapter  2.  Yet  it  was  these  units,  conceived  on  a  very  different  basis,  that  the  colonial  experience 
molded  into  "tribes"  and  which  continue  to  have  meaning  today.  These  older  ideas  about  ethnicity, 
connected  to  the  spreading  of  risk  and  the  ritual  health  of  the  land,  are  still  current  a  century  later. 
Continuities  in  Strategies  for  Coping  with  Disaster 

Western  Serengeti  peoples  developed  strategies  for  coping  with  the  disasters  which 
included  diversifying  and  spreading  out  their  resources.  Narrators  express  this  strategy  through  the 
idiom  of  a  father  dividing  out  his  sons  to  different  age-set  territories  so  that  the  lineage  would 
survive  the  disasters.  A  colonial  story  of  drought  and  famine  in  Ikoma,  Ishenyi  and  Nata  illustrates 


491 
the  continuity  of  coping  strategies  in  the  western  Serengeti.  In  1934  the  District  Officer  of 
Musoma  reported  the  bad  behavior  of  the  chiefs  of  Ikoma,  Nata  and  Ishenyi,  who  had  refused  to 
lift  a  hand  to  alleviate  famine  conditions  in  their  chiefdoms  despite  continual  agitation  from 
Musoma  since  1 93 1 .  Not  only  had  these  chiefs  failed  to  report  famine  conditions  and  to  initiate  the 
district  level  cassava  planting  campaign  but  they  had  actively  opposed  and  disobeyed  the  District 
authorities  who  came  to  carry  out  famine  relief.  Chief  Sarota  wrote  to  the  office  to  ask  for  eleusine 
millet  seeds  when  the  colonial  officers  had  ordered  him  to  plant  cassava  and  sweet  potatoes.  The 
chiefs  even  resisted  road  improvement  schemes  in  which  the  government  would  pay  labor  in  food. 
To  prevent  the  recurrence  of  food  shortages  the  authorities  fined  the  chiefs  for  their  neglect." 
In  fact,  this  famine  occurred  as  a  localized  drought  when  other  areas  in  the  Musoma 
District  experienced  good  harvests.  The  Ikoma  area  was  recovering  from  locust  and  drought  a  few 
years  earlier.  Other  chiefs,  especially  the  "modernizing"  Chief  Makongoro  of  neighboring  Ikizu, 
had  responded  to  the  cassava  planting  campaigns  and  had  a  plentiful  supply  of  food.  Nata,  Ishenyi 
and  Ikoma  peoples  had  already  established  extensive  ties  of  reciprocity  in  Ikizu  that  would  have 
allowed  them  to  find  food  through  ties  of  friendship  and  patronage  (kohema).  When  the 
government  offered  free  grain  in  Musoma  for  those  who  came  and  got  it,  the  District  Officer 
reported  that  people  "prefer  to  barter  with  their  livestock  for  grain  from  neighboring  chiefdoms" 
rather  than  come  the  distance  to  Musoma.  The  only  solution  to  the  famine  that  the  chiefs  offered 
was  that  the  District  should  supply  sacks  of  food  for  them  to  distribute.  Yet  people  resisted 
increasing  the  patronage  of  the  chief  and  the  District  Officer  by  this  method  and  preferred  their 
own  more  personally  controlled  relationships  of  reciprocity.  All  of  the  reports  noted  that  the 
officers  in  charge  detected  little  anxiety  about  food  in  these  chiefdoms.  People  seemed  to  be 


97  A.  Sillery,  Acting  D.O.,  Musoma  District,  to  P.C.,  Lake  Province,  22  February  1934, 
Native  Authorities,  Musoma  District,  1934,  Lake  Province  Files,  215/1027,  TNA. 


492 
finding  their  own  ways  of  coping,  outside  the  authority  of  chiefs.  The  experience  of  deeply 
resented  cattle  quarantines  during  the  rinderpest  epizootic  of  the  late  twenties  undoubtedly 
heightened  resistance  to  government  solutions.98  This  was  also  the  time  when  Magoto  left  Nata  for 
Ikizu  with  his  large  and  diverse  following  of  people.99 

Although  the  District  Officer  attributed  cassava  planting  resistance  to  "laziness,"  one 
might  better  connect  it  to  basic  patterns  of  the  household  economy  developed  during  the  generation 
of  disasters.  The  report  stated  that  young  men  refused  to  plant  cassava  because,  "the  old  custom  of 
the  women  to  the  field  and  the  men  to  the  chase  still  holds  sway  in  Ikoma."  People  increasingly 
relied  on  the  plentiful  wild  game  for  meat  during  the  hunger-"the  youth  spend  all  their  time  in 
hunting,  spreading  sleeping  sickness,  which  threatens  the  very  existence  of  the  tribe."100  Although 
farming  was  clearly  the  occupation  of  both  men  and  women,  the  disasters  of  the  last  century 
encouraged  the  increasing  mobility  of  men  outside  homes  and  fields.  Men  traveled  to  neighboring 
areas  for  food,  gathered  arrow  poison  and  hunted  in  the  wilderness,  and  took  extensive  trade 
journeys  to  Sukuma.  Both  the  large  numbers  of  goats,  sheep  and  cattle  reported  for  the  district  and 
the  game  products  of  the  hunt  demonstrate  that  plentiful  resources  were  available  for  regional 
trade. 

Although  the  conclusions  of  the  colonial  officers  were  based  on  the  assumption  of  isolated 
and  economically  self-sufficient  communities,  people  were  obviously  spreading  their  risks  over  a 


98  District  Veterinary  Officer,  Monthly  Report  for  June  1 927,  July  1 927,  1 926-29, 
Provincial  Administration,  Lake  Province,  215/P.C./1/7,  TNA. 

99  See  Chapter  7  for  story  of  Magoto. 

100  From  District  Officer,  Musoma,  C.  McMahon,  to  Provincial  Commissioner,  Lake 
Province,  27  July  1933  (p.  266)  and  District  Officer,  Musoma  to  Provincial  Commissioner,  Lake 
Province,  21  Oct  1933,  Shortage  of  Foodstuffs,  Famine  Relief,  1932-33,  Lake  Province  Files 
13252,  TNA. 


493 

larger  regional  economy.  As  the  District  Reports  attest,  planting  cassava  meant  restricting  young 
men  to  their  homesteads  and  work  in  the  fields.  In  a  situation  of  limited  domestic  labor,  keeping 
young  men  involved  in  regional  interactions  rather  than  putting  all  their  hopes  for  survival  in  the 
fields  at  home  may  have  been  more  prudent.  While  the  colonial  administration  interpreted  the 
Ikoma  drought  as  an  endemic  semi-famine  condition  of  inadequate  rainfall,  people  had  designed 
local  economic  strategies  to  cope  with  life  in  a  marginal  land.101 

Peoples  of  the  western  Serengeti  responded  to  adversity  in  the  late  nineteenth  century  by 
using  the  principle  of  spreading  their  risks— literally  spreading  out  their  sons.  They  employed  this 
same  principle  in  the  colonial  years  and  continue  to  use  it  today.  This  is  also  a  difficult  time 
economically.  People  look  back  to  the  time  of  their  fathers  when  livestock  herds  measured  in  the 
hundreds  or  even  thousands.  Today  men  are  lucky  to  measure  their  herds  in  the  tens.  Fortunes 
rise  and  fall  and  yet  the  sense  of  increasing  poverty  is  unmistakable.  Once  again  homestead  heads 
see  their  children  as  the  means  by  which  they  can  overcome  these  problems. 

My  host  in  Nata  had  three  daughters  and  one  son.  His  14-year-old  daughter  was  going  to 
school  in  Kibara,  near  the  lake,  and  living  with  his  sister  who  was  married  to  a  school  teacher 
there.  His  1 2-year-old  daughter  was  going  to  school  near  Mwanza  and  staying  with  the  son  of  an 
adopted  "sister-in-law."  His  8-year-old  daughter  was  staying  nearby  in  Mbiso  with  a  sister  to  go 
to  school  and  he  recently  sent  off  his  five-year-old  son  to  Mwanza  to  live  with  another  sister  and 
begin  school.  Other  brothers  in  his  family  used  various  means  to  get  education  for  their  children  or 
set  them  up  in  business  through  extensive  networks  of  political  patronage,  friendship  and  church 
affiliation.  The  "age-set  associations"  that  attract  youth  today,  both  men  and  women,  are  boarding 


101  Various  letters  and  reports  from  District  Office,  Musoma,  to  Provincial  Officer,  Lake 
Province,  Shortage  of  Foodstuffs,  Famine  Relief,  1 932-33,  Lake  Province  Files  1 3252,  TNA. 


494 
schools  spread  throughout  the  nation.  The  memories  of  the  "generation  of  disasters"  are  still  useful 
in  the  coping  strategies  necessary  to  survive  in  a  marginal  land  and  in  times  of  stress. 

Conclusion 

This  chapter  has  shown  how  people  responded  to  the  onset  of  a  series  of  widespread 
disasters  by  drawing  on  generative  principles  of  social  organization  from  the  past.  The  need  for 
protection  in  the  face  of  danger  encouraged  people  to  emphasize  the  core  spatial  images  of 
boundary  formation  and  encirclement.  Yet  the  pathways  of  clan  knowledge  and  the  connections  of 
patronage  between  settlements  were  also  necessary  for  seeking  refuge  in  times  of  trouble.  Because 
of  their  contact  with  the  Maasai,  both  in  raiding  and  in  peaceful  exchange,  western  Serengeti 
people  began  to  form  age-sets  on  the  basis  of  the  previous  pattern  of  generation-sets,  to  mobilize 
young  men  for  raiding.  The  change  in  age-sets  brought  about  far  reaching  changes  in  the  way  that 
people  calculated  time  and  in  the  way  that  they  organized  settlements.  The  discontinuities  were  so 
abrupt  that  the  history  of  self-conscious  ethnic  groups  begins  with  the  period  of  disasters. 

As  the  older  economic  system  of  interaction  between  farmers,  herders  and  hunters  fell 
apart  in  this  era,  farming  communities  found  ways  of  reconstituting  this  system  within  the 
expanded  scope  of  age-cycle  territories.  Each  age-cycle  territory  was  located  in  an  area  of 
different  ecological  and  economic  possibilities.  By  combining  three  of  these  territories  into  an 
ethnic  group,  fathers  were  able  to  spread  out  their  sons,  and  their  risks,  among  diverse 
communities.  Given  the  uncertainty  of  the  times,  settlements  were  no  longer  organized  by  lineage 
or  clan;  a  family's  survival  depended  upon  spreading  out  rather  than  concentrating.  The  regional 
networks  of  affiliation  provided  by  common  age-sets  gradually  replaced  clan  networks  as  devices 
for  crossing  social  boundaries.  The  next  chapter  shows  how  the  ethnic  identities  constituted  by  the 
ritual  unification  of  age-set  cycle  territories  became  "tribes"  in  the  early  colonial  period. 


CHAPTER  TEN 

THE  GENERATION  OF  OPPORTUNITY  (C.  1895-1920): 

CHANGING  FORMS  OF  ETHNICITY 

The  period  after  the  rinderpest  panzootic  and  the  great  "Famine  of  the  Feet"  was  a  period 
of  recovery  in  which  western  Serengeti  people  not  only  survived  the  disasters  but  prospered.  They 
prospered  by  enlarging  the  scale  and  intensity  of  activities  in  which  they  had  previously  engaged. 
Collective  hunting  groups  that  developed  during  the  famine  years  to  harvest  wildebeest  tails  or 
arrow  poison  for  trade  in  Sukuma  transformed  hunting  into  a  commercialized  activity  during  the 
"generation  of  opportunity."  Through  this  trade  young  men  rapidly  accumulated  cattle  wealth  on  a 
scale  previously  unknown  in  the  region.  Age-set  groups  mobilized  for  collective  action  began  to 
raid  on  the  lakeshore  by  imitating  Maasai  warriors  and  gained  additional  cattle  wealth.  Increased 
wealth  led  to  the  emergence  of  a  new  kind  of  wealthy  man. 

The  last  chapter  ended  with  the  formation  among  the  easternmost  groups  of  Nata,  Ishenyi. 
Ikoma  and  Ngoreme  of  age-set  cycle  territories  that  began  developing  into  a  larger  scale  ethnic 
identity  as  a  result  of  the  need  for  enclosure  and  boundary  formation  during  the  disasters. 
Western  Serengeti  people  turned  territories  defined  by  age-set  cycle,  clan  or  the  rule  of  a  rainmaker 
"chief  into  ethnic  groups  that  could  be  defined  as  "tribal."  Ethnicity  took  a  peculiar  course  here 
because  western  Serengeti  people  formulated  their  notion  of  ethnicity  based  on  preexisting  ideas 
about  a  relationship  to  the  land  through  the  ancestors,  the  need  for  periodic  healing  of  the  land  and 
the  people  through  egalitarian  rituals. 

Yet  these  territories  were  not  enclosed  and  people  defined  their  emerging  ethnic  identities  in 
relation  to  others  with  whom  they  were  in  close  daily  contact  through  raid,  trade  and  settlement. 

495 


496 

They  used  various  kinds  of  social  identities,  such  as  age-set,  kinship,  and  eldership  titles,  inherited 
from  the  past  in  their  relationship  with  others  to  cross  ethnic  boundaries.  The  prosperity  of  a  new 
kind  of  wealthy  man  depended  upon  the  extension  of  these  other  kinds  of  identities  into  regional 
ties  of  friendship,  patronage  and  alliance.  Western  Serengeti  people  developed  ethnic  identity  as 
the  regional  context  necessary  for  forming  lateral  networks  that  bridged  ethnic  boundaries. 
Paradoxically,  it  was  in  crossing  boundaries  that  people  defined  the  boundaries  themselves. 
Identities  of  difference  developed  as  people  came  into  close  working  relationship,  rather  than  in 
isolation. 

Through  the  deployment  of  these  ethnic  bridges  people  gained  access  to  the  resources  of 
knowledge  and  power  controlled  by  other  ethnic  groups  such  as  the  Maasai,  the  Sukuma  and  the 
Germans.  Western  Serengeti  people  came  into  increasing  conflict  with  the  Maasai,  not  only 
because  the  Maasai  needed  to  raid  in  order  to  restock  after  the  rinderpest  panzootic,  but  also 
because,  as  western  Serengeti  people  gained  livestock,  they  moved  down  onto  the  plains  and  into 
direct  competition  with  the  Maasai  for  pastoral  resources.  They  made  alliances  and  also  fought 
with  the  Maasai  in  order  to  become  pastoralists.  The  local  concept  of  chiefship  that  developed  in 
response  to  the  German  call  for  "chiefs,"  was  bsed  on  linkage  between  territories.  Western 
Serengeti  people  understood  power  and  knowledge  within  a  field  of  multiple  and  divergent  sources 
that  could  be  tapped  by  making  these  connections  rather  than  within  a  unitary  hierarchical 
structure  of  domination  or  subordination.  This  understanding  drew  on  the  older  notion  of  clans  as 
resource  pathways  at  a  time  when  clan  pathways  were  no  longer  functional.  Ethnic  identity 
coexisted  with  and  depended  upon  multiple  and  situational  social  identities  that  crosscut  ethnicity. 

This  analysis  shows  that  western  Serengeti  ethnicity  was  not  a  creation  of  the  colonial 
state  but  internally  generated  in  a  particular  historical  context.  The  inter-ethnic  context  of 
relationships  with  Maasai.  Sukuma  and  Germans  defined  ethnic  boundaries  through  the  close  and 


497 
intimate  contacts  of  friendship,  Active  kinship,  alliances  and  trade  that  crossed  those  boundaries. 
Recovery  from  the  disasters  through  raiding,  hunting  and  trading  set  in  motion  a  process  of  the 
accumulation  of  wealth  on  a  scale  unknown  in  this  region  which  had  consequences  for  social 
transformation.  The  internal  creation  of  wealth  intensified  the  process  of  ethnic  formation  as 
wealthy  men  began  to  use  the  ethnic  group  as  their  base  of  support. 

Ethnic  Formation 

In  spite  of  its  ubiquitous,  tenacious  contemporary  presence  and  theoretical  importance  in 
scholarship  today,  historians  often  assume  rather  than  problematize  the  concept  of  ethnicity.  What 
we  often  take  for  granted  to  be  universal  about  ethnicity  are  those  attributes  that  are  historically 
constructed  in  the  context  of  the  nation-state,  international  communication  and  industrial- 
capitalism.  Barth's  work  on  ethnicity  is  foundational  for  understanding  the  ethnic  group  in  terms  of 
its  interactions  with  others  and  in  a  particular  historical  context  rather  than  as  an  isolated  unit. 
Others  have  taken  this  a  step  further  to  posit  that  ethnicity  is  only  possible  in  the  case  of  intense 
inter-ethnic  interaction  and  political  relations  of  competition  over  scarce  resources.  Ethnicity  is 
particularly  used  to  describe  relations  of  inequality  within  a  single  political  unit  such  as  the 
colonial  territory  or  the  nation  state.  Although  relations  of  difference  existed  in  the  precolonial 
past,  without  a  state  or  larger  system  of  political  and  economic  difference,  speaking  of  ethnic 
groups  at  all  is  problematic.1  Yet  the  events  of  the  late  precolonial  and  early  colonial  period 
provided  the  conditions  for  just  such  a  system  of  interaction. 

Recent  historical  scholarship  in  Africa  interprets  "tribalism"  or  ethnicity  as  a  creation  of 
colonial  administrators  in  search  of  logical  units  for  indirect  rule  and  elite  national  collaborators 


1  Barth,  Ethnic  Groups:  R.  Cohen,  "Ethnicity,"  pp.  379-403;  Brakette  F.  Williams,  "A 
Class  Act:  Anthropology  and  the  Race  to  Nation  Across  Ethnic  Terrain,"  Annual  Review  of 
Anthropology  18(1 989):  40 1  -444;  Anya  Peterson  Royce,  Ethnic  Identity:  Strategies  of  Diversity 
(Bloomington:  Indiana  University  Press,  1982). 


498 
for  broadening  political  support.  This  view  draws  on  the  insights  of  Hobsbawm  and  Ranger  in  The 
Invention  of  Tradition.  Anderson  in  Imagined  Communities,  and,  more  particularly  for  Africa, 
Vail's  collection  of  essays,  The  Creation  of  Tribalism  in  Southern  Africa.  All  of  these  works  see 
ethnicity  (or  nationalism)  as  historical  construct  rather  than  biological  fact.2  For  Africanists,  going 
beyond  the  stereotypical  view  of  precolonial  societies  as  isolated  and  bounded  "tribes,"  forever 
enmeshed  in  primordial  conflict,  is  a  necessary  step.  On  the  other  hand,  as  Ranger  pointed  out  in 
his  self-critique  of  The  Invention  of  Tradition,  seeing  the  creation  of  ethnicity  as  a  product  of 
colonialism  again  made  ordinary  Africans  the  passive  pawns  of  powerful  outside  forces.  He  called 
for  a  reconsideration  of  ways  in  which  local  people  "filled"  those  colonial  ethnic  "boxes,"  once 
defined,  with  contested  meanings  and  content  in  the  process  of  local  struggle.3 
Western  Serengeti  Forms  of  Ethnicity 

Western  Serengeti  ethnicity  reflects  both  the  historical  context  in  which  it  developed  and 
the  historical  roots  out  of  which  it  developed.  Small-scale  units,  closely  corresponding  to  the  older 
notion  of  the  ekyaro  as  the  bounded  territory  responsible  for  maintaining  the  health  of  the  land, 
survived  in  spite  of  attempts  by  colonial  officers  to  create  Paramount  Chiefs  and  Federations  of 
"tribes."  Yet  the  need  for  ethnic  units  resulted  from  the  acceleration  of  interaction  with  others  in 
the  period  of  recovery  from  the  disasters.  The  process  of  ethnic  formation  was,  in  turn,  intensified 
by  the  accumulation  of  weath  in  cattle  on  a  scale  unknown  before  in  this  region. 


2  Hobsbawm  and  Ranger,  The  Invention  of  Tradition:  Anderson.  Imagined  Communities: 
Vail,  The  Creation  of  Tribalism:  See  also  Justin  Willis,  "The  Makings  of  a  Tribe:  Bondei 
Identities  and  Histories,"  Journal  of  African  History.  33  (1992):  191-208;  and  John  Lonsdale, 
"When  Did  the  Gusii  (or  Any  Other  Group)  Become  a  'Tribe,'"  Kenya  Historical  Review  5   1 
(1977):  123-133. 

3  Ranger,  "The  Invention  of  Tradition  Revisited,"  pp.  62-1 11.  For  another  treatment  of  the 
role  of  ordinary  people  in  defining  the  contested  meaning  of  ethnic  identity  see  also  Bruce  Berman 
and  John  Lonsdale,  Unhappy  Valley:  Conflict  in  Kenya  and  Africa  (Athens,  Ohio,  1 992). 


499 

Few  models  that  exist  in  the  literature  for  understanding  the  formation  of  precolonial  ethnic 
identity  can  be  applied  to  the  western  Serengeti.4  Examples  of  ethnicity  as  a  product  of  early  state 
formation  or  trade  diaspora  communities  abound.5  The  western  Serengeti,  however,  is  an  example 
of  a  stateless  society,  even  a  chiefless  society,  influenced  by  diverse  cultural  traditions  and  little 
formalized  trade.  Ethnicity  emerged  here  in  a  fluid  context  of  multiple  identities  and  affiliations  as 
micro-"tribes"  with  shifting  and  overlapping  boundaries.  Spear  and  Waller  interpret  the 
precolonial  formation  of  Maasai  ethnicity  as  a  process  of  differentiation  according  to  economic 
specialization— Maasai  pastoralists  in  distinction  to  Bantu-speaking  farmers  and  Okiek-speaking 
hunter-gatherers.6    Western  Serengeti  peoples,  however,  resisted  assimilation  into  a  Maasai  world 
view.  Although  they  did  divide  the  world  between  "farmers"  and  "others"  (enemies),  they  did  not 
define  themselves  (farmers)  as  a  unified  group  and  continued  to  include  Tatog  pastoralists  as 
"fathers"  rather  than  as  "others." 

In  the  context  of  the  larger  pan-ethnic  identities  (Maasai,  Sukuma,  Luo)  of  the  region, 
many  have  argued  against  the  separate  existence  of  these  smaller  groups  and  for  a  pan-Mara 
ethnicity.'    Yet,  in  spite  of  profound  regional  sociocultural  similarity,  a  larger  sense  of  "Mara" 


4  See  Greene,  Gender.  Ethnicity,  pp.  12-15,  for  an  argument  that  precolonial  ethnicity  did 
exist  and  was  not  the  invention  of  missionaries  and  colonial  officers  along  with  their  elite 
collaborators.  She  also  demonstrates  how  changing  forms  of  ethnicity  were  related  to  gender. 

5  John  Wright  and  Caroline  Hamilton,  "The  Making  of  the  Amalala:  Ethnicity,  Ideology 
and  Relations  of  Subordination  in  a  Precolonial  Context,"  South  African  Historical  Journal.  22, 
(November  1990):  3-23;  Newbury,  Kings  and  Clans:  Robert  Launay,  Trade  without  Traders 
(Cambridge:  Cambridge  University  Press,  1982);  Toyin  Falola,  "From  Hospitality  to  Hostility: 
Ibadan  and  Strangers,  1830-1904,"  Journal  of  African  History.  26  (1985):  51-68. 

6  Spear  and  Waller,  "Introduction,"  Being  Maasai.  pp.  1-18. 

7  Mekacha,  The  Sociolinguistic  Impact,  p.  56,  makes  this  point  linguistically.  Nyerere 
appealed  to  the  unity  of  South  and  North  Mara  peoples  in  a  published  letter  home  while  studying  in 
Edinburgh,  "labda  siku  moja  hatutakuwa  tena  Wakurya  au  Wasimbiti  wa  Tarime  na  Wajita  au 
Wazanaki  wa  Musoma  bali  WA-MARA  wa  Wilaya  ya  MARA  tukisema  Ki-Mara."  [maybe  one 


500 
ethnicity  has  not  developed  and  Mara  peoples  continue  to  insist  on  the  localized  ethnic  group. 
These  smaller  ethnic  units,  identified  on  the  map  by  the  earliest  explorers  in  the  region  in  the 
1890s,  served  as  the  basis  for  the  formalization  of  ethnicity  in  the  next  century,8    Even  in  the  face 
of  colonial  ideas  about  proper  "tribes,"  the  ethnic  groups  of  the  Mara  Region  held  onto  these 
small-scale  identities  because  of  the  primary  meaning  they  attached  to  the  intimate  ritual 
relationship  between  land  and  people  to  ensure  health  and  fertility.9 

Each  ethnic  group  in  the  western  Serengeti  developed  an  ethnic  identity  in  a  different  way 
according  to  their  particular  historical  experience.  The  easternmost  groups  of  Nata,  Ishenyi,  and 
lkoma  developed  their  ethnicity  around  the  space  of  age-set  cycle  territories.  These  three  small 
ethnic  groups  correspond  most  closely  to  the  old  "clan"  ekyaro  territories  in  size  and  composition. 
Although  the  British  united  these  three  groups  in  the  lkoma  Federation,  a  sense  of  united  identity 
never  developed.  As  for  the  other  Mara  ethnic  groups,  Ngoreme  age-cycle  territories  remained 
fairly  autonomous  into  the  colonial  era,  with  a  sense  of  being  "Ngoreme"  formed  within  ecological 
boundaries  and  in  contrast  to  the  Maasai.  The  Ikizu  united  autonomous  clan  territories  (hamate) 
around  the  growing  power  of  the  rainmaker  mtemi  from  the  Kwaya  clan  of  Kanadi.  In  a  similar 


day  we  will  not  again  be  the  Kuria  or  the  Simbiti  of  Tarime  or  the  Jita  or  the  Zanaki  of  Musoma, 
but  rather  the  Mara  People  of  the  District  of  Mara,  speaking  the  Mara  language.]  Mara  Gazeti. 
vol.  1  (June  1950),  Native  Chiefs,  Musoma,  1949-50,  Secretariat  Files  29626,  TNA.  Kuria 
scholars  have  often  included  western  Serengeti  peoples  as  a  "sub-tribe"  of  the  Kuria.  In  the 
popular  press  all  of  Mara  Region  today  is  considered  "Kuria,"  although  strongly  resisted  by  South 
Mara  peoples.  For  an  analysis  of  Mara  Region  as  one  ethnic  group  in  spite  of  their  insistence 
otherwise,  see  Anacleti,  "Serengeti,"  pp.  23-24. 

8  Prem.-Lieutenant  Werther,  "Ubersichtskarte  der  Expedition  des  Prem.-Lieutenant 
Werther  in  Deutsch-Ostafrika,  1892-1893,"  (Berlin  1894).  "lkoma"  Karte  von  Deutsch-Ostafrika 
(Berlin  1910).  Hauptmann  Schlobach  and  Col.  Delme-Radcliffe,  "Die  deutsch-englische  Grenze 
zwischen  dem  30.  Langengrad  und  dem  Djipe-See."  Map  1907,  GM  149,  TNA. 

9  The  relationship  was  conceived  of  as  between  the  land  and  the  generation  in  "power" 
rather  than  between  the  land  and  the  chief  or  king  as  has  been  described  by  African  historians: 
Feierman,  Peasant  Intellectuals,  pp.  69-93;  and  Packard,  Chiefship  and  Cosmology,  pp.  1-54. 


501 
process  the  autonomous  clan  territories  of  Zanaki  united  around  the  rainmaker  mwami  in  Busegwe. 

The  sense  of  ethnicity  in  each  case  depended  upon  a  ritual  unity  in  relation  to  the  land. 
The  generation-set  or  the  age-set  rituals  of  encircling  the  land  solidified  the  sense  of  bounded  group 
identity  that  was  developing  as  a  result  of  the  stresses  of  the  era  of  disasters.  For  the  first  time 
people  extended  this  ritual  unity  in  relation  to  the  land  beyond  the  boundaries  of  the  clan  ekyaro  to 
the  united  clan  territories  of  the  age-set  cycle  or  the  walk  of  the  generation-set.  These  relatively 
larger-scale  ethnic  territories  allowed  families  to  maximize  the  opportunities  and  minimize  the  risks 
for  economic  prosperity  within  their  localities.  People  marked  the  boundaries  of  these  enclosed 
ethnic  territories  by  physical  features  of  the  land,  beyond  which  lay  the  untamed  wilderness. 

This  sense  of  ethnic  identity,  as  a  people  ritually  related  to  the  land,  developed  within  a 
regional  context  of  inter-ethnic  relations.  In  the  era  of  recovery  the  need  for  lateral  networks  was 
increasingly  important  and  western  Serengeti  people  used  ethnicity  to  facilitate  these  regional 
relationships  rather  than  to  form  exclusive  units.    As  John  Lonsdale  described  this  process  for  the 
Kikuyu,  "wealth,  personal  reputation  and  social  insurance  came  from  bridging  ethnicity;  a  narrow 
ethnic  loyalty  could  invite  destruction."10  The  ethnicity  of  a  bounded  territorial  unit  only  made 
sense  within  a  larger  regional  system  of  ethnicities  across  whose  boundaries  people  constantly 
negotiated  access  to  the  important  social  resources  that  ensured  their  prosperity. 

Ethnicity  created  the  larger  regional  context  within  which  many  other  kinds  of  identities  of 
affiliation  could  function.  To  gain  access  to  the  resources  and  power  represented  in  other  ethnic 
groups  people  identified  points  of  linkage  across  those  boundaries.  Various  rituals  to  formalize 
these  links  through  oaths  that  bound  people  together  as  kin  proliferated  during  this  era.    Through 


John  Lonsdale,  "The  Moral  Economy  of  Mau  Mau:  Wealth,  Poverty  and  Civic  Virtue 
in  Kikuyu  Political  Thought,"  in  Unhappy  Valley:  Conflict  in  Kenya  and  Africa.  Book  Two: 
Violence  and  Ethnicity,  eds.  Bruce  Berman  and  John  Lonsdale  (London:  James  Currev  1992)  n 
329.  F' 


502 
these  oaths  western  Serengeti  people  made  practical  alliances  with  age-mates  throughout  the  region 
for  raiding,  settlement  and  hospitality.  The  Ishenyi  found  land  on  which  to  settle  in  Nata  by 
appealing  to  their  age-mates  and  formalizing  the  relationship  through  oathing  ceremonies.  Ikoma 
and  Ngoreme  youth  made  alliances  through  oaths  or  marriage  with  Maasai  age-mates  to  gain 
wealth  from  cattle  raids.  Men  formed  linkages  to  Sukuma  based  on  individual  friendships,  often 
sealed  by  oaths  or  marriage,  that  developed  into  trade  partnerships  and  cattle  trusteeship.    Wealthy 
men  formed  associations  of  titled  elders  that  crossed  ethnic  boundaries.  Ethnic  groups  across  the 
western  Serengeti  put  forth  men  with  powerful  medicines  to  serve  as  points  of  linkage  to  the 
German  medicines  of  power.    In  each  of  these  cases  people  deployed  multiple  kinds  of  social 
identities  to  gain  access  to  the  resources  of  knowledge  and  power  controlled  by  others. 

The  "generation  of  opportunity"  brought  diverse  peoples  into  closer  contact  with  each  other 
than  they  had  previously  experienced.  While  these  people  sought  ways  to  develop  relationships  in 
spite  of  differences,  they  also  began  to  define  themselves  in  distinction  to  each  other.  John  Iliffe 
aptly  summarized  this  process  throughout  what  was  soon  to  become  Tanganyika:  "As  cultures 
mingled,  so,  paradoxically,  'tribes'  became  more  distinct.""  Ethnic  identities  formed  not  in 
isolation  but  as  people  bumped  up  against  each  other  in  the  close  contact  of  neighbors,  allies  and 
trading  partners. 

This  inter-ethnic  context  was  not  one  of  absolute  inequality  and  hierarchical  hegemony. 
The  hegemonic  power  of  the  Maasai  in  the  Rift  Valley  was  offset  by  the  power  of  the  Sukuma  over 
coastal  trade  in  the  region.  Even  the  perception  of  German  power  embodied  in  their  medicines  was 
offset  by  the  prophetic  power  of  the  Tatoga.  Western  Serengeti  people  did  not  see  themselves  as 
subordinate  to  any  of  these  hegemonic  powers  but  rather  as  seeking  points  of  contact  through 


"  Iliffe,  A  Modern  History,  p.  80. 


503 
which  this  power  might  be  incorporated  into  an  already  eclectic  base  of  knowledge  inherited  from 
the  past. 

Ethnic  identity  developed  largely  to  the  benefit  of  an  emerging  group  of  wealthy  men  who 
based  their  new  cattle  wealth  on  strong  lateral  networks  throughout  the  region.  Paradoxically,  the 
men  who  most  frequently  crossed  ethnic  boundaries,  did  the  most  to  solidify  ethnic  boundaries. 
The  "big  men"  of  the  early  colonial  years  built  their  reputations  as  ethnic  representatives  and 
defenders  of  ethnic  "tradition"  in  the  form  of  an  expanded  set  of  eldership  titles. 
Ishenvi  Settlement  in  Nata  Territory  and  the  Development  of  Ethnic  Identity 

The  process  of  ethnic  formation  within  the  context  of  inter-ethnic  contact  is  illustrated  by 

the  example  of  "becoming  Ishenyi"  within  Nata  territory.  When  western  Serengeti  people  moved 

back  home  from  Sukuma  after  the  famine  in  approximately  1895,  they  built  their  homesteads  on 

land  controlled  by  the  age-set  rather  than  the  clan,  often  in  inter-ethnic  settlements.  The  Ishenyi 

were  not  able  to  go  back  to  their  pre-disaster  home  at  Nyigoti  because  of  Maasai  incursions  and 

appealed  to  Nata  age-set  members  for  land  on  which  to  build.  Yet  they  did  not  assimilate  and 

become  Nata  but  rather  developed  a  sense  of  ethnic  identity  that  eventually  led  to  the  establishment 

of  their  own  territory.  A  Nata  elder  describes  the  process  of  Ishenyi  settlement  in  Nata  [See  Figure 

10-1:  Narrators  of  the  "Generation  of  Opportunity,"  p.  512]: 

Romara:  So  when  the  Ishenyi  were  constricted  out  in  Nyeberekera  (by  the  Maasai)  they 

ran  to  the  Nata,  who  were  people  with  compassion  and  who  received  them. 

Jan:   When  they  received  them  what  place  did  they  give  the  Ishenyi  to  settle? 

Romara:  They  gave  them  land  in  each  age-set  cycle  (saiga).   The  Ishenyi  first  built  at 

Nyigoti. 

Jan:  Which  age-set? 

