THE GUELOWAR LINEAGES
The founder of the Guelowar lineages was a Mande princess. She left her home because she had become pregnant out of wedlock and wished to avoid unpleasant consequences. Her story varies. One account makes her a daughter of the emperor Sunjata who became pregnant after her husband had been absent for several years; she then went into exile, accompanied by a jeli. They lived in the forest west of Kaabu for nine years, until they encountered the inhabitants of the region.
The better known story says that the Mande princess was Amina Coulibaly, a woman renowned for her beauty. A king claimed her for his heir, but before the marriage Amina’s beloved came to her disguised as a jeli. Amina became pregnant, and so she collected her belongings and some followers and fled into the west. They came at last to the shores of the sea, and there Amina took shelter in a great cave. There she lived for a time; her followers did what they could to supply her with food. Eventually, a wandering hunter came across the cave and discovered the princess. He reported this sight to the king, who rode out immediately to find the wondrous woman and confirm the report of her beauty.
At first, she refused to come with him. She had not yet given birth. But he insisted. She told him (and it is unclear if this was a prophecy or a condition) that if she joined him, her yet-unborn child would rule the land. The king accepted this statement: he said that her child would rule after him. At that, Amina Coulibaly went with him. She won over his followers, who might have muttered about a queen taken from a cave, by her lavish distribution of gold bracelets and rings. When her child was born, it was a girl. Her husband proclaimed that her male descendants would be the rulers of his land, and so the principle of matrilineage was established for the Sereer aristocracy.
LINEAGE STORIES I: THE CAXER
In earlier times, the Tewan and the Caxer lived together. The Tewan had acquired occult powers, and could transform himself into any sort of creature. The Caxer was eager to acquire this knowledge, for he was not rich. So he learned what he could until at last he was able to summon one of the spirits of the forest. He did so, standing before one of the great trees in the area (they were considered the home of the spirits), and indeed, a spirit appeared and asked him what he wanted. The Caxer asked him for wealth; the spirit named his price: a human life. The Caxer had two sisters; he offered the spirit one of them. That night, the sister died.
The next night, the Caxer went out to the tree and the spirit gave him his reward: a cowrie-shell, a millet seed, and one hair from a cow, a goat and a sheep. The Caxer began to return home. But the Tewan was dreaming at the time, and saw what was happening. He changed himself into a hyena and went to meet the Caxer; the hyena so frightened the man that he dropped the little packet the spirit had given him and lost his sight as well.
The Caxer groped his way back to the village, and to the home of a Sowan. The Sowan was a healer, and with a powder he was able to restore the Caxer’s sight. The Caxer then became suspicious, believing that only one who had caused the affliction could cure it so easily, and so the two men went before the village judge, the Katy. The Katy had second sight; he was able to explain his mistake to the Caxer and to suggest a means by which to regain his lost wealth. The Caxer burned a rope in his home, and then took the ashes to the home of the Tewan. He spread the ashes on the floor. The Tewan lost his sight. The Caxer was able to retrieve his packet and to release its contents in his house: immediately, he had a wealth of cattle, goats, sheep and cowrie-shells, and his granary filled with a store of millet seed.
His clan thus became rich, but they were never numerous, for they had given up one of their child-bearers in exchange for their wealth.
LINEAGE STORIES II: SIRA BADIANE
Sira Badiane was a Guelowar princess who had borne five sons to the king of Salum. Despite this, her life was miserable and so she ran away with her sons and daughters, and taking the royal drums, the junjun. They fled through the bush, through the wilderness, until finally they collapsed, exhausted, near a stream. There they established a village named Petj. It grew, and Sira Badiane became a respected and powerful ruler, and the junjun drums sounded her praises.
