This story is a clan-legend, collected at the start of the twentieth century. The Darassa and the Jam-Jamo were subject to the government of Ethiopia; the Guji were their neighbours within the same administrative district in the south-west part of the kingdom.
The Jam-Jamo were ruled by a king named Uraga who had imposed tribute on their neighbours, the Darassa and the Guji. He was hated for his severity. At that time, the Darassa had no money or livestock with which to pay the tribute, and so they were forced to give Uraga slaves: a young man and a young woman, each year. If they failed in their tribute, Uraga would make war on them. From fear of his army, the Darassa made no settled houses, but lived in trees and came down at night to drink.
There was division among the Darassa. Some leaders wished to resist Uraga, others feared war and argued against it. After a time, the leaders calling for resistance won the day; they began to withhold the tribute they had paid until that time. Uraga brought his army into the land of the Darassa and called a parley; he asked why they had not paid the tribute, and they replied that their children were too dear to them, and that they wished only for each side to live as they wished. They did not want war, and they were tired of living in trees. But Uraga was not persuaded. A conflict began, and the Darassa were victorious.
The leader of the Darassa travelled into the land of the Jam-Jamo, who had suffered from the war, and came across a great pool of blood. He asked what this pool was, and he was told that it was the blood of Uraga. Then the Jam-Jamo asked him to intercede with the other Darassa leaders to bring about peace. ‘For a time, we were in power,’ they said, ‘and now you have the upper hand. But these are the fortunes of war. Let us put our enmity behind us.’ The leader agreed, but later word came to the Darassa that some among the Jam-Jamo were planning to renew the war. So they marched into the territory of the Jam-Jamo and drove many of them south, where that fraction of the people took the name of Uraga Jam-Jamo.
HOW RULE PASSED FROM WOMEN TO MEN
This is a story of the Darassa, collected in the 1930s by European researchers.
In the early days of the Darassa, there were very few women, and so the men were forced to do all the household tasks: they fetched the firewood and drew the water and minded the gardens, work which is now done by women. The rulers were women, the officials were women.
Ako Manoya is the name of the woman who was the last queen among the Darassa. She had named no heir apparent from her followers at the time, although she was childless. She governed alone, giving orders to the officials and hearing their reports and inspecting their works. During this time, the men were beginning to grumble about their tasks and the way in which they were forced to serve the women. The leader of the men was married; he had a beautiful wife. But he also had a mistress, and the mistress revealed his sedition to the queen. The queen summoned the wife and told her that she knew how her husband was subverting the men and plotting against her rule.
‘He must die,’ said Ako Manoya. ‘How he dies is your choice. If you bring me his head, I shall make you my heir and you shall rule after me.’
That night, the wife served a big meal to her husband, so that he fell asleep after dinner. Then she took a knife from the kitchen and cut his throat, and when he was dead she cut off his head. She took the head to the queen in the morning, and was named the heir apparent to the realm.
The loss of their leader disheartened the men for a time, but then they reorganized. They decided that the queen must die, and they selected the time, place and means. The queen would have to leave the town for a festival, they knew, and so they dug a pit along the road, a deadfall trap. They covered the pit with branches and leaves, and then over the leaves they strewed earth and clay. When the day came and the queen left the town, the men crowded about her on the road so that she was forced to walk over the pit, and she fell in.
Furious, she pronounced her last words: she would be the last queen of the land. Then the men buried her in the pit. They also wished to stone the heir, the young wife, but she climbed into a tree and clung to it, and so instead they killed her with spears. Since that time, men have ruled.
