Creation myths, Oral Tradition and the Bamana Ciwara

Photo by Jo-Bama, 2010. Mural inside the Hotel de l'Independance, Segu, Mali.

This mural painted on a wall at a hotel in Segu, Mali depicts what might be considered a few stock characters in the Bamana narrative universe: the hunter, a dog, the drummer (djembe player), farmers working with a daba (a curved iron hoe), and, with the woman carrying water in a calabash, the Fulani neighbors of the Bamana. 

According to a Bamana oral tradition, Mamari Biton Coulibaly, the founding ruler of Segu, was an outsider who learned he would one day become ruler from faaro, a genie who lived at the bottom of the Niger river. Faaro gave Coulibaly some millet seeds to plant, with the instruction that he should not harvest the mature plants, but instead allow birds to eat them: “Every bird whose beak gets into your millet and flies towards the big river, you will be the head of any village where he stops. Any village where it stops, east and west, little river or big river, you will rule there and be responsible for those lands.” (Banbera/Conrad, 1990)

The utility to Africanist scholars of oral tradition, generally, and of orally transmitted creation myths in particular, has long been debated and theorized from a number of disciplinary perspectives. In 1960, Historian Jan Vansina published Oral Tradition: a study in historical methodology (De La Tradition Orale), a programmatic theoretical argument that oral traditions (as carefully defined and distinguished from other kinds of oral evidence) might be successfully mined for details of past events, circumstances and persons from a given region or community. After a generation of critiques, Vansina modified some aspects of the work in 1978, but steadfastly defended the idea that oral traditions constituted important evidence for historians and other scholars of early Africa. The arguments of the Belgian anthropologist Luc de Heusch mark an opposing view that oral traditions in Africa are best understood as a philosophical argument, rather than as historical testimony, and can best be analyzed in structuralist terms as dualistic inventions of the human mind.

In reflecting on an epic series of debates between Vansina and de Huesch in the 1980s, art historian Suzanne Blier has argued that questions of inquiry shape disciplinary discourse about the past; that the conclusions scholars reach are contingent upon the assumptions underlying the questions they pose.

In the case of creation myths, Blier argues that they may in some cases contain elements constituting historical evidence or in others they may be better understood as theoretical renderings of the natural world that in the West might be called science. About the Bamana, Blier has argued that elements of historical experience may be preserved in ritualistic ciwara mask performances among laborers in the field, as well as in the famous mask forms themselves. 

Early 20th century. Photo courtesy of the Photograph Studio, the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 Historians have dated the establishment of the Bamana kingdom of Segu, in the middle Niger valley, to the late 17th and 18th centuries. This period, which correlates to a peak demand for African labor in the Americas, saw the emergence across West Africa of new polities and political struggles based on military strength associated with slave raiding: Dahomey (ca. 1626),  Asante (1701), Bamana (ca. 1712), and civil wars within the Oyo empire during the 1750s that led finally to the independence of Dahomey (1823) and Oyo’s collapse (1835).

Slavery in the region controlled by the Bamana of Segu, as across West Africa, including forced labor on plantations, expanded even as slaves were being channeled through trade networks to the coasts for sale to the Americas. Yet in analyzing the ciwara sculptural forms and masquerades of the Bamana, scholars have scarcely sought to understand their creation and use in the context of forced labor. In what ways does our historical understanding of slavery and the slave trades in the Bamana kingdom at Segu transform our understanding of these ciwara forms and vice versa?

Works cited

Vansina, Jan. Oral Tradition as History, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.

Suzanne Preston Blier, “African Creation Myths as Political Strategy,” African Arts, Vol. 37, No. 1, Explorations of Origins (Spring 2004), p. 38-45

David Conrad, ed., A State of Intrigue: The Epic of Bamana Segu According to Tayiru Banberra, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1990