Romara:  Those  in  their  age-set  (saiga)  at  that  time  were  the  abaKihocha.   The  saiga  of 

the  abaKihocha,  they  all  built  at  Nyigoti,  first,  after  leaving  Nyaberekera.   Then  after 

they  were  quiet  awhile  they  began  to  disperse  among  the  Nata  age-set  cycles.   The 

Ishenyi  Rumarancha  followed  the  Nata  Rumarancha.   The  Ishenyi  Ngirate  followed  the 

Nata  Ngirate.  The  Ishenyi  Saai  followed  the  Nata  Saai.   They  built  together  as 

neighbors,  right  together.  For  example  there  at  Nagusi,  the  place  they  now  call 

Nyeberekera,  that  place  was  given  to  the  Saai  of  Ishenyi.   That  was  because  it  was  the 


504 

territory  of  the  Nata  Saai.   Then  the  Ishenyi  Ngirate  settled  at  Makondusi  with  the  Nata 
Ngirate.   They  were  given  the  land  on  the  banks  of  the  Rubana  River,  at  Sasakwa,  up  to 
Ng'otera.  At  that  time  the  Ishenyi  Rumarancha  were  here  at  the  Rubana  River  near  to 
the  old  river  crossing.   They  built  at  Mumaruuga.  So  they  built  like  this,  according  to 
age-set,  but  now  it  has  already  become  a  mixture  of  people.  Now  you  cannot  say 
anything  about  a  saiga.   We  were  all  mixed  up. 
Jan:  So  did  they  begin  to  call  themselves  Nata? 

Romara:  No,  they  were  still  just  Ishenyi,  but  now  they  themselves  do  not  settle  by  saiga 
anymore,  either,  they  are  all  mixed  up.  Even  we  Nata  we  do  not  build  each  saiga 
separately  anymore  because  of  development.   We  have  become  a  confused  people. n 

This  testimony,  which  laments  the  demise  of  orderly  settlement  by  age-set,  finds  no 
conflict  in  the  two  territorially  based  identities  of  ethnicity  and  age-set  existing  side  by  side.  "They 
were  still  just  Ishenyi"  although  they  lived  within  the  age-set  territories  of  their  Nata  age-mates. 
This  elder  identifies  their  sense  of  Ishenyi-ness  with  a  common  history  at  Nyeberekera  where  the 
Maasai  scattered  them  to  the  four  corners.  Yet  those  who  became  Ishenyi  are  those  who  settled 
among  their  age-set  peers  in  Nata.  The  Ishenyi  must  continue  to  propitiate  the  spirits  of  the 
ancestors  who  act  as  guardians  of  the  land,  albeit  now  through  the  intermediary  of  a  Tatoga 
prophet,  since  they  destroyed  their  own  prophet  (see  Chapter  3).  A  landed  lineage-based  identity 
still  connected  them  to  particular  places  on  the  landscape  and  so  defined  them  as  a  separate  people 
although  in  other  contexts  Ishenyi  claimed  equality  with  Nata  age-mates. 

This  landed  lineage  or  clan-based  identity,  as  the  foundation  for  ethnic  feeling,  emerges  in 
the  context  of  a  conflict  between  Nata  and  Ishenyi  that  broke  out  after  they  had  settled  as 
neighbors.  The  youth  killed  people  on  each  side,  resulting  in  a  polluted  relationship,  called 
ekishomba.  Without  a  ritual  cleansing  of  this  polluted  state  Ishenyi  and  Nata  people  could  not  eat 
together  nor  marry.  So  the  Nata  and  Ishenyi  reconciled  with  each  other  by  conducting  an  oathing 
ceremony  to  make  them  brothers.  However,  they  did  not  perform  this  oath  of  reconciliation 
between  Ishenyi  and  Nata  as  ethnic  groups,  but  rather  between  the  Moriho  clan  of  Nata  and  the 


1  Interview  with  Mariko  Romara  Kisigiro,  Burunga,  31  March  1995  (Nata  cf). 


505 
Sagiti  and  Bene  Omugendi  clans  of  Ishenyi.  The  Gaikwe  clan  of  Nata  and  the  Rogoro  and  Bene 
O'Kinyonyi  clans  of  Ishenyi  made  another  oath.  This  happened  during  the  time  of  the  abaKihocha 
(C.  1900)  of  the  Saai  cycle  in  Nagusi. 

These  clans  performed  various  oathing  ceremonies  to  formalize  the  link  between  them. 
Through  the  oaths  the  Ishenyi  and  Nata  elders  formed  links  on  the  basis  of  age-set  and  kin  identity. 
Yet  it  was  the  same  oaths  that  bound  them  which  also  defined  them  as  separate  peoples.  People 
who  already  acknowledged  each  other  as  kin  or  age-mates  did  not  have  to  undergo  these  ritualized 
unions.  When  I  asked  one  elder  whether  he  had  taken  an  oath  of  blood  brotherhood  with  someone 
of  his  own  ethnic  group  he  said,  "what  would  be  the  point  of  that,  we  are  already  joined?"  In  other 
places  the  refugees  from  Nyeberekera  did  not  develop  a  separate  identity  but  were  assimilated  into 
other  ethnic  groups  as  clans  or  lineages.  In  the  context  of  inter-ethnic  conflict,  however,  the 
Ishenyi  formed  a  separate  ethnic  identity  through  their  ritual  definition  in  these  oathing  ceremonies. 
It  was  the  Saai  territory,  where  these  oathing  ceremonies  took  place,  that  became  what  is  now 
known  as  Ishenyi  "tribal"  land.  The  other  age-set  territories  have  remained  Nata  territory. 

The  Ishenyi  and  Nata  elders  performed  a  number  of  oaths  to  bring  an  end  to  the  enmity 
between  clans.  A  symbolic  mother  on  each  side  sealed  the  oath  by  nursing  the  other's  baby." 
They  also  performed  a  ritual  of  jumping  over  a  series  of  seven  spears  and  sticks  and  the  ritual  in 
which  the  assembled  people  wore  strips  of  hide  cut  from  a  sacrificed  animal  on  their  fingers.  The 
elders  cut  the  longest  strip  in  half  as  representatives  of  each  side  held  the  ends  to  make  them  blood 
brothers.  After  the  oathing  ceremony  of  reconciliation  the  descendants  of  those  involved  could  not 
fight  with  nor  steal  from  each  other.14 


13  The  Nata  baby  was  Magoto  Mossi,  and  his  mother  was,  Mnyengere  Nyawagamba. 

14  Interviews  with  Rugayonga  Nyamohega,  Mugeta.  27  October  1995  (Ishenyi  <f);  Tetere 
Tumbo,  Mbiso,  5  April  1995  (Nata  <f);  Mikael  Magessa  Sarota,  Issenye,  25  August  1995 


506 

The  oathing  ceremony  draws  on  the  same  ritual  symbols  as  that  of  the  generation-set  walk 

that  unifies  and  encloses  the  people  on  the  land.  Just  as  the  generation-set  rituals  to  heal  the  land 

unify  the  clans,  here  the  ritual  unifies  the  clans  of  two  ethnic  groups  to  live  peacefully  as  brothers 

in  one  age-set  territory.  The  oathing  ceremony  concerned  clans  rather  than  ethnic  groups  because 

matters  of  property,  and  thus  human  life,  still  rested  in  corporate  lineage-based  groups.  An  Ikoma 

elder  describes  the  state  of  ekishomba  between  two  kingroups,  specifically  the  matrikin,  as  a 

dangerous  relationship  that  must  be  cleansed  ritually  in  this  way: 

A  slate  of  pollution,  ekishomba,  exists  if  there  is  a  murder.  It  affects  both  of  the 
"houses,  "of  the  one  who  is  murdered  and  the  murderer — that  is  their  mother's  kin.  So 
even  if  two  brothers  of  different  fathers  were  involved,  it  would  not  affect  their  father's 
side  at  all.  The  mother's  kin  from  both  sides  must  do  the  ceremony  o/kwibiserani  angibo 
to  get  rid  of  the  blood  between  them  so  that  they  can  eat  together  again.  The  side  of  the 
murderer  is  fined  seven  cows  and  seven  goats  and  one  sheep  to  be  killed  as  sacrifice.  A 
young  girl  is  taken  from  one  side  and  a  young  boy  from  the  other  and  they  are  put  under 
afresh  skin  together  (as  if  in  the  act  of  intercourse).  The  elders  mix  flour,  beer,  milk 
and  leaves  in  a  basket  and  sprinkle  (kumusaj  this  over  all  those  present  including  the 
children  as  a  blessing.  ° 

Another  elder  added  that  in  the  ritual  the  children  also  feed  each  other  porridge  by  crossing  their 

arms  over  each  other.  '6 

Nata  perform  the  ceremony  of  nursing  each  other's  babies  to  seal  a  friendship  between  two 

families.  When  a  woman  nurses  a  non-kin  child,  members  of  the  two  families  become  "milk 

brothers"  and  have  the  same  obligations  to  each  other  as  real  kin.  Nata  and  Ishenyi  clan  elders 

chose  this  ceremony  for  the  reconciliation  because  milk  brotherhood  would  apply  to  everyone,  not 

just  the  children  whom  they  nursed,  while  a  blood  brotherhood  ceremony  only  joins  two  people  and 


(Ishenyi  tf);  Mang'oga  Machunchuriani,  Mbiso,  24  March  1995  (Nata  tf);  Jackson  Benedicto 
Mang'oha  Maginga,  Mbiso,  18  March  1995  (Nata  <?). 

15  Interview  with  Mabenga  Nyahega  and  Machaba  Nyahega,  Mbiso,  1  September  1995 
(Ikoma  cf). 

16  Interview  with  Nyamaganda  Magoto,  Bugerera,  4  October  1995  (Nata  cf). 


507 
their  immediate  families.  Elders  perform  the  ceremony  of  jumping  over  sticks  when  the  youth  from 
two  different  age-sets  fight  each  other.  In  this  ceremony  the  youth  jump  over  the  long  bamboo 
containers  that  the  elders  use  to  store  their  beer  straws  and  yellow  fruits  of  the  bush,  seven  of  each 
(which  is  a  bad  number).  The  elder  put  a  curse  on  those  who  would  break  the  oath. " 

The  Ishenyi  example  shows  how  western  Serengeti  people  used  multiple  forms  of  social 
identity  to  bridge  the  gap  between  ethnic  groups  to  live  in  peace  as  neighbors.    Elders  appealed  to 
the  youth  on  the  basis  of  their  common  age-set,  the  ritual  unity  of  the  strips  of  hide  worn  by  each 
clan  and  the  curse  of  elders  over  juniors.  Clans  united  with  each  other  across  ethnic  boundaries  as 
"milk  brothers"  by  cleansing  the  ritual  pollution  of  murder  between  them.  Without  finding  this 
common  basis,  neighbors  could  not  eat  with  each  other  nor  marry  each  other,  destroying  the  basis 
for  the  everyday  alliances  of  common  residence. 

The  Ishenyi  formed  their  sense  of  a  separate  ethnic  identity  in  relationship  to  the  Nata. 
Each  of  these  linkages  deployed  in  the  rituals  of  reconciliation  created  ethnic  boundaries  even  as  it 
crossed  them.  By  creating  bridges  between  ethnic  groups  these  other  forms  of  social  identity 
distinguished  the  ethnic  groups  as  separate  entities.  Although  the  Ishenyi  homeland  of 
Nyaberekera  and  the  place  identified  as  the  Nata  origin  site  are  located  within  sight  of  each  other 
and  their  experiences  of  the  disasters  were  similar,  living  side  by  side  at  Nagusi  encouraged  them 
to  emphasize  separate  histories  and  traditions.  Elders  formulated  ethnic  histories  as  they  sought  to 
distinguish  themselves  from  others. 

Ethnic  identities  formed  the  larger  context  in  which  western  Serengeti  people  interacted  on 
a  regional  basis  not  only  with  each  other  but  with  Maasai  and  Sukuma.  While  the  Ishenyi  needed 
to  bridge  ethnicity  to  find  a  place  to  settle,  western  Serengeti  peoples  sought  points  of  contact  with 


17  Ibid. 


508 
the  Maasai  and  Sukuma  to  gain  access  to  wealth.  In  a  process  that  lent  itself  to  asserting  their 
difference,  ethnic  groups  were  able  to  find  the  grounds  for  cooperation. 

Recovery  from  the  Disasters  and  the  Larger  Context  of  Ethnicity 

The  process  of  ethnic  formation  is  evident  in  the  recovery  from  disasters  as  people  used 
relationships  with  others  to  create  wealth,  conserved  within  the  ethnic  unit.  The  accumulation  of 
wealth  set  in  motion  a  process  that  intensified  ethnicity.  During  the  "generation  of  opportunities" 
social  identities  of  all  kinds  were  in  a  dynamic  state  of  flux.  Western  Serengeti  people  questioned, 
negotiated  and  reconfigured  all  kinds  of  social  identities  to  find  ways  of  meeting  their  needs. 

After  the  great  "Famine  of  the  Feet"  in  1 894,  the  western  Serengeti  began  a  slow  but 
steady  period  of  recovery.  People  moved  back  from  Sukuma  and  other  places  where  they  had 
taken  refuge  to  return  to  a  place  where  they  had  a  connection  to  the  land.  Presumably  others 
stayed  in  Sukuma  or  Ukerewe  or  on  the  coast,  depending  on  the  terms  of  their  relief.  The 
relationships  formed  in  Sukuma  and  Ukerewe  became  the  basis  for  economic  recovery  through  the 
trade  of  forest  products.  During  this  period,  raiding  increased  because  the  Maasai  were  recovering 
from  the  rinderpest  and  the  survival  of  their  way  of  life  depended  upon  the  acquisition  of  new 
stock.  Western  Serengeti  people  formed  their  ethnic  identities  in  this  wider  context  of  inter-ethnic 
relationships  with  Sukuma,  Ukerewe,  Lakes  people  and  the  Maasai,  all  under  the  impending 
shadow  of  colonial  conquest. 
Maasai  Raiding 

Missionaries  and  German  colonial  officers  just  entering  the  region  in  the  beginning  of  the 
twentieth  century  identified  Maasai  raiding  as  the  most  significant  obstacle  to  the  establishment  of 
a  productive  colony.    The  White  Fathers  reported  in  1 902  that  all  along  the  lake  people  lived  in 
constant  fear  of  Maasai  raids  from  the  plains.  As  late  as  191 1  the  White  Fathers  were  still 


509 
recruiting  most  of  their  believers  from  among  the  victims  of  Maasai  raids.18    In  1902  the  Germans 
established  Fort  Ikoma  on  the  western  edge  of  the  Serengeti  plain  (and  on  the  boundary  of  Nata 
and  Ikoma  territory)  specifically  to  act  as  a  barrier  to  Maasai  raids.  They  situated  this  fort  on  a 
hill  with  a  view  east  to  the  plains. 

Ngoreme  oral  tradition  preserves  a  particularly  full  account  of  Maasai  raids.  The  location 
of  Ngoreme  made  them  vulnerable  to  raids  from  the  Siria  Maasai  across  the  Kenya  border. 
Although  Ngoreme  had  reorganized  their  age-sets  into  five  age-set  cycles  during  the  disasters,  each 
of  these  age-set  territories  was  relatively  autonomous.  The  result  was  that  animosity,  rather  than 
cooperation,  was  more  often  the  rule  between  the  territories.  Philipo  Haimati's  written  history  of 
Ngoreme  records  twenty  well-known  conflicts  between  the  Maasai  and  various  Ngoreme 
territories,  some  of  which  he  records  as  the  "wars  of  the  Mairabe  generation"  (C.  1870-1 895). " 
He  describes  conflicts  in  which  Ngoreme  youth  got  help  from  the  Maasai  to  fight  other  Ngoreme 
territories  and  where  Maasai  took  refuge  in  Ngoreme.  As  an  Ngoreme  writer  of  a  "tribal"  history, 
Philipo  laments  the  lack  of  unity  shown  by  the  age-sets  [See  Figure  10-1:  Narrators  of  the 
"Generation  of  Opportunity,"  p.  512]: 

They  fought  each  other,  clan  against  clan,  and  each  clan  had  its  own  village .  .  . 
At  that  time  the  Ngoreme  did  not  assist  each  other  in  battle,  one  age-set  fought  and  the 
others  would  watch  without  helping.   That  is  why  the  Maasai  won  so  often,  because  their 
age-sets  worked  together.  [.  .  .] 

Over  in  Maasailand  there  was  a  time  when  the  Maasai  also  fought  each  other — 
the  Aburugo  clan  and  the  Wantorosiriani  clan.   The  Aburugo  had  many  great  warriors. 


18  Societe  des  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres-Blancs),  "Nyegina  (Notre-Dame  de 
Consolation),"  Rapports  Annuels  191 1-1912,  p.  392;  Societe  des  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres- 
Blancs),  Chronique  Trimestrielle  de  la  Societe  de  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres  Blancs)  24me 
Annee,  No.  94,  Avril  1902,  p.  94. 

15  Philipo  claims  that  these  battles  took  place  between  1700  and  1970.  Haimati  and  Houle, 
"Mila  na  Matendo."  But  in  an  interview  he  mentions  the  "wars  of  the  Mairabe"  in  connection  with 
the  Maasai  falling  into  the  hole  at  Kimeri.  Interview  with  Philipo  Haimati,  Iramba,  1 5  September 
1995  (Ngoreme  cf). 


510 

Every  time  they  beat  the  Wantorosiriani  and  took  their  cattle.  So  the  Wantorosiriani 
planned  to  take  revenge  by  destroying  their  village  while  the  warriors  were  out  raiding 
the  Kuria.   When  the  Aburugo  left  the  Wantorosiriani  sacked  the  village,  killing  elders, 
women  and  children,  taking  all  their  cattle  and  burning  their  homes.  Afterwards  they 
were  afraid  that  when  the  warriors  of  Aburugo  came  home  they  would  take  an  even 
worse  revenge.  So  out  of  that  fear  they  took  all  their  cattle  and  ran  to  Ngoreme. 

The  Wantorosiriani  came  to  Ikorongo  where  the  Ngoreme  welcomed  them.   They 
asked  for  help  from  the  Ngoreme  warriors  when  the  Aburugo  came  after  them. 
Nevertheless,  the  Aburugo  did  not  do  anything  for  many  years.   The  Wantotosirani  asked 
to  make  an  oath  of  friendship  with  the  Ngoreme  so  that  the  Ngoreme  would  not  betray 
them  when  the  Aburugo  came  to  take  revenge.   The  Ngoreme  agreed.  Because  the 
Ngoreme  are  farmers  they  brought  a  hoe  handle  and  the  Maasai  brought  a  cow  to  the 
oathing  ceremony.   The  cow  was  killing  by  opening  it  with  the  hoe  handle  and  everyone 
ate  the  meat  as  the  oath  of  friendship.  [ .  .  .] 

When  the  Aburugo  finally  took  revenge  ten  years  later  the  Wantorosiriani  were 
living  all  over  Ngoreme.   They  had  learned  the  language  and  customs  of  the  Ngoreme . . 
.    The  Aburugo  came  and  asked  the  Ngoreme  to  agree  to  let  them  take  the  cattle  of  the 
Wantorosiriani  without  interfering.   The  Ngoreme  agreed  not  to  fight  them  and  they  took 
an  oath  together.    Then  the  Ngoreme  remembered  their  oath  to  aid  the  Wantorosiriani. 
So  they  told  the  Aburugo  that  they  could  not  honor  their  promise.  At  this  time  the 
Ngoreme  had  settled  far  apart,  so  those  outside  Gitare  did  not  know  that  the  Aburugo 
had  come  to  start  a  battle.   The  Aburugo  were  successful  in  capturing  the 
Wantorosiriani  cattle  and  took  many  people  captive.  Many  Ngoreme  were  also  killed  in 
the  battle.   When  the  other  Ngoreme  warriors  heard  that  the  Aburugo  had  sacked  Gitare 
they  turned  on  the  Wantorosiriani.  who  were  living  throughout  Ngoreme,  and  killed 
them,  taking  their  cattle.  Some  Wantorosiriani  were  able  to  hide  and  run  back  to 
Maasailand.  Later  the  Aburugo  and  the  Wantorosiraini  united  to  take  revenge  on 
Ngoreme  for  those  they  had  killed.  [ .  .  .  ] 

In  all  these  battles  the  Ngoreme  were  not  united.   They  were  divided  by  clan  and 
lineage  and  did  not  help  each  other.   When  one  would  fight,  the  other  would  sit  by 
without  helping.  Because  of  that  the  Ngoreme  were  raided  by  many  Maasai,  who  would 
kill  elderly  people,  women  and  children.  Finally  the  Ngoreme  united  and  overcame  their 
divisions.   They  called  all  the  age-sets  together  and  made  a  plan  to  ambush  the  Maasai 
together  to  bring  an  end  to  these  raids.  [ .  .  .]  On  that  day  more  than  6,000  warriors 
came  out,  followed  by  3, 000  more  people  running  behind  them.  [. . .  ]  146  Ngoreme  were 
killed  and  5.000  Maasai.  From  then  on  the  wars  between  the  Maasai  and  the  Ngoreme 
were  finished.  [.  .  .] 

The  Maasai  asked  for  peace  with  Ngoreme.   To  show  their  intent  they  brought 
Maasai  girls  to  be  married  in  Ngoreme  to  mix  the  blood  of  Ngoreme  and  Maasai  so  that 
a  lasting  relationship  of  friends  could  be  established.   The  Maasai  said  they  had  given 
up  raiding  the  Ngoreme,  they  would  visit  the  Ngoreme  as  friends  and  the  Ngoreme  could 
visit  them  as  friends  in  Maasailand.   Then  the  Maasai  went  home  and  left  the  girls  in 
Ngoreme.   Yet  after  they  left  the  Ngoreme  began  to  fear  that  the  Maasai  were  tricking 
them.  They  were  afraid  that  they  girls  had  been  left  as  spies  and  would  run  home  to  take 
news  to  the  Maasai  when  the  time  was  right  for  a  raid.   They  cut  the  leg  tendons  of  the 


511 

girls  so  they  could  not  run.   When  the  Maasai  heard  about  this,  they  came  in  at  night, 
stole  the  girls  and  took  them  home.20 

This  narrative  aptly  demonstrates  the  frequent  crossing  of  boundaries  between  Maasai  and 
western  Serengeti  peoples  during  this  period.  Maasai  lived  among  the  Ngoreme,  made  agreements 
with  them,  married  Ngoreme  daughters,  gave  their  daughters  in  marriage  to  the  Ngoreme,  and,  in 
other  stories,  acted  as  herdsmen  for  the  Ngoreme.  The  Ngoreme  found  ways  of  bridging  ethnicity 
through  the  same  kind  of  oathing  ceremonies  described  for  the  Ishenyi  and  Nata  which  make 
different  clans  like  kin. 

These  people  from  different  age-cycle  and  clan  territories,  however,  clearly  formed  a  sense 
of  being  "Ngoreme"  in  reference  to  the  Maasai.  Although  Haimati's  longer  narrative  celebrates  the 
military  might  of  Ngoreme  age-sets  as  the  equals  of  the  Maasai  murran,  he  notes  that  "it  was  not 
Ngoreme  custom  to  raid  other  lands."  What  made  them  all  Ngoreme  was  that  they  were  different 
from  the  Maasai.  Those  Maasai  who  had  settled  among  them  and  "learned  the  language  and 
customs  of  the  Ngoreme"  still  had  the  option  of  going  back  to  Maasailand  and  reintegrating  as 
Maasai. 

Through  these  inter-ethnic  contacts  the  Ngoreme  defined  their  ethnic  identity.  The  oathing 
ceremony  between  the  Maasai  and  the  Ngoreme  described  in  this  text  represents  the  distinguishing 
feature  of  each  side,  as  herders  (cattle)  and  farmers  (hoe).  Both  this  text  and  the  Ishenyi  story 
demonstrate  the  dynamic  nature  of  these  identities.  In  either  case  the  Maasai  could  have,  and  some 
probably  did,  assimilate  and  "become  Ngoreme,"  while  the  Ishenyi  could  just  as  easily  have,  and 
some  probably  did,  "become  Nata."  Yet  it  is  the  regional  structure  of  ethnicity  that  allowed  both 
the  assimilation  across  boundaries  and  the  bridging  of  those  boundaries  to  gain  access  to  certain 
resources.  The  Ngoreme  formed  alliances  with  the  Maasai  to  gain  cattle  wealth.  These  alliances 


'  Haimati  and  Houle,  "Mila  na  Matendo." 


Mariko  Romara  Kisigiro,  Burunga,  31  March  1995 


Philipo  Haimati,  Iramba,  15  September 
1995 


Figure  10-1 :  Narrators  of  "the  Generation  of  Opportunity" 


513 
allowed  western  Serengeti  youth  to  become  cattle  raiders  themselves  and  to  build  up  their  own 
herds  of  livestock. 

The  older  literature  on  ethnic  conflict  in  Africa  portrays  these  battles  as  an  inevitable 
outcome  of  "tribal"  difference.21  All  across  East  Africa  warfare  was  particularly  intense  in  the  late 
nineteenth  century.  J.  M.  Weatherby,  writing  about  western  Kenya,  describes  it  as  a  time  when,  "a 
complicated  movement  of  tribes"  led  to  "a  confusion  of  warfare."22  Although  the  literature  has 
portrayed  the  Maasai  "delight  in,  and  propensity  for  war,"23  in  fact  the  most  intense  conflicts 
occurred  after  Maasai  hegemony  broke  down  during  the  rinderpest  panzootic.24  As  the  Ngoreme 
text  attests,  raids  and  warfare  were  just  as  likely  between  clans  of  one  ethnic  group  as  between 
ethnic  groups. 

The  cause  of  the  raids  lay  in  a  conflict  over  resources  rather  than  in  ethnic  difference.  The 
Maasai  need  to  recover  stock  after  the  rinderpest,  coupled  with  the  dramatic  growth  in  western 
Serengeti  herds  led  to  this  increase  in  raiding.  Barth's  model  of  ethnic  conflict  predicts  that  when 
two  populations  coexist  in  economically  interdepedent  relationship,  a  change  in  one  will  affect  the 


21  For  example,  Were  writes  of  the  Luyia  of  western  Kenya  that,  "by  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century  the  ancestors  of  the  main  communities  had  firmly  established  themselves  in  the 
country  and  therefore  became  either  uneasy  or  indifferent  neighbors  since  they  had  separate 
origins.  As  the  population  increased  there  would  be  the  usual  need  for  expansion,  and,  in  view  of 
the  settled  state  of  the  country,  this  meant  that  a  neighbor  would  have  to  be  fought  and.  if  possible, 
dispossessed."  G.  S.  Were,  A  History  of  the  Abaluvia  of  Western  Kenya  (Nairobi:  East  African 
Publishing  House,  1967),  p.  131. 

22  J.  M.  Weatherby,  "Nineteenth  Century  Wars  in  Western  Kenya,"  Azania  2  (1967):  133. 

23  D.  A.  Low,  "The  Northern  Interior  1 840-84,"  in  History  of  East  Africa,  eds.  Roland 
Oliver  and  Gervase  Mathew  (Oxford:  Clarendon  Press,  1966),  p.  301. 

24  J.  E.  G.  Sutton,  "Some  Reflections  on  the  Early  History  of  Western  Kenya,"  in  Hadith  2 
(Nairobi:  East  African  Publishing  House,  1970),  p.  24. 


514 
entire  system,  leading  to  conflict.25  In  this  case,  as  the  Ngoreme  agriculturalists  living  in  the  hills 
gained  large  herds  of  livestock  and  began  moving  out  onto  the  plains,  they  came  into  direct 
competition  with  the  Maasai  for  the  same  pastoral  resources.    The  conflict  was  not  between 
pastoralists  and  agriculturalists  as  much  as  between  pastoralists  and  agriculturalists  who  were 
becoming  pastoralists. 

Philipo's  text  seems  to  indicate  that  the  Ngoreme  only  began  to  identify  themselves  as  a 
united  group  as  a  result  of  the  Maasai  raids,  not  as  the  cause  of  the  raids.  They  "became 
Ngoreme"  when  they  united  to  defeat  the  Maasai,  where  "5,000  Maasai"  were  killed  in  one  battle. 
In  Philipo's  account  the  Maasai  fell  into  "the  hole  of  Kimeri"  in  the  bush  as  they  ran  from  the 
Ngoreme  army.    Kimeri  was  a  erisambwa  site  of  the  Ngoreme  Tabori  lineage.  The  ancestral  spirit 
of  Kimeri  cried  out  when  the  Maasai  fell  in,  "Uuuuuwiiiii,  what  can  remove  these  corpses  so  that 
my  children  might  sleep."  Then  the  corpses  were  all  flung  into  the  air  and  out  of  the  hole.26  The 
ancestral  spirits,  as  "guardians  of  the  land"  appear  to  bless  this  decisive  moment  of  ethnic 
formation.  The  conflict  itself  led  to  the  distinction  of  Ngoreme  as  a  separate  ethnic  block  from  the 
Maasai,  as  opposed  to  a  number  of  different  agricultural  clan  territories  coexisting  in 
interdependent  ecological  niches  with  different  pastoral  clans. 

Other  testimonies  of  raiding  during  this  period  show  that  western  Serengeti  people  had 
moved  to  a  pastoralist  economy  to  the  extent  that  they  began  raiding  on  the  lakeshore.  Although 
Maasai  continued  to  raid  western  Serengeti  people,  they  expanded  their  range  during  this  period  to 
include  the  shores  of  Lake  Victoria.  Some  lakeshore  peoples  had  prospered  in  the  last  decades  due 


25  Barth,  Ethnic  Groups,  pp.  20-21. 

26  Haimati  and  Houle,  "Mila  na  Matendo."  Interview  with  Philipo  Haimati,  Iramba,  15 
September  1995  (Ngoreme  <f). 


515 

to  the  caravan  trade  and  the  thriving  Lake  Victoria  trade  driven  from  Buganda.27  The  great 

"Famine  of  the  Feet"  did  not  affect  the  lakeshores  as  it  did  the  interior,  and  lakes  people  profited 

from  selling  grain  and  "buying"  people.28  As  a  result  the  livestock  populations  on  the  lakeshore 

were  at  an  all  time  high  and  presented  a  perfect  raiding  target  for  Maasai  and  western  Serengeti 

youth  recovering  from  the  drought.  The  lakeshore  people  were  totally  unprepared  for  armed 

conflict.  The  functional  age-  and  generation-sets  that  these  communities  might  have  used  to 

mobilize  young  men  had  lapsed  into  disuse.  Even  by  their  own  account,  the  only  defense  against 

raids  available  to  lakes  people  was  to  run  and  hide.  This  account  by  a  lakeshore  Ruri  elder 

conveys  their  sense  of  vulnerability: 

Our  people  would  sound  the  alarm  when  a  Maasai  raiding  party  came,  but  they  mostly 
just  ran  for  cover  and  let  the  Maasai  steal.  At  that  time  they  built  stone  forts,  obhotingo, 
around  the  houses.    Others  just  ran  to  the  lake  and  took  boats  to  the  rocks  offshore.   The 
Maasai  would  not  follow  into  the  water.  People  also  erected  concealed  ladders  in  the 
rocky  out-croppings  found  along  the  coastline.  Many  people  could  stay  in  these  rock 
hideouts,  called  njego.29 

The  easy  lakeshore  target  for  raids  attracted  not  only  Maasai  but  also  western  Serengeti 

youth,  now  mobilized  in  age-sets  that  celebrated  the  warrior  ethos  and  determined  to  make  a  name 

for  themselves.  Those  raiding  parties  that  lakeshore  people  identified  as  Maasai  may  often  have 

been  their  own  neighbors  to  the  east.  Although  most  people  do  not  like  to  admit  to  this  history  of 

raiding,  many  elders  agree  that  western  Serengeti  age-sets  began  raiding  for  cattle  on  the  lake 

dressed  as  Maasai  beginning  in  this  "generation  of  opportunity."  Nata  elders  said  that  the 


27  For  the  lakeshore  trade  and  prosperity  see,  Cohen,  Towards  a  Reconstructed  Past .  pp. 
2-3;  and  Cohen,  "Food  Production  and  Food  Exchange,"  pp.  1-18. 

28  Hartwig,  The  Art  of  Survival,  pp.  106,  1 16,  127. 

29  Interview  with  Daudi  Katama  Maseme  and  Samueli  Buguna  Katamaa,  Bwai,  1 1 
November  1 995  (Ruri  <f). 


516 

abaKong'ota  (C.  1908)  were  the  first  to  break  the  traditional  prohibition  against  raiding.30 

Ngoreme  elders  report  a  much  earlier  date  for  raiding,  during  the  period  of  the  disasters  itself.31 

Many  young  men  began  to  gain  their  own  wealth  independently  of  their  father's  inheritance  through 

raiding. 

The  "generation  of  opportunity"  seems  to  be  one  of  incredible  dynamism  in  terms  of  social 

identity,  in  contrast  to  the  "generation  of  disasters"  when  things  fell  apart  and  the  people  responded 

through  encirclement  and  boundary  formation.    Just  when  ethnic  identity  was  forming  in  different 

ways  in  different  places,  it  was  crosscut  and  underlaid  by  an  increasing  number  of  other  identities, 

usually  formalized  by  an  oath.  One  of  the  most  often  told  tales  from  this  period  of  raiding  in  Nata, 

Ikoma  and  Ishenyi,  "the  battle  of  Ndabaka,"  aptly  illustrates  this  process.  [See  Figure  10-1 : 

Narrators  of  the  "Generation  of  Opporunity,"  p.  512  and  Figure  10-2:  Kuria  Warriors  with 

Shields,  1904.] 

Mayani:  At  the  time  that  they  left  Sukuma  to  come  home  from  the  "Hunger  of  the  Feet" 
they  did  not  move  all  at  once  but  in  stages,  they  built  at  Hantachega.   That  was  where 
they  fought  the  war  with  the  Maasai,  the  Battle  of  Ndabaka. 

Romara:   The  Nata  were  there  but  also  a  mixture  of  many  other  tribes.  Nata,  Ikoma  and 
Sukuma  built  together  at  Hantachega.  So  many  were  killed  there  -  the  War  of 
Hantachega.   The  Maasai  would  pass  there  when  they  went  to  raid  for  cattle  along  the 
lake,  in  Buringa.   Yet  when  the  Maasai  got  to  Hantachega  they  saw  that  these  people  had 
built  right  in  their  path.  So  they  went  to  the  village  of  Hantachega.  At  that  time  it  was 
mostly  Ikoma,  of  the  Saiga  of  the  Kubhura,  they  were  called  the  Romore.  The  Nata 
living  there  were  of  the  same  saiga  from  the  Borumarancha  age-set  cycle.   The  Maasai 
were  of  the  same  age-set,  with  the  same  name  of  Romore.  So  they  talked  together.  The 
Maasai  said,  "we  want  to  go  west,  to  the  lake,  to  raid  cattle,  we  are  the  Romore,  let  us 
pass  and  do  not  get  in  our  way. "  The  Ikoma  agreed  and  made  an  oath  fkula  ring'aj  with 
them  and  the  Maasai  went  on  their  way  to  the  lake. 

