African Myths of Origin (Penguin Classics)

by Stephen Belcher

  The people took the name Baule from this sacrifice of their queen. She died soon after, and it was her niece, Akwa Boni, who established the Baule state on a firm footing.

  THE MOSSI PLATEAU

  North of Ghana, Togo and Benin, and south of the course of the Niger river, rises the Mossi plateau, from which the Black and White Volta rivers flow to the Atlantic. The plateau takes its name from the most populous group living there, the Mossi, who over the centuries have formed various kingdoms and at times expanded (in war at least) far enough north to attack Timbuktu, but other groups also live around them, and have moved freely across the savannah lands.

  53

  THE FOUNDING OF GONJA

  Gonja is an example of a state founded within the context of the Mande trading networks from the Niger to the south. The foundation probably occurred in the sixteenth century; the story is based on Arabic accounts written locally in the eighteenth century. It seems likely that the Mande names (Jara, Sheghu) in the story represent a confusion of the kingdom of Mali and the Bamana state of Segou which was in power at the time the chronicles were written: Jara was the name of the dynasty in Segou (see Chapter 63). Although the dynasty claimed a Mande origin, the state itself was largely Dagomba (see Chapter 54).

  The king of Mande Kaba, Jigi Jara, heard of the wealth in gold of Sheghu and sent messengers to demand a share in this gold. But the lord of Sheghu refused him. So the king of Mande assembled his army. They cut down a great tree and laid the trunk across the road; his cavalry then rode over the tree-trunk until the hoofs of the horses had worn completely through the wood. He sent his two sons in command of this army to conquer Sheghu, and they were quickly victorious. The elder son, Umar Jara, settled to rule over Sheghu, and sent much of the gold they had captured back to his father. The brothers heard of more gold in a town called Ghuna, and so the younger brother, Naba, led his army to that town and captured it. But then he recalled a prophecy made to him in his youth. He had been told that he would never be king in his own land. So he led his army further on, and they settled in a place called Yagbum, and there he founded his kingdom.

  54

  A DAGOMBA HERO

  The Dagomba belong to a cluster of peoples, sometimes called the Lobi, living north of Ashanti, south of the Mossi, and east of the Mande trading routes into Côte d’Ivoire. They live at the forest edge, and while they may at one time have been hunters they have long since been incorporated into the agricultural economy of the region. Linguistically, they are related to the Mossi, the Dogon, the Gurunsi, and other peoples connected to the Mossi plateau. This account is retold from a version published by a Ghanaian in 1931.

  The Dagomba claim as ancestor Ad, a descendant of Noah. Ad’s people lived in the Hadramaut until they offended God and most of them were exterminated by a hot dry wind which blew for seven days and nights. After that, the tribe migrated to the west until they came to Dagbon. It is said they were enormous in size, ranging from twentyfive to well over thirty metres tall. They were blacksmiths, and they wandered over the country collecting the ore to smelt and leaving the remains of their activity. Eventually, their descendants were reduced in size to that of normal humans.

  There came a drought. A hunter named Tohajiye left his cave in the hills and came down into the village looking for water. At the edge of the town he found an old woman named Malle, and he asked her for water. She answered that she had none. A wild bull was keeping the people from drinking at the lake that lay nearby. Tohajiye the hunter asked the path to the lake, and she pointed it out to him; along the way he saw people lying exhausted and parched, dying of thirst.

  As soon as he began to fill his containers, the bull attacked him. He shot it with arrows and killed it; then he cut off its tail, filled his containers and returned to the old woman. She was amazed that he had brought water, and at first could hardly believe that he had killed the bull.

  The king of the town was delighted that the hunter had accomplished something none of his warriors had been able to do, and offered him a reward: he might choose any of the king’s daughters. Tohajiye asked only for a lame girl who could not walk. Her name was Wobega, and she is also called Pagawobga. The king agreed. The hunter picked her up in his arms and carried her away, stopping to greet Malle, the old woman, on the way. As soon as he was gone, she called two young men and told them to follow Tohajiye to his home, and when they got there to plant some calabash seeds so they would know the spot in the future. Quietly and stealthily the young men followed the hunter, who was making no effort to hide his trail, until he reached his cave in the hills. They saw him enter the cave, and then they planted their seeds and returned to the village.

  Some time later, war came to the land. The town was attacked and the ruler was desperate for help. He asked his attendants where the heroic hunter was who had killed the bull and taken his daughter Wobega; none could answer him. He called for Malle, the old woman who had been Tohajiye’s host when he came; she said she could point out the trail, for the calabash seeds that her scouts had planted had grown into vines and reached all the way back into the village.

  The king’s men went to the hunter’s cave. They found only a young man there, named Kpogonumbo. His parents had died and he had grown up by himself. He was huge, many times the size of a normal man, and his eyes oozed blood and mucus. The king’s men were terrified of him, but they explained their mission and Kpogonumbo said that he would come to help the man who was, after all, his grandfather. He returned to the town with them, joined the army, and attacked the enemy.