Reading history: Maps, map makers and map-making

Map of Africa, Frederick De Wit, 1675 screenshot from Harvard Africamap

         Scholars have pointed to the importance of historical maps as sources for the history of early Africa, as well as for charting the West’s evolving knowledge and engagement with the continent. An unknown number of maps of Africa, both printed and in manuscript form, was produced by Europeans, particularly after the 15th century when the Portuguese first began exploring and trading along the coast, initiating centuries of ever expanding commercial contact between merchants in both continents. (Baesjou, 1988)
         Yet the breadth of these maps, held in archives mostly in Europe and North America, has scarcely been tapped by historians and historians of art for the insights into the changing presence and influence of local polities over time, locations of trading centers, and shifts in political structure. (Baesjou, 1988). Before the profusion of European maps of Africa in the 15th century—Italian and Portuguese mapmakers were dominant in this early period—the western image of Africa had followed that created by Claudius Ptolemy, an astronomer and geographer who lived in Egypt in the second century. (Stone, 1995) 
     Portuguese and Italian-made maps of the 15th century, refashioned this old model with data and observations from sailors who visited the African coast. But as the expansion of European trading companies grew in the 17th century, Dutch mapmakers became prominent as Holland, at war with Portugal since 1602, was home to two of Europe’s largest overseas traders, the Dutch East India and West India companies. It is in this context that this map I posted by the Dutch mapmaker Frederick was published in 1675. [Screenshot shown above].
        Continental interiors depicted on these maps are scarcely defined, as they were little understood by sailors who remained aboard ship or traders who rarely ventured beyond the coast. The De Wit map, for example, shows a profusion of well-defined openings of rivers along the coast running south from the mouth of the “Senega” river. The scale of these openings is large in relation to that of the interior. The Senega is depicted as running inland to connect to the Niger river in a straight line across the breadth of West Africa, emptying finally to a lake (Borno Lacus) in the far east.
       A profusion of place names stretches across the interior regions depicted on this map, along with drawings of animals, and the steeple-shaped symbol that may indicate the presumed location of mosques. There is no visual representation of people or of cities. In light of Baesjou’s emphasis on the continued importance of the classical maps, it is interesting to note here the use and placement of regional names such as Nigritarum, Lybia and Guinea.
       By contrast, the Delisle map of 1722, shows many more place names and mosque locations than De Wit as well as indicates mountain ranges. It shows the Senegal river as separate from the Niger, although both still run in a straight line across West Africa. 

Map of Africa, by Guillaume Delisle, 1722. Screenshot from Harvard Africamap

       There is no indication on this map of the Mali Empire (unlike on the De Wit map 50 years earlier), but it shows a large area covered by the Pays des Mandingues (Manding country) and the kingdom of Tombout or Timbuktu. Both De Wit and Delisle show the Cape Verde islands as very large in relation to the continent, an indication of more activity there in this period than in inland areas.
       Beyond entreaties for scholars to more rigorously use and interrogate historical maps as primary sources, Thomas Bassett has argued for the utility, particularly for those interested in the precolonial period, of analyzing mapmaking by Africans and influences of geographical understanding exchanged between Africans and Europeans at this early period. Bassett defines maps as “social constructions whose meaning lies as much in their making as in the interpretation of constituent elements.” (Bassett, 1998) He explores various types of African mapmaking (cosmographic, mnemonic, etc.) in various media--such as those maps indicating a divine spatial order replicated in the layout of a village or city--and thinks about them as rhetorical devices used to reflect or imagine a given social order. 
         In one example, Bassett discusses a map-making practice among the Bozo, a fishing people of the upper Niger river, recorded by the French ethnographer Marcel Griaule. Each year, children learned to draw maps of local surface and underground water sources as a means to control this vital resource. These maps were drawn on the ground and taught in a such a way as to instill in children an awareness of Bozo ancestors and of their management of water resources (Bassett, 1998)
         As imaginative representations, European made maps of the period indicate how variously “Africa” was being imagined by them in ways distinct from the Africans living there. It would be interesting to read forms of maps created in the Manding region, should any produced in the 17th or 18th centuries be extant, in relation to European maps of the region. What might a comparative study of these competing “sign systems” as Bassett refers to them reveal about historical change at this time?

Works cited:
Rene Baesjou. “The Historical Evidence in Old Maps and Charts of Africa with Special Reference to West Africa” History in Africa, vol. 15, (1988), p.1-83
Jeffery C. Stone. A Short History of the Cartography of Africa, Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1995
Thomas Bassett, “Indigenous Mapmaking in Intertropical Africa,” published in The History of Cartography, Cartography in the Traditional African, American, Arctic, Australian, and Pacific Societies, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1998

The Long View: A Chronology from the earliest times to the 13th CE

A terracotta sculpture from Jenne-jeno in Mali. This image comes from Early Art and Architecture of Africa by Peter Garlake, Oxford University Press, 2002

This rough chronology comes from two excellent sources for the study of early Africa, Christopher Ehret’s, The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800, University of Virginia Press, Charlottesville, VA, 2002 and Roderick McIntosh’s The Peoples of the Middle Niger, The Island of Gold, Blackwell Publishers, Malden, MA, 1988.  I intend to further develop and annotate this chronology in the coming weeks.

From Christopher Ehret:

4.5 to 2.6 million BCE Various hominids inhabit the eastern parts of Africa

2.6 million BCE The first stone toolmaking industry, Olduwan, develops in eastern Africa;

1.8 million BCE A new species of hominid, Homo ergaster, is known in Africa; a second closely related species, Homo erectus, may have spread out of Africa into southern Asia not long after this time.