Nevertheless,  after  they  left  there  was  much  talk  about  it  and  others  disagreed 
with  the  oath.  The  Nata  and  Sukuma  who  were  there  said  that  they  should  fight  the 
Maasai  instead  of  letting  them  pass  to  gain  glory.   They  suggested  that  the  age-set 
should  go  to  see  a  prophet  to  find  out  if  they  could  defeat  the  Maasai.  So  the  Romore 


30  Interview  with  Mang'oha  Morigo,  Bugerera,  24  June  1995  (Nata  tf). 

31  Interview  with  Ali  Maro  Wambura,  Masinki,  30  September  1995  (Ngoreme  <?). 


517 

youth  -went  to  see  the  Tatoga  prophet  Gorigo.  The  elders  told  the  youth  that  they  should 
not  fight  because  they  had  made  an  oath.   The  prophet  slaughtered  a  lamb  and  cooked  it 
for  them,  then  he  cooked  a  small  bit  of  porridge.  He  also  put  a  small  bit  of  milk  in  a 
horn.  He  told  the  gathered  youth  that  they  should  eat  the  food  and  finish  it  all.   They  ate 
but  they  could  not  finish  the  food.   The  prophet  told  them  to  eat  but  they  could  not  finish 
it.  So  the  prophet  told  them  that  they  should  not  fight  the  Maasai  because  if  they  could 
not  finish  the  food  they  could  not  finish  the  battle.  So  the  youth  went  home.   While  they 
were  still  on  the  road  they  began  to  talk  again  saying,  "is  it  really  true  that  we  are  not 
able  to  win  the  war?  "  Others  said,  "no  we  could  win,  did  not  the  prophet  say  we  should 
fight?  "  So  when  they  got  back  to  the  village,  they  told  everyone  that  the  prophet  had  told 
them  to  fight. 

From  that  day  on  they  prepared  for  the  battle  by  sounding  the  alarm  call  to  all 
corners,  from  Sukuma  all  the  way  up  here  to  Nata.   They  waited  two  days  and  still  the 
Maasai  did  not  return.  On  the  third  day  they  said,  "if  the  Maasai  do  not  come  today  we 
will  go  home.  "  On  that  very  day  they  looked  to  the  west  and  saw  many  forms  on  the 
horizon.  When  the  Maasai  looked  to  the  east,  they  also  saw  many  forms  on  the  horizon. 
So  the  Maasai  sent  a  young  man  ahead  to  find  out  what  was  going  on.   The  age-set  at 
Hantachega  told  the  Maasai  messenger,  "we  do  not  have  any  more  words,  we  are  ready 
for  war. "  They  sent  the  message  to  tell  the  Maasai  that  they  wanted  war.   The  Maasai 
discussed  it  among  themselves.   They  offered  to  leave  some  cattle,  but  the  Romore  age- 
set  refused.  So  the  Maasai  made  afire  and  the  smoke  went  straight  up,  they  said,  "well, 
the  medicine  says  that  we  will  win,  let  us  fight  then. "  The  farmers,  all  made  a  line  that 
reached  from  the  Mbalageti  river  to  the  plains.   The  Maasai  made  a  line  that  reached 
across  the  Mbalageti  River.  On  that  plain  they  began  a  fierce  battle.   The  Maasai 
pushed  back  the  line  in  the  middle.    So  many  were  killed.   They  went  on  fighting  until 
everyone  was  mixed  up  on  the  battlefield.    The  Maasai  fought  with  spears  and  the 
Ikoma  with  bows  and  arrows.   The  farmers  were  defeated.    So  manv  were  killed  that 
day32 

Ndabaka  is  located  in  what  is  now  the  western  Corridor  of  the  Serengeti  National  Park, 

near  to  the  Ndabaka  gate  outside  Bunda.  Tatoga  elders  say  that  they  also  fought  in  the  war  of 

Ndabaka  alongside  the  farmers.33  Ndabaka  is  a  Tatoga  word  meaning,  "plain  of  tears,"  named 

after  this  event.  This  battle  is  also  named  after  a  vine  with  white  flowers  that  were  blooming  at  the 


32  Interview  with  Mariko  Romara  Kisigiro,  Burunga,  31  March  1995  (Nata  cf). 

33  Interviews  with  Stephen  Gojat  Gishageta  and  Girimanda  Mwarhisha  Gishageta,  Issenye, 
27  July  1995  (Tatoga  if);  Marunde  Godi,  Mayera  Magondora,  Juana  Masanja,  Manawa,  24 
February  1996  (Isimajega  d"). 


518 


a. 


519 
time,  called  amabohi,  because  the  vines  tripped  the  youth  as  they  ran  from  the  battlefield  and  the 
Maasai  speared  them.34 

This  story  conveys  the  sense  that  social  identities  of  many  kinds  were  all  very  much  in 
flux,  questioned  and  negotiated  by  various  groups  for  their  own  purposes.  The  story  of  the  "battle 
of  Ndabaka"  is  set  at  a  temporary  settlement  site  of  various  peoples  returning  home  from  Sukuma, 
where  they  took  refuge  during  the  famine.  The  village  of  Hantachega  was  located  on  the 
borderland  between  Sukuma  and  Mara,  where  all  ethnic  groups  settled  together  as  age-mates.  The 
Romore  age-set  extended  the  unity  of  age-mates  to  Maasai  murran  as  they  passed  by  to  raid  on  the 
lakeshore.  The  age-set  bond  was  thus  used  not  only  to  unite  the  age-set  cycles  in  one  locality  into 
an  ethnic  territory  but  also  to  form  useful  friendships  and  connections  between  ethnic  groups. 
People  were  coming  up  with  all  kinds  of  new  alliances  by  manipulating  the  possible  relationships 
that  they  could  claim.  The  youth  consulted  the  Tatoga  prophet  as  a  way  of  gaining  access  to 
another  source  of  power  that  they  could  mobilize  in  this  conflict,  but  in  the  end  ignored  his  advice. 
The  age-set  at  Hantachega  formed  its  own  identity  both  in  alliance  with  the  Maasai,  and  finally  in 
opposition. 

The  Maasai  and  the  Ikoma  age-sets  sealed  their  alliance  with  an  oath.  Although  this  is  the 
second  example  of  broken  oaths  with  Maasai  (see  story  above  of  the  Ngoreme  oath  with  the 
Maasai  Wantorosiriani  clan),  western  Serengeti  people  took  these  oaths  seriously.    This  oath  was 
apparantly  sealed  by  exchanging  the  thongs  of  their  sandals.  Other  versions  of  the  battle  narrative 
say  that  the  Maasai  defeated  the  farmers  because  they  broke  the  oath.35  In  this  narrative  the  elders 


34  Interview  with  Bokima  Giringayi,  Mbiso,  26  October  1995  (Ikoma  cf). 

35  Interview  with  Mang'oha  Machunchuriani,  Mbiso,  24  March  1995  (Nata  cf). 


520 
counseled  the  youth  not  to  fight  because  they  had  taken  an  oath.  In  fact,  elders  often  tell  this  story 
to  remind  youth  of  the  consequences  of  breaking  an  oath. 

The  devastating  loss  of  life  on  both  sides  at  Ndabaka  might  also  imply  that  ethnic 
boundaries  were  created  by  these  conflicts.  After  clans  from  both  sides  spilled  such  a  great  amount 
of  blood,  the  individual  rituals  to  restore  the  relationship,  described  in  the  Ishenyi  account,  could 
never  all  be  performed,  nor  all  the  fines  paid.  An  ethnic  identity  in  distinction  to  the  Maasai 
developed  as  a  result  of  these  interactions,  both  the  alliance  of  the  oath  and  the  ensuing  conflict. 
The  Ikoma,  Nata  and  Sukuma  age-set  broke  their  alliance  of  an  oath  between  age-mates  because 
they  hoped  to  gain  more  by  defeating  them  in  battle.  The  fanners  were  now  livestock  owners  in 
competition  with  the  Maasai.  Western  Serengeti  people  also  gained  livestock  from  trade  in 
Sukuma  and  built  relations  with  Sukuma  people  within  this  regional  system  of  difference  and 
alliance. 
The  Sukuma  Trade  and  Commercialized  Hunting 

The  relationship  of  western  Serengeti  people  to  the  Sukuma  not  only  gave  them  refuge  in 
times  of  hunger  but  introduced  them  to  a  commercialized  economy  and  provided  the  means  for  the 
accumulation  of  wealth  which  led  to  further  social  transformations.  The  demand  for  forest 
products  in  Sukuma  led  to  the  commercialization  of  hunting  in  the  western  Serengeti  on  a  scale 
unknown  up  to  this  time.  Young  men  traded  primarily  wildebeest  tails  in  return  for  livestock  and 
gained  wealth  over  which  their  father's  had  no  control.  Because  no  professional  class  of  traders  or 
system  of  markets  developed,  trade  depended  on  the  establishment  of  individual  friendships  across 
ethnic  boundaries. 

Western  Serengeti  people  defined  their  own  ethnic  identity  in  relation  to  the  Sukuma,  first 
as  clients  of  Sukuma  patrons  and  later  as  trading  partners.  A  direct  outcome  of  the  "Famine  of  the 
Feet"  was  the  acceleration  of  interactions  with  Sukuma.  Those  who  stayed  in  Sukuma  for  a  year 


521 
or  two  made  friendships  there  and  began  to  realize  the  potential  for  trade.  After  they  reestablished 
their  homes  in  the  western  Serengeti,  these  men  soon  returned  to  Sukuma  for  trade  (orutani  or 
regional  trade).  The  German  explorer  Baumann  reported  seeing  a  "worn  path"  in  Ikoma  which 
"was  the  trader's  trail  to  Sukuma."36 

The  significant  increase  in  trade  with  the  Sukuma,  along  with  cattle  raiding,  resulted  in  a 
quick  recovery  from  the  disasters  and  a  boom  in  cattle  wealth  during  the  "generation  of 
opportunity."  Elders  across  ethnic  groups  agree  that  the  first  saiga  to  fully  exploit  the  Sukuma 
trade  were  the  Kihocha  (C.  1 900)."    The  most  important  items  traded  by  people  of  the  western 
Serengeti  were  products  of  the  wilderness-wildebeest  and  other  wild  animal  tails,  cured  wild 
animal  skins,  ostrich  feathers  and  shells  for  beads,  lion  manes  and  arrow  poison.  The  Sukuma 
especially  sought  wildebeest  tails  for  their  own  rituals.  They  used  wildebeest  tails  as  the  base 
around  which  they  wrapped  thin  copper  wire  to  produce  bracelets  and  anklets  called  budodi.  Both 
Sukuma  and  Tatoga  prized  these  ornaments  for  their  dance  costumes,  in  which  they  wore  fifty  or 
more  at  a  time.  Sukuma  healers,  prophets  and  dance  associations  made  extensive  use  of  black 
wildebeest  tail  flywhisks  in  their  rituals.  The  Sukuma  sought  western  Serengeti  arrow  poison  for 
their  own  hunting,  as  well  as  for  protection  against  Maasai  raids  that  had  also  increased  at  the  time 
in  Sukuma.38 

In  the  "generation  of  opportunity"  elephant  and  rhino  hunting  associations  called 
Sarabarondo  broke  the  traditional  prohibitions  against  killing  elephants  to  harvest  them 
commercially.  One  Ikoma  elder  said  that  the  first  to  break  the  prohibition  were  the  Maase  age-set 


36  Baumann,  Durch  Massailand.  p.  59. 

37  Interview  with  Mang'ombe  Morimi,  Issenye  Iharara,  26  August  (Ishenyi  if). 

38  Interview  with  Yohana  Kitena  Nyitanga,  Makondusi,  1  May  1995  (Nata  <f). 


522 
(C.  1 884),  and  to  a  greater  extent  the  Kong'ota  (C.  1 908).39  People  still  remember  the  praise  songs 
of  the  men  who  killed  elephants.  The  Sarabarondo  traded  the  tusks  on  to  Sukuma  and  eventually 
into  the  coastal  caravan  networks.  "Big  men"  in  the  western  Serengeti  never  monopolized  the  ivory 
trade  to  gain  political  authority  as  elsewhere  in  what  became  Tanganyika.40    Other  elders  related 
that  the  wealth  of  the  Sarabarondo  from  the  trade  of  tusks  amounted  to  nothing  since  it  was  not 
used  to  build  up  homesteads.41  Locally,  people  only  used  ivory  as  ornamental  armbands, 
chashabashi,  the  sign  of  an  eldership  rank.  They  also  obtained  ivory  from  Asi  hunters  who 
brought  tusks  to  trade  for  grain.42 

Elders  say  that  elephant  hunting  was  traditionally  forbidden  because  elephants  are  like 
people-the  females  have  breasts  and  they  bury  their  dead.  If  a  hunter  killed  an  elephant,  he 
performed  a  complete  funeral  and  period  of  mourning  with  a  false  grave  for  the  elephant.  An 
Ikoma  elder  told  me  the  story  of  the  Tatoga  prophet  Masuche  who  turned  his  wife,  Nyabhoke, 
along  with  her  house,  into  an  elephant  when  she  would  not  cook  for  him.  When  elephant  hunters 
returned  home,  they  sang  a  song  that  said  they  were  bringing  back  Masuche's  wife.4'  Other  elders 
said  that  the  prohibition  was  entirely  a  product  of  the  danger  of  killing  an  elephant  with  a  poisoned 
arrow.  They  claimed  that  once  hunters  obtained  guns  no  one  cared  about  the  prohibition. 


39  Interview  with  Mabenga  Nyahega  and  Machaba  Nyahega,  Mbiso,  I  September  1 995 
(Ikoma  <?). 

40  See  Iliffe,  A  Modern  History,  pp.  40-87.  In  Sukuma  one  tusk  had  to  be  given  to  the 
Ntemi,  Itandala,  "A  History  of  the  Babinza,"  p.  218. 

41  The  most  important  interviews  on  elephant  hunting  were:  Mang'oha  Morigo,  Bugerera, 
24  June  1995.  Nyambeho  Marangini,  Issenye,  7  September  1995.  Mabenga  Nyahega,  Bugerera,  5 
September  1 995. 

42  Interview  with  Bokima  Giringayi.  Mbiso,  26  October  1995  (Ikoma  <f). 

43  Interview  with  Mabenga  Nyahega,  Bugerera,  5  September  1995  (Ikoma  cf). 


523 

The  trade  to  Sukuma  changed  hunting  from  a  subsistence  to  a  commercial  activity.  Men 
formed  hunting  groups  and  set  out  to  harvest  as  many  animals  as  possible  in  a  short  time  to  take  to 
Sukuma  to  trade.  They  would  spend  most  of  the  dry  season  in  permanent  hunting  camps  out  of 
which  they  would  range  to  hunt.  At  the  beginning  of  this  century  when  the  trade  in  wildebeest  tails 
to  Sukuma  flourished  as  a  means  for  recovering  from  famine,  the  use  of  pits  and  snares  increased, 
and  also  the  size  of  organized  hunting  parties.  Before  this  there  would  have  been  no  reason  to  kill 
more  wildebeest  than  the  hunter  needed  for  meat,  yet  colonial  officers  reported  seeing  carcasses 
without  tails  left  to  rot.44 

The  commercialized  hunting  economy  was  at  its  peak  when  the  British  began  to  take  an 
interest  in  the  potential  of  the  Serengeti  for  the  recreation  of  white  hunters.  The  colonial 
government  considered  western  Serengeti  hunting  methods  cruel  and  barbaric  (snares,  pits  and 
poisoned  arrows)  and  never  condoned  the  commercial  harvest  of  wilderness  products,  except  by 
white  trophy  hunters.45  While  the  colonial  government  was  willing  to  accept  local  men  hunting  the 
occasional  animal  that  ate  their  crops  to  provide  extra  meat  for  the  family,  they  were  categorically 
unable  to  accept  or  understand  a  trade  or  ritual  economy  based  on  hunting  products. 

Commercialized  hunting  did  not  fit  with  their  image  of  "primitive"  society  based  on  hand- 
to-mouth  subsistence.  Although  the  colonial  officials  tolerated  the  "Ndorobo"  because  hunting  was 


44  This  would  contradict  the  assumption  that  Africans  naturally  respected  and  lived  in 
balance  with  nature.  For  a  similar  argument  against  an  idealized  African  environmentalism  see 
Harms,  Games  Against  Nature. 

45  Compare  the  lists  of  confiscated  hunting  trophies  in  1929  of  the  local  parties~28 
wildebeest  tails,  9  beards,  4  zebra  tails,  4  rhino  skulls  and  a  large  number  of  giraffe  tails  for  party 
of  over  60  men.  F.D.  Arundell,  Game  Ranger,  Banagi  Hill,  30  June  1929,  vol.  1:  Game 
Regulations,  215/P.C./14/1,  TNA.  And  that  of  a  party  of  professional  Italian  hunters  and  their 
three  clients  from  Nairobi-6  rhino  skulls,  including  a  baby  and  upwards  of  80  trophies,  including 
3  lions  and  24  tails,  from  Acting  P.C.  Mwanza  to  Director  of  Game  Preservation,  1 1  March  1929, 
vol.1:  1923-29  Game  Regulations,  2I5/P.C./14/1,  TNA. 


524 

their  "tradition"  it  seemed  outrageous  that  these  "farmers"  should  be  taking  to  "the  chase."46    Yet 

more  to  the  point,  the  hunt  allowed  western  Serengeti  men  to  avoid  labor  migration  and  the 

cultivation  of  cash  crops.  The  Game  Warden's  comments  on  western  Serengeti  hunting  reflect  both 

these  concerns  of  the  colonial  government  and  also  provide  a  picture  of  the  extent  of 

commercialized  hunting: 

.  .  .  native  operations  cover  the  entire  game  country ...  the  population  that  is  ostensibly 
agricultural  make  it  [hunting]  for  much  of  the  year  their  prime  work .  .  .   Things  are  at 
such  a  pitch  and  the  natives  are  so  generally  implicated  and  in  league  that  convictions 
will  act  as  no  deterrent,  no  real  control  will  be  obtained  until  there  is  someone  resident 
in  the  area  .  .  .  [it  is]  a  rich  country  and  should  be  developed  .  .  .  still  to  have  in  our 
midst  picturesque  primitive  man  (and  his  revolting  cruelties)  but  it  is  neither  in 
accordance  with  the  spirit  of  the  times  nor  with  the  urgent  needs  of  the  Territory  and  the 
Empire  that  appreciable  sections  of  the  population  and  such  strapping  fellows  as  Mr. 
Klein  shows  in  his  photographs  should  be  devoting  their  attention  to  the  chase  instead  of 
playing  their  part  in  the  development  of  this  very  rich  country  .  .  .   The  Mwanza  cattle- 
owners  are  not  greatly  implicated  in  the  lawlessness  and  idleness  of  the  area.  They  live 
comfortably  in  compact  blocks  and  are  now  taking  up  cotton  growing.  It  is  only  when 
the  people  who  now  hug  the  woods  for  the  sake  of  hunting  are  induced  to  settle  and  grow 
economic  crops,  and  making  money  to  buy  cattle,  that  they  also  will  be  anchored  and 
become  useful  members  of  the  community. " 

Hunting  was  not  a  regressive,  remnant  of  a  disappearing  "stone-age"  way  of  life  depicted 

in  this  quotation,  but  rather  the  most  commercialized  aspect  of  the  western  Serengeti  economy, 

providing  trade  goods  that  bought  cattle  and  prosperity  in  the  early  colonial  years.48  Hunting 

products  became  the  first  commodities  used  by  western  Serengeti  people  as  they  entered  the 


46  A.M.D.  Turnbull,  Senior  Commissioner,  Mwanza  to  Director,  Game  Preservation, 
Kilossa,  2  July  1924,  vol.1:  1923-29  Game  Regulations,  215/P.C./14/1,  TNA. 

47  Game  Warden,  Kilossa,  to  HSC  to  the  Government,  DSM,  26  February  1924,  Vol.  1: 
1923-1929,  Game  Regulations,  2I5/P.C./14/1,  TNA. 

48  On  the  critique  of  hunters  as  "remnants"  see  Kratz,  "Are  the  Okiek,"  pp.  355-56;  Kenny, 
"Mirror  in  the  Forest,"pp.  481-484;  Edwin  N.  Wilmsen,  Land  Filled  with  Flies:  A  Political 
Economy  of  The  Kalahari  (Chicago:  University  Of  Chicago  Press,  1989);  and  Richard  Elphick, 
Khoikhoi  and  the  Founding  of  White  South  Africa  (Johannesburg,  South  Africa:  Raven  Press, 
1985).  Fosbrooke  uses  the  term  "stone-age"  in  his  analysis  of  contemporary  hunter/gatherers. 
Fosbrooke,  "A  Stone  Age  Tribe  in  Tanganyika,"  3-8. 


525 
capitalist  world  economy  more  than  a  hundred  years  ago.  They  entered  this  economy,  however, 
through  products,  such  as  wildebeest  tails,  that  were  used  regionally  and  internally,  rather  than 
internationally  as  in  the  case  of  ivory. 

Western  Serengeti  peoples  took  these  products  of  the  wilderness  to  Sukuma  to  trade  for 
cattle,  sheep  and  goats  and  also  iron,  tobacco  and  salt.  The  Rongo  of  Geita  in  Sukuma  provided 
most  of  the  raw  iron  needed  in  the  region,  brought  in  as  trade  hoes  called  omosika.  [See  Figure  6-1 : 
Blacksmiths  and  the  Tools,  in  Chapter  6  for  photo  of  the  trade  hoe.]  In  Ikizu  the  trade  hoe  became 
the  common  currency  for  bridewealth.4'  Turi  smiths  of  Ikizu  reworked  them  into  knives,  arrow 
tips  and  other  farming  implements.  Although  some  alkaline  deposits  in  the  region  provided  an 
inferior  salt,  western  Serengeti  people  coveted  the  fine  salt  available  in  Sukuma  from  Lake  Eyasi. 
During  this  period  tobacco  from  Sukuma  became  the  requisite  gift  of  a  suitor  on  his  first  visit  to 
his  future  father-in-law  or  of  an  initiate  to  learn  the  secrets  of  eldership  titles.* 

The  stories  of  obutani,  or  long  distance  trade  to  Sukuma  constitute  an  entertaining  genre  of 
oral  narratives.  Young  men  formed  small  groups  to  make  the  three-day  trip  of  hard  walking  to 
Sukuma.  On  the  way  home  they  walked  more  slowly  driving  the  livestock  procured  through  trade. 
Men  also  organized  trade  trips  to  other  communities  within  what  is  now  the  Mara  Region  for  other 
products.  The  Ikizu,  more  removed  from  access  to  the  wilderness  products,  traded  gourds  used  for 
hauling  water,  shaking  milk  to  make  ghee  or  storing  flour,  in  Sukuma.  They  took  as  many  as  fifty 


49  Interview  with  Zamberi  Masambwe  and  Gisuge  Chabwasi,  Mariwanda,  22  June  1995 
(Ikizu  cf). 

50  Interview  with  Makongoro  Nyamwitweka  and  Nyawagamba  Magoto,  Rubana,  4  April 
1996  (Nata  cc).  Anacleti  Odhiambo,  "Kijiji  cha  Butiama:  Mila  na  Desturi  Zinazohusiana  na 
Mahari  na  Ndoa:  Tarafa  ya  Makongoro,  Wilaya  ya  Musoma.  Mara  26  March  1979,"  Utafiti  na 
Mipango/Utamaduni.  Dar  es  Salaam,  UTV/M  1 3/22,Mara  Region  Office  of  Culture,  Musoma. 


526 
gourds  tied  together  at  a  time  as  far  as  Geita  by  foot.51  Men  prohibited  women  from  making  trade 
trips  except  in  times  of  hunger  because  of  the  danger  that  women  might  be  captured  as  "slaves." 
Men  armed  themselves  to  guard  against  raids  on  these  trips. 

Since  neither  markets  nor  a  class  of  professional  traders  existed  in  the  western  Serengeti, 
trade  depended  upon  personal  links  of  friendship.52  When  a  man  arrived  with  his  goods  in  Sukuma 
he  needed  a  secure  place  to  sleep,  eat  and  keep  his  goods.  He  made  these  arrangements  with  a 
previously  established  friend  who  would  help  him  to  find  buyers  for  his  goods  and  sellers  for  the 
things  he  needed.  His  friend  acted  as  an  intermediary  in  a  strange  culture  where  people  spoke  a 
different  language.  In  return,  the  trader  left  some  of  his  goods  with  his  friend  and  invited  him  to 
visit  in  return.  The  host  visited  his  friend  on  another  occasion  and  brought  his  own  things  to  trade, 
expecting  the  same  hospitality.  A  man  relied  on  the  hospitality  of  his  wife  to  maintain  his 
friendships.    Men  guarded  their  friendships  more  closely  than  kin  relations  because  they  were 
voluntary.  The  word  "to  exchange  goods,"  kokerdni,  and  the  word  "to  greet,"  kokerani,  in  Nata 
are  the  same  except  for  the  accent.  This  might  indicate  a  play  on  words  that  shows  the  close 
connection  between  friendship  and  trade.53  A  friend  was  someone  with  whom  a  man  exchanged 
things  and  thus  established  a  relationship  of  reciprocity,  rather  than  someone  with  whom  he  shared 
intimate  thoughts. 

Because  the  trading  system  depended  upon  these  relationships,  men  often  secured  these 
friendships  ritually  through  an  oath.  The  most  common  way  was  through  the  ritual  of  "blood 


51  Interview  with  Zamberi  Masambwe  and  Gisuge  Chabwasi,  Mariwanda,  22  June  1995 
(Ikizu  <f). 

52  A  similar  trading  system  described  for  western  Kenya,  Hay.  "Local  Trade  and 
Ethnicity,"  p.  7. 

53  Cultural  Vocabulary,  Nyamaganda  Magoto.  1995. 


527 

brotherhood."  In  distinction  to  the  oathing  ceremonies  of  friendship  described  for  the  Ishenyi  and 

the  Nata,  this  ritual  fkubarisi  aring'a,  gutarana)  seals  the  relationship  between  individuals  and 

affects  only  their  immediate  families.  In  the  ritual  an  elder  cuts  the  fingers  of  each  party,  puts  the 

blood  of  each  onto  a  bit  of  porridge  and  feeds  it  to  each  party.  The  two  are  then  lifelong  friends 

(omwisani  wa  sarago,  omwisani  bo  magula).  A  friend  cannot  kill,  harm  or  steal  from  his  friend, 

he  cannot  take  his  friend's  wife  or  betray  his  interests  in  any  arrangements  he  makes  and  he  must 

always  look  out  for  his  friend's  advantage.54    These  friendships  were  also  often  used  as  the  basis 

for  cattle  trusteeship."  If  this  trust  was  broken,  the  blood  brothers  must  perform  a  ritual  of 

purification  such  as  that  described  above  for  murder. 

Men  most  often  formed  these  types  of  formal  friendships  with  people  outside  their  ethnic 

group.  A  Ngoreme  elder  said  that  many  men  of  his  father's  generation  had  blood  brothers  in 

Sukuma.56  Other  elders  said  that,  although  formalizing  the  friendship  with  a  Sukuma  man  was 

rare,  these  friendships  were  honest  even  without  such  arrangements.  Men  also  secured  their  trade 

relationships  by  marrying  their  daughters  to  their  friends  and  forming  a  relationship  of  in-laws. 

The  use  of  marriage  to  cement  relationships  between  trading  partners  is  common  across  East 

Africa."  One  elder  compares  these  two  forms  of  trade  relations  with  the  Sukuma: 

When  they  were  in  Sukuma  they  were  like  servants  of  the  Sukuma  in  order  to  get  food. 
They  would  go  look  for  a  rich  household  and  ask  for  help.   They  traded  in  Sukuma 
before  the  famine,  bringing  tails  and  skins.  So  they  had  connections  and  friends  through 
this.  They  did  not  have  blood  friendships  with  Sukuma  because  the  Sukuma  were  not 
circumcised.   They  did  not  make  oaths  with  the  Sukuma  because  they  were  like  children  - 


126. 


54  Interview  with  Nyamaganda  Magoto,  Bugerera,  4  October  1995  (Nata  if). 

55  Interview  with  Efaristi  Bosongo  Gikaro,  Masinki,  30  September  1995  (Ngoreme  <f). 

56  Interview  with  Maro  Mchari  Maricha,  Maji  Moto,  28  September  1 995  (Ngoreme  <?). 

57  For  western  Kenya  see,  Hay,  "Local  Trade,"  p.  9;  Were,  A  History  of  the  Abaluvia.  p. 


528 

-  but  they  did  have  lasting  friendships.   The  Sukuma  were  honest  and  married  their 
women.  The  Sukuma  would  come  to  Ishenyi  to  sell  tobacco  to  the  same  friends.  So  when 
hunger  came  many  people  went  to  these  Sukuma  friends  for  help,  mostly  in  Dutwa  and 
Kanadi  and  Ntugu,  which  are  the  first  places  you  come  to  in  Sukuma.  If  your  daughter 
married  a  Sukuma  man  you  brought  home  cattle.  If  you  were  lucky  you  could  learn  some 
Sukuma  medicines  there,  but  they  did  not  have  nyangi,  eldership  titles  like  we  did.  Many 
men  married  Sukuma  wives  there.'8 

This  narrative  illustrates  the  many  kinds  of  social  relationships  and  identities  negotiated  in 
the  pursuit  of  trade  in  Sukuma-kinship,  patron-client,  friendship,  circumcised/uncircumcised,  in- 
law, ritual  speciality  and  ethnic  relations.  Long  distance  trade  friendships  led  to  a  heightened  sense 
of  ethnic  identity.  The  regional  context  of  ethnic  identities  allowed  men  to  form  friendships  and  in- 
law relations  with  others.  The  strong  lateral  relationships  that  crosscut  ethnicity  were  only 
possible  within  common  regional  understandings  of  ethnic  identity.  Through  these  cross-ethnic 
links  western  Serengeti  people  gained  access  to  Maasai  pastoral  resources  and  Sukuma  trade 
wealth. 

The  Emergence  of  New  Wealth 

As  a  result  of  increased  raiding,  commercialized  hunting  and  trade  to  Sukuma,  western 
Serengeti  men,  particularly  younger  men,  began  to  amass  wealth  quickly  in  the  first  decades  of  the 
twentieth  century.  The  emergence  of  this  new  wealth,  not  tied  to  the  generational  authority  of 
fathers,  led  to  other  important  social  transformations.  This  new  group  of  "big  men"  secured  their 
reputations  within  an  ethnic  group  identity  but  were  absolutely  dependent  on  strong  lateral  relations 
across  the  region  to  maintain  their  wealth.  The  emergence  of  cattle  wealth  further  enhanced  and 
intensified  the  development  of  ethnic  identity. 

The  creation  of  large-scale  wealth  also  affected  other  kinds  of  social  relationships. 
Wealthy  men  moved  away  from  concentrated  settlements  to  find  pastoral  resources  for  their  cattle. 


'  Interview  with  Mashauri  Ng'ana,  Issenye,  2  November  1 995  (Ishenyi  <f ). 


529 
Their  movement,  however,  was  also  symbolic  of  the  movement  of  wealthy  men  away  from  the 
constraints  of  community  relationships  and  control.  "Big  men"  created  a  new  system  of  eldership 
titles  that  served  to  consolidate  their  ethnic  ties  and  to  extend  lateral  relations  with  "big  men"  in 
other  ethnic  groups.  Differentiation  by  wealth  did  not  become  class  differentiation,  however, 
because  the  community  found  ways  of  using  the  system  of  eldership  titles  to  pull  wealthy  men  back 
into  reciprocal  relationship  with  the  community  and  to  share  their  wealth. 
The  New  Cattle  Wealth 

Young  men  built  up  their  own  wealth  to  invest  in  cattle,  apart  from  that  of  their  fathers, 
through  the  orutani  trip  to  Sukuma,  which  became  another  important  mark  of  manhood  in  the  early 
colonial  years.  In  later  years  this  impulse  would  send  young  men  into  the  colonial  migrant  labor 
force  when  they  were  building  up  their  own  wealth.  Young  men  in  the  "generation  of  opportunity" 
hunted  and  traded  for  about  five  years  and  then  came  home  to  farm  and  build  up  a  homestead  to 
begin  the  climb  in  status  as  a  "big  man"  in  the  community.  Elders  said  that  it  was  only  during  the 
age-sets  of  the  abaKubhura  (C.  1916)  and  the  abaKinaho  (C.  1924)  that  men  gained  significant 
cattle  wealth."  Ngoreme  elders  testified  that  men  of  the  Gini  generation-set  (C.  1 900)  acquired 
cattle  wealth  by  selling  grain  when  others  experienced  famine.60    While  this  generation  began  to 
number  their  cattle  in  the  hundreds  and  even  thousands,  during  the  previous  generation  of  the 
Mairabe  a  wealthy  man  had  10-30  head  of  cattle.61  This  new  wealth  was  a  significant  departure 


59  Interviews  with  Surati  Wambura,  Morotonga,  13  July  1995  (Ikoma  ?);  Mang'ombe 
Morimi,  Issenye  lharara,  26  August  1995  (Ishenyi  cf). 

60  Interviews  with  Philipo  Haimati,  Iramba,  1 5  September  1 995  (Ngoreme  a");  Efaristi 
Bosongo  Gikaro,  Masinki,  30  September  1 995  (Ngoreme  <f ). 

61  Interview  with  Mwita  Magige,  Mosongo,  9  September  1995  (Ngoreme  cf). 


530 
for  western  Serengeti  peoples  who  had  kept  few  livestock,  mostly  sheep  and  goats,  before  the 
disasters.62 

Increased  cattle  wealth  immediately  resulted  in  a  rise  in  bridewealth  during  the  early 
colonial  years.63  While  the  "generation  of  settlement"  and  the  "generation  of  disasters"  paid 
bridewealth  as  a  token  gift  of  wild  animal  skins  (topi),  iron  hoes  and  bracelets  (sesera),  food  and 
tobacco  to  the  bride's  father,  the  "generation  of  opportunity"  paid  it  exclusively  in  livestock  after 
protracted  negotiations  with  the  bride's  family.  A  Ngoreme  elder  compared  a  typical  bridewealth 
of  2-3  cows  at  the  time  of  his  grandfather  to  the  bridewealth  of  20-26  cows  at  the  time  of  his  father 
or  the  bridewealth  of  forty  cows  in  his  own  youth  (a  figure  that  is  now  back  to  3-10  cows).64  As 
women  increasingly  represented  cattle  wealth  their  independent  authority  and  status  in  the 
homestead  and  community  declined.65 

Another  more  gradual  effect  of  the  new  cattle  wealth  was  a  decrease  in  the  authority  of 
elders  over  juniors  within  a  lineage.  Young  men  now  had  the  ability  to  marry  and  establish  their 
own  homesteads  without  their  father's  help.  One  elder  lamented  that  the  men  of  that  generation  got 
intoxicated  with  their  own  wealth  and  ceased  to  respect  their  elders.66  This  common  trend  across 
East  Africa  occurred  much  earlier  in  areas  such  as  Nyamwezi  where  the  caravan  trade  allowed 


62  Interview  with  Jackson  Mang'oha,  Mbiso,  13  May  1995  (Nata  <f). 

63  See  Anacleti,  "Pastoralism  and  Development";  Barthazar  Aloys  Rwezaura,  Traditional 
Family  Law  and  Change  in  Tanzania:  A  Study  of  the  Kuria  Social  System  (Baden-Baden:  Nomos 
Verlagsgesellschaft,  1985),  for  colonial  disputes  over  bridewealth. 

