bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Nuer Curses and Ghostly Vengeance
Authors: Evans-Pritchard E. E. 
Published: April 2006

In this short article I present some of my notes on what may broadly be called Nuer religion. It describes two important concepts of the Nuer of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan: biit, a curse, and cien, the vengeance of a ghost.The curse of certain persons in Nuer society is believed to be effective if they have been wronged. If they utter curses without due cause (cuong) the curses will not harm those against whom they are uttered, but will either be ineffective or harm the speakers of them. A man curses another by uttering an invocation (lam)— which in this context is an imprecation—over, or about, him; and the Nuer distinguish different kinds of curse by reference to the relationship of the persons implicated in it—biit gwan, the curse of a father, biit nara, the curse of a maternal uncle, biit kuaara, the curse of a leopard-skin chief, and so forth. Some of these curses are regarded as weightier than others.
The Question of Ghana
Authors: Mauny R. A. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn recent years the question of Ghana has acquired new importance for two reasons: firstly, the recent excavations made at Koumbi Saleh in Southern Mauritania, the most probable site of the medieval Western Sudan capital and, secondly, the belief expressed by some Gold Coast authors that the Akan are descended from the ancient Ghana people. This paper is mainly concerned with the first of these.
The Politics of African Church Separatist Movements in British Central Africa, 1892–1916
Authors: Shepperson George 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe scope of this subject and convenient chronological divisions for it may be suggested by three quotations. The first comprises questions put to the Undersecretary for the Colonies in the British House of Commons, 1 and 8 September 1909, by Keir Hardie:…whether Elliott Kamwana, a native missionary working in Nyassaland under the auspices of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, was detained as a prisoner at Chinteche from 18th March till 4th May and then deported to Cape Town, at his own expense, by the Governor…[whether] the preaching complained of referred to the Second Advent…[and]…was the statement [made] that the abolition of taxation was to follow the Second Advent…whether all this was done without any charge having been formulated against Kamwana or any form of trial having taken place…?
The Beef-Cattle Trade in Nigeria
Authors: Jones G. I. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe export of cattle from the northern to the southern provinces of Nigeria is one of the most important internal exports in the Protectorate, and one which offers possibilities of considerable development. It is proposed in this paper to give a summary account of this trade, followed by a more detailed examination of the trade to Umuahia, which is the distributing centre for the eastern provinces.
The Family, Household, and Minor Lineage of the Konkomba
Authors: Tait David 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphSince the household contains members drawn from the larger minor lineage group, we may expect to find that it functions within the framework of the latter. This is indeed the way in which Konkomba think of the household—as part of something larger, as something that is now isolated from and now merged in the larger group. The phrase ‘Ti je mfum mba’ (we are one) may refer to a household, a minor lineage group, a major lineage group, a clan, a tribe or the whole Konkomba people. When speaking of co-operation they speak in terms of the minor lineage group rather than in terms of the household. We shall try to differentiate the role of the household as a unit of reciprocal help, of social control, and of instruction, &c.
Tax and Travel among the Hill-Tribes of Northern Adamawa
Authors: Kirk-Greene A. H. M. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe area under consideration consists of 1,100 square miles of the Madagali, Cubunawa, and Mubi districts of the northern touring division of Adamawa emirate, whose sub-headquarters at Mubi is responsible to the administrative capital at Yola on the River Benue. It is occupied by a heterogeneous population of fairly primitive pagans, and some 400 square miles of the area are still declared closed territory under the Unsettled Districts Ordinance. Though there is a steady, if unspectacular, movement down to the plains, a large proportion of the people remain in their mountain fastnesses whither they fled in the nineteenth century to seek safety from the marauding Fulani cavalry during the slave-raids that characterized the period between the jihad and the British occupation.
The Tabulation of Tenses in a Bantu Language
Authors: Sharman J. C. , Meeussen A. E. 
Published: April 2006

Opening Paragraph1. The material on which the present findings are based was collected during the period January 1950 to June 1951 near Kasama (Central Bemba) and the period July 1951 to June 1952 from Central Bemba informants in Lusaka, N. Rhodesia.2. If we disregard all subject and object prefixes, locative suffixes, and the existence of high- and low-toned radicals (all of which affect tense signs, but only at a phonological and tonological level), we find that formally speaking the Bemba verb has at least 48 positive and 31 negative single-word main-sentence tenses. (Object and subject relative sentence and sub-relative sentence tenses also exist, but are essentially mainsentence tenses with regular tonal modifications.) In order to study and evaluate a verb of such complexity, it is necessary first to find some method of tabulation. There are two possible points of departure: form, and meaning. If we use the latter, we arrive at a matrix involving at least the categories of order (positive or negative), time, aspect, mood, and emphasis. But then we find that certain ‘pigeon-holes’ in the total table are filled by tense forms that also occur elsewhere, given the right context and the right radical. (‘Radical’ we may define as that element in a Bemba verb carrying that meaning which is independent of tense signs and prefixes and infixes.) It is convenient for demonstration and other purposes to construct our tables showing these dual- and triple-function forms occupying their complete range of pigeon-holes, even though this may mean a sacrifice of formal clarity. (It should be remembered, however, that even such compromise tables—in a ‘mere’ order-time-aspectemphasis-mood matrix—can only expose basic meanings; the precise applications of some of the tenses are so subtle as to defy even five-dimensional tabulation.)
