History from the healer's shrine: Genre, Historical imagination, and early Ganda History

Comparative Studies in Society and History

Volumn 49, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 527-552

  Kodesh, Neil ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK; CULTURAL INFLUENCE; CULTURAL TRADITION; METHODOLOGY;

AFRICA;

EID: 33846538211     PISSN: 00104175     EISSN: 14752999     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0010417507000618     Document Type: Article

References (129)

1. Nancy Rose Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon Of Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 23.
2. Among others, see Leroy Vail and Landeg White, Power and the Praise Poem: Southern African Voices in History (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1991)
3. Karen Barber, I Could Speak Until Tomorrow (Edinborough: Edinborough University Press, 1991)
4. Belinda Bozzoli and Mmantho Nkotsoe, Women of Phokeng: Consciousness, Life Strategy, and Migrancy in South Africa, 1900-1983 (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1991)
5. Elizabeth Tonkin, Narrating Our Pasts: The Social Construction of Oral History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
6. Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon
7. Luise White, Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000)
8. Abdullahi A. Ibrahim, "The Birth of the Interview: The Thin and the Fat of It," in, Luise White, Stephan F. Miescher, and David William Cohen, eds., African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 103-24
9. Barbara M. Cooper, "Oral Sources and the Challenges of African History," in, John Edward Philips, ed., Writing African History (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2005), 191-215
10. Tamara Giles-Vernick, Cutting the Vines of the Past: Environmental Histories of the Central African Rain Forest (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002).
11. Vansina first laid out his methodology for the collection and treatment of oral traditions in Jan Vansina, De la tradition orale: Essai de methode historique (Tervuren: MRAC, 1961), which appeared in English translation as Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology, H. M. Wright, trans. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965).
12. Vansina later revised his method in Oral Tradition as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985).
13. Thomas Spear, "Oral Tradition: Whose History?" History in Africa 8 (1981): 132-48
14. Renee Louise Tantala, "The Early History of Kitara in Western Uganda: Process Models of Religious and Political Change," Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin at Madison, 1989
15. David William Cohen and E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, Siaya: The Historical Anthropology of an African Landscape (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1989).
16. White, Speaking with Vampires, 53.
17. For vampire stories, see White, Speaking with Vampires. For an illuminating examination of the Congolese artist Tshibumba Kanda Matulu's painted narrative of Zaire
18. see Johannes Fabian, Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996).
19. For life histories as a vantage point from which to approach larger historical issues, see, among others, Marcia Wright, Strategies of Slaves and Women: Life-Stories from East/Central Africa (New York: L. Barber, 1993)
20. Charles Van Onselen, The Seed Is Mine: The Life of Kas Maine, A South African Sharecropper, 1894-1985 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996)
21. Jean Davison with the women of Mutira, Voices from Mutira: Change in the Lives of Rural Gikuyu Women, 1910-1995 (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996).
22. Fabian, Remembering the Present, 297-98.
23. See, for example, the contributions to White, Miescher, and Cohen, eds., African Words, African Voices.
24. David L. Schoenbrun makes a similar point in his review of Christopher Wrigley's Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty, in "Myth's History or History's Myth: Christopher Wrigley and the History of Obuganda," Azania 34 (1999): 123-33.
25. Luise White, "True Stories: Narrative, Event, History, and Blood in the Lake Victoria Basin," in, White, Miescher, and Cohen, eds., African Words, African Voices, 281.
26. Jan Vansina, The Children of Woot: A History of the Kuba Peoples (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978).
27. David William Cohen, "The Undefining of Oral Tradition," Ethnohistory 36, 1 (1989); 9-18.