64  Interviews  with  Philipo  Haimati,  Iramba,  15  September  1995  (Ngoreme  cf);  Charwe 
Matiti,  Nyeboko,  22  September  1995  (Ngoreme  cf). 

65  Anacleti,  "Pastoralism  and  Development,"  p.  71. 

66  Interview  with  Zamberi  Manyeni  and  Guti  Manyeni  Nyabwango,  Sanzate,  15  June  1995 
(Ikizu  cf). 


531 
young  men  an  avenue  for  gaining  individual  wealth.  This  new  class  of  wealthy  men  turned  their 
economic  power  into  political  authority  based  more  on  personal  achievement  and  individual  loyalty 
than  on  kinship  and  ritual  authority  as  it  had  been  in  the  past.67 
A  New  Kind  of  Dispersed  Settlement 

One  of  the  most  far-ranging  effects  of  the  new  cattle  wealth  of  the  "generation  of 
opportunity"  was  settlement  dispersal.  People  gradually  abandoned  the  stone  forts  and  fortified 
settlements  and  built  homesteads  spread  out  across  the  countryside.68  Dispersal  brought  an  end  to 
age-set  territories  and  people  began  to  regroup  according  to  clan  rather  than  age-set.  British 
Officer  E.  C.  Baker  described  the  move  back  to  dispersed  clan  settlements  in  the  early  colonial 
records,  "the  Waikoma  have  apparently  decided  to  reorganize  themselves  on  a  clan  basis  instead  of 
according  to  Sega  and  this  is  all  to  the  good."69 

One  major  reason  for  the  dispersal  from  concentrated  settlements  was  that  wealthy  men 
with  many  cattle  had  to  be  located  with  more  access  to  the  grasslands  and  removed  from  others 
who  would  compete  for  pastures.  This  era  saw  farmers  move  down  from  the  hills  and  out  onto  the 
plains  for  the  first  time.  The  large  colonial  settlements  of  Sibora  and  Mugeta  are  examples  of 
inter-ethnic  plains  settlements  with  large  cattle  populations.  The  introduction  of  the  ox-plow  also 
allowed  farmers  to  exploit  the  thick  clay  soils  of  the  plains.  In  the  early  colonial  years  wealthy 
men  began  the  trend  toward  dispersion  of  settlements  beyond  pre-disaster  norms.  They  sought  to 
distance  themselves  socially  and  also  physically  from  the  authority  of  kingroups  in  more  compact 
settlements.  Juhani  Koponen's  study  of  the  German  colonial  regime  demonstrates  that  one  cause  of 


67  Andrew  Roberts,  "The  Nyamwezi,"  in  Tanzania  Before  1900.  ed.  Andrew  Roberts, 
(Nairobi:  East  African  Publishing  House,  1968),  p.  129,  "Introduction,"  p.  xv. 

68  For  Kuria  see  Prazak,  "Cultural  Expressions,"  p.  51. 

69  Native  Court  of  Ikoma,  p.  57,  Musoma  Sub-District,  1 9 1 6- 1 927,  MDB,  TNA. 


532 
settlement  dispersal  across  the  colony  was  the  weakening  of  former  political  authority,  in  this  case 
the  power  of  the  elders  to  control  juniors.™ 

Another  reason  that  wealthy  men  led  the  movement  away  from  concentrated  settlements 
was  to  avoid  colonial,  as  well  as  community,  control.  Koponen's  study  shows  that  the  pattern  of 
settlement  dispersal  was  common  across  the  German  colony  as  a  way  of  resisting  colonial  control. 
This  was  surely  a  factor  for  hunters  who  did  not  wish  the  colonial  officers  or  the  chiefs  to  observe 
their  wilderness  harvest.  Many  dispersed  homesteads  sprang  up  on  the  peripheries  in  direct 
proximity  to  the  hunting  areas.  The  colonial  record  also  demonstrates  that  people  actively  avoided 
taxes  and  labor  conscription  by  moving  outside  the  chiefs  most  accessible  domain.  The  British, 
faulting  German  policy  for  the  dispersal  of  settlements,  reported  a  "tendency  before  the  war,  owing 
to  oppression  by  German  askaris  [soldiers],  for  natives  to  break  away  from  larger  villages  and 
establish  small  family  villages  in  the  bush  . . .  also  to  evade  the  demands  of  the  combatants  during 
the  war,  [they]  moved  into  Game  Reserves,  near  elephant  watering  holes"7' 

The  emerging  class  of  "big  men"  was  a  product  of  the  early  colonial  years.  They  often 
found  their  authority  challenged  by  that  of  the  colonial  regime,  which  also  tried  to  coopt  them  in 
the  politics  of  indirect  rule.  They  moved  away  from  concentrated  settlements  both  to  gain  the 
physical  resources  necessary  to  care  for  their  livestock  and  the  autonomy  necessary  to  exercise 
their  new  found  authority. 


70  Koponen,  Development  for  Exploitation,  pp.  649-653;  Cory,  "Land  Tenure  in  Bukuria," 
p.  71;  Huber,  Marriage  and  Family,  p.  16. 

71  C.F.M.  Swynnerton,  Game  Warden  to  HCS,  DSM,  6  August  1923,  Native  Settlement  in 
Game  Reserves,  7227,  TNA. 


533 
A  New  Kind  of  Big  Man:  Gishaeeta 

Although  "big  men"  as  patrons  who  "fed"  their  people  seems  to  be  an  old  institution  in  this 
region,  the  "big  men"  of  "the  generation  of  opportunity"  represent  a  new  kind  of  patronage.  As  1 
demonstrated  in  Chapter  5,  the  title  of  mwami  or  "rich  person"  was  not  gendered  and  was  more 
often  connected  with  the  distribution  of  prophetic  rather  than  material  wealth.  The  new  kind  of 
"big  man,"  called  an  omunibi,  was  a  man  whose  wealth  lay  in  cattle.  These  men  operated  out  of  an 
ethnic  base  to  spread  lateral  relations  of  patronage  on  which  their  wealth  depended  across  the 
region.  The  principle  of  reciprocity  was  still  the  basis  for  converting  wealth  into  social 
relationships.72 

Women  participated  and  benefitted  only  indirectly  from  the  rise  of  a  new  kind  of  "big 
man."  Those  who  amassed  cattle  wealth  were  almost  exclusively  men  because  women  could  not 
raid,  trade  or  hunt  and  therefore  had  no  means  of  gaining  large  livestock  herds.  The  only  women 
with  cattle  wealth  were  abasimbe,  or  independent  women,  who  inherited  it  from  their  fathers  and 
managed  the  herd  well.  With  the  growth  of  cattle  wealth  other  forms  of  wealth  were  devalued. 
Women  became  the  product  rather  than  the  producers  of  wealth. 

During  the  era  of  ethnic  formation  the  frequency  and  density  of  cross-ethnic  ties  increased, 
largely  because  "big  men"  had  to  develop  widespread  lateral  relationships  throughout  the  region  to 
maintain  their  position.  Cattle  disease  had  already  destroyed  the  herds  in  the  late  nineteenth 
century  and  smaller  epidemics  continued  to  threaten  the  livestock.  In  addition,  with  the  increase  in 
raiding  a  large  herd  presented  a  tempting  target  for  youthful  entrepreneurs.  A  man  with  thousands 
of  cattle  could  not  risk  keeping  his  entire  herd  in  one  area,  nor  could  he  secure  pasture  and  water 
for  that  many  cattle  at  one  place.  He  had  to  develop  mutually  beneficial  relationships  with  people 


72  For  an  analysis  of  reciprocity  in  the  form  of  "gift  relations"  transformed  into  commodity 
relations  in  Rwanda  see  Taylor,  Milk.  Honey  and  Money,  pp.  5-7. 


534 
who  would  keep  his  cattle  in  other  areas.  The  practice  of  cattle  trusteeship  (kuwekesha,  kusagari 
chalugo)  took  on  a  new  prominence  during  this  era.  Poor  people  recovering  from  the  famine  found 
the  means  to  regain  control  over  their  homesteads  through  the  loan  of  cattle  from  a  wealthy  man. 
In  addition  the  "big  man"  had  to  gain  the  respect  and  trust  of  the  local  youth  who  would  recover  his 
stock  in  the  case  of  a  raid,  through  age-set  networks.  [See  Figure  10-3:  A  New  Generation  of 
Wealthy  men,  p.  536.] 

For  a  variety  of  reasons,  then,  "big  men"  became  much  more  likely  to  concentrate  on  the 
wide  inclusive  relations  of  patronage,  friendship  and  age-mates  rather  than  narrow  exclusive 
relations  of  lineage  or  clan.  Although  "big  men"  began  defining  themselves  in  ethnic  terms,  their 
relationships  had  to  be  inter-ethnic  to  maintain  their  wealth.  The  following  narrative  describes  one 
of  the  famous  "big  men"  of  this  era,  Gishageta.  Although  he  was  Tatoga,  his  lateral  networks 
reached  across  the  region  to  farmers  of  all  ethnic  groups.  This  testimony  also  describes  how  these 
"big  men"  translated  economic  power  into  political  and  religious  power  [See  Figure  5-5:  Two 
Versions  of  the  Story  of  Masuche's  Bao,  p.  240  for  a  photo  of  Gishageta's  descendants.]. 

My  father,  Gishageta,  was  a  big  man,  a  prophet  and  a  healer.  People  from  all 
over-all  tribes  came  to  ask  him  for  help.   There  were  other  prophets  of  course  but 
Gishageta  was  wealthy,  the  wealthiest  man  in  the  area.  He  was  a  big  man  because  of  his 
wealth  in  livestock.  He  had  8, 000  cows  and  10. 000  goats  and  sheep.  He  fed  everyone  in 
the  area  up  to  Ikizu  with  his  wealth.  Someone  would  come  and  ask  and  he  would  give 
them  even  fifty  cows  to  take  care  of  for  him.  The  veterinary  officer  knew  his  brand  and 
saw  it  in  Ikoma,  Ikizu,  and  Ngoreme  at  Kaonga.  He  brought  Gishageta  to  court  for 
moving  cattle  around  all  over  when  there  was  a  quarantine  for  rinderpest  and  you  were 
not  allowed  to  move  cattle.   Yet  Gishageta  said,  "those  cattle  have  been  there  for  years 
and  I  have  not  moved  them,  I  take  care  of  those  people  and  give  them  all  the  help  they 
need. "  They  arrested  Gishageta  but  he  won  the  case  in  court. 

He  would  leave  the  cattle  with  relatives  or  people  with  problems  who  wanted  a 
milk  cow.  He  might  give  someone  ten  cows,  then  they  would  get  the  milk  and  the  meat,  if 
it  died.  Nevertheless,  they  could  not  butcher  it  without  asking  a  special  favor  of 
Gishageta.   They  also  needed  to  ask  if  they  wanted  to  sell  his  cattle.   The  big  man  got 
nothing  out  of  the  deal.  He  just  helped  others.  He  could  come  anytime  to  get  his  cows 
or  sell  them  if  he  wanted.  Gishageta  did  not  just  put  his  cattle  with  kin  but  mostly  with 
friends  from  all  tribes,  Ngoreme,  Ikizu,  Nata,  Ikoma,  Ishenyi-anyone  he  felt  like  he 
could  trust.  It  was  not  like  it  is  now  when  you  cannot  trust  anyone. 


535 

Gishageta  refused  lo  be  the  chief  of  Ishenyi.   The  while  officer  came  to  him  and 
said,  "I  am  going  to  make  you  the  chief  of  this  district  to  lead  it. "  The  British  had 
already  chosen  Makongoro  in  Ikizu  and  Rotigenga  in  Nata  and  all  the  others. 
Nevertheless,  Gishageta  refused  to  be  made  chief.  He  said.  "I  have  another  chiefship,  of 
prophecy,  for  all  the  tribes.  All  of  them  respect  me  as  their  prophet  and  chief.   Yet  I  also 
have  another  gift  and  that  is  of  wealth,  which  my  God  gave  me.  So  as  for  this  chiefship, 
I  will  look  after  it  myself.  I  will  appoint  another  chief  for  you  and  that  is  my  friend,  who 
I  know  will  be  able  to  lead  properly. " 

So  he  chose  a  Tatoga  named  Kitaki.  Kilaki  also  refused  saying,  "if  the  prophet 
refuses  and  pushes  it  on  me  so  that  the  foreigners  will  come  and  take  me,  I  do  not  want 
it. "  Gishageta  named  another  one  of  his  friends  who  was  also  a  relative,  named  Marina, 
but  he  also  refused.  Finally  he  named  another  of  his  friends,  called  Sarota,  who  was  an 
Ishenyi.  He  became  the  chief  and  that  is  why  this  area  became  known  as  Issenye.   They 
did  not  want  a  Tatoga  chief  only,  but  just  one  for  the  whole  area.   This  was  the  time 
when  I  was  a  young  child. 

Individual  people  came  lo  Gishageta  as  a  prophet  for  help,  especially  for 
problems  of  fertility.  He  would  spit  on  the  woman.  He  did  not  dig  herbal  medicines,  he 
only  used  spit  and  a  rope.  He  would  tie  her  with  a  skin  rope,  they  would  twist  and  braid 
it  from  a  cow  that  died  itself  or  that  was  smothered,  not  one  that  was  cut.   The  rope 
stayed  on  her  for  3-4  months  and  she  got  pregnant.  In  the  dry  season  or  when  there  was 
a  drought,  they  would  come  to  Gishageta  too,  even  if  it  were  the  dry  time.  He  would  get 
a  black  sheep  and  would  smother  it  in  the  wilderness  and  they  would  eat  it  together,  all 
the  people.   Then  they  would  cut  its  hide  into  strips  and  everyone  would  put  a  strip  on 
their  finger,  on  the  right  hand  like  a  ring.   That  day  it  would  rain.13 

A  nephew  of  Gishageta,  who  is  still  relatively  wealthy,  told  me  this  story.  While  the  events  of  this 

story  take  place  in  the  early  British  period,  this  kind  of  new  "big  man"  developed  during  the 

German  period. 

Beyond  their  widespread  networks  of  regional  patronage,  the  wealthy  man  needed  to  secure 

respect  and  authority  at  home,  in  his  local  community.  He  was  absolutely  dependent  on  the 

community  to  prevent  livestock  theft  and  on  the  youth  to  chase  the  thieves  if  a  raid  occurred.  "Big 

men"  secured  both  the  goodwill  and  the  fear  of  the  community  through  their  development  of  a 

system  of  eldership  titles  or  life  stages  known  as  nyangi  into  an  institutional  outlet  for  their 


73  Interviews  with  Stephen  Gojat  Gishageta  and  Girimanda  Mwarhisha  Gishageta,  Issenye, 
27  July  1995  (Tatoga  <f). 


Efaristi  Bosongo  Gikaro  in  front  of  his  cattle  corral, 
Masinki,  30  September  1 995 


Marimo  Nyamakena  (center  with  glasses)  with  his  wives  and  children,  Sanzate,  10 
June  1995 


Figure  10-3:  A  New  Generation  of  Wealthy  Men 


537 
authority.  No  one  could  tell  me  the  origin  of  the  word  nyangi,  but  it  seems  more  than  coincidental 
that  the  generation-set  coming  into  power  at  this  time  was  theNyangi  (C.  1915). 
The  New  Eldership  Ranks:  Nvangi 

Wealthy  men  consolidated  their  ethnic  power  and  formed  bridges  to  wealthy  men  in  other 
ethnic  groups  by  the  elaboration  of  a  new  system  of  eldership  titles.  They  transformed  the 
institution  of  eldership  titles  from  one  of  communal  life-stage  transition  to  one  of  personal  status. 
At  the  same  time  the  community  used  this  system  of  eldership  titles  to  force  "big  men"  to  share 
their  wealth.  To  get  the  ethnic  support  needed  to  keep  large  herds  of  livestock,  wealthy  men  had  to 
enter  into  reciprocal  relationships  maintained  by  "feeding"  the  people.  Class  differentiation  did  not 
develop  from  the  accumulation  of  wealth  because  keeping  a  wealthy  man's  position  of  respect 
demanded  the  redistribution  of  his  wealth.  These  wealthy  men  did  not  define  their  interests  as  a 
group  in  opposition  to  the  interests  of  others  in  their  community  nor  were  they,  in  most  cases,  able 
to  pass  on  this  wealth  in  substantial  form  to  their  heirs.  They  continued  to  live  in  the  same 
neighborhoods,  attend  the  same  social  functions  and  display  little  more  material  goods  than  poorer 
people  in  the  community.74 

Nyangi  refers  to  the  celebration  of  a  series  of  life  stages  performed  by  the  individual,  both 
men  and  women,  within  an  ethnic  group.  Each  ethnic  group  has  a  different  set  of  stages  that  they 
celebrate  but  most  include:  circumcision  (asaro),  setting  up  a  homestead  (titinyo.  borand),  having 
a  first  child,  the  circumcision  of  a  first  child  (egise)  and  having  a  first  grandchild  (ekirangani). 


E.  P.  Thompson  defines  the  process  of  class  formation  in  this  way,  "class  happens  when 
some  men,  as  a  result  of  common  experiences  (inherited  or  shared),  feel  and  articulate  the  identity 
of  their  interests  as  between  themselves,  and  as  against  other  men  whose  interests  are  different 
from  (and  usually  opposed  to)  theirs."  E.  P.  Thompson,  The  Making  of  the  English  Working  Class 
(New  York:  Vintage  Books,  1966),  p.  9. 


538 

The  celebration  of  these  events  seems  to  be  of  deep  time  depth  in  the  region.  All  ethnic  groups 
throughout  the  Mara  Region  perform  these  ceremonies  for  the  major  life  passages." 

Everyone  must  perform  the  first  life  passages  of  circumcision,  acquiring  a  homestead, 
having  a  first  child  and  becoming  an  elder.  The  symbol  of  eldership  throughout  the  region  is  the 
black  wildebeest  or  cow  tail  flywhisk  (eghise).  Men  obtained  this  when  they  circumcised  their  first 
daughter,  signaling  their  status  as  elders  who  enter  negotiations  of  bridewealth.    Most  elders 
carried  the  black  tail  on  ceremonial  occasions  or  when  they  went  to  drink  beer.  Those  who 
performed  these  ceremonies  were  initiates  and  had  to  be  taught  the  secret  knowledge  accessible 
only  to  those  who  have  reached  this  stage  in  life.  The  performance  of  each  nyangi  required  a  large 
feast  that  the  whole  community  would  attend  to  eat  meat  and  drink  beer.  Fathers  arranged  for  the 
nyangi  of  circumcision,  setting  up  a  homestead,  and  the  birth  of  the  first  child  for  their  own 
children.  An  Ikizu  elder  said, 


75  The  partial  nyangi  lists  for  each  ethnic  group  are  as  follows.  Ishenyi-Msanga  (birth  of 
first  child),  Ebinyenyi  (first  teeth),  Richawa,  Asaro  and  Moroko  (circumcision),  Titinyo,  Egishe  - 
Ngaruki  (black  tail  eldership),  Interviews  with  Nyambeho  Marangini,  Issenye,  7  September  1995; 
Morigo  Mchombocho  Nyarobi,  Issenye,  28  October  1995.  lkoma-Rigamba  Rina  (naming), 
Gotusi  (for  women  when  child  weaned),  Asaro,  Atitinyo,  Ekiriri  Atato  or  Ekiriratero.  Egesubero 
(for  women),  Ekirara  Nyumba  (men),  Aguho,  Egishe  (black  tail  eldership  with  circumcision  of  first 
daughter,  the  white  tail  is  automatic  when  your  son  takes  the  black  tail).  Interviews  with  Surati 
Wambura,  Morotonga,  13  July  1995;  Bokima  Giringayi,  Mbiso,  26  October  1995.  Nata-Asaro, 
Etitinyo,  Amaka  Nyangi,  Aguho,  Egise,  Morokingi,  Ekirang'ani,  Egisikero,  Omoroseke, 
Omongibo,  Omurara,  Interviews  with  Gabuso  Shoka,  Mbiso,  30  May  1995;  Yohana  Kitena, . 
Ngoreme-Esaro,  Borano,  Kukerera,  Isuba,  Risancho  -  Ekise,  Interviews  with  Mwita  Magige, 
Masongo,  9  September  1995;  Francis  Sabayi  Maro,  Masinki,  6  October  1995;  Njaga  Nyasame 
and  Nyabori  Marwa,  Kemgesi,  14  September  1995.  Ikizu-Amatwe  (piercing  ears),  Esaro 
(circumcision,  Rosarangi),  Titinyo  or  Borano,  Isubo  (woman's  first  child),  Ekise  -  Ehimbo  (men 
get  black  tail  and  women  a  walking  stick),  Amarungweta  or  Magiha  (guards  for  top  elders),  Esega 
(knows  ritual  for  women's  first  child),  Kibage  (knows  ritual  for  circumcision),  Kegoro  (for  girls 
ritual),  Murungweta,  Kirang'ani  (wear  iron  bracelets),  Kirundu  (advisor  to  the  generation-set), 
Nebwe  (white  tail  advisor),  Mhimaye  (ivory  armbands,  white  tail),  Mchiero  (two  white  tails), 
Interviews  with  Maarimo  Nyamakena  and  Katani  Magori  Nyabunga,  Sanzate,  6  October  1 995; 
Samweli  M.  Kiramanzera,  Kurasanda,  3  August  1995;  Ikota  Mwisagija,  Kiyarata  Mzumari 
Kihumbo,  5  July  1995. 


539 

In  the  past  if  you  did  not  do  the  required  nyangi  or  did  not  do  them  for  your  children  you 
would  be  called  a  likunene  (polluted  thing)  and  would  be  separated  and  shunned  from 
others  until  you  did  them. n 

However,  the  peoples  of  the  western  Serengeti  have  greatly  elaborated  the  celebration  of 

these  basic  life  passages  found  throughout  the  larger  region,  into  a  system  of  eldership  titles 

attainable  only  by  the  wealthiest  men.  1  argue  that  this  elaboration  came  about  in  the  period  of 

recovery  after  the  disasters  in  response  to  the  new  cattle  wealth.  Through  new  eldership  titles 

wealthy  men  were  forced  to  redistribute  their  wealth.  Many  people  told  me  that  the  nyangi  system 

was  about  poor  people  trying  to  find  a  way  to  get  rich  people  to  feed  them.  The  few  oral  traditions 

about  the  origins  of  nyangi  associate  them  with  the  period  of  disasters  and  its  aftermath.  Here  is 

the  Nata  story  of  Kikong'oti: 

At  that  time  there  was  a  great  famine  and  the  people  dispersed  and  went  to  Sukuma 
(Kreti).  As  the  Nata  went  they  all  passed  by  the  place  where  this  Nata,  who  was  like  first 
man,  an  Asi,  named  Kikong'oti  lived,  on  a  little  hill.  As  they  passed  he  warned  them  not 
to  forget  Nata  and  not  to  all  die  in  a  foreign  land.  He  was  concerned  that  they  would 
forget  the  things  of  Nata.  So  he  showed  them  the  Nata  nyangi.   There  was  a  big 
mragawa  tree  in  front  of  his  house.   When  people  passed  by  he  would  ask  them  to  come 
and  then  he  would  show  them  the  nyangi  so  that  they  would  not  be  finished  off  in 
Sukuma.  He  would  take  the  fruit  of  that  tree  and  cut  it  into  four  parts,  and  with  each 
part  [as  the  symbolic  feast]  he  would  initiate  them  into  one  of  the  nyangi  secrets.   Then 
they  went  west  and  when  they  returned  they  came  from  the  south,  from  a  place  called 
Getongi.  ...  So  they  came  back  to  Nata  and  found  that  Kikongoti  had  gotten  very  old. 
He  was  the  beginning  of  the  Nata  nyangi.   Those  that  have  cattle,  if  the  cow  dies,  they  do 
not  want  to  eat  by  themselves.   Those  who  farm  and  harvest  lots  of  millet,  they  wonder 
why  their  neighbors  do  not  come  and  visit  them.  So  they  make  a  big  pot  of  beer.   The 
different  nyangi  grew  around  the  names  of  different  pots  of  beer. 71 

In  one  elder's  version  of  the  Kikong'oti  story  he  speculated  that  the  reason  that  the  nyangi 

started  was  that  people  were  looking  for  a  way  to  get  fed  by  wealthy  men  and  wealthy  men  were 


76  Interview  with  Kiyarata  Mzumari,  Mariwanda,  8  July  1995  (Ikizu  <f). 

77  Interview  with  Gabuso  Shoka,  Mbiso,  30  May  1995,  Mbiso  (Nata  tf)  this  man  holds 
one  of  the  highest  nyangi  titles  in  Nata,  Omongibo. 


540 

looking  for  a  way  to  enjoy  themselves  and  pass  the  time  after  the  harvest.78  When  we  went  to  visit 

the  site  of  Kikong'oti  a  woman  who  lived  near  to  the  hill  said  that  people  sometimes  saw  a  big  billy 

goat,  believed  to  be  the  erisambwa  of  Kikong'oti  who  mounts  other  goats  but  disappears  before  he 

can  be  caught.  When  people  tried  to  build  a  beer  club  at  the  hill  of  Kikong'oti  an  unexplained  fire 

destroyed  it.  So  the  site  remains  abandoned  and  the  graves  of  Kikong'oti  and  his  wife  are  kept 

clean  by  his  lineage.79 

An  Ikizu  elder  responded  this  way  when  I  asked  him  how  the  nyangi  originated: 

How  did  they  start?  This  was  something  they  created  in  a  time  of  hunger,  or  because  of 
hunger.   The  poor  man  figured  out  a  way  to  get  some  food  to  take  to  his  children.  In  the 
past  the  nyangi  were  not  such  huge  feasts.   The  huge  nyangi  began  during  the  colonial 
times.  Just  from  people  looking  for  a  meal— and  to  be  a  big  man.   The  big  man  from 
each  lineage  "door. "  The  one  who  does  the  nyangi  first  is  the  big  man  even  if  his  brother 
is  older.80 

Both  the  Ikizu  elder's  testimony  and  the  Kikong'oti  story  directly  connect  the  nyangi  to  famine, 

going  to  Sukuma,  and  the  early  colonial  years.  It  was  during  this  period  that  wealthy  men  seem  to 

have  transformed  the  institution  of  eldership  titles  from  an  institution  designed  to  mark  the 

communal  transition  of  its  members  from  one  stage  of  life  to  another  into  one  of  individual  rank 

and  status.  Some  other  peoples  of  the  Mara  Region,  such  as  the  Kuria  in  North  Mara  and  the 

Lakes  people,  have  preserved  the  earlier  meaning  of  nyangi  where  a  group  of  elders  performs  their 

eldership  ceremonies  together.81  In  the  western  Serengeti  eldership  titles  marked  individual 

achievement. 


78  Interview  with  Jackson  Mang'oha,  Mbiso,  13  May  1995  (Nata  (f) 

79  Interview  with  Nyawagamba  Magoto,  Kikongoti,  2  April  1 996  (Nata  <?). 

80  Interview  with  Zamberi  Masambwa,  Mariwanda,  22  June  1995  (Ikizu  <?). 

81  Ruel,  "Religion  and  Society,"  pp.  298-300.  Interview  with  Daudi  Katama  Maseme  and 
Samueli  Buguna  Katama,  Bwai,  1 1  November  1995  (Ruri  cf). 


541 

The  Nata  and  Ikizu  performed  particularly  expensive  nyangi  and  people  throughout  the 
region  acknowledged  that  the  medicine  (masubho)  taught  to  initiates  was  extraordinarily  powerful. 
The  Ikizu  have  the  strongest  relationship  and  nearest  proximity  to  Sukuma.  Some  versions  of  the 
Kikong'oti  story  suggest  that  refugees  returning  to  their  homes  after  the  famine  incorporated  into 
nyangi  practice  medicines  learned  in  Sukuma.  As  a  result  of  the  experiences  of  famine  patronage 
and  trade,  the  Sukuma  had  a  reputation  in  the  western  Serengeti  as  people  with  powerful  medicine 
and  dangerous  witchcraft.82  Incorporating  the  medicines  of  Sukuma  secret  societies  may  have  been 
understood  as  a  way  for  men  to  gain  access  to  the  source  of  Sukuma  wealth.  Whether  some 
medicines,  masubho,  had  origins  in  Sukuma  or  not,  each  ethnic  group  now  considers  them  as  the 
property  of  the  particular  ethnically  based  nyangi  associations.  A  Nata  colleague  said  that  the 
Ishenyi,  Ikoma,  and  Ngoreme  took  their  nyangi  rituals  from  Nata  and  Ikizu.83 

After  a  man  took  the  eldership  title  of  the  black  tail  an  elaborate  series  of  titles  were  open 

to  him  by  choice  if  he  had  the  means  to  finance  the  required  feasts.  The  most  expensive  nyangi 

was  not  the  highest  rank  but  the  middle  one,  called  the  aguho  among  the  Nata.  The  reason  given 

for  this  high  price  was  to  test  how  serious  the  man  was  about  rising  in  the  ranks.  If  he  passed  this 

test  the  rest  of  the  ranks  were  relatively  easy.  The  financial  requirements  of  the  nyangi  are  far 

beyond  the  means  of  most  men  today,  leading  to  its  near  extinction.  One  of  the  three  remaining 

Nata  men  of  the  omongibo  rank  today  explained  the  performance  of  his  own  aguho  nyangi  [See 

Figure  10-4:  Stories  of  the  Nyangi.]: 

Two  days  before  the  nyangi  was  to  begin,  the  nyangi  elders  came  to  check  and 
see  if  every  requirement  had  been  met.  I  had  to  show  them  sixty  goats,  ...  cows,  1,000 
sides  of  dried  wild  meat  called  ebimoro,  a  basket  of  peanuts,  a  basket  of  sesame,  a  large 


82  See  descriptions  of  Sukuma  secret  societies  that  may  have  been  one  model  for  this 
elaboration,  Hans  Cory,  "Sukuma  Secret  Societies,"  1938,  CORY  #191,  EAF,  UDSM. 

83  Interview  with  Nyawagamba  Magoto,  Kemgesi,  6  October  1995  (Nata  <f). 


542 

storage  bin  filled  with  millet,  five  large  sacks  of  corn  and  three  sacks  of  hops  for  making 
beer,  a  large  drum  of  water  that  must  never  be  empty,  and  butter  enough  for  everyone  to 
coat  their  bodies  before  the  dancing  began.  I  also  had  to  build  shelters,  orotaro,  around 
my  house  for  everyone  to  eat  and  sleep  under.  A  fence  was  made  to  surround  the 
homestead  with  a  ritual  gate  at  the  entrance.   The  elders  checked  all  these  things, 
counting  each  of  the  1,000  sides  of  dried  meat  and  checking  to  make  sure  that  there  were 
no  tears  or  holes  in  the  pieces.  If  they  found  a  flaw  that  piece  was  counted  as  one  with 
another  piece.   The  elders  then  set  the  beer  and  went  home  to  sleep,  dividing  among 
themselves  the  dried  meat.   The  next  day  they  came  back  to  share  the  beer  made 
especially  for  them,  before  the  nyangi  got  started. 

The  aguho  nyangi  officially  began  with  the  kindling  of  the  fire  in  my  wife's  house. 
That  night  there  was  beer,  singing  and  dancing.  No  man  can  be  initiated  into  a  nyangi 
without  his  wife  or  wives  also  being  initiated  into  the  women's  nyangi.   The  next  day  the 
elders  took  me  into  the  house  and  showed  me  the  masubho,  medicines  or  initiation 
secrets  that  they  each  knew.  Each  man  had  his  own  particular  speciality,  although 
initiates  learn  all  of  them.   The  masubho  specialities  sometimes  tend  to  follow  particular 
clans.  After  this,  my  wife  was  initiated  into  the  women's  masubho.   The  aguho  lasts  for 
eight  days  .  .  .    If  an  initiate  tells  someone  who  is  not  initiated  the  secrets  of  the 
masubho  he  will  suffer  the  natural  consequences  of  breaking  an  oath  and  take  sick  or 
die.  If  the  initiate  does  not  learn  all  the  masubho  during  his  initiation  he  can  go  to  his 
fellow  members  at  anytime  and  give  them  some  tobacco  to  teach  it  to  him.  On  the  last 
days  of  the  aguho  mostly  family  members  remain  and  they  drink  the  final  round  of  beer. 
When  the  nyangi  elders  leave  each  of  their  wives  carried  home  a  kerosine  tin  (20  liters) 
of  millet  from  the  storehouse.  Each  day  of  the  nyangi  many  goals  are  slaughtered,  not 
only  to  feed  those  who  stay  there  but  also  for  the  families  of  those  elders  at  home.  The 
youngest  wife  of  each  elder  takes  some  meat  home  to  her  children  each  day  and  returns 
to  the  nyangi. 

If  a  man  begins  a  nyangi  and  then  somehow  runs  short  of  food  or  beer  he  brings 
on  himself  a  terrible  curse.   That  is  why  the  elders  check  the  supplies  before  the  feast 
begins.  A  couple  of  men  in  recent  memory  failed  to  complete  the  requirements  and  have 
since  lost  their  minds.   Thus  in  order  to  rise  in  these  ranks  you  must  have  considerable 
resources  at  hand.  Only  those  who  have  the  means  are  able  to  do  it,  but  anyone  can 
attempt  it.  One  can  get  help  from  his  friends  and  relatives  but  they  will  only  help  and 
the  bulk  of  the  resources  is  his  to  provide." 

In  Nata  another  set  of  eldership  ranks  existed,  by  invitation  only,  consisting  of  a  rank  of 

men  holding  four  Morokingi  titles,  two  Mongibo  titles  and  one  Morara  title.  Similar  ranks  existed 

among  the  Ikizu  with  different  names  as  well  as  ranks  for  conducting  rituals  like  circumcision. 

The  highest  ranking  elders  carried  a  white  tail  that  is  the  sign  of  a  man  with  dangerous  medicines. 