Some Social Consequences of Nineteenth Century Missionary Activity among the South African Bantu
Authors: Hutchinson Bertram 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe missionary in South Africa found himself, from the earliest years of the 19th century, in an equivocal position, and the role he actually played was the result of the varied and sometimes conflicting hopes and expectations entertained by the Bantu people, by the white settlers and, not least, by the missionary himself. Though he was at this period usually racially tolerant, the missionary was nevertheless out of sympathy with many aspects of traditional Bantu life. There were in consequence certain social changes which he regarded as a necessary preliminary to the establishment of Christianity on a permanent basis. Many of the modifications in Bantu living which the missionary favoured encouraged the gradual transformation of the Bantu population into a reservoir of labour for the growing European economy; while rudimentary education, European crafts, and Christian (or Protestant) individualism, which the missionary taught, contributed to the same end. For this reason, and because of their pacifying influence upon tribes antagonistic to the Europeans, the missionaries enjoyed the support of colonists urgently in need of an amenable labour force. It was widely believed in the early years of the 19th century that only among those Africans who were under missionary influence was there to be found a strong desire to adopt western habits; and colonists who, for other reasons, were not friendly to the missions, freely admitted that personal safety during an armed raid by Bantu tribesmen could be obtained only in refuge at a mission station.
Parenté et Mariage chez les Dogon (Soudan Français)
Authors: Dieterlen G. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphLa structure sociale des Dogon a fait l'objet d'enquêtes consignées, depuis 1931, dans un certain nombre d'ouvrages. Cette population observe dans le cadre de la famille indivise une filiation patrilinéaire et patrilocale, le totem étant hérité en ligne agnatique. Abstraction faite des manages avec les gens de caste (forgerons, griots, travailleurs du bois, du cuir), strictement prohibes, les Dogon pratiquent, au sein des quatre grandes tribus ou groupes qui les composent, l'échange généralisé.Une synthèse des renseignements recueillis a été effectuée par M. D. Tait qui a procédé à ‘une analyse structurale des matériaux’ et conclu à la nécessité, pour comprendre les problèmes de la structure dogon, d'une ‘investigation plus poussée’.
La Polygamie au Congo Belge
Authors: Wing J. Van 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphL'étude complète de ce vaste sujet demanderait un volume. Le but de cet article est plus modeste. Il ne veut donner qu'un aperçu de la situation actuelle de la polygamie; exposer les causes qui la maintiennent et d'autres qui la font évoluer, commenter la position que prend l'Administration à son sujet, et pour finir indiquer l'attitude des Missions à son égard.A cause de l'usage général, nous employons le mot polygamie au lieu de polygynie. Il est cependant à noter, à l'encontre d'une opinion largement répandue, que la polyandrie existe au Congo Belge. Elle est coutumièrement organisée chez les Bashilele du Territoire des Basongo. De là elle s'est introduite dans quelques villages de leurs voisins, les Badinga.
Arab Knowledge of the Niger's Course
Authors: Jeffreys M. D. W. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn the first half of the nineteenth century European knowledge of the course of the Niger was vague. Sir Taubman Goldie summed up the position when he said: ‘In 1819, only those interested in geographical research were familiar with the name of the Niger, or knew that its upper waters, down to Bussa, had been traced fourteen years before by a Scotchman, Mungo Park, the father of African exploration in modern times. It was only in 1831 that the lower waters of the Niger and their path from Bussa to the ocean were discovered by an equally great Englishman, Richard Lander.’ Up to 1831 it was thought that the great river of the Western Sudan, known to flow from west to east, continued across Africa to enter the Nile as a tributary in the region of the Sudd. Alternatively it was popularly supposed to be a tributary of the Congo. To such an extent had this popular idea been accepted that in 1816 the following instructions were issued to Captain Tuckey who, in 1818, led an expedition to explore the River Zaire or Congo. ‘Although the expedition, about to be undertaken for exploring the course of the river Zaire, which flows through the kingdom of Congo . . . was originally grounded on a suggestion of its being identical with the Niger, it is not to be understood, that the attempt to ascertain this point is by any means the exclusive object of the expedition.’