The king of Salum learned how she had set herself up and determined to destroy her, for he felt power should be reserved in the hands of men. He resorted first to sorcery: he had a powerful and noxious amulet sewn into a fine leather saddle which he had delivered to Sira Badiane as a peace-offering. Sira Badiane’s eldest son was the first to try the new saddle. He placed it on a fine horse, rode off, and died when the animal went wild and charged headlong into a great tree-trunk. Two other sons died, before a hunter named Samba Sarr identified the cause. Samba Sarr was Tukolor, from the Futa Tooro, and he had great skills. He detected the amulet in the saddle, and so they threw the saddle into the stream. But the saddle would not stay there. Any fisherman who cast his net into the stream after the saddle had been thrown into it would find himself hauling the saddle back to land.
The king of Salum then tried trickery. He came to Petj and camped nearby. He sent a messenger to tell the queen of his grief at the death of their children, and of his desire to share in the mourning. He asked that the surviving sons should come to lead him into the village. But he prepared a trap for the innocents who came to greet their father: his servants dug a pit and covered it with a great straw mat, and then they all sat around it as the boys arrived. The boys fell in; the servants immediately filled the hole with earth, and he released his soldiers to raid the area.
The surviving sisters threatened to kill themselves, and so they were tied to trees near the river for a time, and at that spot they received food and beatings, and their lamentations disturbed the spirits of the place.
However, Samba Sarr had received a blessing: he had killed an enormous elephant. An ear of the elephant is said to be preserved in his lineage. It endows the wearer with occult power, and marks the legitimacy of the Saltigi, the Fulbe or Tukolor leader of the community. Anyone who ate the flesh of the elephant, or drank from his well, then felt a compulsion: they moved to the area of Djilof where he lived. So even Sira Badiane moved, leaving the village of Petj an empty and forlorn spot, the home of angry spirits who must be appeased each year. Sira Badiane ruled over the new community, and it enjoyed great prosperity.
68
NJAAJAAN NJAAY AND THE WOLOF
The Wolof are the major linguistic and ethnic group of Senegal, and occupy the lands between the Senegal river in the north and the Gambia river to the south. In the last thousand years they have formed numerous kingdoms, sometimes unified and often independent, and have come to terms with their powerful neighbours: the Maninka (and Mandinka of Gambia) in the east and south, the Fulbe (or Tukolors) of the Futa Tooro to the northeast, the Moors to the north, and eventually also the traders who came along the Atlantic coast. Wolof origins lie on the south side of the Senegal, and that region was the core of their kingdom. The story of Njaajaan Njaay was first recorded in the late eighteenth century, by a French traveller, and many modern versions are now available.
It is said that Abu-Bekri bin Amer came from Arabia bringing Islam, although others say the man’s name was Abu Derday. He came to the lands by the Senegal river accompanied by a servant, and took a wife there. They had a son. Abu-Bekri then determined to return to Arabia. He told his wife that if he did not return, she should take another husband. He recommended that she choose her husband carefully: a man of self-control and discretion, and suggested that she could tell something of men’s character by how far they went from the village for their morning excretion.
He left, and died on the road. After a time, his wife decided she would marry again, and she began watching the men as they left the village in the morning. She quickly noticed that Abu-Bekri’s servant, who had not gone with his master, went the furthest and was the most discreet about his morning ablutions, and so she determined to make him her husband.
Her son by Abu-Bekri was most distressed by the thought that his mother wou
ld remarry, and worst of all that she would marry a servant. When the time came for the wedding, he threw himself into the river. He did not drown. He lived in the river for seven years, travelling far downstream from his mother’s home.
He eventually came out of the water. This is how it happened. The children of a village used to go fishing, and they would pile their catch together. There were always disputes and quarrels when the time came to divide up the catch: each claimed to have caught the largest fish, none was happy with his share. Their quarrels bothered the village, and they bothered Njaajaan down in the waters. One day he came out of the river and showed the children a way to avoid such quarrelling: he gave each child a loop of vine to run through the gills of the fish he caught, so each would know exactly which were his fish, and there would be no disputes about ownership. The children were delighted with this arrangement. The adults were amazed that the quarrels and fights over the fish seemed to have stopped, and eventually they asked the children how this had come about. The children told them how a man had come out of the waters and showed them how each could keep his own fish.