PEOPLES OF THE UPPER NILE AND EAST AFRICA
South of the Ethiopian mountains and north of Lake Victoria is a region of savannahs bounded by desert, crossed in the west by the Nile, which also forms the sudd, a great flooded plain and swamp that is the home of cattle-herding populations such as the Shilluk, the Dinka and the Nuer, and their neighbours, the Luo. To the south are groups belonging to the Bantu language family: the Gikuyu and the Swahili in Kenya, the kingdoms of the lakes in Uganda (see Chapters 27–9). This region is where a number of migrating groups came into contact with each other. All the language families of Africa are represented here; here the Bantu-speakers of eastern Africa acquired cattle before beginning their migration south along the Rift Valley. It has never been unified (and Somalia today remains completely anarchic) or marked by powerful kingdoms.
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THE OROMO OF SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA
The Oromo are a group of peoples, linked by language and institutions such as the age-grade system, in the southern regions of Ethiopia, western Somalia and northern Kenya. Through much of their history, they were dominated by their northern neighbours, the Amhara of Ethiopia, but they formed some small kingdoms in their territories. However, they were never unified as a people; their many lineage divisions were more important than any of the political units. Their current emergence and national spirit is a response to modern political conditions. They have also been called the Galla (perhaps from gada, the word for their age-grade system), but that term is seen as pejorative. The stories in this chapter were all collected in the early twentieth century by European researchers.
THE FIRST HUMANS
A man fell from the sky down to earth. As he wandered over the empty land, he came across footprints very like his own, and he followed them until he met another human. The other human looked very much like him, but there were differences: he had a penis growing from his finger, and the other human did not. She had a vagina placed under her right arm. They walked on together until night fell, and then they lay down next to each other. They caressed each other, and he moved his hand under her arm, so that the penis entered the vagina. They found this very agreeable and determined to remain together.
The woman became pregnant. Her body swelled up, and at first she worried what disease might be afflicting her. But she could find no remedy for her condition. One day, when the swelling had become so great that she thought she could no longer bear it, she felt movement and something began to emerge from her vagina. It was a small human, and it was followed by eight others. (The woman at some point became embarrassed at the placement of her vagina under her arm, where all eyes could see it, and besought Waqa the sky-god to move it; he placed it in her groin, and then moved the man’s organ to match it. It is not said whether this happened before or after she first gave birth.)
The nine children were divided into five boys and four girls. When they grew older, four of the brothers married the four girls; the oldest son, however, had no mate and had to wait until one of his nieces grew old enough for him to marry.
One day, while their father was asleep, his covering slipped off his body, revealing his private parts and his legs. One of the sons laughed at this, another closed his eyes, another turned away his head, and a fourth ran away, never to return. Only the eldest, who was devoted to his father, went up and pulled the covering back over his legs and body. The eldest was in the habit of bringing his father a bundle of firewood each day, for as the man had become old he needed the warmth of the fire in the evenings.
As the father felt his death approaching, he decided it was time to pass on to his preferred son, the eldest, the knowledge which Waqa had given to him when he came down from the sky. So he told the eldest to come to him the next day. But the youngest son, the one who had laughed at him, overheard his instructions. The next morning he came bearing a bundle o
f wood, as his brother always did, and convinced the dim-sighted old man that it was indeed the eldest son there. So the father allotted to him his destiny: he would be richer than the others, he would dress in white, and he would rule over the others. The youngest son then slipped away to the waters and began to swim away. In the meantime, the eldest son returned and learned of the trick which had deprived him of the inheritance his father had intended for him. But the father reassured him: there was still something he might receive, and the father bestowed upon him the riches of the earth, crops and cattle, and promised him many wives. The son tried to call back the youngest brother, who was by then far across the waters, but he would not return.
The youngest son, who had crossed the water, became the ancestor of Arabs and Europeans. The eldest became the ancestor of Oromo groups such as the Konso and the Borana. The second son became the ancestor of the Gabra, a group who has camels and do not practise Islam. The third became the ancestor of the Muslims. The fourth, the one who had run away, became the ancestor of the Shangalla.