Industrial Efficiency and the Urban African. A Study of Conditions in Southern Rhodesia
Authors: Gussman Boris 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe report of the Commission of Enquiry set up to investigate the protection of secondary industries in Southern Rhodesia, published in 1946, produced statistical evidence to show that output per head was considerably lower than in any other Commonwealth country. The figures quoted refer to 1938, but there is little evidence of any marked advance in African productivity since that date. Only in isolated instances is native labour today working to the full satisfaction of its European management and, as a general rule, Government officials and industrial or commercial employers are unanimous in their condemnation of African inefficiency. Many of these opinions are founded upon race prejudice or ignorance of industrial history, but there is, nevertheless, ample evidence in the form of high absentee rates, rapid labour turnover and an almost complete failure of normal incentives to produce increased productivity, to indicate that something is radically wrong in the industrial field.
The One-word Tenses in Cokwe
Authors: Atkins Guy 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionThe material for this study was collected during the first two months of 1954, while camping in a Cokwe village about 50 miles north-east of Vila Luso in the administrative area of Camanongue, County and District of Moxico, Province of Bié, Angola. My chief informant was Sr. Francisco Casueka, aged 44, a Cokwe- and Portuguese-speaking African from the printing press at Boma Mission near Vila Luso. He was the ablest assistant I had among many good informants during my stay in Angola.
Matiyo and his Two Wives: A Further Case Study From Bunyoro
Authors: Beattie J. H. M. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThe following text was recorded in 1953, in Lunyoro, by my assistant at that time, Mr. Edward Byaruhanga, a young man who had just finished secondary school. It is about a man called Matiyo (I have altered all the personal names) who decided, against his father's advice, to take a second wife, and it tells how this decision led to misfortune for Matiyo and his family. Traditionally in Bunyoro men liked to have two wives, or even more if they could afford to pay the bridewealth for them, and many still do. But it is well known that such joint households are not always happy ones, for two women who are competing for the favours of one man sometimes become jealous of each other, and this may lead to accusations of sorcery, even to violence, between them. Things are more difficult now than they were in traditional times, for many modern women, even in remote areas, have been to school for a year or two, and have learned to expect a more equal relationship with their husbands than their mothers enjoyed. Such a woman, after she is married, does not always look kindly on the arrival in her home of a second wife, especially if she is younger and prettier than she is. Also, more than half a century of Christian missionary activity has led, if not to the abandonment of polygyny, at least to the recognition that monogamy is the European ideal, and so—at least from the woman's standpoint—a status of rather higher prestige by modern standards. Many women leave their husbands, even after years of marriage, when they take second wives.
The Imagery of Death in African Poetry
Authors: Moore Gerald 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphThis paper rests on the belief that traditional oral poetry from many parts of Africa exhibits a number of common themes in the imagery with which it handles the fact of death. Further, it argues that these themes are often to be found in the work of contemporary African poets, writing in English or in French. Their treatment in such work may be the sort of sophisticated examination of inherited beliefs that we find in a writer like Euripides, but there can be no doubting the strength of this movement, among younger writers, to come to grips with Africa's traditional systems of thought and make them part of a living intellectual and emotional heritage. The old missionary-inspired dichotomy between ‘modern’ and ‘backward’, as that between ‘Christian’ and ‘heathen’, is gradually breaking down and giving place to the reunified culture that is painfully emerging. As this new cultural unity establishes itself, Africans will no longer be required to amputate a large part of themselves, and almost the whole of their ancestry, in order to qualify for civilization. Hence the importance of the role which African poets are playing in this whole process of restatement and reassessment. In their work the concern for bringing these things to the surface of the mind, for integrating them consciously with the personality, is more explicit and more personal that it can be with the novelist or the dramatist.
Religious Ideas and Social Action in Gurage Bond-Friendship
Authors: Shack William A. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphInstitutions of bond-friendship as a form of voluntary association exist in many societies and, when viewed cross-tribally, they show considerable variation both in form and function.1 Even so, variations in the order of bond-friendship associations seem related to a common theme: namely, that there is an exchange of goods and/or services between parties to a ritual covenant that is reinforced by supernatural sanctions; and that protestations of mutual goodwill, together with calling for imprecations of evil to befall the individual who breaks the agreement, are elements which bind the covenant.
The Sculpture and Myths of Eshu-Elegba, the Yoruba Trickster: Definition and Interpretation in Yoruba Iconography
Authors: Wescott Joan 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphDuring my field study of Yoruba art (1955–7) little of the symbolic meaning of the forms and component elements of the ritual sculpture was revealed to me through straightforward answers to straightforward questions. Indeed, it soon became evident that if meaning with any degree of resonance was to be arrived at, such a technique had to be abandoned in favour of an interpretative analysis in relation to myths and praise songs on the one hand, and the observation of the use of sculpture in ritual on the other.