The adults decided they wished to find this man who could settle affairs so well for children; he would be a good ruler for them as well. So they set to work, and eventually they trapped Njaajaan in their nets and brought him to the village. But he refused to say anything. He sat there silent. For two days he sat where they had him tied and said nothing. Finally, a woman said she could make him talk, if they would just let him go one more day without eating. They agreed.
The next day the woman came to Njaajaan and built a small fire. Then she filled a pot with water and spices and pieces of fish, and prepared to set it on the fire. But she only put two stones by the fire, and she could not quite balance the pot on the two stones. It kept tipping to one side or another, and sometimes the water spilled out. Njaajaan was watching her eagerly, it seemed. Finally, after she had kept up these attempts for some time, he spoke. ‘Use three stones!’ he cried, and then realized he had spoken.
After that, he agreed to talk to the people, and they made him their king: the first king of the Jolof, the land of the Wolof. He later learned he had a stepbrother, from his mother’s remarriage, and the stepbrother became the first Brak (king) of Waalo, which is another part of the land of the Wolof and one of their four kingdoms.
69
THE FUTA TOORO
The Futa Tooro was known in medieval times as Tekrur, and that name offers the best etymology for one of the names of the current inhabitants of the region, the Tukolor. The Tukolor, also called the Haal-Pulaaren (‘speakers of Pulaar’), are a sedentary group of the Fulbe (or Fulani) whose language is a form of Fulfulde. The region lies along the middle course of the Senegal river, and is probably the original home of the Fulbe (see also Chapter 9), from which they dispersed east and south through the territory of Mali to northern Nigeria, the Adamawa region of Cameroon, and elsewhere. The Fulbe are widely associated with cattle-herding, and this practice may also explain their wide dispersal over the savannah regions of west Africa. Some scholars have claimed a connection between the Fulbe and the makers of the stone-age rock art in the Sahara that depicts cattle-herders.
The Futa Tooro was also one of several areas in which Fulbe who had converted to Islam established theocratic states, beginning in the early eighteenth century. These include the Futa Jallon in Guinea, from which Muslims marched in 1857 to overthrow the Mandinka kingdom of Kaabu in the Gambia (see Chapter 66) and Maasina in Mali; the most influential was the emirate of Sokoto in northern Nigeria, which extended its control over most of the Hausa city-states and triggered a wave of conquests by Muslim Fula leaders throughout the central savannah region. In the nineteenth century, al-Hajj Umar Tal led a movement of conquest from Senegal east into Mali, conquering the Bamana states of Kaarta and Segou before he died in an explosion.
THE ORIGIN OF THE FULBE
The importance of this story is the way in which it justifies a new religious vocation for the Fulbe, distinct from their former association with cattle and nomadism. It is a claim by Fulfulde speakers of divine sanction for their rise to religious and political eminence, and goes back at least to the eighteenth century. This retelling is based on an oral tradition collected in Mali and published in 1974.
It is said that the Prophet Muhammad foresaw that in a future time, a people and language would arise in west Africa to continue his work. The people would be the last of the created peoples, and the language would be something new. So he told his followers to pay attention to that land, and in the years following his death, as the armies spread across north Africa carrying his new faith, the leaders of the armies were mindful of his words and sent an Arab named Oqba south across the desert. He came to the green lands south of the sands, travelling with his slave, and there he took a wife, named Bintu Doucoure. She gave him four sons.
A few years after the birth of the fourth son, Oqba departed, leaving his slave behind. He told his wife that if he did not return from his trip to the north she should take his slave as her husband. With the consent of her family, she did so. In the north, Oqba married an Arab woman, and they also had four sons; these sons became the ancestors of the Jatara, also known as the Tuareg.