28. There are three main narratives in which Kintu serves as one of the primary characters: "Kintu and Bemba the Snake," "Kintu and Nambi," and "Kintu and Kisolo." Though not necessarily treated by either Ganda or outside scholars as individual elements of a single set of ideas, these three narratives constitute what I call the "Kintu Episode" in Ganda traditions. This essay focuses on the first of these narratives - "Kintu and Bemba the Snake." For an analysis of the other two narratives, see Neil Kodesh, "Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Collective Well-Being in Buganda," Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 2004, ch. 1.
29. Speke's account was based on his six-month tenure at the royal court in 1862. John Hanning Speke, Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1863).
30. Apolo Kagwa, Bakabaka b'e Buganda, 1st ed. (Kampala: Uganda Bookshop, 1901), 3-4.
31. J. F. Cunningham, Uganda and Its Peoples (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1905), 170-78.
32. "Kintu Ne Bemba," Munno (1915): 93-95
33. Daudi Bakika and J. Bwagu, "Ekika Kye Balangira Mu Buganda," Munno (1921): 73
34. and Lawi Wakibi Sekiti, "The Baganda of Mbale [Mbaale]" and Ludoviko Kibato, "The Harp of the King of Buganda," both in Translations from Munno and other Periodicals, Sir John Gray's Manuscripts, Royal Commonwealth Society.
35. Eriya M. Buligwanga, Ekitabo Ekitegeza Ekika Kye Mamba (Kampala: Uganda Publishing Company, 1916), 14-17
36. S. K. L. Kakoma, A. M. Ntate, and M. Serukaga, Ekitabo Eky'Abanyajove Ab'e Mmamba Mu Siiga Lya Nankere e'Bukerekere (Kampala: East African Institute of Social Reseasrch, 1959), 3-4.
37. James Miti, "A Short History of Buganda, Bunyoro, Busoga, Toro, and Ankole," MS Translation (Makerere University Library, n.d.), 15-17
38. Nsimbi, Amannya Amaganda N'Ennono Zaago (Kampala: East African Literature Bureau, 1956), 184-85
39. Charles E. S. Kaguba, "The Genealogy of Kabaka Kintu and the Early Bakabaka of Buganda," Uganda Journal 27, 2 (1963): 207-8.
40. For a detailed historiographic overview of the "Kintu and Bemba the Snake" narrative, see Kodesh, "Beyond the Royal Gaze," 37-56.
41. For an excellent discussion of the problems with the concept of "religion" in an African context, see Paul Landau, "'Religion' and Conversion in African History: A New Model," Journal of Religious History, 23, 1 (1999): 8-30.
42. See also Rosalind Shaw, "The Invention of 'African Traditional Religion,'" Religion 20 (1990): 339-53.
43. Anthony Appiah, In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 108.
44. Steven Feierman, "Colonizers, Colonized, and the Creation of Invisible Histories," in, Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, eds., Beyond the Linguistic Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999), 202-3.
45. See, for example, F. B. Welbourn, "Some Aspects of Kiganda Religion," Uganda Journal 26, 2 (1962): 171-82
46. Holger Bernt Hansen, "The Colonial Control of Spirit Cults in Uganda," in, David M. Anderson and Douglas H. Johnson, eds., Revealing Prophets: Prophesy in East African History (London: James Currey, 1995), 143-63
47. and, more recently, Henri Medard's Ph.D. dissertation, specifically the sections entitled "La religion méconnue du Buganda" and "Royauté et religion: Complémentarités et concurrences." Henri Medard, "Croissance et crises de la royaute du Buganda au XIX Siecle," these de doctorat (Universite Paris I - Pantheon Sorbonne, 2001).
48. Apolo Kagwa, The Kings of Buganda, translated by M. S. M Kiwanuka (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1971), 5-7
49. Cunningham, Uganda and Its Peoples, 170-78
50. Apolo Kagwa, "Ekitabo Kye Kika Kyenseenene" (Privately printed on author's press, n.d.), 40-41
51. C. W. Hattersley, An English Boy's Life and Adventures in Uganda (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1913), 72-74
52. Bakika and Bwagu, "Ekika Kye Balangira," 62-63
53. John M. K. Bapere, "Kintu and the People with Him on Masaba Hill," Munno (1929): 66-69, in Source Material in Uganda History, Vol. 3. Collected and translated by the Department of History, Makerere University, 1971
54. Kibato, "The Harp of the King of Buganda";
55. Nsimbi, Amannya Amaganda, 183-85
56. Kakoma, Ntate, and Serukaga, Ekitabo Eky'Abakyanjove, 3-4.
57. Bemba often appears specifically as a python (ttimba).
58. In some versions the Mukiibi character appears as Ndugwa, the title used for the head of the Pangolin clan.
59. In some versions Kigave appears as Lugave, the Luganda word for 'pangolin.' The word kigave, however, carries the same meaning.
60. The details of this portion of the narrative differ in some versions, but always with the same result: Nfudu and Kigave trick Bemba into having his head chopped off.
61. For the historiography of the Kintu figure, see Kodesh, "Beyond the Royal Gaze," 37-56.
62. Kalule George William, 29 Sept. 2001.
63. Ssalongo Ssegujja Musisi, 16 Mar. 2002.
64. David William Cohen, The Historical Tradition of Busoga: Mukama and Kintu (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 19-21, 44-45.
65. Cohen, Historical Tradition, 20-21.
