page_title: Sukuma people
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Sukuma people / History
caption_attribution_description: Norsk bokmål: Illustrasjon hentet fra boken "Den tyske Emin Pascha-Expedition" av Peters, Carl og utgitt av Forlagsbureauet (Kjøbenhavn, 1891) Deutsch: „Wasukuma.“ (Originalbeschreibung)
context_page_description: The Sukuma are a Bantu ethnic group from the southeastern African Great Lakes region. They are the largest ethnic group in Tanzania, with an estimated 10 million members or 16 percent of the country's total population. Sukuma means "north" and refers to "people of the north." The Sukuma refer to themselves as Basukuma and Nsukuma. They speak Sukuma, which belongs to the Bantu branch of the Niger-Congo family.
context_section_description: As with the Nyamwezi, all members of the five groups in Greater Unyamwezi identified themselves as Wanyamwezi to those outside of the "greater" area, but among themselves use Sukuma. They call themselves "Sukuma" (Northerners) when speaking to Nyamwezi, but use Nyamwezi when speaking to anyone else. The groups can be called the Nyamwezi–Sukuma complex, for, while never united, they were very closely related in attitude and way of life. Like most of their neighbors, they were an ethnic group divided into many smaller groups. Some claim they were a Nyamwezi people who had moved northwestward to escape Mirambo's raids with the result that game and tsetse re-occupied the deserted area.
  Unyanyembe, the most important kingdom of the Nyamwezi, centered on Tabora and obtained its meat supplies from the Sukuma. By 1892, however, the herds of cattle began to decline due to rinderpest and tsetse fly, and while two-thirds of German East Africa became unsuitable for cattle, and cattle in general probably did not recover until after the First World War, large valuable herds of cattle were retained by the Sukuma who were then still able to escape any great social change by exploiting the herds economically. Sukuma tradition suggests that famine did become more common towards the end of the nineteenth century, leaving conservative Sukuma blaming religious innovation for the natural disasters and expecting regular sacrifices for the household or chiefdom ancestors.
  As with all Nyamwezi, the Sukuma, being agriculturalists, ridged their fields to accommodate the fertile but rather arid region. At the same time they had herds, having acquired them from the Tatoga people, but since "mixed" farming was practiced they were not considered pastoralists. Usakma also contained and used iron deposits, re-exporting some 150,000 iron hoes to Tabora.
caption: Wasukuma (circa 1890)
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