The sons of Oqba and Bintu Doucoure were most unusual: they did not speak as others do. They remained silent, it seemed, until the eldest was almost nine years old. Then their mother happened to give them a branch of a jujube tree, with many ripe berries. The boys began happily plucking and eating them, until very few were left. The youngest wanted to take the rest of the berries, but the other brothers felt they should get them. They began to argue over the berries, using a language that had never been heard before: this is the origin of Fulfulde. After that they began to talk normally, but with each other they continued to use their strange and rich new language.
When they grew up they heard how the Prophet had indicated that their land would deserve special attention, and they decided to return to their father’s land to see what they might gain from the visit. They crossed the desert and came to Mecca, where their simple piety won them attention. Curious about these strangers, the people of Mecca determined to test their faith. They placed four sheep in a house, and then a leader of the faith came into an assembly where the four young men were sitting, and asked if there were any present ready to meet their maker, through love of God and his Prophet.
No one in the crowd said a word. After a space, the eldest of the four sons of Oqba rose and said he would offer himself. They took him into the house, and there they slaughtered one of the sheep so that it cried as they cut its throat, and the blood ran under the door into the street. Holding the bloody knife, the leader of faith came out and asked if anyone else would meet his fate, for love of God and his Prophet. In turn, each of the other three sons presented himself.
This demonstration convinced the people of Mecca of the truth of the prophecy concerning the people of west Africa. A further confirmation came when they consulted their papers. They found a list of words that the Prophet had made in the new language that he had foreseen, and the words corresponded to the language spoken by the four brothers. So they sent the four men back to their own country with blessings. The brothers settled in the Futa Tooro, and gave rise to the four clans of Fulbe: Diallo and Diakite, Sidibe and Sangare. And from the Futa Tooro their descendants eventually also populated other regions: the Futa Jallon of Guinea, Wasulu in the Manden, and Massina along the middle Niger.
KOLI TENGELA AND THE DENIYANKE DYNASTY
The Deniyanke were the dominant dynasty in the Futa Tooro from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century; they were replaced eventually by a system of Islamic government known as the Imamate, in which a different leader was elected each year. Koli Tengela is said to have established the dynasty, but numerous stories about a leader and founder named Koli are told from Senegal south into Guinea, particularly in the region of the Gambia. This retelling is based upon an account prepared by local sch
olars and translated into French in the last century.
Tengela was a Fula leader who served Sunjata well, and the king of Mali rewarded him with the gift of a wife. But he warned Tengela that he had already slept with the woman, and that if she gave birth to a child within the space of nine months the child would be his. This proved to be the case; the woman gave birth to a son whom they named Koli and whom Tengela raised as his own son.
When he grew older, Koli became a war-leader and led his men against the Soninke kingdom of Jara, then ruled by the son of Dama Ngille. It is said that one of Koli’s followers may have killed a prince of Jara; whatever the case, the war went against Koli and he was forced into the wilderness lying west of Jara. He determined to pass through the wilderness and see what he might find. But provisions ran very low, and water was hard to find. His army of three thousand men began to despair of escaping the wild lands.
Koli gave them hope when he saw a bird high on a tree branch holding an ear of millet in its beak. He noted the direction from which the bird had come and sent men to scout out the land; they soon returned to announce that there was rich territory ahead of them. The army pushed through and came into the Futa Tooro, the lands along the Senegal river. There they quickly conquered the people and replaced the Diaobe who had ruled before. The memory of their reign is not entirely pleasant; they were troublesome and belligerent, proud and quick to violence.
70
MALICK SY AND BONDU
Bondu was an Islamic kingdom lying at the headwaters of the Senegal river, founded around 1700 in relatively empty territory ceded to Malick Sy by the Soninke ruler of Gadiaga, and later populated by immigrants from the Futa Tooro who were unhappy under the rule of the Deniyanke. There are many versions of this story published in the last century.
African Myths of Origin (Penguin Classics) Page 43