The  masubho  or  medicine  that  the  top  elders  learn  was  strong  enough  to  kill  and  only  those  who 


84  Interview  with  Gabuso  Shoka,  Mbiso,  30  May  1995  (Nata  <?). 


Warioba  Mabusi,  Ikizu  White-Tail  Elder  carries  the  white  tail 
and  leather  satchel,  and  wears  the  ivory  armband  of  his  rank, 
Kilinero,  16  August  1995 


Gabuso  Shoka,  Nata  Eldership  Title  of  Omongibo,  Mbiso,  30 
May  1995 


Figure  10-4:  Stories  of  the  Nyangi 


544 
would  put  the  good  of  the  community  first  could  be  initiated.  The  top  nyangi  elders  discussed  the 
case  together  before  making  a  decision  to  use  their  medicines.  They  used  their  medicines  to 
identify  thieves,  punish  criminals  or  enforce  local  custom.  People  feared  these  ranks  of  elders  and 
no  one  wanted  to  incur  their  wrath. 

The  mark  of  a  leader  was  someone  who  fed  people  and  in  order  to  take  the  eldership  ranks 
a  man  must  feed  the  community.  Hundreds  of  people  at  a  time  attended  the  nyangi  ceremonies  that 
lasted  up  to  eight  days.  Some  titles,  amaka,  required  simply  dividing  out  meat  that  the  people  took 
home  to  cook  and  eat.  One  man  said  that  nyangi  were  created  so  that  people  could  eat  at  the  rich 
man's  house.  Eldership  titles  forced  the  "big  man"  to  distribute  his  wealth  to  the  poor.  The  same 
elder  said  that  the  masubho  were  only  later  added  to  give  the  men  incentive  to  take  the  titles.85  To 
be  a  big  man,  to  gain  respect  in  the  community  one  must  feed  people.  To  rise  in  the  ranks  a  man 
must  have  wives,  children  and  grandchildren  as  a  sign  of  his  wealth. 

A  man  with  enormous  herds  of  cattle  to  protect  had  no  better  means  for  securing 
community  support  and  respect  than  the  nyangi.  People  not  only  respected  titled  elders  because 
they  distributed  food  but  also  feared  them  because  of  the  medicines  that  they  learned  when  they 
took  the  titles.  Titled  elders  did  not  have  a  formal  leadership  position  in  the  community  but  the 
people  consulted  them  on  community  matters  and  few  dared  to  disobey  them.  Among  the  Ikizu  the 
highest  ranking  nyangi  had  more  formal  leadership  status,  while  among  the  Ikoma  little 
differentiation  existed  past  the  black  tail  elders  that  most  could  attain.  People  feared  the  top 
eldership  titles  of  the  Ngoreme  and  looked  to  them  for  advice  when  community  problems  arose.86 


85  Interview  with  Nyawagamba  Magoto  and  Kinanda  Sigara,  Mchang'oro,  19  January 
1996(Natatf,  Ikizu  <t). 

86  Interview  with  Elfaresti  Wambura  Nyetonge,  Kemgesi,  29  September  1995  (Ishenyi  <f). 


545 

One  educated  man  predicted  that  if  the  colonial  system  had  not  interfered,  the  nyangi  elders  would 
have  developed  into  a  hierarchical  authority.87 

Each  set  of  eldership  titles  was  ethnically  based.  The  nyangi  ceremonies  created  an  ethnic 
community  by  attendance  at  these  feasts.  Few  other  rituals,  besides  the  walk  of  the  generation-set 
encompassed  the  whole  ethnic  community.  People  continued  to  perform  most  rituals  within  the 
local  clan-based  community  or  the  homestead.  Nyangi  thus  became  an  important  mechanism  for 
the  ritual  creation  of  ethnic  unity  during  the  early  colonial  years.  Titled  elders  celebrated  ethnicity 
in  events  which  highlighted  their  individual  achievement.    Nyangi  leaders  in  Nata  could  not  settle 
outside  the  boundaries  of  the  ethnic  territory  and  elders  understood  the  secrets  of  the  nyangi  as  the 
heart  of  what  it  was  to  "be  Nata."88  Elder's  explanations  of  nyangi  always  included  how  nyangi 
practice  differed  in  their  ethnic  group  from  others.  Titled  elders  became  the  guardians  of 
"tradition"  as  they  used  their  medicines  on  those  who  transgressed  ethnic  law. 

The  ethnic  basis  of  each  nyangi  practice,  however,  depended  upon  cross-ethnic  ties.  Just 
as  the  patronage  ties  of  wealthy  men.  the  eldership  titles  also  crosscut  ethnic  boundaries.  The  Ikizu 
and  the  Nata  share  eldership  titles  and  eldership  secrets  and  can  attend  each  other's  ceremonies. 
The  lkoma  Mwancha  clan  shares  eldership  titles  with  the  Nata  Mwancha  clan.  The  Ngoreme, 
Ikoma  and  Ishenyi  share  some  nyangi  and  can  attend  each  other's  ceremonies.  Some  Nata  women 
attend  the  Ikoma  women's  nyangi  ceremonies.89  The  "big  men"  of  the  nyangi  used  these  titles  to 


87  Interview  with  Dr.  Rugatiri  Mekacha,  Dar  es  Salaam,  24  May  1996  (Nata  <f). 

88  Interview  with  Jackson  Benedicto  Mang'oha  Maginga,  Mbiso,  18  March  1995  (Nata  <y). 

89  Interviews  with  Mwita  Magige,  Mosongo,  9  September  1995  (Ngorem  tf);  Morigo 
Mchombocho  Nyarobi,  28  October  1995  (Ishenyi  <?);  Bokima  Giringayi,  Mbiso,  26  October  1995 
(Ikoma  cc). 


546 

maintain  their  regional  links  while  building  their  authority  as  ethnic  group  leaders.  The  attendance 

of  Ikizu  elders  at  a  Nata  nyangi  accentuated  rather  than  lessened  their  ethnic  difference. 

The  story  of  the  Tirina  River  flood  is  a  popular  story  that  illustrates  the  cross-ethnic  nature 

of  the  nyangi.  Many  elders  who  tell  this  story  use  it  as  an  explanation  of  how  the  Nata  and  Ikizu 

people,  who  are  essentially  one,  were  separated.  It  is  an  origin  story  of  sorts  that  describes  the 

separation  of  a  people  into  two  ethnic  identities  as  a  result  of  physical  boundaries,  while 

maintaining  their  essential  unity  through  the  symbolic  passing  of  "tobacco"  between  "big  men"  of 

the  nyangi  on  each  side. 

The  Nata  always  had  good  relations  with  Ikizu.   They  were  neighbors  when  we  lived  at 
the  Sanchate  and  Tirina  Rivers.   The  Ikizu  lived  on  the  other  side  of  the  river.   Then  one 
day  the  Tirina  River  flooded.   The  Nata  elders  had  sent  messengers  to  invite  the  Ikizu  to 
attend  a  nyangi  ceremony  and  the  Ikizu  had  sent  messengers  from  their  side  to  invite  the 
Nata  to  their  nyangi  ceremony.   The  messengers  each  carried  bundles  of  tobacco  for  the 
elders  on  the  other  side  as  a  confirmation  of  the  invitation.   When  they  reached  the 
Tirina  River  and  found  that  it  was  in  flood  they  could  not  cross.  Each  messenger  threw 
his  bundle  of  tobacco  across  the  river  to  be  taken  to  the  eiders  on  the  other  side  as  an 
invitation.   They  told  each  other,  "you  go  do  your  ceremony  and  we  will  do  ours  but  we 
are  still  one. "  This  was  during  an  age-set  of  long,  long  ago.90 

The  new  "big  men"  of  the  "generation  of  opportunity"  established  the  wide  regional 

networks  necessary  to  maintain  their  wealth  from  the  position  of  a  localized  ethnic  identity.  Ethnic 

identity  allowed  freedom  from  the  constraints  of  lineage  and  clan  authority  while  still  providing 

local  support.  The  emerging  class  differences  of  wealthy  men  created  the  context  in  which 

ethnicity  flourished.  Without  their  self-interest  in  promoting  the  ethnic  system  other  competing 

forms  of  social  identity,  such  as  age-set,  may  have  taken  precedence.  Wealthy  men  created  an 


90  Interview  with  Mahiti  Kwiro,  Mchang'oro,  19  January  1996  (Nata  rf).  Mzee  Mahiti  is  a 
nyangi  Omongibo  for  Nata.  This  story  was  told  to  me  numerous  times,  always  in  the  context  of 
Ikizu  and  Nata  unity  and  common  origins.  Other  versions  by  Jackson  Benedicto  Mang'oha 
Maginga,  Mbiso,  18  March  1995  (Nata  <?).;  Tetere  Tumbo,  Mbiso,  5  April  1995  (Nata  (?) ; 
Mang'oha  Morigo,  Bugerera,  24  June  1995  (Nata  <?) ;  Riyang'ang'ara  Nyang'urara,  Sarawe,  20 
July  1995  (Ikizu  cf). 


547 
ethnic  ritual  community  around  their  individual  achievements  and  became  the  principal  narrators  of 
an  ethnic  history." 

Colonial  Rule  and  Changing  Forms  of  Social  Identity 

The  sense  of  ethnicity  as  the  regional  context  in  which  wealthy  men  built  up  their  authority 
was  well  in  place  when  the  Germans  entered  the  scene  at  the  turn  of  the  century.  Yet  it  was  a 
context  in  which  the  long-range  effects  of  colonial  power  on  the  coast  had  preceded  their  physical 
presence.  A  colonial  regime  that  required  ethnic  groups  to  rule  further  solidified  ethnicity.  Ethnic 
territories  were  the  units  most  easily  identified  by  the  Germans  within  a  field  of  multiple  and 
diverse  forms  of  social  identity,  existing  in  a  state  of  flux  and  dynamic  interaction  during  this  era. 
One  of  the  first  acts  of  the  Germans  in  this  region  was  to  identify  chiefs,  and  the  "tribes"  over 
which  they  ruled.  In  each  ethnic,  age-set  or  clan  territory  people  sent  out  a  man  representing  a 
different  kind  of  authority  to  the  Germans  as  their  chief.  The  choices  of  local  people  for  their  first 
chiefs  indicate  how  they  understood  the  ethnic  unit  in  relation  to  other  forms  of  social  identity  and 
how  the  Germans  fit  into  those  understandings. 

Western  Serengeti  people  consistently  chose  as  their  "chiefs"  men  who  based  their 
authority  not  on  the  exclusive  bounded  space  of  the  ethnic  or  clan  territory,  but  rather  on  the 
extensive  lateral  networks  of  prophets,  eldership  nyangi  titles  or  age-sets.  Because  they  built  their 
sense  of  ethnicity  in  relation  to  others  across  the  region,  those  who  represented  the  ethnic  group 
were  those  with  the  broadest  contacts.  Through  these  leaders  people  sought  a  relationship  with  the 
Germans  that  can  be  classified  neither  as  resistance  nor  accommodation.92  Western  Serengeti 


91  Many  of  the  elders  recommended  to  me  as  good  informants  on  history  were  titled  elders. 

92  For  a  critique  of  the  resistance  paradigm  see,  Sherry  Ortner,  "Resistance  and  the 
Problem  of  Ethnographic  Refusal."  Comparative  Studies  in  Society  and  History.  26.  1  (1995): 
173-193;  and  Michael  F.  Brown,  "On  Resisting  Resistance,"  American  Anthropologist.  98,  4 
(1996):  729-749. 


548 

people  saw  the  Germans  as  another  set  of  powerful  ethnic  people  whose  resources  local  people 
could  tap  for  their  own  uses  by  establishing  relationships  that  linked  them  together.  In  the  case  of 
the  Maasai  and  the  Sukuma  they  had  already  used  common  age-sets  and  friendships  to  become 
powerful  raiders  and  traders  themselves.  The  dilemma  of  western  Serengeti  people  who  first 
confronted  the  Germans  was  to  identify  the  most  effective  link  across  ethnic  boundaries  to  German 
power  and  knowledge. 
Colonial  Chiefs  as  Cross-Ethnic  Bridges 

The  first  remembered  encounter  with  the  Germans  was  the  event  of  choosing  colonial 
chiefs.  Thus  far  no  chiefs  nor  centralized  authority  existed.  This  was  a  crucial  moment  because  it 
would  determine  the  nature  of  chiefly  authority  and  also  the  social  units  over  which  a  chief  would 
rule.  Although  the  Germans  established  a  military  post  in  Mwanza,  at  the  southern  end  of  Lake 
Victoria  by  1891,  they  did  not  attempt  to  assert  control  over  the  area  to  the  north,  known  as 
Ushashi,  until  after  1 900."  At  that  time  the  Germans  established  military  posts,  first  at  Schirati  on 
the  Kenya  border  to  check  the  immigration  of  Luo  people  from  the  north  and,  second,  in  the  east  at 
Fort  Ikoma,  to  bring  an  end  to  Maasai  raiding.*1 


93  For  a  history  of  the  development  of  Mwanza  as  a  colonial  base  see,  Laird  Revis  Jones, 
"The  District  Town  and  the  Articulation  of  Colonial  Rule:  The  Case  of  Mwanza,  Tanzania,  1890- 
1945"  (Ph.D.  dissertation,  Michigan  State  University,  1992). 

94  For  an  overview  of  the  German  presence  in  this  region  see,  Ralph  Austen,  Northwest 
Tanzania  under  German  and  British  Rule:  Colonial  Policy  and  Tribal  Politics  1889-19.39  Wew 
Haven:  Yale  University  Press,  1968);  and  Theodor  Gunzert,  "Memoirs  of  a  German  D.C.  in 
Mwanza  1907-1916,  Extracts  from  the  Memoirs  of  Theodor  Gunzert,  trans.  Joyce  Hutchinson,  ed. 
Ralph  Austen,  Tanzania  Notes  and  Records.  66  (December  1966):  171-179.  For  accounts  of  some 
of  the  few  expatriates  living  in  the  area  during  these  years  see,  Carl  Jungblut,  Vierzig  Jahre  Afrika. 
1900-1940  (Berlin-Friedenau:  Spiegel  Verlag  Paul  Lippa,  1941 )  who  owned  a  plantation  in  Majita: 
and  Anne  Luck,  Charles  Stokes  in  Africa  (Nairobi:  East  African  Publishing  House,  1972),  Stokes 
was  a  CMS  missionary  (arrived  1 879)  who  quit  (1 886)  and  became  a  caravan  operator,  living  in 
Ukerewe  and  Mwanza. 


549 

Each  of  the  original  chiefs  chosen  in  what  are  now  five  different  ethnic  groups  represented 
very  different  social  bases  of  authority.  Their  choice  reflected  the  particular  ways  in  which  each 
group  had  struggled  with  the  challenges  of  famine,  war,  disease  and  ecological  collapse  in  the 
quarter  century  just  before  the  Germans  arrived.  In  Nata  the  chosen  chief  was  the  highest  ranking 
elder  in  the  system  of  eldership  titles,  borrowed,  in  part,  from  Sukuma  and  Ikizu  where  Nata  people 
sought  refuge  during  the  disasters.  The  chosen  Ikoma  chief  was  a  prophet  from  the  Tatoga 
pastoralists  because  their  medicines  had  saved  the  Ikoma  from  famine  and  infertility  when  their 
own  prophet  cursed  them.  The  Ngoreme  and  lshenyi  chiefs  were  leaders  of  age-set  territories 
developed  during  the  era  of  Maasai  raiding  when  they  reconfigured  clan-based  settlements  into  age- 
set  territories  as  a  defensive  measure.  The  Ikizu  choice  of  a  rainmaker  as  chief  also  related  to  the 
period  of  disasters  when  a  rainmaker  clan  from  Sukuma  created  a  consolidated  and  centralized 
Ikizu. 

Each  of  these  chiefs  also  represented  a  powerful  bridge  across  ethnic  boundaries.  The 
titled  elders  of  Nata  shared  their  initiation  secrets  of  medicines  with  Ikizu  and  some  Ikoma  elders. 
The  powerful  medicine  of  a  titled  elder  gave  him  respect  in  the  local  community  out  of  which  his 
regional  ties  of  patronage  extended  through  cattle  clientship.  The  Ikoma  chose  a  Tatoga  prophet  as 
their  chief  because  he  also  represented  inter-ethnic  ties  of  authority  throughout  the  region.  The 
age-set  leaders  of  Ngoreme  and  lshenyi  based  their  authority  on  their  ability  to  appeal  to  age-mates 
across  the  region  to  form  alliances  against  or  with  the  Maasai. 

When  the  Germans  went  from  Schirati  to  build  Fort  Ikoma,  their  most  immediate  need  was 
to  establish  relations  with  local  people  through  an  intermediary  whom  they  could  control  and  who 
could  provide  them  with  conscripted  labor  and  food.  In  the  oral  traditions  about  this  period  the 
overwhelming  image  of  the  Germans  is  as  those  who  captured  people.  The  job  of  the  new  chief 
would  be  to  demand  their  labor.  One  example  of  an  Ikoma  testimony  demonstrates  this  fear: 


550 

Mahewa:  When  the  Germans  came  they  took  captives  and  people  were  afraid  of  them. 
My  father  had  only  two  sons,  me  and  my  elder  brother.  He  hid  us  in  the  bush  and  told  us 
not  to  make  any  noise  so  that  the  Germans  would  think  that  there  was  no  one  at  the 
homestead  and  pass  by  without  taking  captives.   While  we  were  hiding,  my  elder  brother 
started  a  game  of  sticks  to  pass  the  time.   Yet  the  sticks  would  make  noise  when  they 
slapped  down.  I  got  hit  in  the  eye  and  cried  out.  My  father  came  to  scold  us  and  said 
that  he  was  hiding  us  so  that  the  white  men  would  not  get  us,  and  here  we  were  playing. 
Jan:  What  did  they  want  the  captives  for? 
Samuel:  To  do  work  at  the  fort. 

Wilson:  They  took  people  as  porters  to  carry  their  loads. 

Samuel:  In  the  year  that  the  English  beat  the  Germans  in  the  war,  as  they  were  leaving 
the  Germans  rounded  up  captives  to  carry  their  loads.   They  wanted  young  men  and  took 
them  by  force  to  carry  their  loads.  Many  ran  away.''5 

This  testimony  makes  it  clear  that  western  Serengeti  people  recognized  the  oppressive 

nature  of  the  colonial  encounter  and  took  action  to  counter  it  at  an  early  stage.  The  imagery  here  is 

that  of  hiding,  running,  or  retreating.  Yet  there  seems  to  be  more  to  this  image  then  simple 

resistance  by  subterfuge.  The  same  image  of  "hiding"  appears  in  the  story  of  how  the  first  Nata 

chief  was  chosen: 

At  that  time  people  ruled  themselves.  Then  one  day  they  were  surprised  to  see  a 
white  man,  a  German,  who  had  come  from  Mwanza.  He  came  with  Sukuma,  Takama  and 
Kahama  soldiers.   This  was  at  the  lime  when  my  grandfather  was  still  a  young  boy.  They 
made  their  camp  at  Makondusi,  in  the  bush  that  is  called  Mungaraba.   The  Nata  people 
all  came  to  see  and  they  cleared  a  spot  inside  the  bush  where  they  could  watch  what  was 
going  on  but  not  be  seen.   The  German  was  armed  with  guns  and  set  up  his  tents  so  that 
he  could  find  and  install  the  Sultan.   Yet  the  Nata  people  remained  hidden  in  the  bush. 
The  German  sent  his  soldier  to  summon  them.  He  called  them  in  the  language  of  the 
Sukuma.  Still,  they  were  afraid  and  refused  to  come  out  for  the  second  time. 

The  German  told  them  to  bring  out  their  leader.  Among  the  Nata  was  an  elder 
named  Kiboge  who  was  the  big  man  among  them.  He  was  a  prophet  and  had  the 
medicine  bundle  of  war.  He  dreamed  about  things  that  would  later  take  place.   The  Nata 
people  told  him  to  go  and  meet  the  German,  but  he  was  afraid  and  refused.  So  the  white 
man  got  mad  and  said  that  if  their  leader  did  not  come  he  would  attack  them.  One  voung 
man  named  Megassa  volunteered  to  go.    "I  will  go  so  that  you  all  can  stay  in  peace. " 
He  had  compassion  on  his  people.  So  he  went  to  the  German. 

When  he  approached  the  white  man,  he  was  given  a  stool  and  a  book.   The 
soldier  asked  his  name.  He  said,  "Megassa  Nyora  Sesera.  "  The  German  measured  his 
feet,  length  and  width.  He  gave  Megassa  boots,  a  kanzu,  and  a  tarabush  hat  (fez). 


95  Interview  with  Mahewa  Timanyi,  Nyambureti  Morumbe,  Robanda,  27  May  1995 
(Ikoma  J). 


551 

Megassa  took  off  his  leather  clothing.   Then  he  went  back  into  the  bush  to  his  people  but 
they  ran  away  in  fear.  He  called  them  and  said,  "it  is  only  me."  So  they  came  and 
listened  to  his  explanation.   They  saw  that  the  book  looked  like  a  soft  sheepskin.   When 
they  saw  the  pen  writing,  they  called  it  wanag'ora  ng'ora  [that  which  scribbles].   The 
white  man  slept  there  that  night  and  left  the  next  day.  He  went  to  Nyabuta  where  he 
began  building  Fort  Ikoma. 

After  four  days  he  sent  one  of  his  soldiers  to  the  new  Sultan  Megassa  who  lived 
near  the  Rubana  River  at  Tarime.    He  was  told  to  send  young  men  to  work  on  building 
the  fort.  They  were  sent  to  work  near  to  the  Orangi  River,  at  a  place  where  there  are  lots 
ofebenturu  trees,  which  are  very  heavy.   They  cut  these  and  carried  them  to  the  fort.96 

Here  the  spatial  image  that  represents  the  Nata  interaction  with  the  Germans  is  that  of 
hiding  in  the  bush.  Yet  this  time  they  are  there  to  watch  and  observe,  to  be  able  to  understand  the 
power  of  this  stranger.  They  decided  whom  to  send  hidden  from  the  German  gaze.  Rather  than 
being  a  strategy  only  of  fear,  as  the  narrator  portrays  it,  it  seems  also  to  be  taken  from  a  position  of 
strength.  Because  no  preexisting  chiefs  existed,  the  Nata  retained  their  autonomy  to  choose  whom 
they  would  send  out  and  thus  determine  the  terms  of  the  colonial  encounter. 

The  first  choice  of  the  Nata  was  a  prophet  who  kept  the  medicine  of  protection  during  war. 
When  he  refused,  they  agreed  to  send  a  young  man  who  volunteered  to  go  out  to  save  them  from 
destruction.  In  many  versions,  elders  said  Megassa  was  a  person  of  no  particular  authority  when 
he  became  chief.  According  to  other  knowledgeable  elders  he  held  the  highest  rank  in  the  eldership 
titles  and  was  the  spokesperson  for  his  age-set.97  Like  the  prophet,  both  positions  would  have  had 
powerful  medicines  associated  with  them. 


56  Interview  with  Mohere  Mogoye,  Bugerera,  25  March  1995  (Nata  <?),  member  of  the 
chiefs  family. 

"  Although  the  testimonies  are  ambiguous  I  have  come  down  on  the  side  of  those  who 
claim  that  Megasa  was  a  man  of  authority  because  it  is  consistent  with  the  choices  of  chiefs  in 
other  places  and  by  weighing  the  sources  of  knowledge  and  political  interests  of  the  various 
informants.  It  is  possible  that  Megasa  only  took  these  titles  after  becoming  chief  and  this  would  be 
consistent  with  stories  elsewhere  in  Tanzania  of  slaves  being  put  forth  as  chiefs.  However,  it 
seems  that  the  knowledge  of  what  the  Germans  had  done  in  other  places,  like  Sukuma,  Zan'aki  and 
Ikizu,  would  have  forced  the  Nata  to  take  the  request  for  a  chief  seriously. 


552 

Nata  people  seem  to  imply  with  these  choices  that  they  needed  men  with  powerful 

medicines  based  on  wide  regional  networks  to  link  them  to  the  power  of  the  Germans.    They 

assumed  that  the  power  of  the  Germans  was  embodied  in  their  own  medicines  and  prophets.  One 

Kuria  elder  told  me  that  the  Germans  killed  a  Nyabasi  prophet  because  he  refused  to  come  when 

summoned.  German  prophecy  had  warned  them  against  this  powerful  rival.98  In  most  of  the 

stories  of  making  German  chiefs  throughout  the  region  the  symbolic  items  of  the  fez,  kanzu,  boots. 

pen,  flag  and  book  in  the  investiture  of  chiefly  office  play  a  central  role.  Another  version  of  the 

Nata  story,  told  by  Nyamaganda  Magoto,  shows  that  they  understood  these  items  locally  as 

"medicines"  which  were  the  embodiment  of  German  authority. 

This  is  how  Megasa  became  chief.   The  Germans  came  and  pitched  camp  in  Nata.   They 
called  a  meeting  of  all  the  people,  but  no  one  came.   They  did  it  three  times,  but  still  no 
one  came.  They  said  they  wanted  our  leader  to  come.  Kiboge  was  the  prophet  who  kept 
a  medicine  bundle  with  medicine  for  war  and  authority.  Nevertheless,  he  was  afraid  to 
go  meet  the  Germans.  Finally  the  Germans  said  they  would  defeat  us  unless  we  sent  our 
leader.  So  Megasa  said  he  would  go  rather  than  have  everyone  killed.  He  was  a 
nobody.   When  he  went  out  the  German  sal  him  down  and  dressed  him  in  a  kanzu,  with  a 
round  red  hat  and  shoes.  He  was  made  a  Sultan.   When  he  went  back  to  the  people  they 
were  all  scared  of  the  medicine  that  he  had  gotten  from  the  Germans,  he  possessed 
authority.   The  other  institutions  of  authority  in  the  community  continued  to  function 
except  the  relationship  with  the  colonial  authorities.  Neither  Megasa  nor  Rotigenga,  his 
son,  would  interfere  with  them.   The  chief  s  job  was  seen  mainly  as  collecting  taxes  and 
labor  conscription.  All  else  was  under  traditional  authority." 

The  titled  elder  with  his  own  medicines  served  as  the  local  link  to  this  new  source  of 

authority  by  receiving  the  powerful  medicines  of  the  Germans.  Almost  certainly  the  Nata  had 

heard  of  the  power  of  the  Germans  before  they  arrived.  The  Germans  had  recently  severely 

punished  their  neighbors  to  the  east,  the  Ikizu  and  Zanaki.  The  German  army  burned  and  pillaged 


*)■ 


1  Interview  with  Sira  Masiyora  and  Philemon  Mbota,  Nyerero,  17  November  1995  (Kuria 
'  Interview  with  Nyamaganda  Magotto,  Bugerera,  4  March  1995  (Nata  cf). 


553 

villages  who  refused  to  obey.100  When  Nata  people  went  to  Sukuma  during  the  famine  to  seek 

refuge  the  had  encountered  the  caravan  trade  and  observed  the  rule  of  the  Germans  through 

Sukuma  chiefs.  The  symbolic  meaning  of  waiting  and  watching  from  the  bush  implies  that  the 

Nata  were  much  less  naive  about  colonial  power  than  other  statements  in  the  text  imply.  They 

chose  men  who  possessed  the  embodied  power  of  medicines  because  they  would  be  the  ones  able  to 

deal  with  the  medicines  of  the  Germans. 

Because  the  Germans  had  neither  common  age-sets,  clans,  lineages  nor  oathing  ceremonies 

of  ritual  friendship,  the  Nata  sought  to  bridge  the  ethnic  boundaries  between  them  by  incorporating 

German  medicines  into  specific  existing  nodes  of  knowledge,  rather  than  to  resist  it  or  to 

subordinate  themselves  to  it.  Just  as  prophets  had  access  to  their  power  through  ancestors  that 

represented  a  whole  system  of  clan  knowledge  throughout  the  region,  the  Nata  concealed  in  the 

bushes  had  to  figure  out  how  to  attach  one  of  their  people  to  the  Germans  in  a  way  that  would  give 

them  access  to  another  set  of  networks.  In  the  two  versions  told  above  Megassa  gives  himself  up 

to  the  task  as  a  sacrifice  for  his  people,  the  assumption  being  that  he  will  in  some  way  gain  a  new 

identity  through  their  medicines.  This  interpretation  makes  sense  of  the  story  in  which  the  Nata 

describe  the  succession  to  Chief  Megassa  after  his  death. 

After  Megassa  died,  the  Nata  had  to  choose  his  successor,  who  would  then  be  appointed 
by  the  Germans.   The  people  decided  to  put  up  Rotigenga  because  he  was  not  a  son  born 
to  Megassa  but  was  bought  during  the  time  of  hunger.  He  was  a  Simbiti.   They  were 
afraid  to  put  up  a  son  from  the  house  because  the  white  man  might  take  the  son  to  his 
home.  So  they  threw  out  Rotigenga,  who  was  still  just  a  child  when  he  came  to  Nata. 
His  parents  were  going  to  Sukuma  to  get  food.  During  this  hunger  people  ate  leather 
and  insects.  Among  the  other  children  of  Megassa,  Matinde  was  a  girl  from  Kuria  and 
Mohere  was  a  youth  from  Ngoreme.   They  were  just  like  children  of  the  house. 


1  A  German  report  states  of  the  Zanaki,  "Relying  on  the  inaccessibility  of  the  country, 
they  long  resisted  the  German  rule.  The  Protectorate  troops,  after  numerous  expeditions,  finally 
subdued  them  in  1905."  Geographical  Section,  A  Handbook  of  German  East  Africa,  pp.  96. 


554 

Rotigenga  had  already  married  when  he  was  made  chief.  Because  he  was  not  native 
born,  he  was  made  chief.  Now  we  know  that  this  was  foolishness. "" 

This  story  expresses  the  assumption  that  by  becoming  chief  Rotigenga  would  take  on  the 
identity,  the  spirit,  of  the  colonial  authority.  Because  of  this,  the  Germans  had  the  right  to  take  the 
chief  home  with  them  if  they  choose.  In  both  cases  the  Nata  sent  out  one  who  was  powerful  and 
yet  expendable.    The  chiefs  would  remain  attached  to  their  old  networks  of  power  but  their  new 
connection  to  German  medicines  would  make  additional  demands  on  their  lives.  This  is 
reminiscent  of  the  ways  in  which  spirit  mediums  throughout  the  Lakes  region  were  consecrated  to  a 
spirit  in  its  service.102  By  initiation  into  these  medicines,  the  German  ancestral  spirit  embodied 
therein  would  exert  its  own  control. 

Western  Serengeti  people  perceived  that  local  medicines  were  as  strong  as  German 
medicine-not  in  competition  as  much  as  coexisting  within  a  field  of  multiple  and  diverse  powers. 
Nata  elders  said  that  when  the  Germans  began  to  build  their  fort  they  first  chose  a  site  at 
Sang'ang'a  hill,  which  is  a  place  of  powerful  medicine  vested  in  the  medicine  bundle  of  Manterera, 
the  keeper  of  bees.  Every  day  the  Germans  would  work  on  building  the  fort  and  set  guards  to  it  at 
night  but  every  morning  the  structure  was  found  in  rubble.  So  the  Germans  moved  to  Nyabuta.103 
The  Germans  could  have  their  fort  but  not  in  this  place  of  power. 

Western  Serengeti  people  did  not  understand  power  as  emanating  from  a  single  source, 
within  hierarchical  structures.  Each  ethnic  group  had  their  own  kind  of  power  to  which  others 
could  gain  access  by  forming  linkages  across  ethnic  boundaries.  The  Ikoma  chose  a  Tatoga 
prophet  as  their  chief  not  because  they  were  subordinate  to  the  Tatoga  but  because  these 


1  Interview  with  Mohere  Mogoye,  Bugerera,  3 1  March  1 995  (Nata  <f). 

'■  Schoenbrun,  A  Green  Place,  p.  429. 

'  Keneti  Mahembora,  Sang'ang'a,  1 7  February  1 996  (Nata  <?). 


555 
efficacious  medicines  from  other  sources  would  augment  their  own  kind  of  power  in  the 
compositional  process  of  acquiring  knowledge.    Western  Serengeti  people  seem  to  have  perceived 
the  colonial  encounter  as  a  means  to  incorporate  new  medicines,  new  associations  of  knowledge, 
into  the  ethnic  unit.  The  first  Ikoma  chief  was  a  pastoral  Tatoga  prophet  named  Gambariko,  who 
was  succeed  by  his  son  Kichaguchi.    Ikoma  elders  said  that  the  Germans  killed  Kichaguchi 
because  he  refused  to  be  their  chief  and  follow  their  commands.104  After  Kichaguchi  the  Ikoma 
elected  one  of  their  own  as  chief,  the  spokesperson  for  the  age-set  in  power  at  the  time,  Rokini,  who 
possessed  either  the  medicine  of  rain  or  the  medicine  of  healing  the  land.  Colonialism  was  not  a 
form  of  domination  to  be  resisted  but  a  resource  to  be  tapped.  The  Ikoma  chose  a  Tatoga  prophet, 
and  later  an  age-set  leader,  as  their  chief  because  he  would  be  best  able  to  make  the  link  with 
German  power  necessary  for  coming  to  terms  with  this  new  authority. 

In  Ngoreme  the  mchama  of  the  age-set  was  designated  as  chief.    Rather  than  claiming  a 
pan-Ngoreme  identity,  they  insisted  on  chiefs  for  each  of  the  age-set  territories.  Defining  the  unit 
over  which  a  chief  would  rule  and  the  kind  of  authority  he  would  represent  maintained  local 
autonomy.  Given  the  flexible  and  situational  nature  of  social  identity  at  this  time  local  people 
defined  the  "tribal"  unit  in  different  ways  in  different  places.  Yet  here  as  well,  the  leader  of  the 
age-set  had  strong  lateral  links  to  age-set  members  in  other  ethnic  territories.  He  based  his 
authority,  in  part,  on  his  ability  to  make  alliances  with  other  age-set  territories  to  fight  the  Maasai 
or  trade  for  surplus  food.  The  Ishenyi  also  began  the  colonial  era  with  three  separate  chiefs  for 
each  age-set  cycle  territory."" 