THE ADAMITES OF THE KINGDOM OF GUMA
The kingdom of Guma arose at the start of the nineteenth century, one of a cluster of small kingdoms in a region known as Gibe. This story was recounted by Loransiyos Walda Iyasus in the early years of the twentieth century; the teller warned that such traditions of the Oromo kingdoms of southern Ethiopia were being lost, as the conquest by the Amhara had effaced the importance of such chronicles and the old men who knew them were dying out. The story itself, however, is older than the kingdoms of Ethiopia; it recalls the Epic of Gilgamesh, and serves as evidence for the long-standing connections between the cultures of Ethiopia and those of southern Arabia.
The line of the Dagoye ruled Guma, until the time of King Sarbo. In his days, some hunters of the royal court went out into the woods that lay at the edge of their lands, and there they witnessed amazing deeds performed by a man whose name was Adam. Adam lived among the buffaloes that wandered in the woods; he drank from their milk and ate of their flesh, and he lived in a cave whose entrance he blocked with a huge stone. He was so mighty that the first hunters fled at the sight of him. They sent a master hunter to observe this man and see how he lived.
The master hunter went out and spent several days concealed in the woods, watching the behaviour of this wild man. Then he came back and made his report. The wild man, he said, lived from the buffalo. He would follow the buffalo, and then seize one and throw it to the ground, and then he would slay it with a knife. He carried the carcass easily back to his cave, rolling aside the great boulder with one hand, and then he ate the entire buffalo, save for the entrails, the head and the horns.
The master hunter was led before the king, who questioned him. The king found this story hard to believe, and so he sent other men out to observe the wild man, promising that if the story was true the master hunter would receive a rich reward; otherwise, he would be killed as a liar. The hunter led a party of twelve men into the woods. As soon as the men saw Adam, they fled in fear, but after a time they thought of the report they would give the king, and so they turned back again to stay watching Adam. So they were able to see Adam come out for his daily hunt; they saw him seize a buffalo and easily slay it; they watched him devour it, leaving only the head and horns and the entrails. They saw him catch a mother buffalo, followed by a calf; he tethered its legs with vines and then drank from its milk until he was satisfied. Then he released the mother buffalo with her calf. They saw him roll aside the boulder and enter the cave to sleep.
They returned and reported to the king what they had seen. Sarbo gathered his warriors and went out to seize this wild man. This time, they found the man milking an elephant cow, and they were aghast. They waited until he had retired for the night, and attempted to roll aside the boulder from his cave. They could not. So the king ordered them to return.
On his return, one of the princesses of the royal house came before him and told him that she would be able to bring the wild man back to the court. The king questioned her; she answered only that she would find a way. She asked for food and fire, and for guards to watch her and protect her from the beasts, and promised that within seven days she would return with the wild man.
The guards accompanied her into the woods, and then they hid. She sat near the boulder which blocked Adam’s cave, until he returned with a buffalo on his shoulder.
‘What is this I smell?’ he asked.
‘It is the smell of man,’ she answered, and he went into the cave. He devoured the buffalo he was carrying and then went to sleep. The next day he went out again, and seized a buffalo in the woods and devoured it. Then he came back and seized the woman and lay with her.
In the morning he went out. The big buffalo were too fast for him; he was only able to seize a small one. He ate it and then returned. This time, he brought the woman into his cave and spent the night with her there.
The next morning, he could not catch a buffalo at all. All he caught was an antelope. Now he was finding it difficult to move the boulder that blocked his cave, and he was forced to leave it ajar. After another night with the woman, he could only catch a gazelle, and of that he ate only half. The woman talked with the guards and told them to come the next morning; they would be able to capture the man at that time.
They did so, and brought the man bound before the king. The king gave him a house in the town, and he took the princess of the Dagoye as his wife. He acquired the weapons of a warrior and followers, and after a time he came to King Sarbo and challenged him to battle. In the battle, King Sarbo was slain, and so the people agreed to be ruled by Adam.
It is said that Adam made the people of the kingdom of Guma convert to Islam.
