African Myths of Origin

by Stephen Belcher

  In the bush, Sunjata and his brother Manding Bori began to butcher their kills. They were amazed to find that the two large antelopes had no hearts or livers. Then Sunjata laughed. ‘This must be the doing of our sister,’ he said. ‘Surely she has guests she wishes to feed, and there was no meat in the house.’

  ‘How dare she take the parts of our kills!’ protested Manding Bori, and he fumed about his sister’s arrogance all the way back to the town. When they reached the compound he shouted aloud in anger, and Sogolon Kulunkan’s wrap-around cloth fell from her hips, baring her legs and groin. She cried, and the cloth rose up again around her. Again Manding Bori shouted and the cloth fell, again Sogolon covered herself.

  ‘Control yourself, brother,’ ordered Sunjata. ‘You have already shown that your children will never be kings.’ He moved forward to greet his sister and then to meet the guests. After all had eaten, the guests explained their mission. They told how Sumanguru had come upon the Manden, driving out Dankaran Tuman, and how the people felt oppressed and wished for a saviour to free them.

  ‘You are the son of the king,’ they concluded. ‘The people call you. You must return to the Manden.’

  ‘It is not that simple,’ answered Sunjata. ‘I am also the son of my mother, and she is old. She cannot travel to return to the Manden, and I will not leave her here alone. So long as my mother lives, I cannot return to the Manden.’

  That night Sunjata went out into the dark, and he offered a vow. ‘If it is my fate to rule the Manden, if I am truly destined to lead the three and thirty clans of the Manden: the clans of quiver bearers, the Manding mori clans (the Muslim leaders), the clans of the blacksmiths and the jeliw and the leatherworkers, if I am to become king, then let my mother die tonight in peace.’

  That night, Sogolon Conde, Sunjata’s mother, died. They wrapped her in a cloth, and then Sunjata went to Mema Farin Tunkara to tell him that his mother had died and he wished to bury her. He asked the king for land.

  The king had advisers, three old men known as See-all, Hear-all and Know-all. They reminded the king that this man was a stranger who had come among them, and that he should ask for good payment for the land he was to give as a resting place for Sunjata’s mother. The king asked Sunjata for nine mithqals of gold.

  ‘It is a high price,’ answered Sunjata. ‘I shall bring it to you later in the day.’ But when he returned, he gave the advisers a battered old calabash bowl filled with dust, ashes, arrowheads and partridge feathers.

  ‘What does this mean?’ the king asked his advisers. ‘This payment is not gold.’

  ‘It is a warning,’ answered the advisers. ‘If we do not give him the land, he will return with war. That is the message of the arrowheads. Our houses will be burned and broken down. That is the message of the dust and the ashes. Partridges shall play where we lived. That is the message of the feathers. It is best to give him the land.’

  They gave Sunjata the land, and he buried Sogolon Conde. Then he and his remaining family, and the envoys who had come to seek him, took the path of return to the Manden.

  They came to the river, to the passage which was served by the boats of the Somono boatmen. On their way out, Sogolon Conde had given the leader of the boatmen two silver bracelets. He asked why she made him this gift, and she answered, ‘Sinin ku [a thing for tomorrow].’ After Sumanguru took power, he gave orders to the boatmen that they were to transport no one across the river without permission from the court. The boats lay idle on the far bank.

  Sunjata came to the river and shouted across. He summoned the chief of the boatmen and asked for passage. The chief of the boatmen answered he could not let them pass without permission from Sumanguru.

  ‘Ah, chief!’ cried Sunjata, ‘raise your arms!’ Intrigued, the boatman chief raised his arms in the air.

  ‘Cross your wrists!’ cried Sunjata, and the chief did so. As his wrists met, the two silver bracelets rattled against each other.

  ‘What was that sound?’ asked Sunjata. ‘Was it not a gift that my mother called “a thing for tomorrow”?’ The chief of the boatmen did not answer, but turned and ordered the boats to fetch Sunjata’s party across the river.

