African Myths of Origin (Penguin Classics)

by Stephen Belcher

  Several people were involved in this event. There was Siata Bere, the maiden who was the chosen sacrifice. There was Mamadi Sefa Dekhote (Mamadi the Taciturn), who loved her. And his uncle Wagane Sakho played a part as well. Wagane Sakho had the best horse in Wagadu, a stallion. Mamadi secretly bred a mare by the stallion, so that he had a horse the equal of his uncle’s.

  When the lots chose Siata Bere as the sacrifice, Mamadi decided he would not allow it. On the appointed day, the king’s ministers dressed the maiden in her finest and set her astride a noble horse and led her to the well. There they left her for the Bida-serpent to take. Nearby, Mamadi waited on his horse.

  The serpent stuck its head out of the well, and swung it low towards the maiden. She did not flinch; the sacrifice was her fate, and she was honoured to give her life for her people’s prosperity. But Mamadi Sefa Dekhote rode up and with a great sword cut through the serpent’s neck. Then he seized the maiden, swung her over his saddle, and raced out of town, heading to the south where his mother lived near the river.

  The serpent’s head flew into the air, and as it did so it called out a curse on Wagadu: there would be a seven-year drought, and the rains of gold would end.

  The people of Wagadu rallied, and quickly a pursuit party was formed. Wagane Sakho led it, and his horse outstripped the others very quickly. He was the only one who had a chance of catching up. But each time he was within range, he cast his spear wide so that it missed his nephew, and then he was delayed as he picked it up again. Mamadi Sefa Dekhote reached his mother’s home by the river.

  The pursuing party arrived, and the mother asked them what they wanted. They told her that her son had committed a sacrilege and broken the pact which linked the people and the land of Wagadu, and that the people would now be without food for seven years.

  ‘I shall feed them,’ said the mother. ‘In my storehouses is enough grain for Wagadu for seven years.’ And so she did. But the prosperity of Wagadu was ended, and the Soninke people dispersed to other lands.

  DAMAN GILLE AND THE KINGDOM OF JARA

  The kingdom of Jara grew up in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, based in the region around Nioro du Sahel, and fell to Muslim conquest in the nineteenth century.

  Daman Gille was a hunter of elephants who lived in the Manden, the land of Sunjata. He spent a good deal of time in the bush, far from other people. One day, he encountered a marabout, a Muslim holy man, who was travelling to Mecca on pilgrimage. He entertained the marabout, giving him food and shelter for the night. In the morning he found that the marabout had walked off leaving a purse of gold where he had slept, and he ran after him to return it. Grateful, the marabout asked him what return he might make, and after some thought Daman Gille asked for a great knife or a sword that he might use to cut up the elephants he killed.

  The marabout went on to Mecca and accomplished his pilgrimage, and then went on various commissions. He forgot about Daman Gille. But as he was preparing to depart, he paid a call on a great holy man in Mecca, and the holy man asked him if there weren’t some promise he had forgotten. The marabout remembered Daman Gille, and told the great man about the hunter’s request for a sword. The great man gave the marabout a sword. It was a sword of kingship, and when it was removed from its scabbard it shone with a great light.

  The marabout returned to the Manden. At that time Daman Gille was out in the bush hunting elephants, and no one knew where he might be found. So the marabout entrusted the sword to Sunjata, the king of the Manden, to be held for Daman Gille, and he continued on his way.

  After some time Daman Gille came to the king’s town and stayed with his usual host there, a leatherworker. From the leatherworker, he learned that the king was holding a sword for him, brought from Mecca, and so he went to retrieve it. Now, Sunjata was well aware of the magical properties of the sword, and reluctant to let anyone else have a token of kingship within his own lands. So when the servant he had dispatched to the storehouse brought back the sword from Mecca, he said it was not the right one. He sent the servant to fetch a different blade, and the servant, understanding the king’s mind, did so. But when the servant reappeared, the blade in his hands was again the sword from Mecca. This happened yet again, and Sunjata realized that he could not keep this sword from Daman Gille. So he gave it to the hunter, but he laid down a condition: that the hunter must leave his kingdom and settle in another land.

