Hunting reputations: Talent, individuals, and community in precolonial South Central Africa

Journal of African History

Volumn 53, Issue 3, 2013, Pages 279-299

  De Luna, Kathryn M ^a  

^a RICE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Central Africa; hunting; linguistics; precolonial

Indexed keywords

COLONIALISM; DURABILITY; HUNTING; LANGUAGE;

CENTRAL AFRICA;

BOS;

EID: 84872357056     PISSN: 00218537     EISSN: 14695138     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S002185371200045X     Document Type: Article

References (175)

1. J. R. Fell, Folk Tales of the Batonga and Other Sayings (London, 1932), 197-9.
2. Map reproduced from K. de Luna, Surveying the boundaries of historical linguistics and archaeology early settlement in south central Africa', African Archaeological Review, 29: 2/3 (2012), 209-51.
3. Regional classics include: M. Douglas, 'The Lele of Kasai', in D. Forde (ed.), African Worlds: Studies in the Cosmological Ideas and Social Values of African Peoples (Oxford, 1954), 1-26;
4. S. A. Marks, Large Mammals and a Brave People: Subsistence Hunters in Zambia (Seattle, 1976);
5. V. Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, NY, 1967);
6. C. M. N. White, 'The role of hunting and fishing in Luvale society', African Studies, 15:2 (1956), 75-86.
7. C.S. Bird and M. B. Kendall, 'The Mande hero, in I. Karp and C. S. Bird (eds.), Explorations in African Systems of Thought (Bloomington, IN, 1980), 13-26;
8. S. Kent (ed.), Farmers as Hunters: The Implications of Sedentism (Cambridge, 1989).
9. Among many, consider: L. de Heusch, Le roi ivre ou l'origine de l'État (Paris, 1972);
10. J. J. Hoover, 'The seduction of Ruwej: reconstructing Ruund history: the nuclear Lunda; Zaire, Angola, Zambia (volumes one and two)' (unpublished PhD thesis, Yale University, 1979);
11. T. Q. Reefe, The Rainbow and the Kings: A History of the Luba Empire to i8gi (Berkeley, CA, 1981);
12. J. C. Yoder, The Kanyok of Zaire: An Institutional and Ideological History to 1895 (Cambridge, 1992). In East Africa
13. see S. Feierman, The Shambaa Kingdom: A History (Madison, WI, 1974).
14. R. E. Schecter, A propos the drunken king: cosmology and history, in J.C. Miller (ed.), The African Past Speaks: Essays on Oral Tradition and History (Kent, 1980), 117.
15. J. Guyer and S. M. E. Belinga, Wealth in people as wealth in knowledge: accumulation and composition in equatorial Africa', Journal of African History, 36:1 (1995), 91-120.
16. A. Apter, Black Critics and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in Yoruba Society (Chicago, 1992);
17. S. Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania (Madison, WI, 1990);
18. H. E. Hanson, Landed Obligation: The Practice of Power in Buganda (Portsmouth, NH, 2003);
19. N. Kodesh, 'Networks of knowledge: clanship and collective well-being in Buganda', Journal of African History, 49:2 (2008), 197-216;
20. S. K. McIntosh (ed.), Beyond Chiefdoms: Pathways to Complexity in Africa (Cambridge, 1999);
21. th Century (Portsmouth, NH, 1998);
22. R. Stephens, 'Lineage and society in precolonial Uganda', Journal of African History, 50:2 (2009), 203-21;
23. J. Vansina, Paths in the Rainforest: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison, 1990);
24. J. Vansina, How Societies Are Born: Governance in West Central Africa before 1600 (Charlottesville, VA, 2004).
25. Reconstructable Botatwe terms for formal political titles and institutions are rare, demonstrating the persistence of autonomy as a political ideal and the ephemeral nature of power to the fourteenth century. Kinship vocabulary may contribute more to our understanding of political life in the earliest periods of Botatwe history. For a lively debate about the antiquity of decentralized Botatwe politics, see contributions to C. Lancaster and K. P. Vickery (eds.), The Tonga-Speaking Peoples of Zambia and Zimbabwe: Essays in Honor of Elizabeth Colson (Lanham, MD, 2007).
26. J. I. Guyer, Wealth in people and self-realization in equatorial Africa, Man, new series 28:2 (1993), 243-65;