  People rallied to Sunjata from across the Manding. Village chiefs and rulers of lands assembled their soldiers, the bowmen and the swordsmen and the riders, and came to join Sunjata. Sumanguru in turn assembled his soldiers and came to meet the challenger. There are many stories about the battles they fought, and where they took place. Some say they met four times, others that they met nine times, others that they met twenty times. But in all these battles Sumanguru’s forces had the upper hand; as they say, the laughter went to the Sossos, and the tears to the Manden. While Sunjata’s men fought bravely, somehow they could not defeat Sumanguru. Even when they thought they had him pinned down or cornered he would somehow escape them and turn defeat into victory.

  Spirits were getting low. They were raised slightly by a defection from Sumanguru’s army: his nephew Fakoli who came to the side of Sunjata. Fakoli was the son of the sister who had given herself to the jinns to obtain the balafon for Sunjata. He had an extraordinary wife: when she cooked, her one pot would feed as many people as the three hundred pots prepared by his uncle Sumanguru’s three hundred wives. Sumanguru had taken Fakoli’s wife, jealous of her powers. Fakoli renounced his kinship and came to Sunjata. He confirmed to them what they had already guessed: that Sumanguru was protected by more than weapons, and that to defeat him they would have to learn the secret of his occult powers.

  Sogolon Kulunkan went to Sumanguru’s capital. Her hair was done in intricate braids, her body was rubbed with aromatic oil, the cloths that covered her body shimmered and somehow highlighted the sway of her hips. She came by Sumanguru’s palace, and soon she was invited in. It was not long before she and the king were seated at a dinner, and his eyes followed the movement of the cloth around her shoulders, and the grace of her arms as she reached out for food. He quickly decided that he must have this woman, that very night.

  But when he asked her into his bedchamber, she demurred. Up to that point she had seemed more than willing. She matched smile for smile, she offered him meaty morsels, she shrugged in ways that almost made the cloth slip from her shoulders, revealing hints of a bosom. But she stopped at the door.

  ‘I do not know enough about you,’ she said. ‘When a man and a woman share a bed, there should be no secrets. I must be assured of your trust.’

  He argued with her, but she held firm. In the course of the argument, Sumanguru’s mother intervened. She had heard of the strange woman who had appeared, and she was worried for her son. She came to him and listened for a time to the discussion. To her, it seemed clear what was going on.

  ‘Oh, my son!’ she called. ‘Do not give your secrets to a one-night woman!’

  Sumanguru was enraged at the intrusion and the interruption. He turned and seized the old woman violently, dragged her across the room where he had been eating with his guest, and threw her out of the door. Then he shut the door. When he turned back, Sogolon Kulunkan was standing before the small fire, and somehow the shadows limned her body and her bright smile.

  ‘I am a man of power,’ said Sumanguru. ‘Surely you must know that. I am the king.’

  ‘It is clear you are powerful,’ said Sogolon. ‘You are well protected. But how can you be sure no one will somehow violate the secrets? Can you be sure of your protection?’

  ‘No ordinary matter can harm me,’ said Sumanguru, coming close to her.

  ‘That must be true,’ she answered, looking up at him. ‘So you are safe from everything?’

  ‘Not everything,’ he admitted. ‘An arrow… Not an ordinary arrow, but one tipped with the spur of a white cock. That could harm me.’

  ‘No one makes arrows from the pieces of a fowl,’ answered Sogolon Kulunkan, and she moved closer to him. ‘Come, let us go within.’

  Sumanguru’s desire was not immediately satisfied. Although she entered the bedchamber
with him, Sogolon Kulunkan broke off before any serious lovemaking had occurred and said that she must go to wash herself. Sumanguru waited a while. He called. Her voice answered from the neighbouring privy. He called again, and again she answered. The third time he went to see what was keeping her: she had fled. She had left two small tokens which she had enchanted to answer for her.