104  Baker,  "Tribal  History  and  Legends,"  Sheet  No.  8-9,  MDB. 

105  Interviews  with  Judge  Frederick  Mochogu  Munyera,  Maji  Moto,  28  September  1995 
(Ngoreme  cf);  Rugayonga  Nyamohega,  Mugeta,  27  October  1995  (Ishenyi  &).  It  is  also  clear  from 
numerous  other  interviews  and  the  colonial  record  that  Ngoreme  and  Ishenyi  were  organized 
according  to  age-set  territory,  it  is  less  clear  that  in  every  case  the  leader  of  the  age-set  was  chosen 


556 

The  chiefship  was  a  contested  title  because  people  increasingly  saw  the  value  in  the  cross- 
ethnic  linkages  that  it  provided  with  the  Germans.    The  Germans,  unwittingly  or  not,  affirmed 
local  assumptions  about  how  power  was  constituted  by  becoming  central  actors  in  contests  over  the 
legitimacy  of  local  medicines.  Although  not  exactly  a  chief,  the  rainmaker  in  Ikizu  held  an 
important  position  of  authority.  In  a  competition  for  this  position,  Mwaninyama  went  to  the 
Germans  in  Mwanza  and  claimed  that  he  was  the  rightful  ruler  of  Ikizu,  usurped  by  Matutu.  So 
the  Germans  came  to  Ikizu  to  settle  the  matter.  "*  They  made  a  camp  at  Sarawe  and  called  both 
rainmakers.  Matutu  appeared  wearing  a  black  sheepskin  and  had  a  goat  and  a  gourd  of  honey  in 
his  hand,  the  symbols  of  his  medicine.  The  Germans  staged  a  test  to  see  who  was  the  real 
rainmaker  and  ruler  of  Ikizu.  Each  man  had  four  days  to  make  rain.  Mwaninyama  failed  but 
when  Matutu's  turn  came  it  rained  so  hard  that  the  German  camp  was  washed  away.  The 
Germans  made  Matutu  chief  and  took  him  to  Schirati  where  he  got  the  medicines  of  his  office  -  a 
coat,  a  kanzu,  a  hat  and  a  flag.  When  he  got  home  those  who  opposed  him  said  that  he  could  not 
make  rain  wearing  white  clothes  since  all  rainmakers  wore  black  skins,  the  color  of  the  fertile 
earth.  The  opposition  grew  so  strong  that  Matutu  had  to  run  away.  At  least  at  this  stage,  the 
Germans  failed  to  control  local  medicines."" 

As  western  Serengeti  people  began  to  experience  the  reality  of  chiefly  rule,  they  realized 
that  the  expected  benefits  of  association  with  German  medicines  had  not  materialized.  Rather,  the 
chiefs  had  become  tyrants  and  oppressors  themselves.  When  the  Germans  left  during  World  War  1 


due  to  the  confusion  surround  the  term  "muchama"  —  was  this  the  leader  of  the  age-set  or  the  man 
who  acted  as  the  agent  of  the  age-set  prophet?  See  discussion  of  the  "chama"  in  Chapter  8. 

106  Sebastian  Muraza  Marwa,  Mashuiaa  wa  Tanzania:  Mtemi  Makoneoro  wa  Ikizu. 
Historia  va  Mtemi  Makoneoro  na  Kabila  lake  la  Waikizu.  Mwaka  1894  Hadi  1958  (Peramiho, 
Tanzania:  Benadictine  Publications  Ndanda,  1 988). 

""  Matutu  was  eventually  reinstated  by  the  Germans  and  ruled  until  1 926. 


557 
the  people  overthrew  all  of  the  German  appointed  chiefs  except  one.  Those  who  overthrew  the 
chiefs  and  reasserted  their  own  power  represented  the  current  generation-set  of  elders,  identified  by 
the  colonial  regime  as  the  "Bagini."  The  generation-set  was  responsible  for  maintaining  the  health 
of  the  land  by  ritually  walking  over  it  every  eight  years  and  encircling  it  with  the  medicine  of 
protection.  While  the  medicines  of  the  prophets  were  individual  and  eclectic,  based  on  lateral 
networks  across  the  region,  the  medicines  of  the  generation-set  were  integrally  tied  to  the 
relationship  between  the  people  and  the  land,  effected  by  enclosure  and  unity. 

Soon  after  the  Germans  left,  another  large  scale  famine  and  a  series  of  epidemics  brought 
renewed  suffering.108  The  medicine  of  the  chiefs  had  not  proved  powerful  enough  and  the  elders 
had  to  reassert  the  older  medicines  of  the  land.  In  this  scenario  the  chiefs  represented  a  form  of 
individualistic  power  that  is  distributive  and  incorporative,  while  the  generation-set  reasserted  an 
alternate  communal  power  in  which  medicines  encircle  and  enclose  the  land  for  protection.  The 
actors  seen  from  this  perspective  were  not  resisters  and  collaborators  but  those  with  distributive 
medicine  and  those  with  encircling  medicine.    In  the  past  both  kinds  of  medicine  had  to  be 
balanced.  Colonial  power  upset  this  balance,  resulting  in  a  lack  of  health. 

Once  the  British  reestablished  control  their  first  act  was  to  reinstate  the  chiefs  who  were 
overthrown  in  the  inter-war  years.  They  suppressed  the  generation-set  elders  on  charges  of 
witchcraft  and  replaced  them  with  headmen,  who  were  the  direct  agents  of  the  chiefs  and  "akidas" 


108  See  James  Ellison,  "Making  'the  Nyakyusa':  Cultural  Translation  and  Cultural  Identity 
in  Colonial  Tanganyika"  (Ph.D.  Dissertation,  University  of  Florida,  forthcoming)  for  an  analysis 
of  the  influenza  epidemic  of  1918-1919,  "Chapter  4:  'Lake  Nyasa  and  Even  the  Mountains  Shook, 
Although  Our  Houses  Didn't  Fall':  Hunter  and  Transition  in  a  Colonized  World,  1913-1925." 
Prazak,  "Cultural  Expressions,"  p.  53,  reports  5000  deaths  in  the  western  Kenya  District  of  South 
Kavirondo  during  the  influenze  epidemic  of  1 91 8. 


558 
(government  clerks). ""  It  is  only  at  this  point,  when  power  became  centralized  and  unitary  rather 
than  multiple  and  diverse,  that  we  can  properly  speak  about  resistance  and  collaboration.  The 
chiefs  were  no  longer  links  between  ethnic  groups  to  gain  critical  resources  but  rungs  in  a  ladder  of 
authority  emanating  from  the  colonial  office. 
The  Consequences  of  Colonialism 

The  sense  of  ethnicity  created  during  the  early  colonial  years  was  particular  to  the  history 
of  this  region.  Small  scale  ethnicity  developed  because  people  connected  group  identity  to  a 
relationship  with  the  land  and  the  medicines  of  protection  to  enclose  those  boundaries.  Yet  the 
ethnicity  of  the  western  Serengeti  was  never  exclusive  and  formed  in  relation  to  other  ethnicities 
within  a  regional  system  crosscut  by  many  other  kinds  of  social  identities.  Western  Serengeti 
people  formed  their  sense  of  ethnic  identity  in  a  situation  of  intense  interaction  with  people  who 
were  different.  As  they  found  common  identities  to  bridge  these  differences,  they  defined  the  ethnic 
boundaries  that  separated  them.  Ethnic  identity  also  developed  out  of  a  situation  in  which  wealthy 
men  used  ethnicity  as  the  base  from  which  they  extended  lateral  networks  of  patronage  across 
ethnic  boundaries. 

The  Germans  stepped  into  this  situation  in  which  social  identities  of  all  kinds  were  in  a 
state  of  flux.  Western  Serengeti  people  used  their  understanding  of  ethnicity  to  forge  bridges  to  the 
Germans  and  gain  access  to  their  power.  In  the  end,  the  colonial  process  subverted  their  dynamic 
sense  of  ethnicity  into  an  exclusive  "tribalism"  in  which  other  social  identities  were  increasingly 
diminished,  along  with  their  power  to  crosscut  ethnic  boundaries.  The  Germans  expected 


109  Baker,  "System  of  Government,  Extracts  from  a  report  by  R.S.W.  Malcolm,"  MDB. 
"Major  Coote  took  the  part  of  the  Chiefs  and  in  an  attempt  to  improve  the  administration  in  1919 
the  Bagini  were  suppressed."  General  Meeting  at  Musoma.  2-6-1919. 


559 
completely  enclosed  and  sealed  ethnic  boundaries  that,  in  western  Serengeti  terms,  could  only  lead 
to  death  (see  Chapter  8). 

Western  Serengeti  people  maintained  some  local  autonomy  by  creating  micro-ethnicities 
that  had  deep  cultural  meaning.  The  fact  that  they  refused  amalgamation  into  a  pan-Mara  ethnic 
identity  demonstrates  their  ability  to  resist  colonial  hegemony.  The  ethnic  groups  of  western 
Serengeti  are  not  colonial  creations.  They  are  instead  locally  meaningful  units  forged  on  the  basis 
of  long  term  generative  principles,  in  response  to  the  sweeping  changes  of  the  late  nineteenth 
century.  Although  chiefs  were  notoriously  corrupt  and  lacking  in  local  respect,  the  "tribal"  units 
did  and  still  do  have  emotional  appeal  as  the  landscapes  of  the  past  through  which  a  people  know 
themselves. 

Western  Serengeti  people,  however,  have  paid  dearly  for  this  autonomy  by  foregoing  the 
political  clout  of  larger  scale  ethnicity,  such  as  their  neighbors  enjoy.  The  Sukuma  and  Maasai 
gained  significant  land  concessions  at  the  expense  of  western  Serengeti  peoples  during  the 
negotiations  over  the  Serengeti  National  Park  boundaries,  simply  because  the  Sukuma  and  Maasai 
could  mobilize  ethnic  politics  in  the  colonial  office.  Without  a  common  name  or  common  ethnic 
identity  the  Ishenyi,  Ikoma,  Ngoreme,  Nata  and  Ikizu  had  no  public  image  around  which  to  rally 
support."0  Even  though  the  former  President  Julius  Nyerere  comes  from  the  Mara  Region,  this  has 
not  translated  into  national  political  power  because  the  Mara  Region  does  not  speak  in  one  ethnic 
voice. 

This  deep  analysis  of  western  Serengeti  oral  traditions  demonstrates  that  the  particular 
form  taken  by  ethnicity  in  this  region  resulted  from  a  long  history  of  cross  cultural  interaction  and 


I  hope  to  more  fully  develop  this  argument  in  a  future  article  but  the  evidence  is  found 
in  the  archival  files  concerning  the  Serengeti  National  Park,  National  Game  Parks,  2 1 5/350/vol  1  - 
4,  TNA. 


560 

the  interplay  of  multiple  and  situational  social  identities.  The  ability  of  western  Serengeti  peoples 
to  respond  creatively  and  successfully  to  disaster  and  colonial  control  shows  the  adaptability  and 
flexibility  of  this  regional  system  of  multiple  and  contingent  identities  in  which  any  one  form  of 
authority  could  be  countered  by  others  and  any  one  means  of  creating  prosperous  communities 
could  be  replaced  by  others.  Although  women  found  their  autonomy  restricted  as  a  result  of  the 
late  nineteenth  century  changes,  they  were  able  to  draw  on  these  long  term  generative  principles  to 
find  ways  of  resisting.  Men  were  also  able  to  maintain  some  autonomy  from  colonial  rule  by 
choosing  the  terms  on  which  they  would  accept  the  imposition  of  a  chief. 

The  kind  of  dynamic  and  open  ethicity  based  in  small  scale,  locally  meaningful  units 
created  by  western  Serengeti  people  is  structurally  and  functionally  different  from  other  kinds  of 
ethnicities  even  within  Tanzania.  Deep  historical  experiences  have  determined  why  the  Luo,  for 
example,  developed  a  "nation"  while  the  Ikoma  developed  a  "community"  out  of  a  similarly 
heterogenous  mix  of  people  and  cultural  elements.  Perhaps  Mara  peoples  will  have  to  forge  a 
common  identity  in  order  to  compete  on  the  political  market.  The  ethnicity  of  the  western  Serengeti 
may  be  again  transformed  in  a  new  post-independence  political  climate  but  it  will  not  gradually 
fade  away  as  national  identity  takes  precedence  unless  people  are  physically  removed  from  the 
landscapes  of  their  past. 

Conclusion 

The  landscapes  of  memory,  manifested  in  oral  tradition,  exist  in  the  mind,  but  also  in  the 
physical  contours  of  the  land.  Each  hill  and  river,  each  rock  outcropping  and  spring  holds  a  story. 
The  memories  of  the  people  who  walk  over  this  land  have  created  and  recreated  the  landscape 
many  times  over  the  past  millennium.  Each  new  layer  does  not  erase  the  old  but  overlays  it  with 
new  meaning.  The  path  of  first  man  the  hunter  leading  to  the  house  of  first  woman  the  farmer  can 
still  be  seen  in  the  ecologies  of  woodlands,  hills  and  grasslands.  The  sacred  places  of  the  ancestors 


561 
who  guard  the  land  are  still  left  to  grow  wild,  marked  by  the  growing  pile  of  stones  on  their  graves. 
The  lawless  wilderness  boundaries  still  enclose  the  cultivated  space  ofa  unified  people.    Even  if 
the  elders  cease  to  tell  the  stories  of  the  past,  the  landscape  holds  these  memories,  through  the 
ancestors  who  still  enliven  it. 

It  is  the  memory  ofa  people  habituated  to  the  land,  however,  that  keeps  these  landscapes  of 
memory  alive.  These  memories  rest  in  people's  bodily  practice,  their  daily  routines  and  their 
household  spaces.  The  past  identities  of  generation-set  remain  in  the  way  people  greet  each  other 
each  day  or  divide  the  meat  at  a  wedding.  The  circular  paths  of  women  around  the  village 
exchanging  food  and  news  and  the  linear  paths  of  men  outside  the  village  conducting  business  in 
town  or  going  to  drink  beer  represent  the  autonomous  gendered  spheres  of  identity.  Clan  identities 
take  shape  in  the  arrangements  for  a  funeral  or  finding  a  place  to  build  a  house.  In  myriad  ways 
people  unconsciously  embody  their  past  as  they  kick  the  dust  in  their  daily  routine. 

The  experiences  of  the  disasters  show  that  even  with  extreme  upheaval  and  societal  stress, 
memories  do  not  disappear.  In  radically  changed  situations  people  need  to  resort  and  reshape  these 
memories  to  fit  their  present  needs.  However,  the  landscapes  still  remain  and  people  still  habitually 
perform  the  bodily  practices  of  routine  and  ritual.  The  western  Serengeti  elders  who  retain  the 
memories  of  the  past  are  those  whose  fathers  and  mothers  returned  from  Sukuma  after  the  drought 
to  settle  in  the  same  landscapes  with  other  people  who  also  had  memories  of  that  landscape.  People 
must  respond  to  crises  in  the  present  but  they  do  so  with  memories  of  the  past. 

These  memories,  embodied  in  the  core  spatial  images  of  oral  tradition  and  ritual,  represent 
the  generative  principles  out  of  which  people  constantly  improvise  their  daily  lives.  Generative 
principles  inherited  from  the  past  do  not  determine  the  choices  that  people  will  make  but  only  the 
wealth  of  possibilities  from  which  they  will  choose.  We  cannot  understand  the  present  choices  that 
people  make  without  knowledge  of  the  choices  they  have  made  in  the  past  and  the  basis  on  which 


562 
they  made  those  choices.  It  is  equally  true,  however,  that  we  cannot  understand  the  past  without 
knowledge  of  the  choices  that  people  have  made  in  the  present  which  have  reshaped  those 
memories.  The  core  spatial  images  of  memory  are  so  powerful  because  they  are  repeated  daily  in 
the  landscapes  that  people  inhabit  and  the  routines  that  they  practice. 

Can  refugees  then  carry  memories,  removed  from  the  landscapes  in  which  they  were 
formed?  They  can  and  do  but,  as  Malkki  so  eloquently  demonstrates,'"  they  translate  those 
memories  onto  new  landscapes  and  give  them  new  meaning.  After  all,  what  were  the  first  Bantu- 
speaking  farmers  in  the  western  Serengeti  but  refugees  from  the  very  different  forest  landscapes  of 
central  Africa?  Their  memories,  translated  onto  a  dry  savanna  parkland  where  hunters  and  herders 
preserved  a  different  kind  of  memory,  created  the  dynamic  synthesis  that  exists  today. 

What  will  happen  to  those  memories  if  the  western  Serengeti  landscape  is  significantly 
altered?  Perhaps  only  then  will  the  memories  die.  This  region  does  not  face  the  industrialization 
and  urbanization  that  threatens  most  landscapes  of  memory.  Oddly  enough,  the  threat  is  more 
likely  to  come  from  the  "wildernization"  or  "naturalization"  of  a  landscape  that  the  memories  of  a 
peopled  past  now  enliven."2  The  Serengeti  National  Park,  with  its  expanding  "buffer  zones," 
"game  control  areas"  and  "corridors,"  takes  new  pieces  out  of  habitation  and  cultivation  each  year. 
People  cannot  return  to  the  sacred  sites  of  the  emisambwa  without  paying  park  fees  and  hiring  a 
game  guard.  The  tourist  propaganda  of  the  park  maintains  that  the  Serengeti  remains  today  as  a 
pristine  wilderness  area  because  permanent  human  settlement  was  never  possible.  The  visitor's 
center  features  the  stone  tools  of  early  man  but  does  not  mention  the  farmers  of  the  last  millennium 


111  Malkki,  Purity  and  Exile. 

112  For  a  critique  of  the  naturalization  of  these  landscapes  by  the  conservation  movements 
see  Jonathon  S.  Adams  and  Thomas  O.  Mc  Shane,  The  Mvth  of  Wild  Africa:  Conservation 
without  Illusion  (New  York:  W.  W.  Norton  and  Co.,  1 992). 


563 
who  knew  and  named  these  landscapes.  The  Maasai  herders  and  the  Ndorobo  hunters  appear  as 
part  of  the  natural  landscape,  people  who  went  through  seasonally  to  herd  or  hunt  but  never  to 
occupy  the  land.  The  Maasai  cave  paintings  at  Moru  Kopjes  that  are  probably  less  than  one 
hundred  years  old,  take  their  place  in  the  minds  of  tourists  next  to  australopithecus  skull  fragments 
and  the  fossilized  footprints  of  an  ancient  woman. 

Serendipitously,  as  I  finished  this  dissertation,  I  received  a  card  from  the  artists  whom  the 
park  commissioned  to  paint  a  mural  on  the  visitor's  center  wall  at  Seronera."3  They  wondered 
whether  I  could  share  my  work  with  them  since  they  were  "researching  human  history  in  the 
Serengeti  area"  for  presentation  as  artistic  images.  They  were  especially  interested  in  any  "post 
Ambrose  work"  I  might  know.    Ambrose  is  an  archaeologist  of  the  pastoral  neolithic  period,  1000 
B.C.  and  700  A.D.  That  this  entire  last  millennium  of  human  habitation  in  the  western  Serengeti 
could  be  so  completely  erased  in  the  minds  of  the  government,  park  and  donor  agencies  illustrates 
the  threat  to  these  landscapes  of  memory.  I  wonder  if  they  really  want  to  hear  about  farmers 
crossing  the  Serengeti  as  hunters  and  pilgrims,  building  enduring  settlements  in  the  western  hills  of 
what  is  now  the  park,  and  creating  various  kinds  of  networks  over  time  which  made  the  Serengeti  a 
corridor  of  interaction  rather  than  a  wilderness  barrier.  The  landscape  of  memory  that  the  artists 
are  asked  to  recreate  on  the  wall  at  Seronera  is  the  pristine  wilderness  imagined  by  an 
industrialized  society  to  define  its  own  identity.  Will  school  children  from  Ikoma.  Nata  and 
Ngoreme  taken  to  the  park  for  an  educational  tour  accept  the  naturalized  images  of  the  Serengeti 
over  the  peopled  landscapes  of  their  grandfathers  recreated  in  oral  tradition? 


'  David  Bygott  and  Jeanette  Handby 


APPENDIX  1:  NATA  EMERGENCE  TRADITIONS 

This  version  was  told  by  Megasa  Mokiri,  in  Motokeri,  4  March  1995.  He  was  one  of  the 
top  ranking  elders  in  Nata,  taking  the  tile  of  Omongibho.  Once  my  male  colleagues  introduced  our 
purpose,  to  learn  the  history  of  the  Nata,  Megasa  chose  to  begin  with  this  story.  He  told  it  without 
a  pause  and  took  on  the  characters  of  the  dialogue  with  different  voices: 

The  beginning  of  Nata  was  two  people,  Nyamunywa  and  Nyasigonko.   The 
woman  was  Nata  and  the  man  was  Asi.   The  woman  was  a  farmer  who  planted  kunde 
beans,  sesame  and  millet.  She  had  no  fire  to  cook.  One  day  the  Asi  hunter  killed  an 
eland  near  to  her  field.  After  a  little  while  the  hunter  went  by  and  found  the  woman 
sitting  on  a  large  rock.  He  asked  her,  "did you  see  an  animal  going  by  here?"  The 
women  answered,  "I  saw  it  going  by,  it  is  over  there. "  The  woman  was  naked  and  the 
hunter  wore  skins.  They  went  over  to  the  animal  and  the  man  skinned  and  butchered  it. 
The  woman  asked,  "do  you  eat  these  animals?"  The  man  said,  "wait  a  minute."  He  went 
and  made  fire,  cheeeecheeecheee,  and  when  he  was  finished  he  told  the  woman,  "I  have 
excreted  the  fire. "  They  took  the  meat  and  roasted  it.   The  woman  lived  in  a  cave.   The 
hunter  lived  in  a  grass  shelter  in  the  wilderness.   The  man  told  the  woman,  "let  us  move 
to  the  house  of  grass. "  When  they  reached  the  house  the  man  was  the  leader.  He  gave 
the  woman  a  skin  to  cover  herself  with.   They  lived  together  and  were  married.  The 
woman  became  pregnant  and  gave  birth  to  a  son.   Then  she  gave  birth  to  a  daughter, 
and  in  total  four  boys  and  three  girls.   When  they  were  grown  they  were  married  to  each 
other.   This  is  the  reason  that  Nata  inherit  through  the  woman's  side.   The  children  made 
the  clans  of  Nata.  The  place  where  they  lived  is  called  Bwanda.   When  they  got  to  be  too 
many  the  divided  into  the  Saiga. 

This  version  was  told  with  detail  and  enthusiasm,  without  pause,  by  Mgoye  Rotegenga  Megasa,  in 
Motokeri,  13  March  1995.  He  is  from  Chief  Rotigenga's  family.  Even  though  the  interview  was 
with  his  sister  concerning  women's  circumcision  he  wanted  me  to  record  this  story. 

They  came  from  the  east,  the  man  was  Nyamunywa  and  the  woman  was 
Nyasigonko.  He  was  an  Asi,  a  hunter  of  zebra.   The  animal  he  was  hunting  fell  on  the 
rise  and  died,  he  took  out  the  arrow  and  saw  that  there  was  a  person  in  front  of  him.  He 
came  closer  and  saw  that  it  was  a  woman.  He  went  to  the  door  and  asked  who  was  there. 
The  answer  came,  "the  person  of  this  house. "  To  which  he  replied,  "a  person  of  the 
wilderness. "  They  greeted  each  other  in  Ekinata.  She  invited  him  inside.  He  went  in 
and  put  up  his  bow  and  quiver,  asking  her,  "who  are  you?"  She  said,  "lam 
Nyasigonko. "  She  asked  him  who  he  was  and  he  said,  "1  am  Nyamunywa. "  He  said,  "let 
us  go  back  to  the  animal  and  you  hold  it  while  I  skin  it. "  So  they  went  and  did  this. 
Then  he  said,  "let  us  take  all  the  meat  back  to  your  house. "  So  they  took  it  all  inside. 
The  sat  awhile  and  then  Nyasigonko  gave  the  man  some  raw  millet  to  chew  on.  He  ate 
until  he  was  full.  She  took  the  knife  and  cut  off  a  piece  of  liver  to  eat.   The  man  said, 
"why  do  you  eat  it  raw?"  "Let  us  roast  it."  The  woman  said,  "where  would  I  get  fire?" 

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He  man  asked  her,  "don't  you  make  fire  or  cook?"  She  said  thai  she  didn't  know  how. 
He  told  her  to  get  water  and  wood.   Then  he  took  his  quiver  and  went  outside.  He  took 
out  his  stick  and  board  and  twirled  the  stick,  cheeecheeecheee,  until  it  made  fire.   Then 
he  went  back  into  the  house  and  started  the  fire  inside.   The  woman  roasted  the  meat  and 
they  ate.   The  man  asked  her  to  get  water  after  he  had  chewed  the  millet.  She  said,  "the 
water  is  in  the  river. "  He  said,  "don't  you  have  anything  to  carry  it?"  She  did  not.  So  he 
took  the  stomach  of  the  zebra  and  sewed  it  like  a  bag  to  carry  water.  He  made  four 
bags,  washed  them  and  they  carried  water  to  the  camp.   The  man  went  outside  again  and 
looked  on  the  mountain  until  he  found  a  stone  for  grinding.  ...  [he  taught  the  woman  to 
grind  millet  and  make  porridge  and  they  ate  the  first  meal] 

A  third  version  was  told  to  me  by  Sochoro  Kabati,  in  Nyichoka,  on  2  June  1 995.  He  is  the 
Bongirate  age-set  leader,  Kang'ati,  for  the  Getiga  and  Gaikwe  clan  moiety.  He  began  to  tell  this 
story  because  he  was  explaining  why  these  clans  have  priority  in  Nata.  This  version  gives  more  of 
the  dialogic  nature  of  these  narratives.  Nyawagamba  was  my  colleague  who  came  along  to 
introduce  me  and  help  with  the  interview.  The  old  man  came  to  listen  and,  I  believe,  was  Sochoro's 
uncle. 

Sochoro  :  Nyamunywa  and  Nyasigonko,  Nyamunywa  was  a  Gaikwe  clan  member  and 

Nyasigonko  was  the  woman.   You  know  this  Nyasigonko,  they  say  she  was  Soncho,  but 

now  this  woman  .  .  . 

Old  man:  She  was  Getiga. 

Sochoro:  Ok,  she  was  Getiga. 

Nyawagamba:  Mmmm. 

Sochoro:  She  was  Getiga,  all  the  clan  names  come  from  these  . . .  [holds  up  two  finger] 

Nyawagamba:  Two 

Sochoro:  Two  ...  the  Nata  today,  even  the  Moriho  clan,  or  any  other,  come  from  this 

inheritance.   The  Ghikwe  get  the  first  inheritance.  If  an  old  man  dies  they  can't  divide 

the  inheritance  unless  a  Ghetiga  goes  first.  He  takes  the  beer  straw. 

Nyawagamba:  Eeeee. 

Sochoro:  This  is  because  the  woman  was  in  her  house,  a  cave,  in  the  rocks,  that  is  where 

they  lived.  But  she  was  a  farmer  and  used  a  digging  stick  (amaroso>,  because  this  soil  in 

the  east  at  Bwinamoki.  .  .  .  Do  you  know  that  this  soil  is  so  loose  that  they  could  farm 

with  a  digging  stick.  The  man,  Nyamunywa  saw  her  and  every  day  when  he  passed  he 

saw  her.   "Muuu  Muuuu,  this  person  who  is  here,  where  does  she  live?"  He  was  a  hunter 

and  came  to  her  house.  So  one  day  he  caught  her  by  surprise.   They  greeted  each  other 

and  she  asked  him  to  sit  down.   He  asked  her  to  let  him  live  there  with  her  and  asked  her 

what  she  ate.  She  said,  "this  is  millet,  this  is  kunde,  this  is  sesame,  this  is  sorghum  and  I 

eat  them  all  raw."  He  said,  "I  eat  meat  cooked. "  She  asked,  "how  do  you  cook?"  He 

said,  "with  fire."  He  went  and  got  the  animal  and  prepared  it  for  roasting.   Then  he 

said,  "I  am  going  out  to  make  fire. "  He  went  out  and  twirled  the  stick  until  he  made  fire. 

He  brought  some  grass  and  kindled  the  fire.   "Do  you  know  how  to  make  fire?  " 

Nyawagamba:  Eeeee 

Sochoro: .  .  .  [explains  how  to  make  a  fire]   They  roasted  the  meat  and  ate.  They  were 

married.   That  is  where  our  names  come  from.  She  gave  birth  to  children,  from  which 

came  our  age-sets  and  clans. 

Nyawagamba:  Mmmmmm 

Sochoro:  Eeeee 


566 

This  version  was  told  to  me  by  Mariko  Romara  Kisigero,  in  Burunga,  on  31  March  1995.    He  was 
in  his  seventies,  one  of  the  first  to  receive  an  education,  spending  much  of  his  life  in  government 
service  and  as  a  TANU  activist.  My  colleague,  Mayani,  participated  in  the  interview. 
Jan:  How  did  the  Nata  begin? 

Romara:  The  Nata,  their  asimoka  (emergence).  .  .  .  Father  Nyamunywa  was  a  hunter.  .  . 
and  this  hunter  on  his  journeys  here  and  there  in  the  wilderness,  over  there,  he  shot  an 
animal  with  his  arrow.  Basi.  After  he  hit  the  animal  he  followed  its  tracks.  . .  followed 
its  tracks.  .  .  followed  its  tracks...  and  he  found  that  the  animal  had  fallen  on  a  large  flat 
rock,  where  there  was  water.    And  before  he  did  anything  he  saw  another  person  coming 
to  meet  him  there,  and  she  was  a  woman.   The  woman  was  carrying  a  bundle  on  her 
back.  Now  she  welcomed  him  there  and  they  began  to  talk.   We  don't  know  what  they 
talked  about  but  it  seems  that  he  decided  to  live  with  her  there  at  that  large  rock.   The 
man  skinned  the  animal  and  prepared  it  for  roasting  with  the  water  that  was  there.   Then 
he  said  to  the  woman,  "excuse  me  while  I  go  out  and  excrete  the  fire."  So  she  left  and  he 
took  the  chance  to  make  fire  by  twirling  a  stick  in  a  board. 
Mayani:  What  were  the  sticks  called? 

Romara:  Ekingaita  and  rurendi. . .  .  After  he  made  the  fire  he  called  the  woman  and  she 
came.   They  roasted  the  meat  and  ate  it.   Then  the  woman,  look .  .  .,  in  her  bundle  she 
had  grain  seeds.  They  took  a  stick  and  made  holes  and  planted  them  there  and  the  seeds 
sprouted.   They  harvested  the  grain,  and  that  was  their  home. 
Mayani:  What  kind  of  grain? 

Romara:  Millet. . .  .  For  the  Nata  this  was  their  most  important  seed.  So  that  is  the  way 
it  is...  And  this  woman's  name  was  Nyasigonko.  Some  people  who  have  looked  into  it 
say  that  she  was  from  Soncho.  So  they  lived  these  together  and  had  children,  and  those 
were  the  Nata.   We  say  of  ourselves,  "we  are  the  Nata  of  Nyamunywa  and  Nyasigonko. " 
That  is  because  our  parents  were  Nyamunywa  and  who? 
Mayani:  and  Nyasigonko. 
Romara:  Eeeee 
Mayani:  Eeeee 


APPENDIX  2:  IKIZU  EMERGENCE  TRADITIONS 

Zamberi  Manyeni  and  Guti  Manyeni  Nyabwango,  Sanzate,  15  June  1995.  These  are  brothers,  the 
elder  Zamberi  was  a  retired  farmer  and  the  he  younger  Guti  held  a  number  of  political  offices. 
They  are  of  the  Kombogere  clan  of  Isamongo  on  their  father's  side  and  the  hunting  clan  of  Hemba 
on  their  mother's  side.  The  contentious  nature  of  history  is  evident  in  their  dialogue. 

Guti:  Let  us  begin  with  how  the  Ikizu  started.   The  Ikizu  began.  .  .  The  Ikizu  began. . . 
with  a  man  named  Isamongo.   This  Isamongo  met  his  wife  who  was  named  Nyakinywa. 
He  was  a  hunter,  a  great  hunter,  he  lived  on  the  mountain.  He  was  an  expert  on  making 
fire,  his  wife  Nyakinywa  knew  how  to  make  rain.  She  made  it  and  it  rained.   When  they 
met  to  marry  he  asked  his  wife  how  she  made  rain.  And  she  asked  him  how  he  made  fire. 
So  now  Nyakinywa  excelled  Isamongo  in  cleverness.  One  day  he  went  to  hunt  and  she 
put  out  the  fire.   When  Isamongo  came  home  he  was  shivering.  He  had  been  rained  on. 
He  called,  "Nyakinywa,  where  is  the  fire?  Make  it  for  me. "  Nyakinywa  said,  "it  went 
out  and  you  are  the  expert  on  fire,  show  me  how  to  make  it. "   "My  wife,  go  to  my  quiver 
and  get  two  things,  a  small  stick,  and  another  thing.  Rub  them  together  and  you  will  get 
fire. "  Nyakinywa  knew  that  she  had  tricked  him  and  learned  his  expertise.  After  awhile. 
. .  the  Kombogere.  . .  They  gave  birth  to  children.  One  was  named  Mugabho.  He  was  a 
son.   The  daughter  was  named.  .  .   Wanzita.   Wanzita  went  to  the  clan  where  she  got 
married,  the  blacksmiths.  So  that  is  why  the  blacksmiths  are  Kombogere  clan.   The 
children  of  Wanzita  were  Waturi.   We  sing  —  "Ikizu  wetu,  cha  Wanzita  na  Mogabho. " 
Ikizu  wa  Isamongo  na  Nykinywa,  cha  Wanzita  na  Mogabho. 

Zamberi:  Isamongo  and  Nyakinywa  left  each  other.  Isamongo  wanted  to  circumcise  the 
children  but  Nyakinywa  refused.   They  fought  about  it  and  separated.   While  they  were 
fighting  Isamongo  wanted  to  circumsise,  but  Nyakinywa  refused.  Isamongo  said  if  you 
want  to  live  in  this  country  the  children  must  be  circumcised.   The  woman  refused  and 
they  separated,  each  building  in  a  different  place. 
Jan:  Where? 

Zamberi:  Isamongo  came  to  build  in  Sarama.  Nyakinywa  stayed  at  Kihumbo.  They  met 
at  Kirinero.  It  is  a  known  place.  At  this  time  the  woman  lived  at  her  house  and  the  man 
at  his.   The  man  had  medicine.  He  made  a  plan  with  the  medicine  to  make  the  children 
sick,  one  was  lame  and  could  not  walk.  Nyakinywa  was  upset  and  came  to  the  man.  My 
husband,  why  are  the  children  sick  and  lame,  what  shall  I  do.  He  said,  it  is  because  you 
refused  the  tradition  of  this  land.   This  land  does  not  accept  that  a  child  lives  here 
without  being  circumcised.  If  you  agree  to  have  them  circumcised  they  will  be  healed. 
So  she  agreed  and  they  were  circumcised  and  they  became  well.  So  this  is  how  Ikizu 
knows  the  tradition  that  they  must  circumcise  their  children. 
Guti:  So  they  divided  the  work,  one  became  a  prophet/healer,  the  other  became  a 
rainmaker,  omugemba.   The  prophet  had  the  speciality  of  protection  against  enemies. 
When  enemies  came  he  would  keep  them  from  entering  the  land.  The  enemies  were  the 

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Maasaifrom  a  long  time  ago.   The  man  was  a  prophet  to  keep  the  Maasaifrom  entering 

to  kill  us.   The  woman  was  a  prophet  to  bring  rain.   They  divided  the  work.   The 

medicine  of  the  prophet  was  the  orokoba.  The  man  went  clear  over  there  and  circled 

around  putting  the  medicine  on  the  trees  to  keep  out  the  enemies.  The  enemies  could  not 

enter. 