27. J. I. Guyer, 'Traditions of invention in equatorial Africa', African Studies Review, 39:3 (1996), 1-28.
28. The best regional descriptions are E. Colson, T onga Religious Life in the Twentieth Century (Lusaka, Zambia, 2006), 46, 134-5, and 165 - 7;
29. and E. W. Smith and A. M. Dale, The Ila-Speaking Peoples of Northern Rhodesia Volume I (New York, 1968 [orig. pub. 1920]), 152-60, 180, 203, and 219-21.
30. I appreciatively build on John Iliffe s recent insights into householder honor. Yet, honor is a particular outcome of reputation and its study as an 'enforceable right' masks the other reasons (negative) reputations were acquired and used. J. Iliffe, Honour in African History (Cambridge 2005).
31. On affect in precolonial Africa, see K. de Luna, 'Affect and society in precolonial Africa', International Journal of African Historical Studies, forthcoming;
32. Hanson, Landed Obligation;
33. Iliffe, Honour;
34. and D. L. Schoenbrun, 'Violence, marginality, scorn and honour: language evidence of slavery to the eighteenth century', in H. Médard and S. Doyle (eds.), Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa (Athens, OH, 2007), 38-75.
35. On this and previous classifications of the Botatwe languages, see K. de Luna, 'Classifying Botatwe: M60 languages and the settlement chronology of south central Africa', Africana Linguistica, 16 (2010), 65-96.
36. Y. Bastin, A. Coupez, and M. Mann, Continuity and Divergence in the Bantu Languages: Perspectives from a Lexicostatistic Study (Tervuren, Belgium, 1999);
37. C. Ehret, An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History, 1000 B. C. to A.D. 400 (Charlottesville, VA, 1998), 234-7;
38. de Luna, 'Classifying';
39. C. Saidi, Women's Authority and Society in Early East-Central Africa (Rochester, NY, 2010).
40. The earliest direct evidence for sorghum in south central Africa was recovered at Mteteshi, 27 kilometers northeast of Kabwe in Central Province, Zambia, and dated to the first century: see J. Robertson, 'Early iron age archaeology in central Zambia', Azania, 35:1 (2000), 147-82.
41. The earliest hoes, an indirect indicator of agriculture, were recovered from Kumadzulo and dated to the sixth century: see J. O. Vogel, Kumadzulo: An Early Iron Age Village Site in Southern Zambia (Lusaka, Zambia, 1971).
42. *-pila ('sorghum'), were borrowed into Botatwe from eastern Bantu languages. Ehret, African Classical, 212 and 270 - 4;
43. Vansina, How Societies, 74-7.
44. Ehret, African Classical;
45. de Luna, 'Classifying';
46. Saidi, Women's.
47. This modest Proto-Greater Eastern Botatwe investment in cattle-keeping contrasts with the intensive pastoralism associated with the seventeenth century. Linguistic and archaeological evidence for the history of regional pastoralism is discussed in de Luna, 'Surveying'; R. M. Derricourt, Man on the Kafue: The Archaeology and History of the Itezhitezhi Area of Zambia (New York, 1985);
48. Ehret, African Classical, 212, 225, 235, 242, and 271-3;
49. B. M. Fagan, Iron Age Cultures in Zambia, Volume I: Kalomo and Kangila (London, 1967);
50. B. M. Fagan, 'Gundu and Ndonde, Basanga and Mwanamaimpa', Azania, 13:1 (1978), 127-34;
51. B. M. Fagan and D.W. Phillipson, 'Sebanzi: the iron age sequence at Lochinvar, and the Tonga', Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 95:2 (1965), 253-94;
52. and B. M. Fagan, D.W. Phillipson, and S. G. H. Daniels, Iron Age Cultures in Zambia, Volume II: Dambwa, Ingombe Ilede, and the Tonga (London, 1969).
53. K. de Luna, Collecting food, cultivating persons: wild resource use in central african political culture, c. 1000 B.C. E. to c. 1900 C.E.' (unpublished PhD thesis, Northwestern University, 2008);
54. J. Vansina, 'A slow revolution: farming in subequatorial Africa', Azania, 29/30:1 (1994), 15-26.
55. For an ethnographic treatment of overlaps between farming and food collection, see T. Scudder, The Ecology of the Gwembe Tonga (Manchester, 1962).
56. This shift also occurred in the Zambezi and Mulungushi valleys: see Robertson, 'Iron age';