  Daman Gille left the Manden and travelled north into Jara. At that time, Jara was ruled by the Nyakhate clan. Daman Gille lived there for a time, and had a son. When the son grew up, the ruler of Jara was Bemba Nyakhate, and he was widely known as a cruel and evil man. The people of Jara performed a divination to learn how they might overthrow him: it required someone to rub an ointment on Bemba’s hands which would drive him mad. The son of Daman Gille performed this deed, and Bemba vanished. Daman Gille’s son was named king in his place, establishing the Diawara dynasty of Jara. The sword of kingship remained with the family until the nineteenth century; it is said to have vanished when al-Hajj Umar Tal conquered Jara.

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  THE MANINKA AND THE EMPIRE OF MALI

  The empire of Mali was formed in the fertile lands around the headwaters of the Niger, in eastern Guinea and western Mali, and it counts as a successor state to the Soninke empire of Ghana, which lay somewhat to the north. The era of empire (c. 1250–1500) seems to have been something of a golden age in the region. Many peoples around this territory look to Mali for their origins or political legitimacy. The empire stretched from close to the Atlantic (the Gambia river) east to Timbuktu. The founder of the empire, Sunjata Keita, is also a culture hero to the Maninka, and his story is still retold in a vibrant oral tradition. In recorded history, the empire’s most celebrated ruler was perhaps Mansa Musa, who made a pilgrimage to Mecca around 1325, and left enough gold along the way to place Mali firmly on the map of the medieval world. The empire declined in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and eventually fragmented under blows from Songhay and Segou. In the nineteenth century, the warlord Samory Toure reconstituted a great state, and opposed French penetration of the territory, but was eventually defeated.

  A RITUAL STORY OF CREATION

  The following narrative was reported in the 1950s, associated with the reroofing ceremony of the Kama Bloñ, a sacred hut in the town of Kangaba. This ceremony takes place every seven years, and is performed by the Keita nobles, who claim descent from Sunjata, and by the Diabate (or Jebate) jeliw (griots), who are traditionally linked to them. In the course of the ceremony, the singers recite the history of the world, down to the establishment of the shrine. The narrative has not been reproduced elsewhere, although elements of it are attested in other contexts. Since the 1950s the stories told at the reroofing ceremony have changed and now include much Muslim material (see the next story).

  In the beginning, Mangala created an egg which contained seeds and two pairs of beings. One of the beings within the egg came to consciousness earlier than the others, and desired to take over the work of creation. The being, later known as Pemba (fen-ba, ‘great thing’), tore loose from the womb and descended to earth with that portion of the enveloping matrix which held his umbilical cord. From the matrix he created the earth, but it was sterile, and although he later succeeded in planting seeds in this earth, they polluted the earth by using the residual blood for moisture.

  To purify the earth, the male portion of the other paired being was sacrificed and came to earth in the form of water, which washes all things. This being, named Faro, spirit of the waters, is represented by twin catfish, perhaps because after the rainy season catfish will follow the seasonal floods out of river-beds and into fields. Faro came to earth in a great ark, and landed in the mountains of Kri, in the heartland of the Manden. His ark contained plants and animals and four pairs of humans, male and female. The names of the men were Kanisimbo, Kaniyogosimbo, Simbumba Tangnagati and Nunu. The place where the ark came to earth became a shrine, near Nyagasola i
n Guinea; a second shrine was later built in Kangaba, near Bamako in Mali.

  Three other beings also came down from heaven: first Surakata, the ancestor of the jeliw or griots (the praise-singers and musicians of the Mande) and then the ancestor of the blacksmiths. Each of them in turn appealed to the heavens for rain, Surakata by beating a drum made from the skull of the heavenly Faro, and the blacksmith by beating a rock with his hammer. The rains came in answer to the blacksmith’s prayer. Later an old woman came down, Muso Koroni. She was the female twin of Pemba and had remained within the world egg, but she shared something of Pemba’s rebellious nature and she soon fled east to join him where he had settled, far to the east of Kri.