  At the next battle, the tide changed. Sunjata’s forces had the secret of Sumanguru’s power. Sunjata carried his bow, and kept ready a new arrow, one tipped with the spur of a white cock. Sumanguru avoided him, and this time the forces under Sunjata were able to overcome the Sosso army. Sumanguru fled on horseback, closely pursued by Sunjata, Fakoli and several other leaders of the army. Sumanguru caught up his wife and charged away. They reached the Niger river, just as Sunjata caught up with him. Sumanguru’s horse gave a great leap and landed on the far side of the river, just as Sunjata’s arrow struck the rider. Sumanguru, his wife and his horse all turned to stone; it is said you can still see them there today, at the falls of Koulikoro.

  Sunjata and his generals turned back into the Manden. In Sumanguru’s palace they found Bala Faseke Kuyate, crippled by Sumanguru. They made Sumanguru’s son his steed, to carry him everywhere he wished to go.

  Soon after the last battle, Sunjata and all the leaders of the Manden held a great assembly at a place called Kurukan Fugan. There they established the rules that would govern their new state. They apportioned territories and defined principles. Thus was the empire of Mali born.

  There are very few stories about the death of Sunjata. The most common says that he drowned while crossing the river, although the context varies. Instead, most performances of the epic end with the growth of the empire, and in particular the conquest of the Jolof by Tira Magan Traore, which is told below in the section on the Mandinka (Chapter 66).

  65

  THE BAMANA OF THE MIDDLE NIGER

  The Bamana or Bambara (the older French name) are the people occupying the lands along the middle Niger, between the cities of Bamako and Djenne. The population of this region is ethnically diverse, originally composed of Soninke, Fulani, Bozo/Sorko (hunters) and many other groups who have fused together in the course of a long and tumultuous history, under the sway of the empires of Mali and Songhai and then the Tukolor Islamic conquests of the mid-nineteenth century. The Bamana states were the kingdoms of Kaarta, on the north side of the Niger, and Segou, on the south; of the two, Segou was by far the more powerful. Their period of eminence lasted from the early eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth, when both were conquered by the forces of al-Hajj Umar Tal. The Bamana language, very close to Maninka, its western neighbour and parent, has now become the dominant African language of the region. During the period of the kingdoms, warfare and slave-taking were the principal economic activities; slaves were sold for guns, or set to work on farms. The river and the rains make millet-farming possible; fishing and trade are also major activities. The Bamana also have strong artistic traditions, and while most are now Muslim, one popular etymology for their name is ‘they who refused [Islam]’, stressing that in the period of the kingdoms they held closely to their traditional beliefs.

  THE CREATION

  The original source of this narrative was not identified by the scholar who first reported it in 1951, but it appears to have been a branch of the Komo initiatory association. It is also possible that a number of separate accounts were combined to create this master-narrative, which has strong parallels with the Maninka myth given in Chapter 64.

  The sky-god sent Pemba (‘great thing’) down to create the earth. Pemba used the knowledge and the materials with which he had been equipped, and in the form of a whirlwind he travelled to the four corners of the earth and so shaped the land into hills and plains and valleys. At the same time, the sky-god sent another spirit, Faro, into the upper air, and there Faro performed a similar movement, establishing the limits of heavens by his movement. Faro was called to assist Pemba, who proved unable to complete the fashioning of the earth, and Faro fell to earth in the form of rain, which filled all the empty spaces left by Pemba as he had moved the clods of earth about. It was Faro’s presence that made possible life on earth.

  Pemba remained a whirlwind (and this is still a preferred form for spirits) for seven years, and then settled and took the shape of a great acacia tree. But the tree died for lack of water; the trunk decomposed down to a great log under which a pile of dust built up. He eventually moistened this dust with his saliva and blew life into it. A creature came into being that was part fox and part human, a female who is known as Muso Koroni of the white head. She was the female double of Pemba, endowed with his powers and knowledge, and she was also his wife. She brought forth all sorts of animals and creatures which began to populate the earth in riotous disorder. Pemba wished to establish his authority over these creatures, and so he took the form of a balanza tree, the acacia albida which unlike other trees remains green throughout the dry season.