57. Vansina, 'Slow revolution';
58. *p > Ø) and distribution support reconstruction to Proto-Central Eastern Botatwe. Vowel lengthening is a common feature of Bantu languages in the context of a glide created through the fusion of two vowels across morphemic boundaries. Here, the vowel of the noun class prefix mu- and the initial vowel of the root itself fuse after the loss of /p/to produce the extant Botatwe form, mwaalu.
59. Y. Bastin and T. Schadeberg (eds.), Bantu Lexical Reconstructions 3, Musée Royale de l'Afrique Centrale (Tervuren, Belgium), (www.metafro.be/blr), RN 8909 and 8982;
60. Marks, Large Mammals, 67;
61. White Fathers, The White Fathers' Bemba-English Dictionary (London, 1954), 479 and 584;
62. C.M. Doke, English-Lamba Vocabulary (2nd edn, Johannesburg, 1963), 81.
63. J. Nash, Ruwund Vocabularies, Occasional Papers Series, no. 3 (Urbana-Champaign, IL, 1991), 47.
64. See also 'Seduction', 487-9;
65. R. J. Papstein, 'The upper Zambezi: a history of the Luvale people, 1000-1900' (unpublished PhD thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1978), 70-1.
66. A. F. Isaacman and B. S. Isaacman, Slavery and Beyond: The Making of Men and Chikunda Ethnic Identities in the Unstable World of South-Central Africa, 1750 - IQ20 (Portsmouth, NH, 2004);
67. T. I. Matthews, 'Portuguese, Chikunda, and peoples of the Gwembe valley: the impact of the "lower Zambezi complex," on southern Zambia', Journal of African History, 22:1 (1981), 23-41.
68. Bastin Schadeberg, 'BLR-3', RN Main 2344;
69. M. Guthrie, Comparative Bantu: An Introduction to the Comparative Linguistics and Prehistory of the Bantu Languages, four volumes (Farnborough, Hampshire, 1967-1971), Comparative Series 1404.
70. T.C. Schadeberg, Derivation, in D. Nurse and G. Philippson (eds.), The Bantu Languages (London, 2003), 77 and 85;
71. T. C. Schadeberg, 'Die extensive extension im Bantu', in T. Geider and R. Kastenholz (eds.), Sprachen und Sprachzeugnisse in Afrika: Eine Sammlung Philologischer Beiträge, Wilhelm J. G. Möhlig zum 60. Geburtstag Zugeeignet (Köln, 1994), 357-66.
72. *-pàd is borrowed, though vowel assimilation can account for /a/> /u/. See H. Carter, An Outline of Chitonga Grammar (Lusaka, Zambia, 2002), 50;
73. A. C. Madan, Lenje Handbook: A Short Introduction to the Lenje Dialect Spoken in North-West Rhodesia (Oxford, 1908), 48;
74. E. W. Smith, A Handbook of the Ila Language, (Commonly Called the Seshukulumbwle), Spoken in North-Western Rhodeisa, South-Central Africa, Comprising Grammar, Exercises, Specimens of Ila Tales, and Vocabularies (Farnborough, Hampshire, 1964 [orig. pub. 1907]) 131-2.
75. The antiquity of this meaning for the extensive affix is uncertain in Botatwe due to the paucity of descriptive grammars, but it does exist in each of the three best documented Central Eastern Botatwe languages (ChiTonga, Ila, and Lenje) and is widely documented in southern Bantu languages. Carter, Outline;
76. Madan, Lenje;
77. Smith, Handbook.
78. *-pàdu's huntsmanship. Scudder, Ecology, 195;
79. B. Siamwiza, 'Famine and hunger in the history of the Gwembe Valley, Zambia, c. 1850-1958', in Lancaster and Vickery, Tonga-Speaking, 251.
80. As Fielder notes, the Ila themselves describe a man s economic struggle, his seeking for wealth and power, as his buwezhi, his hunting (kuweza - to hunt, pursue).'. R.J. Fielder, 'Economic spheres in pre-colonial Ila society', African Social Research, 28 (1979), 624.
81. D. W. Phillipson, 'The early iron age site at Kapwirimbwe, Lusaka', Azania, 3:1 (1968), 87-105.
82. J. Vansina, Do Pygmies have a history? Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, 7:1 (1986), 431-5;
83. Vansina, Paths, 287.
84. My reconstruction of Proto-Kafue chila is a composite of the field observations and descriptions in: W. F. H. Ansell, 'The declining red lechwe', Oryx: The International Journal of Conservation, 3:1 (1955), 15-8;
85. C. L. Boyle, 'The secretary's African tour: an account by the secretary of his visit with his wife to east and central Africa between June and October 1957', Oryx: The International Journal of Conservation, 4:4 (1958), 216-69;