66. Soga clan histories suggest a possible connection between the Kintu figure and the leopard totem. In southern Busoga all the groups of people who adopted the leopard as their totem trace their ancestry to Kintu, a possible indication that the musambwa may once have functioned as the nkuni spirit for these communities. However, it is also quite likely that the connection between the leopard totem and Kintu in southern Busoga occurred after the rise to prominence of Kintu the conqueror-king in Buganda, where the Leopard clan provides the priest for Kintu's royal tomb at Magonga. For the connection between Kintu and the leopard totem in southern Busoga, see Cohen, Historical Tradition, 89, 119.
67. Kakoma, Ntate, and Serukaka, Ekitabo Eky'Abakyanjove, 2, 14, 21, 37-38.
68. For a more detailed discussion of shifts in the deeply-rooted traditions of health and healing in the region, see David Lee Schoenbrun, A Green Place, A Good Place: Agrarian Change, Gender, and Social Identity in the Great Lakes Region to the 15th Century (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1998), 197-203.
69. Schoenbrun, Green Place, 199. The conceptual link between territorial misambwa spirits and pythons related to the common practice among pythons of lingering around bodies of water, which for many Great Lakes communities served as conduits to the Underworld where spirits traveled upon the death of their human vehicles.
70. In addition to being the head of the estate, the shrine's priest also served as the medium's interpreter. See John Roscoe's account of the same event in The Baganda: An Account of Their Native Customs and Beliefs (London: Macmillan and Co., 1911), 322.
71. John Roscoe, "Python Worship in Uganda," Man 9 (1909): 89-90.
72. The widespread analogy in the Great Lakes region between the manner in which a spirit possesses a person and a python seizes its prey hints at the historical depth of this connection.
73. Nsimbi, Amannya Amaganda, 211
74. Muyondo Kubi Kiviri, 31 Oct. 2001.
75. Richard Reid, Political Power in Pre-Colonial Buganda (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002), 244.
76. Muyondo Kubi Kiviri, 31 Oct. 2001.
77. Haji Blukhan Kabulidde, 3 Nov. 2001.
78. Miti, "Short History," 1606.
79. The communities living along the lake's eastern shores preserved the keel once a canoe fell into a state of disrepair.
80. Michael Kenny, "The Powers of Lake Victoria," Anthropos 72, 5/6 (1977): 725-27.
81. The Church Missionary Society missionary C. W. Hattersley described Buddo as a place where many snakes dwelt on account of the area's inhabitants' fear of killing the creatures. See Hattersley, An English Boy's Life, 74.
82. Kawooya Bakazirwendo, 4 Oct. 2001
83. Committee of the Lungfish Clan, Ekitabo Ky'Ekika Ky'Emmbama (Acquired at Lungfish clan introduction ceremony at king's residence at Banda, 2001), 2
84. Dick Makande Nsubuga, Abazzukulu Ba Kkerebwe E Lukumba, Bwerenga Mu Ssiga Lya Kirulu E Bwenga Mu Kika Ky'Emmamba (Kampala: Luganda Language Society, 1997), 9. Lungfish clan history constitutes a matter of considerable debate, and not all versions claim Bemba as an ancestor.
85. Reid, Political Power, 227-50
86. Michael Kenny, "The Stranger from the Lake: A Theme in the History of the Lake Victoria Shorelands," Azania 17 (1982): 16-20.
87. For the clan's activities in the Buvuma archipelago, see Jurgen Jensen, "Die Erweiterung Des Lungenfischs-Clan in Buganda (Uganda) Durch Den Anschluss von Bavuma Gruppen," Sociologus 19, 2 (1969): 153-66. I thank Henri Médard for providing me with a French translation of this article.
88. For canoe construction, see Roscoe, The Baganda, 383-90
89. and Reid, Political Power, 228-31.
90. Kagwa, The Customs of the Baganda, May Mandelbaum, ed., Ernest B. Kalibala, trans. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934), 114-15
91. Roscoe, The Baganda, 290-94
92. Nsimbi, Amannya Amaganda, 127. This intermediary role was reinforced by the clan's lungfish totem, whose anomalous characteristics seem to have inspired metaphorical associations with the spiritual realm. An air-breathing creature that inhabits the mudflats along the lake and resembles a snake, the lungfish provided oarsmen traveling between spiritual centers on the Ssese islands and lakeshore settlements such as Buddo hill with a totemic symbol capable of capturing the metaphysical capacities of their intermediary role.
93. Michael G. Kenny, "Mutesa's Crime: Hubris and the Control of African Kings," Comparative Studies in Society and History 30, 4 (1988): 610, n. 52.
94. For a discussion of this process, see Kodesh, "Beyond the Royal Gaze," ch. 4.
95. For an analysis of the ritual symbolism of the Buddo rites, see Benjamin Ray, Myth, Ritual, and Kingship in Buganda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 78-86.
96. For descriptions of the rites, see Kagwa, Customs, 11-13