  The humans (whom Faro had created) took refuge beneath this tree, and eventually came to worship it since it was not subject to the rule of the seasons. The tree instructed them, and they acquired arts. At that time, humans were immortal, but they had no language. They were fed by fruits sent down from heaven by a spirit of the air whom Faro had set in place. The fruits were the nuts of the shea tree, also known as the karite, from which oil is made. One day, after a woman had eaten some nuts and made her hands oily, she wiped them on the trunk of the tree. Pemba was pleased by the savoury moisture, and asked for more; soon, all the women and later the men were making offerings of karite oil to the tree.

  From offerings of oil, the demands of the tree soon increased. He asked the women to become his brides, coupling with a wooden member which was shaped for the purpose, and from the lovemaking he drew renewed strength. But this behaviour created problems, for Muso Koroni became jealous of the women with whom she shared Pemba’s love, and developed ill-will and malice. These emotions became so strong that she was estranged from Pemba and fled far away; in the course of these throes, she mutilated her genitals and so brought about menstruation among women. Her malice also infected everything she touched, so that the earth lost its purity. At the same time, her actions eventually benefited humankind, for it was she who discovered the skills of farming and gardening.

  The balanza tree that was Pemba grew ever hungrier for power, for the world was growing and he needed more energy to rule it. He soon discovered another source, when a human accidentally bled upon his bark and brought him a burst of heat, which is the materialization of occult strength. He began to require blood-offerings from the humans: the men would go to the tree and offer their blood several times a year. In exchange for this gift, the tree would rejuvenate them when they became old.

  Eventually, however, the tree’s demands became too great for the humans to fulfil. They were too exhausted even to find themselves food. One day, a woman fainted near a patch of ngoyo fruit (a form of wild tomato); Faro came to her in a dream and told her to eat the fruit. She did so, and was strengthened so that she went swimming in the waters of the river. There Faro took her as an offering to himself. He then challenged Pemba: while Pemba had some power over the earth, life required water which was the domain of Faro. Pemba uprooted himself and lumbered forth to struggle with Faro, but he was eventually defeated. After his defeat, humans lost much of their respect for him, although they still continued to make offerings to him. But after one disrespectful man climbed to the top of the tree and cut off the fruit that was the quintessence of the blood-offerings the people made, the tree ceased to protect them from death. The man who performed the outrage fled to the west, but could not escape his fate: he fell dead. The people among whom he died did not realize he had committed a sacrilege, and so they buried the body; in this way, his taint spread into the earth and all people who came in contact with it eventually died.

  THE KULIBALI DYNASTIES

  Both Segou and Kaarta wer
e ruled at first by different branches of the Kulibali lineage. The lineage that ruled Segou died out practically with the founder, however, while that in the Kaarta remained in power until the second dynasty to rule Segou, the Diarras, conquered them at the end of the eighteenth century. The legend is retold from various accounts collected in the past century.

  Two brothers, Nchi and Nchian, came from the east, pursued by enemies. When they reached the river, they thought they were trapped, but a poyon, a great fish, emerged from the water and offered to carry them across. The brothers quickly accepted the fish’s offer. This is how the Kulibalis got their name: they crossed the river without a canoe (kulun bali). But when they reached the other side, one of the brothers then turned back and killed the fish that had helped them. Some say he did so because his wife complained that their children would have nothing to eat. The two brothers then separated: one remained on the near shore of the river, in the area that would become Segou, while the other moved on into the area that would be the Kaarta.

  THE DIARRAS

  The kingdom of Segou was founded by Biton Kulibali, as told in the next story, but after his death his sons failed to hold power, and after a period of anarchy a second dynasty, that of the Diarras (or Jaras), came to power. This is their story of origin, retold from the account of a Bamana performer recorded around 1980.