African Myths of Origin

by Stephen Belcher

  FARA MAKAN AND FONO

  Fono thought he was the greatest of the Sorko river-hunters. Every day he would spear three hundred hippopotamuses and send his people out to fetch the meat. But an envious woman once told him that his equal lived up the river, and so Fono made enquiries and learned about Fara Makan, of whom many stories are told. He learned also that Fara Makan had a daughter, Nana Miriam, and so he decided to ask for her hand in marriage. But the emissary he sent to Fara Makan returned with bad news: Fara Makan foretold great misfortune from such a union, and so would not allow it. Fono decided to try himself, without relying on an intermediary, and so he travelled downstream to the territory of Fara Makan.

  As Fono approached, Fara Makan knew why he had come, and prepared a courteous refusal. But Fara Makan’s daughter saw Fono and fell in love with him, and she went to her father and begged him to allow her to marry the stranger who was coming. Very hesitantly, Fara Makan agreed, for he really could not refuse his daughter anything, but he knew in his heart that this action would bring misfortune. Still, he laid upon her a strong prohibition: that she should not reveal to her husband any of the hunting secrets she might have learned as his daughter. She agreed to this. Then the two were married with a great feast.

  Fono and Nana Miriam lived in Fara Makan’s town for some time. One day, Fara Makan and Fono went fishing together. Fara Makan returned with baskets of fish and loads of hippopotamus meat, but Fono did not catch anything that day. He returned disappointed and ashamed to his home, where Nana Miriam did what she could to console him. This happened again and again, each time the two of them fished together, and Fono became most depressed. He complained to Nana Miriam, and she let slip, at last, that Fara Makan’s success was due to the hunting magic he possessed, and that without it, Fono would never be able to match her father.

  After that, Fono began to bother his wife to reveal what she might know of her father’s magic to him. She held out as long as she could, caught in this conflict of father and husband, and finally decided that she should teach Fono what she could. So she taught him the river magic her father had taught her, and he learned it well.

  The next time Fara Makan and Fono went fishing together, Fono was the one to catch all the fish and to spear the hippopotamus. Fara Makan caught nothing, and he knew quite well why this had happened: his daughter had broken her promise and revealed his secret magic for river-fishing to her husband. At the end of the day, they turned their boats back to the town and landed at the riverbank. Fara Makan immediately hurried away to Fono’s house and broke in. As soon as he saw his daughter, he killed her, and then he dressed a slave-woman in her clothes, telling the woman to impersonate Nana Miriam. He took his daughter’s body away.

  Fono returned home and called out his wife’s name. The slave-woman answered, ‘Ah, Fono!’ and he knew at once that it was not his wife. He brought the woman into the light and saw that she was not Nana Miriam, and he guessed what had happened, for Nana Miriam had told him of her promise to her father.

  The next day Fono went and called Fara Makan to go out fishing with him on the river. As soon as they were out of sight of the village, they pulled out their weapons and prepared for battle, each standing in the prow of his boat. Each hurled spears. The spears struck the water or the gunnels of the boat, but did not touch the adversary. They shot arrows, which bounced harmlessly away. The struggle continued in this way for some time, until Fono felt himself weakening and feared that Fara Makan would get the better of him. So he turned his boat and sent it down the river, so fast that the water grew white at the bows. Fara Makan sent his boat after the fleeing Fono, equally fast. Fono left his boat and ran ashore; Fara Makan leaped from his boat and followed. Fono ran until he was out of sight, and then turned himself into a stalk of millet.

  Fara Makan came running after him, and then paused when he could see no man running before him. He looked carefully around, and then saw the stalk of millet growing. He turned himself into a hen and began to peck at the millet seeds. Fono became a man and ran away. Further on, he became a small watercourse. Fara Makan followed him to the watercourse, then turned into an elephant and began drinking up the water. Fono became a man and ran away. Further on, he became a tamarind tree. Fara Makan came up and stood in the shade of the tree and called his name, ‘Fono!’

  Hearing his name, Fono became a man again. But when he met Fara Makan’s gaze, he changed into a monkey and ran away.

  Some people say that Fara Makan defeated Fono and returned home, others say that he died in the pursuit, and others again say that the two of them are still chasing each other along the banks of the Niger.

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  THE ORIGIN OF HUNTERS’ ASSOCIATIONS: SANEN AND KONTRON OF THE MANDEN

  Across west Africa, hunters among sedentary populations have formed associations. In the Manden, the world of the old empire of Mali, such associations may date back to the Middle Ages. The patron deities of the modern Malian (Mande) associations are two figures, female and male, named Sanen and Kontron. Mande hunters’ associations exist from the Gambia into Côte d’Ivoire, and share a good deal of their story-material; the myths of origin, however, vary considerably, as seen in the following examples. Hunters’ associations nowadays serve more of a social than a practical purpose; most of the big game has been wiped out over the years and there is little left to hunt in much of this region. The associations, however, cut across the other lines of division (status, family) in the society and serve as a force for social and cultural cohesion.