Jan:  Do  people  still  have  this  medicine? 

Guti:  Up  to  now,  traditions  do  not  die,  they  are  here. 

Jan:  Is  there  one  for  the  whole  land  or  many? 

Guti:  There  are  few  who  know  it,  those  from  one  clan  ofKombogere  wa  Sarama,  Bahiri 

Zegera.    They  are  the  only  ones  who  know  it.  The  whole  clan. 

Zamberi:  One  at  a  time  they  take  the  title.  One  dies  and  leaves  it  to  the  next  in  line.  It 

follows  like  this. 

Jan:  Did  the  medicine  first  come  from  Isamongo? 

Zamberi:  Yes,  they  got  it  from  Isamongo  the  Bahiri  Zegera.  Those  who  followed  him  in 

the  line.   The  clan,  the  children  of  Isamongo  do  the  orokoba.  [. . .] 

Jan:  Do  they  inherit  the  expertise  or  do  they  dream  it? 

Zamberi:  They  do  not  dream.  They  learn  it. 

Guti:  Like  me,  if  I  have  medicine  1  can  teach  my  children  to  use  it.   This  person  takes  it 

and  teaches  his  children.  [.  .  .]  Not  by  dreaming. 

Jan:  There  is  not  another  kind  o/orokoba  in  Ikizu? 

Zamberi:  There  are  smaller  ones  but  not  the  big  one.  Many  help  the  prophet  but  he 

makes  the  medicine  and  keeps  it. 

Guti :  When  you  do  it  you  must  wear  the  traditional  leather  clothes.  The  prophet  wears 

the  woman's  clothes  of  leather,  goat.  Because  his  expertise...  the  uniform  gives  him 

authority  to  do  the  medicine.  . . .  The  enemies  will  see  him  spreading  the  medicine  and 

think  it  is  just  a  woman  and  no  threat.    .  .  . 

Guti:  We  are  finished  with  the  story  of  Isamongo.  Let  us  go  back  to  the  work  of  mama, 

Nyakinywa,  she  was  an  expert  in  rain.    This  woman  was  the  leader  of  the  land,  the 

Mtemi.  The  whole  land  respected  her  and  knew  her.  Isamongo  let  her  be  leader  because 

she  brought  the  rain  to  bring  food,  the  plants  flourished. 

Kinanda:   Where  did  she  come  from? 

Zamberi:  Sukuma,  Kanadi.  [. . .]  [goes  over  the  story  again  to  show  why  she  has 

authority.]  To  get  the  mtemi  she  took  him  one  day  to  show  him.   The  man  killed  a  pongo 

(bushbuck),  and  brought  the  skin.  She  said,  this  is  prohibited  for  me,  take  it  and  throw  it 

away.  So  he  threw  it  away.  It  landed  on  a  tree.   The  next  day  she  said  I  will  now  take 

you  to  show  you  how  to  make  rain  from  above.   They  went  to  the  rock  where  there  is  a 

pool  of  water.  She  said,  put  the  skin  on  the  water.  He  could  not  do  it.  But  the  woman 

could  do  it.  She  staked  it  out  to  dry.  So  Nyakinywa  got  the  authority.  Everyone  knows 

how  to  make  fire  today  but  only  few  can  make  rain. 

Jan:  Who  followed  her  as  mtemi. 

Zamberi:  Nyakinywa,  then  Wang'ombe,  then  Kisozura,  then  Wekunza.  All  of  these  were 

women,  four  women,  then  it  went  to  the  men.  Mayai,  Gibwege,  Mwesa,  Matutu, 

Makongoro.  It  follows  the  clan  of  Nyakinywa,  Abaraze.  [...]  OfthelandofKihumbo. 

There  are  no  other  rainmaker  clans,    [then  lists  the  line  of  the  prophet,  Isamongo.]  [. . .] 

All  of  these  of  one  clan.  Abahiri  Zegera.  [.  .  .]  do  sacrifices  on  Chamuriho.    Muriho 

was  the  one  who  began  Ikizu.  .  .  .  he  came  from  Ukamba.  He  came  here.   The  mountain 

of  Chamuriho  is  called  Chamuriho  cha  Mukamba.  [ . .  ■  ] 


569 

Zamberi:  Three  -women  came  with  Nyakinywa  from  Sukuma...  Wang'ombe  and  Wekunza 
one  stayed  in  Sizaki  (Wekunza)  and  the  other  in  Hunyari  (Wang'ombe).  [. .  .] 
Nyakinywa  was  at  Kihumbo.   Wang'ombe  gave  birth  to  Hunyari  and  Nyamang'uta,  Ik  izu 
ofWanzitaandMugabho.  They  were  born  of  Wang'ombe,  the  sister  of  Nyakinywa.  I  do 
not  know  who  their  father  was. 

Guti:  The  mzee  (elder)  has  talked  about  the  history  of  Sukuma,  but  I  want  to  tell  you  the 
history  oflkizu.  He  puts  it  together  the  stories  of  Sukuma  and  Ushashi.  I  want  to  tell 
you  about  the  two  women.  I  want  to  tell  the  story  oflkizu.  This  woman  asked  the  story 
oflkizu.   The  elder  told  you  the  story  of  Ushashi,  but  out  history  does  not  come  from 
Ushashi  and  Usukuma.  The  other  women,  he  does  not  know  who  they  came  from.  But 
Ikizu  is  of  two  people,  Isamongo  and  Nyakinywa  who  met,  they  had  two  children,  two 
children,  one  was  an  Mturi  and  he  was  a  prophet,  and  the  other  was  a  rainmaker. 
Mugabho  and  Wanzita.  If  you  asked  anyone  to  sing  the  song.   They  will  say  the  same 
thing.   This  is  our  history.  [. . .]  [they  fight  amongst  each  other  on  the  utemi  list  order, 
Guti  finally  leaves] 

Zamberi:  Moriho  came  here  but  he  had  no  people.   The  Hengere  were  here.  Chamuriho 
mountain  was  inhabited  by  the  Hengere  people.  [.  . .]  ^Sings  the  song  of  Muriho  and  the 
HengereJ  This  Mukamba  named  Muriho  chased  out  the  Hengere.   The  Moriho  are  the 
united  clan  lands  ofKirinero,  Kihumbo,  Butaza  and  Mariwanda,  Buraze.   This  is  the 
land  of  Muriho.  [.  .  .]  Nyakinywa,  because  of  her  medicines,  knew  how  to  milk  buffalo. 
When  they  met,  she  went  to  Isamongo 's  house,  but  then  she  asked  him  to  come  to  her 
house  at  Kihumbo,  Gaka.  So  they  went  there.  In  the  evening  she  said  since  you  are  a 
hunter,  do  not  shoot  my  cattle  when  they  come  home.  He  found  milk  inside  the  house. 
She  milked  the  buffalo. .  . .  She  was  a  farmer. 

This  version  of  the  Ikizu  emergence  tradition  appeared  in  print,  E.  C.  Baker,  "Notes  on  the 
Waikizu  and  Wasizaki  of  Musoma,"  Tanganyika  Notes  and  Records  23  (June  1947):  66-67. 

In  the  region  ofKanadi,  which  is  in  Sukumaland,  the  people  were  so  rich  in 
cattle  that  they  could  not  make  use  of  the  daily  yield  of  milk  and  were  in  the  habit  of 
throwing  the  surplus  into  the  river  which  flowed  through  their  country.  But  this 
wastefulness  was  the  cause  of  their  downfall,  for  the  river  flowed  into  the  Masai  country 
and  the  Masai,  wondering  to  see  the  milky  water,  followed  the  river  bed  until  they  came 
to  Kanadi.   They  saw  the  prosperity  of  the  people  and  the  greatness  of  their  herds  and, 
thereafter,  they  raided  them  so  continuously  that  the  dwellers  in  Kanadi  fled  their 
country  and  were  dispersed. 

Among  those  who  left  Kanadi  were  two  women,  Nyakinwa,  who  was  the  elder, 
and  Nyambubi,  and  they  wandered  together  until  they  came  to  Sizaki  and  there,  in  the 
Changugi  Hills,  Nyakinwa,  who  was  a  raindoctor,  deposited  the  Imbura  (rain)  stones 
which  remain  there  to  this  day.   These  Imbura  stones  are  the  medium  of  communication 
between  humans  and  the  supernatural  beings;  they  are  produced  in  times  of  crisis  and 
offerings  are  made  through  them  to  the  Gods.  After  leaving  the  stones  at  Changugi  the 
two  women  went  on  until  they  came  to  Chamuliho  where  they  met  a  man  of  the  Msarara 
tribe,  a  hunter  by  profession  whose  name  was  Samongo.  After  that  Nyakinwa  and 
Samongo  lived  together  at  Chamuliho  and  no  further  mention  is  made  of  Nyambubi. 
Water  was  very  scarce  round  Chamuliho  and  the  carrying  of  it  arduous  but  Nyakinwa 
prayed  to  her  ghosts  and  always  found  plenty  in  the  clefts  and  crannies  of  the  rocks  near 


570 

their  dwelling  place  and  so  she  was  able  to  carry  it  home  without  the  discomfort  of  a 
long  and  hot  journey.  Samongo  noticed  the  short  time  it  took  her  to  fetch  the  water  and 
tried  to  discover  the  source  of  her  supply  but,  though  he  questioned  her,  she  refused  to 
tell  him. 

After  a  time  the  two  quarreled  as  to  who  was  the  ruler  and  owner  of  the  land. 
Samongo  said  that  he  must  be  the  chief  for  it  was  he  who  had  found  and  adopted 
Nyakinwa  but  Nyakinwa  said  no;  it  was  she  who  had  given  shelter  to  Samongo.  One 
night,  while  Samongo  was  out  hunting,  hyaenas  howled  round  Nyakinwa's  hut  until  dawn 
and  rats  destroyed  the  skins  which  she  used  as  a  covering.  But  she  guessed  that  this  was 
Samongo's  doing  and  next  morning  she  retaliated  by  bringing  a  number  of  lion  and 
buffalo  which  she  shut  in  the  compound.   Then  she  made  rain  which  drenched  Samongo 
and  made  him  shiver  so  that  he  ran  home  for  shelter,  only  to  find  that  he  could  not  enter 
his  compound  which  was  full  of  wild  beasts.  He  called  to  Nyakinwa  and  asked  her  what 
he  should  do  and  she  calmly  told  him  to  come  into  the  kraal  by  the  usual  path.  He 
pointed  out  that  the  place  was  full  of  lion  and  buffalo  which  prevented  him  from  entering 
his  own  hut  but  she  replied  that  they  were  her  cattle  and  that  she  had  brought  them  into 
the  compound  in  order  to  milk  them.  At  last  Samongo  begged  her  to  come  out  and  guide 
him  and  she  came  out  to  him  and  covered  his  face,  for  he  was  terror-stricken,  and  led 
him  into  the  hut.   When  they  had  settled  down  she  milked  them  and,  when  Samongo 
reminded  her  that  she  had  arrived  from  Kanadi  empty-handed,  she  said  that  she  had  sent 
her  flocks  and  herds  ahead  of  her.  As  a  last  resource,  Samongo  challenged  her  to  milk 
her  so-called  cattle  and  she  went  out  and  did  so  and  brought  him  the  milk. 

Next  morning  Nyakinwa  drove  the  beasts  from  the  compound  to  enable  Samongo 
to  go  out  and  hunt  but  she  brought  them  back  before  he  returned  in  the  evening  and  left 
him  outside  until  be  begged  her  to  lead  him  into  the  kraal.   When  she  had  brought  him 
safely  in  she  went  out  and  milked  the  buffalo  and  drank  their  milk. 

Samongo  complained  bitterly  at  having  all  these  wild  beasts  about  the  place  but 
Nyakinwa  retorted  that  if  he  was  afraid  of  the  animals  in  the  compound  she,  and  not  he, 
must  be  the  ruler  of  the  country.  Samongo  made  a  last  effort  to  maintain  his  argument 
and  pointed  out  that  he  must  be  the  ruler  of  the  land  as  he  was  living  there  when 
Nyakinwa  arrived  but  she  said  that  if  he  was  indeed  the  overlord  he  should  prove  the  fact 
by  killing  a  bushbuck  and  floating  the  skin  on  the  water  ofBunuri  pool,  which  lay  in  the 
Chamuliho  plains,  until  the  skin  was  dry.  If  she  said,  he  could  do  this  she  would  say  no 
more  but  would  submit  to  his  authority.  Samongo  agreed  and  killed  a  bushbuck  but 
when  he  spread  the  skin  on  the  surface  of  the  water  it  sank.   Then  Nyakinwa  took  a  green 
skin  and  floated  it  on  the  surface  of  the  pool  until  it  was  dry.  And  thus  was  female  rule 
established  in  the  land  oflkizu. 


APPENDIX  3:  IKOMA  EMERGENCE  TRADITIONS 

Ikoma  emergence  stories  were  particularly  difficult  to  collect  in  Ikoma  itself  because  of  the 
current  political  implications  of  the  story.  My  Ikoma  colleague  told  me  that  people  were  reluctant 
to  say  they  came  from  Soncho  for  fear  that  the  government  would  send  them  back  there  and 
incorporate  their  land  into  Serengeti  National  Park.  Ikoma  land  has  been  slowly  reduced  as  the 
park  and  game  control  areas  expand.  The  one  village  of  Robanda  is  really  the  only  land  left  which 
is  in  the  old  Ikoma  territory.  Most  Ikoma  people  live  in  other  territories  today  and  they  were  the 
only  ones  willing  to  tell  the  emergence  story.  The  Ikoma  story  is  also  difficult  because  seems  to  be 
an  ellision  of  ethnic  origin  story,  clan  origin  story  and  settlement  site  place-names  on  the  migration 
route. 

Mabenga  Nyahega  and  his  brother  Machaba  Nyahega,  Mbiso,  1  September  1995,  were 
interviewed  mainly  because  they  have  been  important  singers  throughout  the  region  for  many 
years.  Mabenga  sings  the  solo  parts  and  Machaba  does  the  responses.  They  are  Ikoma  but  have 
settled  in  Nata  Mbiso  and  were  friends  of  the  Magoto  family.  One  of  their  singing  performances  in 
on  video  tape. 

Machaba:  The  Ikoma  came  from  Rogoro,  the  east,  they  came  from  over  there  .  .  . 
Jan:  Ok 

Machaba:  They  had  a  Taturu  prophet  then.  Mwikoma  and  his  wife,  had  an  argument. 
The  prophet  got  mad.  But  he  didn  't  let  them  know.  He  said  to  Mwikoma,  "make  an 
arrow. "  So  he  made  it.   The  day  that  it  was  finished  the  Prophet  asked  him,  "is  it 
ready?  "  He  said,  "yes. "  The  Prophet  said,  "tomorrow  many  animals  will  come,  at  one 
o'clock  they  will  come  in  here,  when  you  have  enough  do  not  follow  them  anymore,  do 
not  bring  the  meat  home.  But  there  will  be  an  animal.  ..[...]  All  of  these  animals  you 
will  get,  but  you  cannot  return  here.  ...when  you  get  there  the  animal  that  you  will  see 
will  be  a  lion.   You  will  kill  it.   When  you  get  the  lion  you  will  know  that  the  animals  are 
finished.  Do  not  return  home.  So  for  the  Ikoma  it  turned  out  like  this,  they  came  from 
over  there,  from  Loliondo,  there  they  were  the  Sonjo.  For  those  who  came  it  was  only  a 
few  days  journey.   When  they  got  to  the  lion  they  were  already  at  Robanda  (presently  in 
Ikoma),  over  at  that  mountain  which  sits  all  by  itself  on  the  plain.   They  found  the  lion 
there.   When  they  got  the  lion  they  said  to  each  other,  "we  have  wives  and  children 
here."  "And  Sonjo  is  so  far  away."  "What  is  it  that  would  take  us  back  there."  "So  now 
let  us  begin  to  farm  here. "  They  began  to  farm.   When  they  farmed  they  got  food  and 
made  their  homes  here  at  Ikoma.   There  was  no  one  here,  it  was  wilderness.  There  were 
no  people.   They  made  a  camp  and  farmed  and  got  food  and  so  they  settled  settled  here. 
Then  they  went  on  living  here  and  had  children  and  stayed,  but  they  came  from  Sonjo. 
When  we  got  here  we  found  the  people  ofNyawagamba  (Nata)  here,  don't  asked  me 
where  they  came  from  ?  But  we  began  to  understand  each  other  and  get  along  together. 
Jan:  Then  there  is  no  relationship  between  you  and  the  Nata  or  the  Ishenyi  by  birth? 
Machaba:  No  none,  it  is  just  tribe,  you  see  when  one  tribe  builds  near  to  the  other,  they 
begin  to  get  along  and  understand  other.  Even  you  white  people,  don 't  you  settle  next  to 

571 


572 

others  who  speak  a  different  language  but  eventually  you  learn  to  like  each  other  and  to 
understand  each  other?  We  were  neighbors.  I  don't  know  who  got  here  first,  but  the 
lkoma  got  here  a  really  long  time  ago.  Our  grandfathers  of  long  long  ago  were  born 
here. 

Sabuni  Machota,  Issenye,  14  March  1996. 

Sabuni:  lkoma .  .  .  To  say  where  we  came  from,  we  came  from  Soncho.   We  came  from 
Soncho.  . . 

Jan:  Where  in  Soncho?  [.  .  .] 

Sabuni:  1  don't  know. .  .  Soncho  Regata  [.  .  .]    Serunga  Nyageta  was  the  one  who 
brought  us  to  lkoma,  who  came  first.   We  came  as  hunters  to  Banagi  Mountain.  It  was 
at  the  time  of  hunger  so  they  followed  the  herds  and  when  the  animals  stopped  the 
hunters  would  make  a  camp  there.   They  would  hunt  and  eat.  In  this  way  they  came  to 
Banagi.   Then  to  Menuno.   Then  we  came  to  Chengero.  All  of  these  places  are  in  lkoma, 
but  now  in  the  park.  [. .  .]  Then  finally  to  Rewanda.  They  made  a  camp.   There  was  a 
rain.  Serunga  made  his  big  camp  under  an  lkoma  tree.   The  places  where  they  camped 
were  good  so  there  was  no  reason  to  return  to  Regata.   They  stayed  there  under  the 
lkoma  tree.  So  when  others  would  ask  them  where  they  were  going  they  would  say,  "I  am 
going  over  there  to  the  lkoma  tree. "  And  that  became  the  name  of  the  people  who  lived 
there.   Then  they  sent  back  to  Regata  for  the  women  to  come.  [.  .  .J  They  made  the 
camp  with  skins  and  grass  thatch.   Then  gradually  began  to  build  regular  houses.  [. . .] 
Rewanda  was  the  first  big  settlement.  It  is  the  same  as  what  is  today  called  Robanda, 
named  after  the  "toothbrush  tree  "  (Rewanda) .   The  white  man  who  asked  what  the  place 
was  called  mispronounced  the  name.  [...]  Serunga  had  two  sons.  Momurisa  and 
Morogoro.  Each  of  them  had  four  children.  Momurisa  gave  birth  to  Mogaikwe, 
Murachi,  Mserubati,  and  Mwancha.  Morogoro  gave  birth  to  Mogetiga,  Mohikumari, 
Mohimurumbe  and  Msagarari.   The  four  doors  (clans)  of  the  lkoma. 


APPENDIX  4:  TATOGA  EMERGENCE  TRADITIONS 

This  is  the  story  of  how  the  Tatoga  separated  from  the  Maasai,  told  by  Stephen  Gojat  Gishageta 
and  Girimanda  Mwarhisha  Gishageta,  Issenye,  27  July  1995: 

Giriweshi  was  born  of  a  woman  and  was  the  son  of  God.  His  son  was  Masuje 
who  tricked  God,  the  Sun,  in  a  game  ofbao  because  he  knew  how  to  make  the  stones 
revolve  endlessly  without  coming  to  an  empty  hole.  Because  the  game  never  ended  the 
Sun  never  set  and  Masuje's  cattle  could  graze  far  from  home.   The  Sun  became  angry 
and  retreated  into  the  sky,  taking  Giriweshi  with  him. 

Masuje's  son  was  Gambareu  who  had  a  twin  brother,  Senandageu.  The  elder 
brother,  Senandageu,  told  his  younger  brother  that  they  should  move  east,  so  they  went. 
But  when  they  got  to  Getamweka  (near  what  is  now  Sibora  in  Nata),  Gambareu,  who  was 
a  prophet,  saw  that  the  trip  would  turn  out  badly.  In  the  morning  he  told  his  brother  that 
they  should  turn  back.   The  elder  brother  refused  and  forced  Gambareu  to  go  on.  Later 
on  Gambareu  told  his  brother  that  his  shoe  had  broken  and  that  he  would  catch  up  later 
after  he  fixed  it.   When  Senandageu  was  out  of  site  the  younger  brother  went  back  to  his 
father  at  Raho.  He  took  his  iron  bracelet  and  bent  it  into  a  hook,  with  which  he  dug  a 
channel  all  the  way  to  the  lake,  creating  the  Raho  River.  He  did  this  so  that  Senandageu 
would  not  see  him  across  the  plains. 

He  built  his  home  near  the  lake  and  put  in  a  livestock  kraal.  He  gathered  a  lot 
of  bones  and  put  them  in  the  kraal.  During  the  night  the  bones  turned  into  cattle. 
Among  those  cattle  was  the  rainmaker's  cow  with  the  hump  of  power  on  its  back.  Soon 
Senandageu  sent  his  son  back  to  find  out  where  Gambareu  had  gone.  They  saw  that  he 
already  had  cattle  and  even  one  which  would  be  used  to  make  rain.  They  reported  this  to 
their  father,  who  told  them  to  go  back  and  say  that  his  elder  brother  orders  him  to  move. 
If  he  refused  the  sons  were  to  steal  the  cattle.   They  tried  to  steal  the  cow  of  rain 
prophecy  and  were  defeated,  going  home  empty  handed.  Since  then  they  have  been 
separated.   The  elder  brother  became  the  Maasai,  of  the  first  clan  ofLaibons,  living  at 
Fuweri,  on  the  rim  ofNgorongoro  Crater.  Senandageu  promised  his  brother  that  he 
would  always  come  to  steal  the  cattle  of  his  father,  and  Gambareu  promised  him  that  he 
would  always  defeat  him.  Gambareu  didn't  die  either  but  disappeared  into  the  lake. 

The  story  of  Giriweshi's  birth  explains  the  separation  from  the  farmers  and  their 
relationship  to  the  Tatoga,  told  by  Mayera  Magondora,  Juana  Masanga,  Marunde  Godi,  Manawa, 
24  February  1996: 

Giriweshi's  mother  had  a  swollen  belly  and  the  people  were  ready  to  move  on  to 
another  place  where  there  was  rain.  They  had  to  leave  her  behind  because  she  could  not 
travel.  They  left  her  with  a  sheep  so  that  when  the  hyena  came  to  eat  her  it  would  eat  the 
sheep  too.  They  spread  its  stomach  contents  over  her  to  make  her  grave.  The  people 
moved  away  and  for  two  years  there  was  no  rain.  In  the  third  year  it  rained  in  the  place 
where  they  had  left  the  woman.   They  sent  four  youth  back  to  their  old  home  to  check  it 

573 


574 

out.  They  found  lots  of  good  grass  there  and  their  eyes  were  overcome  with  the  sight  of 
the  person  that  they  met,  his  was  a  shining  color.   They  went  back  and  told  everyone  of 
the  incredible  brightness  of  the  person  that  they  met.  Others  came  to  see  for  themselves. 
But  then  they  saw  that  he  was  only  a  person  and  greeted  him.  Giriweshi  called  his 
mother  and  told  her  to  give  them  some  milk.   When  they  saw  his  mother  they  were 
amazed,  she  was  beautiful  and  her  stomach  was  no  longer  swollen.   They  went  back  and 
told  the  others  that  the  woman  they  had  left  behind  had  given  birth.   Then  they  went  to 
ask  Giriweshi  if  they  could  come  and  live  there  again.   When  they  asked  Giriweshi  he 
said  that  they  must  go  back  and  kill  their  mothers  and  fathers  if  they  wanted  to  move 
here.  So  they  did  and  then  brought  back  the  report  that  they  had  done  it.  So  Giriweshi 
said  that  they  should  all  come.   When  the  all  arrived  Giriweshi  called  them  all  together 
and  divided  them  into  two  groups,  those  who  had  killed  their  parents  and  those  who  had 
not.   Those  who  had  not  killed  their  parents  were  only  a  few  and  those  who  had  were 
many.  Those  who  had  killed  their  parents  were  changed  and  became  the  Washashi  or 
Nadiga  —  that  is  all  of  those  who  are  not  Tatoga,  including  the  Sukuma,  the  farmers. 

Another  story  explains  the  relationship  between  the  three  territorial  sections  of  the  Tatoga 
in  Tanzania,  told  by  Stephen  Gojat  Gishageta  and  Girimanda  Mwarhisha  Gishageta,  Issenye,  27 
July  1995: 

The  three  sections  of  the  Aratoga,  the  Barabaraig  ofMbulu,  the  Burarega  of 
Singida  and  the  Rotigenga  of  Mara,  separated  from  each  other  on  their  journey  from  the 
north,  maybe  from  Misri  (Egypt).  On  their  journey  a  donkey  was  lost  and  some  stayed 
behind  to  look  for  it.   They  ended  their  journey  there  and  became  the  Rotigenga.  The 
others  went  on  south  in  the  journey  and  one  group  was  tired  and  so  stopped  to  rest. 
They  became  the  Burarega.   The  last  group  went  on  until  they  stopped  to  cut  walking 
sticks.   They  stayed  there  and  became  the  Barabaig.   ...In  each  of  the  sections  you  can 
find  each  of  the  clans  so  we  have  a  close  relationship  with  each  other  even  now,  all  are 
Aratoga...   Within  the  area  of  the  Rotigenga  there  were  also  separate  sections  but  all  of 
the  clans  were  represented  in  each. 

The  Tatoga  also  had  hunter/gatherers,  the  Isimajek,  living  in  symbiotic  relationship  with 
them.  The  story  of  how  the  hunters  got  separated  from  the  herders  is  told  by  Isimajek  informants 
and  is  a  different  version  of  the  emergence  story  told  about  Gambareu  above,  told  by  Mayera 
Magondora,  Juana  Masanga,  MarundeGodi,  Manawa,  24  February  1996.: 

This  story  begins  on  the  shores  of  Lake  Victoria  in  a  time  when  alt  the  cattle 
were  gone  — finished.   Their  prophet  ordered  them  each  to  make  a  livestock  kraal  at 
home  and  inside  of  it  to  put  bones,  any  kind  of  bones  they  could  find,  wild  animal  or 
whatever.  Some  of  them  refused  to  make  a  kraal  because  they  did  not  believe  the 
prophet.   The  prophet's  name  was  Naiyi.   The  next  day  those  that  had  finished  their 
kraals  went  and  reported  to  the  prophet  that  they  were  finished.  He  said  that  they  should 
return  and  sleep  that  night.  In  the  night  they  heard  the  sound  of  cattle  and  in  the 
morning  they  awoke  to  see  that  the  bones  had  turned  into  a  herd  of  cattle,  male  and 
female  and  calves.   The  women  went  right  away  to  milk  the  cows.  Those  who  had  not 
made  kraals  and  had  gotten  no  cattle  went  back  to  the  prophet  to  ask  for  cattle  for 
themselves.  But  the  prophet  said  that  they  were  too  late  and  that  it  would  not  come 
around  for  a  second  time. 


575 

He  told  them  to  go  home  and  that  it  would  rain  tonight  and  in  the  morning  they 
should  go  to  the  river  to  see  what  they  would  depend  on.  So  they  went  home  and  it 
rained  very  hard  that  night  and  in  the  morning  they  went  to  the  river  and  saw  lots  and 
lots  offish  floating  on  top  of  the  water.  But  they  were  afraid  of  the  fish,  thinking  they 
were  snakes.   They  went  back  to  the  prophet  and  explained  to  him  about  the  snakes.  The 
prophet  told  them  that  this  was  their  food  and  not  snakes.   They  should  return  to  the 
river  and  fish.  So  they  were  happy  and  went  back  to  the  river  to  fish.  This  was  the 
division  of  the  Tatoga  into  the  Isimajek  and  the  others.   The  others  have  cattle  and  we 
don't.  The  other  Tatoga  want  nothing  to  do  with  us.  they  laugh  at  us  because  we  don't 
have  any  cattle.  Even  if  we  have  cattle  we  still  cannot  be  admitted  to  their  society.   The 
blacksmiths  also  have  no  cattle  and  are  separated  from  the  rest  of  the  Tatoga. 


REFERENCES  CITED 

Oral  Sources:  Formal  Interviews 

Information  from  each  interview  is  listed  in  the  following  order:  Informant,  Place  of 
Interview,  Date(s)  of  Interview,  Ethnic  group  of  Informant,  Gender  of  Informant,  Age  of 
Informant,  Residence  of  Informant,  Occupation  and  Training  of  Informant  (although  nearly  all  are 
farmers),  Status  and  Membership  of  Informant,  Tape  Number  of  Interview. 

Tapes,  translations  and  transcripts  of  interviews  will  be  deposited  with  the  African  Studies 
Association  oral  data  collection  housed  at  the  Archives  of  Traditional  Music,  Indiana  University, 
Bloomington.  Translations  and  transcripts  will  be  forwarded  to  the  University  of  Dar  es  Salaam, 
History  Department  and  the  Musoma  Regional  Archives. 

Adamu  Matutu  and  Kihumbo  elders,  Kihumbo  and  Gaka,  31  August  1995,  Ikizu,  M,  32,  Kihumbo 
and  Nyamuswa,  Mtemi  of  Ikizu  and  Rainmaker,  #107. 

Ali  Maro  Wambura,  Masinki,  30  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  78,  Masinki,  Farmer,  School 
Committe  Member,  #162-63. 

Apolinari  Maro  Makore,  Mesaga,  29  September  1 995,  Ngoreme,  M,  62,  Mesaga,  Farmer, 
Regional  Representative,  #156. 

Atanasi  Kebure  Wambura,  Maburi,  7  October  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  58,  Maburi,  Farmer,  District 
Representative  for  Kenyamonte  1970  (Diwani),  #167-70. 

Baginyi  Mutani,  Sanzate,  8  September  1995,  Ikizu,  F,  75,  Sanzate,  #1 18-20. 

Barichera  Machage  Barichera,  Nyichoka  to  Ryara,  7  March  1996,  Nata,  M,  39,  Nyichoka, 
Appointed  Age-set  Leader  (Kang'ati)  for  the  Gikwe  Bongirate,  #206. 

Bhoke  Rotegenga,  Motokeri,  13  March  1995,  Nata,  F,  63,  Motokeri. 

Bhoke  Wambura,  Maburi,  7  October  1995,  Ngoreme,  F,  75,  Maburi,  Farmer,  Eldership  title  of 
Eborano,  #167-70. 

Bhosa  Rugatiri,  Mbiso,  17  June  1995,  Nata,  F,  85,  Mbiso,  Eldership  ranks,  #60-61. 

Bokima  Giringayi,  Mbiso,  26  October  1995,  Ikoma,  M,  73,  Mbiso,  Farmer,  During  the  colonial 
years  was  on  the  age-set  coucil  (mchama)  and  an  elder  on  the  village  council,  Eldership 
title  of  Egishe,  #171-74. 


576 


577 

Bugerera  women  and  storytelling,  Bugerera,  17  August  1995,  Nata,  F,  #95-96. 

Charles  Nyamaganda,  Burunga,  31  March  1995,  Nata,  M,  90,  Burunga,  District  Representative 
(Diwani),  #14. 

Charwe  Matiti,  Nyeboko,  22  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  85,  Nyeboko,  Court  Elder  (Baraza), 
Kisaka  Headmen  (Mwanangwa)  under  colonial  Chief  Simeho,  #142-44. 

Daniel  Kitaro  Wambura,  Motokeri,  2  April  1 996,  Nata,  M,  80,  Motokeri. 

Daudi  Katama  Maseme,  Bwai,l  1  November  1995,  Ruri,  M,  95,  Bwai,  #186-87. 

Efaristi  Bosongo  Gikaro,  Masinki,  30  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  69,  Masinki,  Farmer,  #161. 

Elfaresti  Wambura  Nyetonge,  Kemgesi,  20  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  Kemgesi,  Farmer. 
#133-36. 

Elia  Masiyana  Mchanake,  Borenga,  21  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  76,  Borenga,  Chairman  and 
Elder  of  the  Village  Council  (Baraza)  in  1 975,  #  1 40-4 1 . 

Emmanuel  Ndenu,  Sale,  6  December  1995,  Sonjo/  Temi,  M,  58,  Sale,  Sonjo,  Chairman  of  the 
Village  and  Clerk  since  1937,  his  father  and  brother  are  "keepers  of  water,"  #195. 

Faini  Magotto,  Mbiso,  6  March  1995  and  19  August  1995,  Nata,  M,  69,  Farmer,  #99. 

Francis  Sabayi  Maro,  Masinki,  6  October  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  65,  Masinki,  Farmer,  Many  and 
various  political  leadership  positions,  #164-65. 

Gabuso  Shoka,  Mbiso,  30  May  1 995,  Nata,  M,  65,  Mbiso,  Farmer,  Eldership  title  of  Omongibo 
and  Morokingi,  #40-43. 

Gejera  Ginanani,  Kyandege,  26  July  1995,  Tatoga  Rotigenga,  M,  51,  Kyandege,  Prophet  clan, 
#80-81. 

Gesura  Mwatagu,  Issenye,  5  August  1995,  Tatoga  Rotigenga,  M,  Issenye,  #88-89. 

Getara  Mwita,  Mesaga,  29  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  80,  Mesaga,  Catholic  since  1951,  #157. 

Ghamarhizisiji  (Uyayehi)  Nuaasi,  Issenye,  5  August  1995,  Tatoga  Rotigenga,  F,  79,  Issenye, 
#88-89. 

Gilumughera  Gwiyeya,  Issenye,  28  July  1995,  Tatoga  Rotigenga,  M,  77,  Issenye,  Tribal  Advisor, 
#84-85. 

Ginanani  Chokora,  Kyandege,  26  July  1995, Tatoga  Rotigenga,  M,  77,  Kyandege,  Prophet 
(Relimajega  clan),  #80-81. 


578 

Girihoida  Masaona,  Issenye,  28  July  1995,  Tatoga  Rotigenga,  M,  39,  Issenye,  #84-85. 

Girimanda  Marisha  Gishageta,  Issenye,  28  March  1996,  Tatoga  Rotigenga,  M,  Issenye,  #217-18. 