  Kanisimbo was the first ancestor to die, and on his death Simbumba Tangnagati created the first balafon, a xylophone, and with its music he restored Kanisimbo to life. But the resurrected ancestor did not return to human form. He became instead a great serpent and withdrew into the caves of the mountain. The fourth ancestor, Nunu, travelled east along the course taken by Muso Koroni, and he eventually found her and settled in an area near present-day Segou. There, he too died, having been led by Muso Koroni to capture and kill one of the catfish of Faro. On his death, Faro sent the antelope, dage, to restore fertility to the land; the antelope travelled from Segou west to the land of Kri and in its path the earth became green and covered with plants. To commemorate this event, the blacksmith carved the antelope mask which is now well known as a chi-wara; the chi-wara’s dance is associated with agricultural rites.

  Faro travelled east to oppose and overcome Pemba, whose actions continued to be a source of pollution and impurity in the world. The course of Faro’s travels can be seen in the course of the Niger river, running from the mountains of Kri down to the inner delta. They met and struggled, and Faro was victorious.

  MIGRATION FROM MECCA

  This narrative was given at the start of a performance of the epic of Sunjata, and may serve to illustrate a conflation of traditional west African motifs with a Muslim context.

  Jon Bilal served the Prophet Muhammad in Mecca, and became the first muezzin (caller-to-prayers) of Islam. Jon Bilal’s oldest son, Mamadu Kanu, had three sons: Kanu Simbon, Kanu Nyogon Simbon and Lawali Simbon. Because of his love for Jon Bilal, the Prophet Muhammad on his death bequeathed to each of the grandsons a chest, with the instructions that they should take the chests to a distant land and there they should found their own kingdom. They should not open the chests until they had been three years in that land.

  The three young men took their chests and travelled far to the west from Mecca, until they came into the Manden. There they settled and founded the village of Kri-koroni (old Kri). They laboured there for three years, and at last determined to open their chests. That of the eldest, Kanu Simbon, was full of gold. Kanu Nyogon Simbon’s share was the bark of trees. Lawali Simbon’s chest contained nothing but earth. The division of wealth seemed to them a great injustice, but they could not believe that the Prophet Muhammad, who had so loved their grandfather Bilal, would be unfair and so they decided it was a mystery they must clarify. So they set out for the land of Kabaku (Mystery) to ask him to solve this riddle.

  On the way, they came to a row of three wells. The two outermost wells were full of water, and it flowed through the air from one well to another. The central well was dry.

  ‘This is a mystery,’ said one of the brothers. ‘We are coming close to the land of Kabaku.’

  They met a man carrying a gourd of water, and crying out in thirst. ‘This must be Mystery,’ said the brothers.

  ‘No,’ said the man. ‘I am only his water-bearer. You must go further to find Kabaku.’

  They found a child sitting on an anthill. His hair was black on one side of his head and white on the other. ‘This must be Kabaku,’ said the brothers.

  ‘No,’ said the child. ‘I am his son. You must go further to find him.’

  They found an old man lying on a mat, his eyes misty with age.

  ‘This man is Mystery,’ said the brothers.

  ‘No,’ said the old man. ‘I am Kabaku’s younger brother. You must continue on your way a bit further to find him.’

  They met a grown man and greeted him.

  ‘People of the Manden!’ he exclaimed. ‘Welcome! I am Kabaku. You have come to me with a problem. Explain it to me.’

  They told him of their three chests, filled with such strange substances.

  ‘You do not understand’, said Kabaku, ‘that gold is worth no more than the bark of trees or earth. The chests are of equal value, if used in the right way. But more important than any of these is work. If you work you will prosper in the Manden.’

  The brothers accepted Kabaku’s interpretation. ‘But tell us,’ they asked, ‘of the curious things we saw as we came. There were three wells…’

  ‘The wells’, said Kabaku, ‘show that the rich, those who have, will overlook the poor, even their neighbours.’

  ‘There was a man with a gourd…’

  ‘A miser gains nothing from what he hoards.’

  ‘There was a child whose head was…’

  ‘Knowledge does not belong only to the old. The young who enquire will learn.’

  ‘And an old man on a mat…’

  ‘Work is much older than him, and after a lifetime spent in honest work you will have the right to rest.’

  The brothers returned to the Manden, pondering the advice of Kabaku. After they arrived, they set about planting fields. But as soon as Kanu Simbon began to cut the trees to clear his fields, Kanu Nyogon Simbon came running.

  ‘My brother,’ he said, ‘you are touching my heritage. You must compensate me for the trees.’ Kanu Simbon agreed, and gave his brother a share of the gold from the chest he had brought from Mecca.