  FIRST VERSION

  Sanen was not born; she came into being by herself. She bore a son whom she named Kontron. They had no country, for they lived in the bush between the boundaries of countries and peoples. They belong to everyone. Kontron became a great hunter and brought down every kind of game. He never married. He remained a virgin. One day, his thigh began to swell; it grew larger and larger over the following days until he could no longer stand the pain. He cut the swelling with his hunter’s knife; out came a baby girl who grew rapidly into a young woman. Hunters are uncertain if she was his unborn twin or a daughter, nor do they know how the two of them first united – in mutual attraction or in violence. But they became husband and wife. Sanen and her son Kontron remain the divinities and models for hunters.

  SECOND VERSION

  Kontron was a great one-eyed hunter. He was married to Sanen, but she had never seen him. He came to her at night, and during the day he was invisible to her. She wondered what her husband was like, and talked about the matter with an old woman. The old woman said she could help Sanen see her husband, and gave her a medicine to put in his food.

  She did so that night, and Kontron ate it with his dinner. In the morning, she saw him and was astounded to see that he was one-eyed. That day, Kontron called all his apprentices and led them out into the bush. He seated himself on a termite mound, and said to them:

  ‘Listen carefully to what I say, for after today you will have no more opportunities to learn what I have to teach.’ He began to expound the secrets of the hunters’ lore: how to dispel the dark powers that are released at the death of an animal, how to keep themselves pure so that animals would not sense them and flee or attack, and much else. As he spoke, his body sank into the termite mound, and as his head vanished he stopped talking.

  His apprentices did what they could: they dug up the termite mound and transported it to the nearest crossroads, which is a site that has remained sacred to hunters since that day. Then, confused and perturbed, they returned to town.

  Sanen, when her husband failed to return, transformed into a bird and vanished into the bush. Kontron’s dogs also disappeared. Thereafter, the apprentices started a cult to Sanen and Kontron, and made offerings at the termite mound.

  THIRD VERSION

  In a time of great drought, two hunters were crossing the bush. After two days, they were almost dying of thirst and so desperate for water that they would stop at nothing. They met a young woman with a baby on he
r back, carrying on her head a calabash of water.

  ‘Please, give us some water,’ begged the hunters, but the woman refused, for her water was barely enough for herself and her child. The hunters renewed their entreaties, but she continued to deny them. Then they became crazed. They seized her calabash from her head, and first one and then the other hunter drank his fill. Then they poured the water out for their dogs. The mother watched in horror. One of the hunters took her baby from her back and dashed it on the ground; the dogs furiously threw themselves on it and devoured it. Then they fought over the last remaining scrap, and one of the dogs killed the other.

  The hunter whose dog had been killed protested, and with his axe broke the skull of the surviving dog. The other hunter then shot an arrow into his friend’s chest. Then he took a second arrow and stabbed himself to the heart. The woman had watched in horror as this bloody scene took place. When the two hunters lay still she roused herself, maddened by the death of her child, and began to pound their remains with rocks, screaming curses at their still bodies.

  The sky-god came down and asked her why she was not satisfied. He had repaid the death of her child with immediate and bloody vengeance. But the woman could not accept vengeance in the place of her child, and she continued to curse them. But the sky-god brought the hunters and their dogs back to life.

  The hunters stared at each other, realizing that something marvellous had just occurred. And fearing that they might again become so estranged and lost to decency as to commit such crimes again, they bound themselves with a great oath. This, they say, is the origin of the hunters’ association, in which all hunters are brothers and bound to respect each other, and which unites its members regardless of rank and wealth in the brotherhood of those who walk in the wilds.

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  HOW HUNTERS LEARNED ABOUT MAGIC

  This and the following stories are taken from various groups in west Africa, where they are widely distributed as folk tales. They express the transformations of the figure of the hunter as the majority of the population become sedentary farmers. Hunters are the adventurers who leave the safe human world and bring back the wealth of nature; they are also intermediaries between the spirits of the wild and other humans. The belief is widespread in Africa that the arts of human culture were gifts from the spirits (sometimes they were stolen), and hunters are perceived as the usual beneficiaries. Hunters serve thus as culture heroes – figures who helped to establish the people’s way of life. This story comes from the Fon of Benin (see Chapter 51). Vodun is the Fon term for a deity; transplanted to the New World, it became ‘voodoo’. Fa divination is a Yoruba practice (see Chapter 49).

  A hunter was in the bush when he heard the sound of drums and dancing. He went to see what was going on, and he saw the agbui, bush spirits shaped like rats, holding a dance. He watched the dance and he listened to their songs, and so he learned something of the history of the world: how first there were the trees, and among them the tree whose seeds are used in fa divination, and then humans and then the animals. And of all the animals, the bush rats said they were the oldest. After them came the lion and the leopard and the other great beasts of the earth, and then came the birds such as the eagle and the hawk, and then the beasts of the water such as the crocodile and the fish. All these creatures were sent by Mawu, who is the great goddess of the sky.