1.5 million BCE. Development of a new kind of stone tool industry, Acheulean, characterized by the making of hand-axes, takes place in Africa

800,000 to 600,000 BCE Acheulean tool industry spreads for the first time outside Africa to the Middle East and Europe.

90,000 to 60,000 BCE First appearance of Homo sapiens, ancestor of modern humans, develops in eastern and southern from earlier African species Homo ergaster. They are the first makers of bone tools and backed blades, characteristic of all later human stone tool industries.

60,000 to 40,000 BCE Homo sapiens spread out of Africa, first into the Middle East and southern Asia and then after 40,000 BCE into Europe and northern Asia (and eventually still later from Asia into the Americas) outcompeting and replacing all other species of the genus Homo.

9,000 to 5,000 BCE Agriculture first develops. First appearance of pottery used for storing water and for cooking. Also Ehret argues that the first domestication of cattle and use of fishing (the Aquatic Tradition) emerge around this time.

1,000 to 300 BCE Development of the manufacture and use of iron in Africa

  

From Roderick McIntosh:

300 BCE Foundation of Jenne-jeno (Upper Delta) and Dia (Macina)

AD 300  Demographic explosion in four areas along the Upper Niger

AD 5th century Jenne-jeno “Island of Gold” emerges as a trading center of exchange relations with greater West Africa (Bambouk gold production?)

   —Founding of large Niger Bend settlements (eg Timbuktu)

AD 7th century (Appearance of first tumuli/megaliths in Lakes Region?)

AD 690 Traditional date for foundation of Gao (Songhai capital)

AD 8th century Occupation specialists in recognizable (“casted”) form

AD 850 Rural abandonment begins in Dia hinterland

   —Population maximum at Jenne-jeno and its hinterland (Ghana Empire hegemony over Mema and Lakes region?)

AD 10th century Early in-migration of Fulani pastoralists

   —Beginning of abandonment of Lakes Region sites (Bure gold production?)

A sculpture from Jenne-jeno in Mali. This sculpture is on display in the Musee Nationale du Mali in Bamako.

AD 1055 Almoravids wrest Awdaghost (Tegdaoust) from Ghana

AD 1076 Almoravids temporarily overwhelm capital of Ghana

AD 1100 Beginning of demographic decline in Macina and Upper Delta

AD 11th-12th centuries Beginning of contraction of Jenne-jeno’s hinterland

   —El-Oualadji constructed

   —Prolonged droughts at Saharan entrepot (eg Tegdaoust)

AD 13 century Early in-migration of Bambara

   —Mema an independent kingdom under Tunkara

   —Abandonment of many large Mema settlement clusters

AD 1235 Battle of Krina—founding of the Mali Empire

   —Kurukan Fuga a corpus of laws established for the empire of Mali

Water Systems, Trade, Economy & Regional Life

Pinasse On the River Niger Mali from Rolf Magener on Vimeo.


      What are the implications of water for the economy, trade and history of this region?
      As water is essential to human life, so too has life across the Middle Niger been fundamentally organized around the region’s powerful rivers, its lakes and streams and the digging of wells to tap sources underground. For a region so dramatically affected by the expansion of the Sahara desert over many centuries and the shifting, unpredictable patterns of rainfall, perhaps no issue has gone to the core concern of daily life and survival more than access to water. The region’s major bodies of water include the Niger, Senegal, and Gambia rivers, all of which begin in the Fouta Djallon highlands in today’s Guinea.

Fouta Djallon, Guineé Dec 31, 2008. Photo by "Manu" via picasa web albums.

Fouta Djallon, Guineé Dec 31, 2008. Photo by "Manu" via picasa web albums.

        One could cite many examples, and develop this theme of the link between water and trade in more directions than I can take time to do here now. But a few brief thumbnail points should indicate the range of issues involved. I present them in no particular order:

• Scholars have long debated the cause of the fall of ancient Ghana, the earliest polity from this part of Africa to appear in the historical record. One interpretation drawn from oral traditions suggests that the kingdom collapsed around the 11th century after a sustained period of drought led to the exhaustion of local water wells and the abandonment of its original site.
• Throughout the region the oldest, most enduring and widely practiced methods of food cultivation have been rainfed and floodplain agriculture. Accordingly, grains such as rice, millet, sorghum, fonio have been staples of the diet across this region for centuries, perhaps millenia. These subsistence crops were historically exchanged for salt, dates and other non-local products brought across the desert.
• The earliest inhabitants of the Upper Niger delta region, around Lake Debo and the ancient cities of Jenne and Dia, based their livelihood on fishing and rice cultivation, both activities dependent on the Niger river. 
• Between the 16th and 19th centuries, the city of Jenne was able to dominate the central Niger delta region because of its access to 500 km of navigable water between itself and Timbuktu to the north. In addition to supplying food to Timbuktu through canoe traffic, Jenne served as a major entrepot connecting regional trade in commodities such as gold, salt, slaves, cloth, and kola. (McIntosh, JAH, 1981)
• Further south, during roughly the same centuries, rivers were the primary means through which Europeans based along the coasts of Senegal, Gambia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, traded with the interior, exchanging various manufactured goods for captive human beings. Earlier in this period, the Portuguese, French and British also interposed themselves into existing riverine trade networks; for example, buying cloth at one end of the Gambia river and selling it at another.
• Rivers were also departure points for exploration. In 1827, René Caillié began his travel towards Timbuktu from the Rio Nunez on the coast of today’s Guinea, above Conakry. [My guess is the river is named for a Portuguese explorer/trader/pirate who traveled there centuries before Caillié]. 
• Bodies of water often constitute social and political boundaries between different ecological zones, human modes of production, religions, languages and/or cultural memories. For example, the Senegal river today marks the border between the modern nations of Mauritania and Senegal. But beginning in the 17th century, French traders distinguished between peoples living along the river’s left bank—Moors who traded in gum Arabic—and those on the right bank—Woloff, Futanke and others who were either agriculturalists or cattle raising pastoralists. The Senegal river was navigable by large boats only part of the year, which limited French ability to sail to the interior during this early period. Again, another historical example of the ways regional trade and settlement patterns have been shaped by the rhythms, patterns and flow of water.
• Even small streams may carry great meaning. Much historical and social meaning has been attributed to the Woyowoyanko, a small creek southwest of Bamako, that is said to have repeatedly been the site of major events over the centuries. Traditionally, the creek marks the boundary between the “Mande heartland” to the southwest and the Bamana region to the northeast. Woyowoyanko is also the site where, in 1898, Samory Toure, the jihadist and erstwhile builder of empire from Wassulu,  surrendered to the French, opening the era of French colonialism in the region.

Land and Topography

        Referred to variously as the Middle Niger Valley, the Inland Niger Delta and by other labels, the region I am studying lay inland from a enormous stretch of Atlantic coast from Senegal to Ghana. Its terrain morphs from open desert in the north across flat savannah woodlands to mountains and thick forests in the south. The geographical heart of the Middle Niger Valley lay within the present day borders of Mali but its influence reaches parts of as many as nine nations: Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Ghana. Outside West Africa, its historic connections to the Maghreb, across the desert, have been profound.
        The region's topographical diversity is but one of its attractions for me, as well as one of its significant challenges. I’m also intrigued by the multiple directional orientations possible from this inland “center” which, because of its location, has had trade access to such widely distinct regions. I’m interested in understanding the ways various people of the region oriented themselves across this space—ways that may not necessarily correspond to the simple north/south/east/west orientation of a casual map reader unfamiliar with the terrain.
       Ann Stahl succinctly describes the Inland Niger Delta as “a rich interior floodplain inserted into arid surroundings on the southern margins of the Sahara.” Archeologist Rod McIntosh, in Island of Gold, talks about a series of six “basins” or parts of this floodplain that have constituted the political, social, economic skeleton of the entire region over thousands of years. Its environment has supported pasturage (cattle, sheep, goats), agriculture (grains such as millet, fonio, rice; tubers and groundnuts), fishing and mining (iron and gold). Throughout the savannah, the soil is a red-colored laterite, which looks rocky and unyielding to my inexperienced eye. You can see what I mean in the photo posted above (more about that photo in later posts!). Notice the ground. But, however dry the laterite might appear, I have seen many fields of green stalks pushing from it, and even from the much drier looking sandy ground near Bandiagara in Dogon country!
        It was only this summer, while in Mali, that the regional significance of the river finally ‘clicked’ for me: all of the regions great “empires” include at least some territory along the banks of the Niger. It struck me that in all those very approximate maps in books/articles about the ancient empires of Ghana, Mali, Songhay, and of more recent ones such as Segu and Macina, the imperial territories appear as ambiguous gray shapes with uncertain borders—shapes that always overlap with the Niger. The waterway as a corridor of power, an inescapable element in any would be ruler’s toolkit. For years, my haphazard reading about aspects early West Africa had circled around this rather pedestrian observation without it ever developing into a full-fledged “a-ha” moment. Until now.