  When the two older brothers began to turn the earth to prepare the soil for planting, Lawali Simbon came to them. ‘My brothers,’ he said, ‘the earth was the share given to me, and if you wish to use it you must compensate me, as owner of the earth.’

  The brothers agreed, and so they each shared the portions that had been allotted to them. For a time they prospered, and men came from other lands to live with them. Then came a period without rains, and the inhabitants of the Manden began to suffer. Lawali Simbon helped them, because he had stored food in his granaries and he shared it with the people.

  After a time, they determined they should choose a king. Kanu Simbon objected that he was the eldest and should by right become king, but the people answered that they wished the powers of earth and sky to approve their choice. It is said that they dug a pit and hid a man with a great drum in the pit, then covered it over.

  On the day they had named, the three brothers and their people came out and invoked the heavens: which of them should be king?

  Kanu Simbon stepped forward, but there was no sign. Kanu Nyogon Simbon stepped forward, but again there was no sign. Lawali Simbon stepped forward. The heavens were silent.

  ‘Let us call upon the earth,’ cried the people.

  ‘Shall Kanu Simbon be our king?’ cried a spokesman. The earth was silent.

  ‘Shall Kanu Nyogon Simbon be our king?’ Again, the earth was silent.

  ‘Shall Lawali Simbon be our king?’ This time, the earth (or the man in the pit) answered with a rumble, and so Lawali Simbon became the ruler in Kri-koroni.

  SUNJATA AND THE EMPIRE OF MALI

  What follows is a short retelling of the epic of Sunjata, a great narrative corpus with many variants and versions recorded over the past century.

  In the earliest days, the Manden was divided into three kingdoms: Do, Kri and Tabon. Dumogo-nya-mogo was the ruler of the land of Do. One day he slaughtered an ox and invited all his relatives to join in the feast. But he excluded Du Kamisa, his father’s sister, although she had witnessed his birth and it was she who buried his umbilical cord. She was outraged and swore revenge. She took the shape of a great wild buffalo with horns of gold and tail of silver, and she began to
kill people in the land of Do. No one working in the fields was safe: the buffalo would charge out of the bushes at the edge of the field and gore or trample the farmers and their helpers. People walking on paths between villages would be slaughtered. Dumogo-nya-mogo sent hunters out to kill the buffalo, but they died. The buffalo killed them all. The land went into decline: fields were not cleared, the earth was not turned, crops were not harvested. No one dared to leave the village space.

  The ruler sent out word of the trouble facing his land, and men came to hunt the buffalo. They were killed. The buffalo with the horns of gold and the tail of silver overcame all the hunters and warriors and adventurers.

  Two poor brothers in the Manden decided to try their fate against the buffalo. They consulted a diviner before they left, and they were told they must befriend the first person they met when they came to Do. They were called Dan Mansa Wulanden and Dan Mansa Wulanba. They assembled what supplies they could find and set out on the paths that led to Do. As they approached the town, they came across a decrepit hut, whose mud walls were crumbling and whose thatch was thin and sparse. In front of the hut, an old woman sat staring at an empty fireplace.

  ‘Greetings, grandmother,’ said the two young men. She did not answer them. ‘We hope you are in good health.’ Still she said nothing, which was unusual. The elder brother was about to say something sharp when the younger nudged him. ‘Remember the oracle.’

  ‘Have you no fire, grandmother?’ asked the elder. The answer was clear. The two young men put down their packs and went into the bush looking for firewood. Soon they found enough to make two bundles, which they brought back and laid beside the hut.

  ‘You have no water, grandmother,’ observed the younger brother. The two young men found vessels beside the house and walked down to the stream. They filled the pots and returned to the hut.

  ‘Let us prepare you a meal,’ they said, and they took some rice from their provisions and set it to boil over the fire. Then they prepared a sauce with the meat from an animal they had killed along the way and some herbs they had found. When the two parts of the meal were ready, they spread the rice in a dish and poured the sauce over it. They placed the dish in front of the old woman. She leaned her head forward to smell the food, then she looked down at the dish and up at the young men. Hesitantly, her hand went out and made a small ball of rice which she dipped in the sauce. She brought it to her mouth.