97. Kagwa, Kings of Buganda, 79
98. John Roscoe, The Baganda, 190-96
99. and Barolomayo M. Zimbe, Buganda Ne Kabaka (Uganda: Gambuze, 1939), 79-82.
100. Nsimbi, Amannya Amaganda, 154.
101. Robert Pickering Ashe, Chronicles of Uganda (New York: Randolf, 1895), 111-13.
102. A similar transition seems to have occurred in Bunyoro, where the ntimbo drums constituted a crucial part of both royal accession rituals and initiation ceremonies surrounding mbandwa spirit possession practices. Allan J. Lush, "Kiganda Drums," Uganda Journal 3, 1 (1935): 9
103. Elisa Muwanga and the Council of the Ssiga of Jjumba, Ekitabo Eky'essiga Lya Jjumba (Kampala: Makerere University College Library, 1964), 10
104. Kakoma, Ntate, and Serukaga, Ekitabo Eky'Abakyanjove, 46
105. Kenny, "Powers of Lake Victoria," 728
106. Tantala, "Early History of Kitara," 611, 646, n. 35
107. Margaret Trowell and K. P. Wachsmann, Tribal Crafts of Uganda (London, 1953), 366-67.
108. The innovation is evidenced in the fact that the word mbándwa named both a medium and a spirit while musambwa named a spirit and its territorial location but not its medium. For the historical linguistic evidence supporting the nature and timing of this innovation, see Schoenbrun, Green Place, Good Place, 202-6.
109. For an example from of this process involving the rise of Cwezi spirits in western Uganda, see Tantala, "Early History of Kitara," 257-357.
110. Ssalongo Lukoda Wamala Kaggwa, 4 Feb. 2002; Ssalongo Ssegujja Musisi, 16 Mar. 2002
111. Simon Mwebe, 5 May 2002.
112. Connections between the pangolin's unusual physical characteristics and its metaphoric significance stretch well beyond Buganda and are particularly prevalent in central Africa. See Allen F. Roberts, Animals in African Art: From the Familiar to the Marvelous (New York: The Museum for African Art, 1995), 83
113. Mary Douglas, "Animals in Lele Religious Symbolism," Africa 27, 1 (1957): 46-58
114. Daniel Biebuyck, "Repartition et droits du pangolin chez les balega," Zaire 7, 8 (1953): 899-934
115. F. Lukyn Williams, "Myth, Legend, and Lore in Uganda," Uganda Journal 10, 2 (Sept. 1946): 69-70.
116. The use of anomalous creatures as symbols for meta-physical activities is widespread through much of Sub-Saharan Africa. For an example from Southern Africa, see John M. Janzen, Ngoma: Discourses of Healing in Central and Southern Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 117.
117. This conclusion accords with the extremely precise and calculated decisions made by diviners and mediums in many parts of Africa with respect to the creatures employed in their respective activities. See Philip M. Peek, "African Divination Systems: Non-Normal Modes of Cognition," in, Philip M. Peek, ed., African Divination Systems: Ways of Knowing (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 198-99.
118. For a discussion of the types of networks forged by itinerant mediums, see Kodesh, "Beyond the Royal Gaze," ch. 2.
119. The rich ethnographic record in the Great Lakes region consistently describes the state of possession as being seized on the head by an overpowering force.
120. Bemba's decapitation brings to mind a similar story from nineteenth-century Mpororo/ Ndorwa. When the soldiers of the well-known Rwandan king Rwabugiri sought to conquer Kigezi, Nyabingi mediums led the resistance against the expansionist Rwanda state. The king's soldiers found the most important medium, killed her, and took her head back to the royal court. The decapitated head, however, began to speak and reprimanded Rwabugiri, who ultimately removed his forces from the medium's territory. Unlike Nyabingi, however, Bemba's decapitation resulted in his demise and ultimate disappearance from Ganda history. M. J. Bessell, "Nyabingi," Uganda Journal 6, 2 (1938): 75-76.
121. For an insightful account of some of the transformations in the Kintu figure in from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, see Henri Médard, "The Syncretic Changes, from the XVIII to the XX Century, of the Life of Kintu, First King of Buganda," paper presented at Makerere University, Kingship in Uganda Conference (Kampala, Uganda, 1997).
122. John Yoder, "The Quest for Kintu and the Search for Peace: Mythology and Morality in Nineteenth-Century Buganda," History in Africa 15 (1988): 363-76.
123. Ray, Myth, Ritual, and Kingship, 99-103.
124. Kodesh, "Beyond the Royal Gaze," 101-7.
125. William F. Hanks, Language and Communicative Practices (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), 274.
126. Cooper, "Oral Sources."
127. See, for example, the contributions to Joseph C. Miller, ed., The African Past Speaks: Essays on Oral Tradition and History (Hamden: Archen, 1980).
128. Cooper points in particular to Luisa Passerini and Alessandro Portelli's work on student uprisings in Italy during the 1960s.
129. Cooper, "Oral Sources," 195-96.