86. E. Colson, Marriage and the Family among the Plateau Tonga of Northern Rhodesia, (Manchester, 1958), 32;
87. E. Colson, 'The plateau Tonga of northern Rhodesia', in E. Colson and M. Gluckman (eds.), Seven Tribes of British Central Africa (Manchester, 1959 [orig. pub. 1951]),106;
88. Colson, Tonga Religious Life, 104-5;
89. T. Haller, 'The contested floodplain: institutional change of common pool resource management and conflicts among the Ila, Tonga, and Batwa, Kafue Flats (Southern Province), Zambia' (unpublished habilitation, University of Zurich, 2007);
90. D. Livingstone and C. Livingstone, Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries; And of the Discovery of the Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1838-1864 (London, 1865), 311;
91. J. K. Rennie, 'Traditional society and modern developments in Namwala district', in G. W. Howard and G. J. Williams (eds.), Proceedings of the National Seminar on Environment and Change: The Consequences of Hydroelectric Power Development on the Utilization of the Kafue Flats, Lusaka, April 1978 (Lusaka, 1982), 35-46;
92. B. Reynolds, The Material Culture of the Peoples of the Gwembe Valley (New York, 1968), 57-8;
93. Scudder, Ecology, 198-9;
94. Siamwiza, 'Famine', 153-5.
95. The next three paragraphs draw on de Luna, Surveying; Derricourt, Man, 200-15;
96. Fagan, Iron Age, Volume I 70-82;
97. Fagan, Phillipson
98. and Daniels, Iron Age, Volume II.
99. In addition to citations in fn. 36: J. Denbow, 'Material culture and the dialectics of identity in the Kalahari: AD 700-1700' in McIntosh, Beyond Chiefdoms, 110-23;
100. P. de Maret, Fouilles Archéologiques dans la Vallée du Haut-Lualaba, (Tervuren, Belgium, 1985);
101. B. M. Fagan, 'Early trade and raw materials in south central Africa', Journal of African History, 10:1 (1969), 1-13;
102. and R. Lanfranchi and B. Clist (eds.), Aux Origines de l'Afrique Centrale (Libreville, 1991).
103. This stands in stark contrast to sons rigid, ritualized capture of hunting prowess from fathers described for the Lunda-Ndembu. Turner, Forest, ch. 8.
104. For the Botatwe region, this development is best documented among Tonga speakers in the Valley. Matthews, 'Portuguese'.
105. Bisa members of the Bafundi elephant-hunting guild of Bembaland were cut off from Kazembe's trade around 1830 and sought new hunting lands in the south. They were joined by Chikunda hunters based around Zumbo from the 1850s. Isaacman and Isaacman, Slavery, 87-110 and 236-42;
106. Marks, Large Mammals, 61-4 and 72;
107. A. Roberts, A History of Zambia (New York, 1976), 120-6.
108. Isaacman and Isaacman, Slavery.
109. C. Ehret, 'Subclassifying Bantu: the evidence of stem morpheme innovations', in J.-M. Hombert and Larry Hyman (eds.), Bantu Historical Linguistics: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives (Stanford, 1999), 136.
110. On the Batoka Plateau, Tonga and Ila speakers change the noun class of the root to talk about an 'unhonored' elder with the term caalu. J. Torrend, An English-Vernacular Dictionary of the Bantu-Botatwe Dialects of Northern Rhodesia (Natal, 1931), 180;
111. D. G. Fowler, A Dictionary of Ila Usage: 1860-1960 (Hamburg, 2000), 499.
112. On friendship in late precolonial trade networks of west central Africa, see A. von Oppen, Terms of Trade and Terms of Trust: The History and Contexts of Pre-colonial Market Production around the Upper Zambezi and Kasai (Münster, 1993).
113. On friendship as an economic and social coping system in more recent times, see J. A. Pritchett, Friends for Life, Friends for Death: Cohorts and Consciousness among the Lunda-Ndembu (Charlottesville, VA, 2007).
114. D. G. Fowler, The Ila Speaking: Records of a Lost World (Münster, 2002), 59.
115. Though traders from Sena, Tete, and, later, from the cycles of settlement at Zumbo sporadically visited the fringes of the eastern Botatwe zone from the close of the seventeenth century onward, the settlement of some Tonga in these towns in the first half of the nineteenth century and the reopening of Zumbo in 1862 intensified slaving in the Gwembe Valley, Plateau, and Middle Kafue communities. Isaacman and Isaacman, Slavery;