  At that time people had no medicines and they suffered always from sickness. There was a hunter whose wife had leprosy. He was hunting in the forest, and he came upon a mound of earth. The mound was inhabited by an azizañ, a spirit of the bush. The azizañ spoke to him and offered him a cure for his wife’s disease, and the hunter accepted it happily. He took the leaves he was given (although he turned his back and never saw the azizañ) and used them to wash the sores of his wife, and she was cured.

  People naturally learned that the hunter’s wife had been cured, and people who suffered from diseases then began to come to him and ask him to find a cure for their ailment. The azizañ had told the hunter that if he wished for more cures he should return to the mound of earth and explain the problem. So when people came to the hunter, he would lead them into the bush to the mound where the azizañ lived and they would tell the azizañ of their suffering, and they would receive a remedy.

  Word reached the king of that country that a hunter had a means for treating sicknesses, and that it involved a spirit who lived in a mound of earth. So the king went to the mound, taking with him an offering of a goat, liquor and palm oil. He told the azizañ that in his land they had no means of curing sicknesses, and asked the azizañ to provide him with remedies. So the azizañ gave the king of the country many of the vodun who are now worshipped there such as Sagbata, Agé, Dañ and others, and the king took them back.

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  THE ANIMAL BRIDE I: THE CHANGED SKIN

  The hunter’s relationship with the natural, non-human world is expressed in a variety of ways, and is often translated, for the purposes of the story, into sexual or marital terms. The story of the hunter who falls in love with a transformed animal occurs around the world. The west African versions are generally tragic. They express an impossible alliance, an irreconcilable pairing. But the fruits of the union of the human and the animal worlds can often be valuable for humans; one version of this story makes it another myth of origin for the Mande hunting deities Sanen and Kontron, who are the children of the hunter and his antelope wife.

  A hunter was in the bush when he saw a beautiful woman washing herself in a pool. He watched her from the bush for some time without approaching her, and he saw that when she finished her bath she didn’t dress in clothes, but put on a skin and changed into a graceful antelope. He made a note of the place and promised himself that he would return. So when he was hunting in that area, he would steal up to the pool, hoping to see her again. One day he was rewarded: there she was. This time he slipped up close until he could take her skin and hide it in his hunter’s bag. Then he approached the woman and they talked. After some time he told her that he had taken her animal skin, and begged her to come home with him and to become his wife. She agreed, on one condition: he must never threaten her with fire. He agreed. They went back to his home and lived happily for some time, although people wondered where the hunter’s wife had come from: she had no family in the village, and no one had ever seen her before in the region around. The couple had children, and the children began to grow up.

  At last, though, the couple quarrelled, as married couples so often do. In the course of the quarrel, the husband seized a burning stick from the cooking fire and waved it at his wife. Without a word she went into their hut and seized her animal skin from under the roof where it was hidden, and returned to the bush in her antelope form.

  Her departure left the hunter maddened, almost crazy with grief. He began to hunt ever more fiercely, filling the pots of the village with an abundance of game. One day he saw and shot an antelope. He brought it home and set it to cook. But his children refused to eat that meal. He ate it by himself, and that night he died.

  In other versions of this story, the wife agrees to join the hunter if he promises never to reveal her animal origin, or to remind her of it. But he tells someone – perhaps his first wife or a relative – and in the course of a quarrel the other person, or the hunter himself, brings up the wife’s origin and she runs away. In one version, when the antelope sees the hunter preparing to shoot she waves her legs, the hunter lowers his gun and they talk. They are reconciled and the wife comes home.

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  THE ANIMAL BRIDE II: SIRANKOMI

  The hunter’s relations with the animal world are far more often expressed in terms of antagonism. The story of the animals’ attempt to learn the hunters’ secrets through seduction by a disguised animal is extremely widespread in west Africa, and is found among many language and culture groups. The means by which the hunters escape vary with their powers. In some cases they are masters of magic, able to transform themselves. In others, the secre
t of their success is the use of dogs, and then the animal seductress turns her efforts to the destruction of the dogs (but the dogs are still able to rescue their master). The belief that one must master another’s secret knowledge to defeat them is common in Africa, and occurs in historical and epic narratives as well as in folk tales. The name ‘Sirankomi’, used in this retelling, is taken from Malian versions of the story (the Manden – see Chapter 64).

  A child was born who was clearly destined to be a great hunter: when Sirankomi could barely crawl he would stalk the animals around the house, and when he began to wander away from home he would return with small prey. When he was old enough, he became a hunter’s apprentice. He learned the secrets of the bush and the magics necessary to protect himself from the angry ghosts of the animals he killed and from the hostile spirits that one sometimes encounters away from the houses of humans.

  Then he became a hunter in his own right, and his promise was fulfilled: he was extraordinarily successful. Never did he come home empty-handed; his game-bag was always full or on his shoulders he carried the carcass of an antelope, or often a quarter of meat from some animal too great for him to carry alone. Day in, day out, he set forth and returned to fill the village larders with so much meat that the villagers smoked what they could not eat at once.

  In the bush, the animals were becoming worried because every day Sirankomi killed some of them and their numbers were dwindling. They could see the day coming when Sirankomi would have killed them all, leaving the bush empty and lifeless. They set aside their differences and met in council to discuss what they might do.