Girimanda  Mwarhisha  Gishageta,  Issenye,  27  July  1995,  Tatoga  Rotigenga,  M,  42,  Issenye, 
#82-83. 

Giruchani  Masanja,  Mariwanda,  Tatoga  Rotigenga,  6  July  1995,  Tatoga  Rotigenga,  M,  53, 
Mariwanda,  #71-2. 

Gisuge  Chabwasi,  Sanzate,  22  June  1995,  Ikizu,  M,  Sanzate,  #65. 

Gorobani  Gesura,  28  July  1995,  Tatoga  Rotigenga,  M,  41,  Issenye,  #84-85. 

Guti  Manyeni  Nyabwango,  Sanzate,  1 5  June  1 995,  Ikizu,  M,  60,  Sanzate,  Village  Chairman  for 
CCM,  #56. 

Hezekia  Marwa  Sarya,  Mugumu/Matare,  15  March  1996,  Kuria  Nyabasi,  M,  86, 
Mugumu/Kiabakari,  Farmer,  #214. 

Ikizu  Elders  at  Historical  Places,  Kilinero,  16  August  1995,  Ikizu,  M,  #93-94. 

Ikota  Mwisagija,  Kihumbo,  5  July  1995,  Ikizu,  M,  86,  Kihumbo,  Healer,  Expert  in  Orokoba 
medicine.  Eldership  titles  of  Rusaranga,  Marungweta,  Isega,  Ekise,  #69-70. 

Isaya  Charo  Wambura,  Buchanchari,  22  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  64,  Buchanchari,  Ten-cell 
leader  in  Village  for  1 5  years.  District  Representative  for  CCM.  Advisor  to  the  Village 
Council  (Baraza),  #145-46. 

Jackson  (Benedicto)  Mang'oha  Maginga,  Mbiso,  18  March  1995  and  13  May  1995,  Nata,  M,  77, 
Mbiso,  Medical  dresser.  Customary  Council  Member  (Mchama  wa  Kimila)  1957-1974, 
1974  Ten-cell  member.  Chairman  for  Parent's  Council  (Umoja  wa  Wazazi),  Writer,  #5-7, 
#31. 

Jackson  Witari,  Mariwanda,  8  July  1 995,  Ikizu,  M,  59,  Mariwanda,  Eldership  title  of  Mhimaye, 

#73-74. 

Joseph  Mashohi,  Nyeberekera,  16  February  1996,  Ishenyi,  M,  50,  Issenye,  District  Representative 
(Diwani),  #200. 

Juana  Masanja,  Manawa,  24  February  1996.  Tatoga  Isimajega,  M,  32,  Manawa,  #202-03. 

Judge  Frederick  Mochogu  Munyera,  Maji  Moto,  28  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  65,  Maji 
Moto,  Retired  Judge,  #154. 

Katani  Magori  Nyabunga,  Sanzate,  10  June  1995,  Ikizu,  M,  69,  Sanzate, Wealthy  cattle  owner, 
owner  of  a  bus  service,  #51-55. 


579 

Keneti  Mahembora,  Sang'anga,  17  February  1996,  Gitaraga,  9  February  1996,  Nata,  M,  72, 
Nyekitono,  Farmer,  #199  and  201. 

Kenyatta  Mosoka,  Robanda,  12  July  1995,  Ikoma,  M,  Secretary  of  the  village  of  Robanda,  #75. 

Kihenda  Manyorio,  Kurasanga,  3  August  1 995,  Ikizu,  M,  77,  Kurusanga,  Local  Defense 
Committee  (Jadi  and  Sungugungu),  #86-87. 

Kinanda  Sigara  (Itara),  Bugerera,  21  May  1995  and  23  May  1995,  Ikizu,  M,  48,  Bugerera, 

Farmer,  Secretary  of  Sanzate  Village,  CCM  Secretary  in  Bunda  area,  #32-33  and  34-35. 

Kirigiti  Ng'orogita,  Mbiso,  8  June  1995,  17  June  1995,  Nata,  M,  Mbiso,  Generation-set  Leader, 
#50. 

Kisenda  Mwita,  Mugumu/Matare,  15  March  1996,  Kuria  Nyabasi,  M,  84,  Farmer,  Mugumu/ 
Kiabakari,  #214. 

Kitang'ita  Robi,  Busawe,  22  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  74,  Busawe,  Representative  on  South 
Mara  Council  I960,  Ten-cell  Leader,  Secretary  of  CCM,  #147. 

Kiyarata  Mzumari,  Kihumbo,  5  July  1995,  Mariwanda,  8  July  1995,  Ikizu,  M,  73,  Mariwanda, 
Farmer,  Eldership  titles  of  Amatwe,  Tohara,  Borano,  Isubo  (wife),  Rusarangi,  Ekise, 
#69-70,  #73-74. 

Mabenga  Nyahega,  Mbiso,  1  September  1995,  Bugerera,  5  September  1995,  Ikoma,  M,  61, 
Mbiso,  Farmer,  #113. 

Machaba  Nyahega,  Mbiso,  1  September  1995,  Ikoma,  M,  Mbiso,  #108-1 1. 

Machota  Nyantitu,  Morotonga/Mugumu,  28  May  1995,  Ikoma,  M,  80,  Morotonga,  Farmer. 

Machota  Sabuni,  Issenye,  14  March  1996,  Ikoma,  M,  76,  Issenye,  Farmer,  Eldership  title  of  Egise 
and  Advisor  to  the  Village  Council,  #210-12. 

Maguye  Maginga,  Nyeketono,  21  June  1995,  Nata,  M,  90,  Nyeketono,  Farmer,  Government 
service  as  Mtware  Mugeta,  Guard  at  the  Court  (Utalishi  Barazani),  Headman 
(Mwanangwa)  of  Makundusi,  #62-64. 

Mahewa  Timanyi,  Robanda,  27  May  1995,  Ikoma,  M,  85,  Robanda,  Eldership  title  of  the  white 
tail,  #36-39. 

Mahiti  Gamba,  Bugerera,  3  March  1996,  Nata,  M,  Bugerera,  #205. 

Mahiti  Kwiro,  Mchang'oro,  19  January  1996,  Nata,  M,  50,  Mchang'oro,  Farmer,  Ten-cell  leader, 
Chairman  of  the  section  (Kanda),  Eldership  title  of  Mkero,  #197-98. 


580 

Makanda  Magige,  Bumangi,  10  November  1995,  Zanaki,  M,  74,  Bumangi,  Farmer,  Court  Elder, 
Ten-cell  leader,  Eldership  title  of  White  Tail,  Mkiyero,  #184-85. 

Makang'a  Magigi,  Bisarye,  9  November  1995,  Zanaki,  M,  70,  Bisarye,  Local  Defense  Council 
(Mrugaruga),  Advisor  to  the  Chief  (Mchama),  Reconciliation  Elder  (Uzee  Usulishi), 
Eldership  title  of  the  Red  Tail,  Msirori,  #183-84. 

Makongoro  Nyemwitweka,  Rubana,  4  April  1996,  Nata,  M,  58,  Mbiso. 

Makuru  Magambo,  Geteku,  8  March  1996,  Nata,  M,  69,  Mbiso,  Farmer. 

Makuru  Moturi,  Maji  Moto,  29  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  71,  Farmer,  Maji  Moto. 

Makuru  Nyang'aka,  Motokeri,  8  June  1995,  Bwanda,  Nyichoka  and  Getaraga,  9  February  1996, 
16  February  1996,  Nyichoka  to  Ryara,  7  March  1996,  Nata,  M,  73,  Nyichoka,  Farmer,' 
#46-49,  #199,  #200  and  #206. 

Mang'oha  Machunchuriani,  Mbiso,  24  March  1995,  Nata,  M,  77,  Mbiso,  Advisor  to  the  Age-set 
(Mwikundu),  Elder  of  the  Court  (Baraza),  CCM,  Chairman  of  the  Store  Committee,  Elder 
of  Defense  (Jadi),  Eldership  title  of  Amaaka,  #8-11. 

Mang'oha  Morigo,  Bugerera,  24  June  1995,  Nata,  M,  Kyandege,  Farmer,  Leader  of  the  Age-set 
(Kangati)  Bongirate  -  Abahobasi  Abamase,  Regional  Representative,  Eldership  Title  of 
Etitinyo,  #66-67. 

Mang'ombe  Morimi,  Issenye/Iharara,  26  August  1995,  Ishenyi,  M,  76,  Issenye/Iharara  Farmer 
#103-106. 

Maria  Maseke,  Busawe,  22  September  1 995,  Ngoreme,  F,  7 1 ,  Busawe,  Farmer,  Eldership  title  of 
the  Risancho,  #148-49. 

Mariam  Mturi,  Nyamuswa,  Makongoro  Secondary,  30  June  1995,  lkizu,  M,  68,  Secondary  School 
teacher  and  headmaster,  Makongoro  Secondary  School,  author  of  local  history  book. 

Mariko  Romara  Kisigiro,  Burunga,  31  March  1995,  Nata,  M,  73,  Burunga,  Representative 
(Diwani)  on  Chiefs  Council  and  Chairman  of  TANU  of  Natta  Branch,  #15-17. 

Marimo  Nyamakena,  Sanzate,  10  June  1995,  lkizu,  M,  99,  Sanzate,  Farmer,  Wealthy  cattle 
owner,  #51-55. 

Marindaya  Sanaya,  Samonge,  5  December  1995,  Sonjo/  Temi,  M,  53,  Samunge,  Sonjo  Storv 
teller,  #193-94. 

Maro  Mchari  Maricha,  Maji  Moto,  28  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  90,  Maji  Moto,  Eldership 
title  of  Black  tail,  Omokoro  Anyangi,  Rainmaker,  #  1 52-53. 


581 

Maro  Mugendi,  Busawe,  22  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  77,  Busawe,  Farmer,  Eldership  title 
of  Eborano,  #148-49. 

Marunde  Godi,  Manawa,  24  February  1996,  Tatoga  Isimajega,  M,  60,  Manawa,  #202-03. 

Mashauri  Ng'ana,  lssenye,  2  November  1995,  Ishenyi,  M,  71,  Issenye,  Farmer,  Advisor 
(Mchama),  Elder  of  the  Court  (Baraza).  #181-82. 

Masosota  Igonga,  Ring'wani,  6  October  1 995,  Ngoreme,  M,  77,  Ring'wani,  Eldership  title  of 
lsubo,#166. 

Maswe  Makore,  Mesaga,  28  September  1 995,  Ngoreme,  M,  85,  Mesaga,  Farmer,  Eldership  title  of 
the  Black  tail,  Risancho,  keeper  of  the  generation-set  medicine,  #155. 

Matias  Mahiti  Kebumbeko,  Torogoro,  2  April,  1996,  Nata,  M,  70,  Mbiso. 

Mayani  Magoto,  Bugerera,  3  March  1 996,  Nata,  M,  Bugerera,  #204. 

Mayenye  Nyabunga,  Sanzate,  8  September  1995,  Ikizu,  F,  75,  Sanzate,  Farmer,  #1 18-20. 

Mayera  Magondora,  Manawa,  24  February  1 996,  Tatoga  Isimajega,  M,  75,  Manawa,  Prophet, 
#202-03. 

Megasa  Mokiri,  Motokeri,  4  March  1995,  13  March  1995,  Nata,  M,  87,  Motokeri,  Farmer, 

Eldership  title  of  Omorokingi,  Kuvinza  Kitatinyo,  Aguho,  Black  and  White  tails,  #2-4. 

Merekwa  Masunga,  Mariwanda,  6  July  1995,  Tatoga  Rotigenga,  M,  77,  Mariwanda,  #71-2. 

Mgoye  Magutachuba  Rotegenga  Megasa,  Motokeri,  13  March  1995,  Mbiso,  1  May  1995,  Nata, 
M,  #27. 

Mikael  Magessa  Sarota,  Issenye,  25  August  1995,  Ishenyi,  M,  73,  Issenye,  Son  of  former  Chief, 
#101-2. 

Mnyengere  (Bhoke)  Magotto.  Mbiso,  13  May  1995,  Nata,  F,  Mbiso,  #30. 

Mohere  Mogoye,  Bugerera,  25  March  1995,  Nata,  M,  53,  Bugerera,  Farmer,  #12-13. 

Moremi  Mwikicho,  Robanda,  12  July  1995,  Ikoma,  M,  Robanda,  #75. 

Morigo  (Mchombocho)  Nyarobi,  Issenye,  28  October  1995,  Ishenyi,  M,  85,  Issenye,  Farmer, 
Eldership  titles  of  Egishe  and  Ekiero,  #  1 78-80. 

Mossi  Chagana,  Nyeberekera,  16  February  1996,  Ishenyi,  M,  72,  Bugerera,  #200. 

Musa  Matabarwa,  Mariwanda,  8  July  1995,  Ikizu,  M,  70,  Mariwanda,  Ten-cell  leader,  Chairman 
of  the  Seconday  school  committee  and  Director,  Elder  of  SDA  church,  #73-74. 


582 

Mwenge  Elizabeth  Magotto,  Mbiso,  6  May  1995,  Nata,  F,  69,  Mbiso,  #28-9. 

Mwikwabe  Maro,  Busawe,  22  September  1 995,  Ngoreme,  M,  65,  Busawe,  #  1 47. 

Mwinoki  Munyewa,  Bugerera,  21  May  1995,  Ikizu,  F,  Mariwanda,  Her  grandson  says  she  is  one 
of  the  very  few  "old  style"  rainmakers  left.,  #32. 

Mwita  Magige,  Mosongo,  9  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  74,  Mosongo,  Farmer,  WW  II 

Corporal  in  the  army,  worked  in  theNyambara  mines,  Mgambo,  Ten-cell  leader,  Village 
Chairman,  #121-24. 

Mwita  Maro,  Maji  Moto,  29  Septmeber  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  71,  Maji  Moto,  The  leader  for  the 
Abamaina  generation-set,  Village  chairman,  Court  elder,  #  1 60. 

Nata  Elders  Meeting,  Mbiso,  14  August  1995,  Nata,  M. 

Nata  singers  and  dancers,  Bugerera,  19  August  1995,  Nata,  #100. 

Njaga  Nyasama,  Kemgesi,  2  September  1995,  14  September  1995,  29  March  1996,  Ngoreme,  F, 
81,  Kemgesi,  Farmer,  #1 12,  #128  and  #221 

Nyabori  Marwa,  Kemgesi,  14  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  F,  Kemgesi,  #128. 

Nsaho  Maro,  Kenyana,  14  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  64,  Kenyana,  Farmer,  Chairman  of 
Kenyana,  Speaker  (Omokina),  #125-7. 

Nyabusogesi  Nying'asa,  Nyamuswa,  Makongoro  Secondary,  30  June  1995,  Ikizu,  M,  Nyamuswa, 
68,  Farmer,  Prophet. 

Nyamaganda  Magotto,  Bugerera,  3  March  1 995,  Cultural  Vocabulary,  numerous  days,  Nata,  M, 
66,  Mbiso,  Teacher. 

Nyambeho  Marangini,  Issenye,  7  September  1995.  Ishenyi,  M,  75,  Issenye,  Farmer.  Msamu  of  the 
Generation-set  and  Age-set  (the  one  who  divides  the  meat),  #114-17. 

Nyambureti  Morumbe,  Robanda,  27  May  1995,  Ikoma,  M,  Robanda,  Eldership  title  of  the  white 
tail,  #36-39. 

Nyawagamba  Magoto,  Site,  Kikongoti,  2  April  1996,  numerous  other  informal  discussions,  Nata, 
M,  Bugerera. 

Paulina  Wambura,  Bugerera,  16  April  1995,  Kuria,  F,  65,  Bugerera,  Farmer,  #22. 

Paulo  Maitari  Nyigana,  Maji  Moto,  29  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  79,  Maji  Moto,  Farmer, 
Sergent  Major  in  Army,  TANU.elder,  #158-59. 


583 

Peter  Nabususa,  Samonge,  5  December  1 995,  Sonjo/  Temi,  M,  47,  Samonge,  Sonjo,  "Controller  of 
water,"  #191-92. 

Philemon  Mbota,  Mugumu/Matare,  15  March  1996,  Kuria,  M,  55,  Mugumu/  Kiabakari,  Farmer, 
Mennonite  Pastor,  #214. 

Phillipo  Haimati,  Iramba,  15  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  72,  Iramba,  Chairman  of  the  party 
Ngoreme  and  Kiagata  1959  and  secretary  of  T ANU  to  1 970  Ten-cell  leader,  clerk  for 
Catholic  Mission,  Iramba,  #129-132. 

Raheli  Wanchota  Nyanchiwa,  Mugumu/Morotonga,  16  March  1996,  Ikoma,  F,  80, 
Mugumu/Morotonga,  #215. 

Ramadhani  Masaigana,  Motokeri,  8  June  1995,  Nata,  M,  59,  Motokeri,  Farmer,  #46-49. 

Raphael  Machogote,  Issenye,  1 4  March  1 996,  Ishenyi,  M,  67,  Issenye,  Representative  for  the 
Section  (Diwani  Kata)  of  Issenye,  Village  Chairman,  CCM  Chair  of  Village,  Anglican 
Church  Council,  #213. 

Reterenge  Nyigena,  Maji  Moto,  23  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  81,  Maji  Moto,  Farmer,  Road 
Foreman,  #150-51. 

Riyang'ang'ara  Nyang'urara,  Sarawe,  20  July  1 995,  Ikizu,  M,  77,  Sarawe,  Eldership  Title 
Amagiha,  Healer,  #78-79. 

Robi  Nykisokoro,  Borenga,  21  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  F,  Borenga,  #140-141. 

Rugayonga  Nyamohega,  Mugeta,  27  October  1995,  Ishenyi,  M,  93,  Mugeta,  Advisor  (Mchama), 
Age-set  and  Generation-set  leader  Ekireri,  Eldership  title  Egishe,  (blind),  #175-177. 

Sagochi  Nyekipegete,  Robanda,  12  July  1995,  Ikoma,  M,  Robanda,  #75. 

Samueli  Buguna  Katama,  Bwai,  1 1  November  1995,  Ruri,  M,  68,  Bwai,  Farmer,  Ten-cell  leader. 
Advisory  Council  CCM,  Mennonite  Church  leader  and  elder  1962,  #186-87. 

Samweli  Ginduri,  Samonge,  6  December  1995,  Sonjo/Temi,  M,  64,  Samonge,  Sonjo,  various 
government  and  party  offices,  including  first  medical  dresser  in  Sonjo  and  District 
representative  (Diwani),  #  1 96. 

Samweli  M.  Kiramanzera,  Kurasanda,  3  August  1995,  Ikizu,  M,  59,  Kurusanga,  Farmer,  Healer, 
Numerous  government  positions,  #86-87. 

Sarya  Nyamuhandi,  Bumangi.10  November  1995,  Zanaki,  M,  84,  Bumangi,  Farmer,  Court  Elder, 
Ten-cell  leader,  Eldership  title  of  the  Red  Tail,  Sirori,  #184-85. 

Senteu  Maghanye,  Issenye,  14  March  1996,  Ikoma,  M,  80,  Issenye,  Leader  of  the  Age-set, 
#210-12. 


584 

Silas  King'are  Magori,  Kemgesi,  21  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M,  68,  Kemgesi,  Farmer, 
Chairman  of  the  Branch  for  TANU  1954,  Diwani  in  colonial  days,  #137-39. 

Sira  Masiyora,  Nyerero,  17  November  1995,  Kuria.  Nyabasi,  M,  80,  Nyerero,  Farmer,  Tax 
collector,  Eldership  title  of  Wife's  Isubo,  #189-90. 

Sochoro  Kabati.  Nyichoka,  2  June  1995,  Bwanda  16  February  1996,  Riyara,  7  March  1996,  Nata, 
M,  70,  Nyichoka,  Leader  (Kangati)  of  the  Abangurati  Age-set,  Eldership  title  of  the 
Omongibo,  #44-45,  200,  206. 

Songoro  Sasora,  Nyamuswa,  Makongoro  Secondary,  30  June  1995,  Ikizu,  M,  #68. 

Stephen  Gojat  Gishageta,  lssenye,  27  July  1995,  28  March  1996,  Tatoga  Rotigenga,  M,  75, 
Issenye,  District  Representative  (Diwani),  Mennonite  Church  Elder,  #82-83,  #217-18. 

Sumwa  Nyamutwe,  Mugeta,  9  March  1996,  Mbiso,  4  April  1996,  Nata,  F,  87,  Mbiso,  Eldership 
titles  of  Egise  and  Omwikarabutu,  #207-09. 

Surati  Wambura,  Morotonga,  13  July  1995,  Ikoma,  F,  83,  Morotonga,  #76-77. 

Tatoga  elders  and  singers,  Kyandege.  18  August  1995,  Tatoga  Rotigenga,  M,  #97-98. 

Tetere  Tumbo,  Mbiso,  5  April  1995,  1  May  1995,  Nata,  M,  63,  Mbiso,  Farmer,  TANU  youth 
league,  Ten-cell  leader,  Village  Council.  Court  elder,  Eldership  title  of  Atitinyo,  #18-19, 

#27. 

Thomas  Kubini  and  Jacob  Mugaka,  Bunda,  10  March  1995,  Sizaki,  M,  70,  Bunda,  Member  of 
Parliament. 

Tirani  Wankunyi,  Issenye,  7  April  1995,  Nata,  M,  90,  Issenye,  #20-21. 

Wambura  Nyikisokoro,  Sang'anga,  Buchanchari,  23  September  1995,  Ngoreme,  M. 

Warioba  Mabusi  Nyangabara,  Sarawe,  20  July  1995,  Ikizu,  M,  71,  Kitare,  Eldership  title  of 
Mhimaye.  #78-79. 

Webiro  Ginyewe,  Sarawe,  20  July  1995,  Ikizu,  M,  Sarawe,  #78-9. 

WebiroZeze,  Mariwanda,  8  July  1995,  Ikizu,  M,  53,  Mariwanda,  Secretary  of  TANU,  Chairman 
of  CCM  Section  of  Hunyari.,  #73-74. 

Weigoro  Mincha,  Kemegesi,  29  March  1996,  Ngoreme,  F,  59,  Kemegesi,  Farmer,  #219-20. 

Wilson  Shanyangi  Machota,  Mugumu/Morotonga,  12  July  1995,  16  March  1996,  Ikoma,  M,  61, 
Mugumu/Morotonga,  Mennonite  Pastor,  political  offices,  Leader  of  the  Generation-set, 
#216. 


585 

Yohana  Kitena  Nyitanga,  Makondusi,  1  May  1995,  Nata,  M,  83,  Makondusi,  Headman  of  Bigo 
(colonial),  Catholic  Catechist,  Church  elder,  Chama  cha  Msingi,  #23-6. 

Zabron  Kisubundo  Nyamamera,  Bisarye,  9  November  1995,  Zanaki,  M,  59,  Bisarye,  Ten-cell 
leader,  Village  representative,  Committee  of  the  Rikora,  Mzama,  #183-85. 

Zamberi  Manyeni,  Sanzate,  15  June  1995,  Ikizu,  M,  82,  Sanzate,  Mrugaruga,  Mchama,  Member 
of  TANU,  Eldership  titles,  #56-59. 

Zamberi  Masambwe,  Mariwanda,  22  June  1995,  Ikizu,  M,  77,  Mariwanda,  #65. 

Unpublished  Archival  Sources 

Abbreviations  Used  in  Footnotes 

TNA  Tanzania  National  Archives,  Dar  es  Salaam 

CORY  #  EAF  UDSM     Cory  Papers,  East  Africana  Collection,  University  of  Dar  es  Salaam 

Library 
MDB  Musoma  District  Books  (microfilm,  Tanganyika  National  Archives) 

Unpublished  Local  Histories  and  Dictionaries.  Conies  in  Author's  Personal  Collection 

"Kikao  cha  Mila,  Desturi  na  Asili  ya  Kabila  la  Waishenyi  Kilichokutana  Tarehe  6/6/1990, 
Nyiberekera,  Ishenyi."  Copy  in  author's  collection. 

Haimati.  P.;  and  Houle,  P.  "Mila  na  Matendo  ya  Wangoreme."  Unpublished  mimeo,  Iramba 
Mission,  1969. 

Kishamuri,  Marwa.  "Historia  ya  Abakiroba:  Desturi  na  Mila  Zao."  Unpublished  manuscript  in 
the  author's  collection,  1988. 

Kisigiro,  Augustino  Mokwe.  "Nata-Swahili  Dictionary."  Unpublished  manuscript,  copy  in  the 
author's  collection,  n.d. 

Maryknoll  Language  School.  "English  Kikuria  Dictionary."  n.d. 

Maryknoll  Fathers.  "Ngoreme-English  Dictionary."  Parish  Office,  Iramba,  n.d. 

Mossi,  Mwalimu  Nyamaganda  Magoto,  assisted  by  Masoye  Faini  and  Chuba  Faini  on  behalf  of 
the  Magoto  Family.  "Historia  ya  Mzee  Magoto  Mossi  Magoto,  Katika  Maisha  Yake." 
Unpublished  manuscript  in  the  author's  collection,  Nata,  1 996. 

Mturi,  P.  M.;  Sasora,  S.  "Historia  ya  Ikizu  na  Sizaki."  Unpublished  manuscript  in  author's 
collection,  1995. 


586 

Ngokolo,  Mtemi  Seni.  "Historia  ya  Utawala  wa  Nchi  ya  Kanadi  ilivyo  andikwa  na  marahemu 

Mtemi  Seni  Ngokolo  mnamo  tarehe  10/6/1928."  Unpublished  manuscript  provided  by  his 
son,  Mtemi  Mgema  Seni,  20  May  1971,  to  Buluda  Itandala,  copy  in  author's  collection. 

Siso,  Zedekia  Oloo.  "The  Oral  Traditions  of  North  Mara."  Unpublished  manuscript  in  author's 
collection,  1995. 

White  Fathers'  Regional's  House.  Nvegezi.  Mwanza 

Bourget,  L.  Trip  Diary,  1904,  White  Fathers'  Regional's  House,  Nyegezi,  Mwanza. 

Societe  des  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres-Blancs).  "Ukerewe."  Chronique  Trimestrielle  de  la 
Societe  de  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres  Blancs)  24me  Annee,  95  (July  1902):  281. 

Societe  des  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres-Blancs).  "Ukerewe."    Chronique  Trimestrielle  de  la 
Societe  de  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres  Blancs)  24me  Annee,  94  (Avril  1 902):  94. 

Societe  des  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres-Blancs).  "Ukerewe."  Chronique  Trimestrielle  de  la 
Societe  de  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres  Blancs)  27me  Annee  (1905):  133. 

Societe  des  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres-Blancs).  "Nyegina."  Rapports  Annuels  Sixieme  Annee 
(1910-1911):  383. 

Societe  des  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres-Blancs).  "Nyegina  (Notre-Dame  de  Consolation)." 
Rapports  Annuels  (1911-1912):  392. 

Societe  des  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres-Blancs).  "Nyegina."  Rapports  Annuels  11(1915-16): 
328-330. 

Societe  des  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres-Blancs).  "Nyegina."    Rapports  Annuels  13  (1919-20): 
353-354. 

Societe  des  Missionnaires  d'Afrique  (Peres-Blancs).  "Nyegina."  Rapports  Annuels  17(1921- 
1922):  520. 

Visitations  Book,  Nyegina,  Mwanza  I,  1931-1932,  White  Fathers'  Regional's  House,  Nyegezi, 
Mwanza. 

Sukuma  Archives.  Bujora,  Mwanza 

Bourget,  L..  Trip  Diary,  1 904.  "Report  of  a  Trip  in  1 904  from  Bukumbi  to  Mwanza,  Kome? 
Ukerewe,  Kibara,  Ikoma  ~  Mara  Region,  together  with  some  stories."  N.p.  n.d.  M- 
SRC54,  Sukuma  Archives,  Bujora,  Mwanza. 

Bugomora,  Gregory.  Lumuli  5  August  1949. 


587 

Microfilm 

Baker,  Edward  Conway.  Tanganyika  Papers.  Microfilm  project  of  Oxford  University  Press. 

Musoma  District  Books,  Tanganyika  District  Books.  Reel  24,  Microfilm,  Tanganyika  National 
Archives. 

Corv  Paper.  East  Africana  Collection.  University  of  Par  es  Salaam 

Cory,  Hans.  "Sukuma  Secret  Societies."  1938.  CORY  #191,  EAF,  UDSM. 

Cory,  Hans.  "Report  on  the  pre-European  Tribal  Organization  in  Musoma  (South  Mara  Distict 
and  Proposals  for  adaptation  of  the  clan  system  to  modern  circumstances."  1945.  CORY 
#173,  EAF,  UDSM. 

Cory,  Hans.  "Report  on  the  general  situation  in  Kuria  Chiefdoms  of  North  Mara  and  proposals  for 
its  improvement...."  1945-49.  CORY  #171,  EAF,  UDSM. 

Cory,  Hans.  "South  Mara  Constituent  Assembly,  a  new  constitution  for  the  South  Mara  Council. . 
. ."  1959-60.  CORY  #385,  EAF,  UDSM. 

District  Commissioner,  Musoma.  "Memorandum  on  the  Revival  and  Application  of  the  Clan 
Regime  in  the  Musoma  District."  4  July  1945.  CORY  #347,  EAF,  UDSM. 

Fosbrooke,  Henry  A.  "Sections  of  the  Masai  in  Loliondo  Area."  1953  (typescript).  CORY  #259, 
EAF,  UDSM. 

Fosbrooke.  H.  A.,  Senior  Sociologist,  Tanganyika.  "Masai  History  in  Relation  to  Tsetse 
Encroachment."  Arusha,  1954.  CORY  #254,  EAF,  UDSM. 

Musoma  District.  "Notes  from  the  Musoma  District  Books  on  Local  Tribe  and  Chiefdoms  in 
German."  [c.1912?].  CORY  #348,  EAF,  UDSM. 

Musoma  Archives.  Regional  Office  of  Culture 

Anacleti,  Odhiambo,  "Kijiji  cha  Butiama:  Mila  na  Desturi  Zinazohusiana  na  Mahari  na  Ndoa: 
Tarafa  ya  Makongoro,  Wilaya  ya  Musoma,  March  26  March  1979."  Utafiti  na 
Mipango/Utamaduni,  Dar  es  Salaam,  UTV/M  13/22,  Mara  Region,  Office  of  Culture, 
Musoma. 

Tanzania  National  Archives.  Dar  es  Salaam 

Annual  Reports,  Native  Affairs  Section,  Lake  Province,  215/924/2. 

Game  Regulations,  vol  I:  1923-1929,  215/P.C./14/1 . 

Complaints,  21 5/P.C./50/5. 


588 

East  African  Population  Census,  1 948,  African  Population  of  Musoma  District,  East  Africa 

Statistical  Department,  Nairobi,  1  October  1948,  African  Population  by  Chiefdom,  1948, 
Secretariat  Files,  4064 1 . 

Land  and  Mines,  Chiefdoms'  Boundary  Dispute  Files,  North  Mara  District,  83/3/127. 

Mara  Regional  Statistical  Abstract  1993.  Dar  es  Salaam:  President's  Office,  Planning 
Commission,  Bureau  of  Statistics,  June  1995. 

Musoma  Sub-District  1916-1927,  bound  book. 

Mwanza  Province  1927-28,  Provincial  Administration,  Annual  Report,  246/  P.C/1/30. 

National  Game  Parks,  vols.  1-4,  215/350. 

Native  Settlement  in  Game  Reserves,  7227. 

Native  Affairs  Census  1926-1929,  Chiefdom  Census  1926,  246/P.C./3/2! . 

Native  Authorities,  Musoma  District,  1934,  Lake  Province  Files,  215/1027. 

Native  Chiefs,  Musoma,  Secretariat  Files,  29626. 

Native  Affairs,  Collective  Punishments  and  Prosecution  of  Chiefs,  1926-31,  246/P.C./3/4. 

Native  Affairs  Census  1926-29,  246/P.C./3/21. 

Provincial  Administration  Monthly  Reports,  Musoma  District,  Provincial  Administration,  1 926- 
29,215/P.C./l/7. 

Raids  by  Masai,  1936,  vol.  1,  Secretariat  Files,  23384. 

Serengeti  National  Park,  National  Game  Parks,  vols.  1-4,  215/350. 

Shortage  of  Foodstuffs,  Famine  Relief,  1932-33,  Lake  Province  Files  13252. 

Sleeping  Sickness:  Musoma  District,  215/463. 

Stock  Thefts:  Musoma  District  1932,  215/351. 

Tanganyika  Territory  Classification  of  Tribes  and  Tribal  Map,  Population  Census,  Secretariat 
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Tarime  District  Office,  Native  Administration,  Kuria  Union  Meetings  1946-52,  83/3/2. 

Veterinary  Department  Annual  Reports,  1921,  3046/22. 


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Landkommissions  Adventisten  Mission  Magita,  1909-1912,  G  15/499. 

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Schlobach,  Hauptmann;  and  Delme-Radcliffe,  Col.  "Die  deutsch-englische  Grenze  zwischen  dem 
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Abuso,  Paul  Asaka.  A  Traditional  History  of  the  Abakuria.  C.A.D.  1400-1914.  Nairobi:  Kenya 
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Adams,  Jonathon  S.;  and  McShane,  Thomas  O.    The  Myth  of  Wild  Africa:  Conservation  without 
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BIOGRAPHICAL  SKETCH 
Jan  Bender  Shetler  lives  on  a  farm  in  southwest  Colorado  with  her  husband,  Peter,  and  her 
two  sons,  Daniel  (15)  and  Paul  (1 1).  She  was  born  in  Philadelphia  and  raised  in  a  small  town  in 
Indiana.  She  graduated  with  a  B.A.  in  History  from  Goshen  College  in  1 978  and  went  on  to  begin 
graduate  work  at  Utah  State  University.  In  1 980,  she  and  her  husband  went  to  Ethiopia  with 
Mennonite  Central  Committee  where  she  worked  as  a  secondary  school  teacher  and  community 
development  worker.  This  led  to  assignments  in  Zaire  and  Tanzania  in  community  development 
and  as  Co-Country  Representative  for  Mennonite  Central  Committee  before  returning  to  the  United 
States  in  1 99 1  to  begin  a  graduate  program  at  the  University  of  Florida.  Her  Master's  paper  was 
published  as  "A  Gift  for  Generations  to  Come:  A  Kiroba  Popular  History  from  the  Forgotten  Side 
of  the  Lake  in  the  1980s."  in  the  International  Journal  of  African  Historical  Studies  (19951.  She 
spent  eighteen  months,  from  January  1995  to  July  1996,  in  Tanzania  doing  field  research. 


613 


LD 

1780 
199g 

pf.T 


UNIVERSITY  OF  FLORIDA 

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3  1262  08556  6825