116. Matthews, 'Portuguese';
117. Roberts, History.
118. J. Glassman, Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856-1888 (Portsmouth, NH, 1995);
119. Hanson, Landed Obligation;
120. M. Wright, Strategies of Slaves and Women: Life Stories from East/Central Africa (New York, 1993).
121. D. Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa; Including a Sketch of Sixteen Years' Residence in the Interior of Africa, and a Journey from the Cape of Good Hope to Loanda on the West Coast, thence Across the Continent, Down the River Zambesi, to the Eastern Ocean (New York, 1876 [orig. pub. 1858]), 565.
122. Consider the reports of Shialozhi, Kabocha, Nanshiku, and Nabwantu in Smith and Dale, Ila-Speaking, 400-7.
123. To the east of the Botatwe zone, claims to kinship were strategies to both demand protection and to facilitate and justify the sale of vulnerable people: see Wright, Strategies. To the west, nineteenth-century sources describe maternal uncles' sale of their nieces and nephews on the Upper Zambezi, as cited in von Oppen, Terms, 279.
124. Fell, Folk Tales, 174-5; É. Jacottet, Études sur les langues du Haut-Zambèze: Troisième partie: Textes Louyi (Paris, 1901), 40-4;
125. J. Torrend, 'Contes en Chwabo ou Langue de Quelimane', Zeitschrift für afrikanische und Oceanische Sprachen, 1:3 (1895), 243-9;
126. J. Torrend, Specimens of Bantu Folk-Lore from Northern Rhodesia (London, 1921), 183-7.
127. 3 McGregor recognizes the same pattern of Kololo ridicule o Botatwe speakers living along the middle Zambezi through a careful reading of Kololo influence on Livingstone's perceptions of the Tonga, Leya, and Toka communities.
128. J. McGregor, Crossing the Zambezi: The Politics of Landscape on a Central African Frontier (Oxford, 2009), 42-57.
129. A. Jalla, Silozi-English Dictionary, (3rd edn, Lusaka, 1982), 85.
130. Bastin and Schadeberg, 'BLR-3', RN 8909 and 8982;
131. de Luna, 'Collecting', RN 609.
132. Bastin and Schadeberg, 'BLR-3', RN 1523 and 1525;
133. de Luna, 'Collecting', RN 508 and 511;
134. Ehret, African Classical, 307;
135. Ehret, 'Subclassifying', 66;
136. Guthrie, Comparative, CS 903y and 904.
137. Bastin and Schadeberg, 'BLR-3', RN 7874;
138. de Luna, 'Collecting', RN 610.
139. Bastin and Schadeberg, 'BLR-3', RN 3108 and 3109;
140. de Luna, 'Collecting', RN 611;
141. Guthrie, Comparative, CS 1867.
142. Bastin and Schadeberg, 'BLR-3', RN 2726-30;
143. de Luna, 'Collecting', RN 616;
144. Guthrie, Comparative, CS 1642-4.
145. de Luna, 'Collecting', RN 618.
146. Bastin and Schadeberg, 'BLR-3', RN 8930;
147. de Luna, 'Collecting', RN 617;
148. Ehret, 'Subclassifying', 96;
149. C. Ehret, 'The establishment of iron-working in Eastern, Central, and Southern Africa: linguistic inferences on technological history', Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika 16/17 (2000), 153.
150. de Luna, 'Collecting', RN 432.
151. Bastin and Schadeberg, 'BLR-3', RN 1523;
152. de Luna, 'Collecting', RN 434;
153. Ehret, African Classical, 313;
154. Guthrie, Comparative, CS 903y.
155. de Luna, 'Collecting', RN 431;
156. Ehret, African Classical, 300;
157. C. Ehret, 'Subclassifying', 66.
158. Bastin and Schadeberg, 'BLR-3', RN 5807 and 6130;
159. de Luna, 'Collecting', RN 621;
160. Vansina, 'Pygmies';
161. Vansina, Paths, 287.
162. Bastin and Schadeberg, 'BLR-3', RN 2387-9;
163. de Luna, 'Collecting', RN 622;
164. Guthrie, Comparative, CS 1433, 1433a, and 1434.
165. Bastin and Schadeberg, 'BLR-3', RN 9139;
166. de Luna, 'Collecting', RN 623.
167. de Luna, 'Collecting', RN 824;
168. M. Hannan, Standard Shona Dictionary, (2nd edn, Salisbury, 1974), 71 and 278;
169. White Fathers, Bemba, 540.
170. de Luna, 'Collecting', RN 827;
171. Ehret, 'Subclassifying', 136.
172. Bastin and Schadeberg, 'BLR-3', RN 3147;
173. de Luna, 'Collecting', RN 814;
174. Guthrie, Comparative, CS 1890.
175. de Luna, 'Collecting', RN 815 and 585-6.