THE STORY OF MOHAMMED GRAGN
This story is not necessarily a tradition of origin, as Ahmed Gragn was a historical figure: the leader of the Muslim Oromo attack on the Christian empire of Ethiopia in the early sixteenth century. But the elements presented in this shortened version are not historical and one might compare Mohammed Gragn with other heroes such as Liyongo (Chapter 26).
The empire of Ethiopia was strong, and peoples beyond its borders were forced to pay it tribute. It happened that a young Muslim woman from Harrar was sent with the cattle that her father owed in tribute, because he himself had fallen sick and was unable to make the voyage. When she came into the Ethiopian territory, she delivered the cattle to the king’s representative, and the tally was noted by a young priest. The priest was struck by the beauty of the young woman, and she too found him extremely attractive; that night they met and spent the night in passion. The priest left her before the dawn light, but instead of his white headcloth, he put her blue shawl over his hair. He appeared in the church, and was immediately denounced. He refused to admit where he had been and why he happened to have a Muslim woman’s scarf upon his head, but the church leaders felt that it was clear he had been consorting with a woman of the enemy faith and he was stoned to death.
The woman returned to her home, and some time later gave birth to a son, Mohammed Gragn. He grew at an extraordinary pace, and in less than two months was fully grown. He tested his strength by wrapping his arms around a tree and uprooting it; in his hands, the tree changed into a heavy sword. So armed, he began his war against the Amhara. He was immediately successful, and men flocked to join him. The king of Ethiopia sent a messenger to him, asking why he was making war upon the Amhara and who he was. The answer he got was a riddle: ‘Fearless as my father, cunning as my mother!’
Trying to understand these words, the king sent for his steward. The steward was married to one of the most beautiful women in the country. He told the steward that he would give him half the kingdom if he brought him, the king, the head of his wife. But that night, as the steward gazed upon his beautiful wife in her sleep, he could not bring himself to do the deed. The next day, the king summoned the wife and made her the same offer. The next morning, the wife appeared, with her husband’s head in a basket. Her rew
ard was less than had been promised: the king ordered her buried alive. He began to fear his enemy, who combined the fearlessness of a man with the cunning of a woman.
But it was a woman who brought down Mohammed Gragn, after he had overrun several provinces of Ethiopia. He married a princess of Gondar, and she arranged for him to bathe in some hot springs. There he was ambushed by warriors of Gondar and killed.
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THE SHILLUK OF SOUTHERN SUDAN
The Shilluk live along the upper Nile, in the modern republic of Sudan. It is a flat and wet region subject to seasonal flooding. They share the pastures with their neighbours, the Nuer and the Dinka, and their livelihood comes from herding (cattle, goats and sheep) and agriculture. The Shilluk formed a kingdom, and the ruler was in theory descended from their hero Nyikang, but in the nineteenth century that kingdom was practically destroyed by slave-raiding expeditions led by the northern Arabs. The Shilluk form of ‘divine kingship’ attracted early ethnographers who were interested in the theoretical question and also in possible connections with the royal institutions of Egypt, but the notion has not stood up over time. The Shilluk language belongs to the Nilo-Saharan family, while Coptic is part of the Afro-Asiatic family. This retelling of the story of Nyikang is based on accounts collected in the early twentieth century by researchers and missionaries.
Jouk the creator made a great white cow which emerged from the waters of the Nile and then gave birth to human children, of whom the last was Okwa. Okwa once saw two maidens come out of the water on the riverbank and desired them. They had beautiful long hair like humans, but in the bottom half of their bodies they were crocodiles. Okwa tried to approach them, but they escaped. After several attempts he caught them. They called to their father, who emerged from the water. Their father was human on the left side and crocodile-shaped on the right. After some discussion he agreed to give his daughters to Okwa.
The elder was Nyakay, and she gave birth to Nyikang and several other children, a boy and three girls. The younger, Ungwad, gave birth to a son named Ju. And by a later marriage Okwa fathered Duwat.
African Myths of Origin (Penguin Classics) Page 16