Structure de la Parenté chez les Goula Iro
Authors: Pairault Claude A. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphL'étude d'un système familial postule l'inventaire et l'analyse des termes par lesquels les personnes apparentées s'appellent ou se désignent. Une investigation de cet ordre engage l'ethnographe (et son lecteur) sur des chemins arides, mais elle a chance d'aboutir aux distinctions pertinentes qu'une société donnée met en œuvre dans son mode de vie familiale. Notre propos se limite ici à rechercher de telles distinctions dans le cadre de Boum Kabir, village tchadien habité par 900 Goula Iro.
!Kung Bushman Bands
Authors: Marshall Lorna 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn this paper I describe the band organization of the !Kung Bushmen. The !Kung word n//a besi was translated by the interpreters as ‘people who live together’. I use the word band for n//a besi, meaning by band, in this connexion, the grouping in !Kung social organization which is above the family grouping. It is a grouping precisely of the people who live together.
Cousins Croisés et Descendants: Les Systèmes du Rwanda et du Burundi comparés à ceux du Bas-Congo
Authors: de Sousberghe L. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphDepuis Morgan la relation de parenté ‘cousins croisés’ a été fréquemment observée et décrite ainsi que les formes diverses d'union préférentielle qui s'ensuivent. Mais que devient la relation de parenté par la suite? Comment évolue-telle entre les descendants de ces cousins et conjoints éventuels dans le cas, fréquent, où l'union matrimoniale ne se réalise pas entre eux? se retrouvent-ils frères et sœurs, tout comme si leurs parents respectifs (père des uns, mère des autres) s'étaient réellement mariés? restent-ils, au contraire, cousins croisés, dans la même relation de conjoints possible que leurs parents?
The Left Hand of the Mugwe: An Analytical Note on the Structure of Meru Symbolism
Authors: Needham Rodney 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphIn his admirable study of the Mugwe, a religious dignitary among the Meru of Kenya, Bernardi reports a singular fact which raises a problem of comparative and theoretical interest: viz. that the left hand of the Mugwe possesses and symbolizes his ritual power. The issue is best seen, to begin with, in the following passage:Among the Imenti [a sub-tribe] an unusual aspect of the people's conception of the Mugwe concerns his left hand. It is this hand…that should always hold the kiragu [insignia] and be used only to bless. It is a most sacred member of the Mugwe's body and no one is allowed to see it. During the day, the Mugwe spends his time playing kiothi, the Meru draughts, but even while he plays, he must always keep his left hand covered and no one must see it. Sudden death would overtake anyone who dared to look at the left hand of the Mugwe.
Asoŋu Worship among the Nzema: A Study in Akan Art and Religion
Authors: Grottanelli Vinigi L. 
Published: April 2006

IntroductionApart from its aesthetic evaluation, the study of any art object or class of objects should be carried out following three distinct though interrelated lines of analysis. The first is iconographic, i.e. at the same time morphological, technological, and historical, and concerns the nature of the objects per se, their formal characters, the technique of production, their distribution in space and time, and their stylistic affinities to similar productions elsewhere. The second is iconological, and has to do with the meaning of the representation, the nature of the beings it purports to portray, and the underlying system of conceptions and beliefs in which it is integrated—the world of ideas and symbols in a given culture. These first two aspects of the analysis are common also to archaeological research. The third approach, on the other hand, is more distinctly anthropological, as it deals with the impact of those ideas and of their concrete symbols on the everyday life of the society concerned and with their influence on the ritual and social behaviour and thought of individual men and women. Only a combination of these three approaches can give us a true picture of the phenomenon we are called upon to investigate.
Niumi: A Nineteenth-Century Mandingo Kingdom
Authors: Quinn Charlotte A. 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphBy the middle of the nineteenth century Niumi, a small Mandingo kingdom at the mouth of the Gambia river in West Africa, was on the verge of profound social changes. Until almost the end of the century it was swept by secular and religious warfare, important segments of its population were displaced, many members of its ruling clans were killed or driven into exile, and the state itself was divided to be later reconstituted under European colonial rule. It is the purpose of this paper to describe the social-political organization of Niumi in the 1850s before the traditional political system which had existed for over two centuries was destroyed. Niumi was one of fourteen small river kingdoms, ruled by Mandingo, some more clearly defined and centralized than others, together comprising one of the major areas of Mandingo settlement in West Africa. Although Niumi enjoyed a favoured economic position among these Mandingo states of the Senegambia its institutions were typical of Mandingo organization in the area and its history has proceeded along lines similar to the rest.
The Role of Proverbs in Fante Culture
Authors: Christensen James Boyd 
Published: April 2006

Opening ParagraphA Knowledge of what has been traditionally termed ‘folklore’, and more recently ‘verbal art’, has long been considered essential for any well-rounded ethnography. Among many non-literate peoples this art form sanctions and validates other aspects of culture such as religious, economic, social, and political institutions. This paper will discuss the role of one of its elements, the proverb, in a West African culture.