  The enemy, too, were terrified at the sight of this giant, and they fled. Kpogonumbo chased them far into the forest, until he was sure they would not return, and then informed his grandfather of his victory. Then he continued his travels.

  He came to Biung, an old village ruled by a priest called the Tindana. He did not enter the village immediately; he concealed himself at a spot by the stream where he could see when people came to draw water. The Tindana sent his daughter, called Sisagba, to get water for the people working in the fields; when she approached, Kpogonumbo revealed himself. She was terrified, but he reassured her and sent her to fetch her father.

  The Tindana came with some other men, and they talked with Kpogonumbo. To prove his knowledge and powers, Kpogonumbo gave him a calabash seed and told him to plant it, and gave him some millet and told him to plant it. The Tindana bent down and planted the seeds in the soil by the stream. Immediately, the calabash plant sprouted, grew, flowered and produced ripe gourds. The millet immediately grew up, formed heads, ripened and hung heavy in the air.

  ‘Take the millet,’ said Kpogonumbo. ‘Give it to your daughter, have her grind it and mix it into millet beer, and bring me the drink in this gourd.’

  The Tindana took the small harvest, and Sisagba made millet beer from it, which she poured into a gourd from the seeds Kpogonumbo had planted. She brought the beer to him. He drank it thirstily.

  ‘My daughter,’ said the Tindana to Sisagba, ‘this is a fearsome stranger who has come among us. But I think he has come on your account, and so you must marry him.’ So Sisagba married Kpogonumbo, and they eventually had a son.

  The son was ill-treated by his relatives. He would go hunting with his mother’s brother, but if he killed anything – a bird, a small animal, a guinea-fowl – his uncle would take the animal, cook it, and give him only a small part of a leg and the head. At first the son complained, but the uncle answered him with a blow and harsh words. ‘You are the son of an unknown man, a monster. We do not know where he came from. Be content that we give you anything!’

  The son complained to his father, but his father told him to suffer in patience and to bide his time. A festival came some time later, the great annual festival at which the Tindana presided. In the days leading up to the festival there was great rejoicing among the people, and vast quantities of millet beer were drunk. Sisagba joined her family members in drinking, and returned somewhat tipsy to her husband’s
home.

  Kpogonumbo greeted her with praises and song when she entered, and so she herself began to boast of her knowledge: she was the daughter of the Tindana and she knew his secrets. Kpogonumbo offered her more beer and flattery, and she continued to talk, revealing what she knew to her husband.

  This was the occasion Kpogonumbo had awaited. He went out that night to the Tindana’s house; when the priest came into the dark to relieve himself, Kpogonumbo speared him and then cut off his head. He threw the head into the washing area of the compound of his wife’s brother. Then he went in to the Tindana’s house and dressed himself in the Tindana’s ritual robes.

  The next morning, when the people came to bring the Tindana to the shrine to celebrate the festival, they found the body of the old Tindana lying headless before the door. As they approached, the door burst open and Kpogonumbo appeared.

  ‘I have killed him! I have taken his place!’ he announced, and no one dared to challenge him. So he became ruler of the country. The kingdom later became known as Yendi.

  55

  THE MOSSI OF BURKINA FASO

  The Mossi are the dominant group of modern Burkina Faso, and the most widespread on the Mossi plateau. While they have not always been politically unified, the central authority is that of the Mogho Naba whose palace is in Ouagadougou and who traces his descent (and legitimacy) from the line of Princess Yennenga. The Mossi are known principally as farmers (millet and sorghum), although their kings also engaged in warfare and on occasion raided as far north as Timbuktu, and there was trade with their neighbours to the north and east. This retelling is based upon a number of accounts collected in the early twentieth century.

  Perhaps nine hundred years ago, there was a king in the lands to the south, among the Dagomba who lived along the forest’s edge. He had a daughter named Yennenga the Slender who was old enough to be married, but her father did not find her a husband because he wished to keep her by him. She planted a field of okra before the king’s house, and when it was ripe she left it past its time on the ground without harvesting it. When the king commented on the waste, she retorted: ‘You say the harvest is past its time? But what about a woman who has not been married?’ Her father still did nothing about her marriage.

  Yennenga took care of the matter herself, but we do not know who her chosen partner was. She became pregnant, and when the king learned of this state of affairs he swore to put her to death. Friends warned Yennenga, and so she took horses from the royal stables and fled to the north. However, she raced her horse so fast and hard that she suffered a miscarriage.

  She continued her flight to the north and came to a land that seemed empty. There she stopped with her followers. In fact, the land was part of the territory of the elephant-hunter Rialle, and he discovered the party when he returned from a hunt. He greeted them warmly, and bowed to Yennenga, whom he took to be the lord of the group, since she was dressed in men’s clothes and gave orders as would a king. After a time, Yennenga came to Rialle in secret and told him of her true origin, daughter of a king among the Dagomba, and after that the two of them married in public.

  A son was born of this union, whom Yennenga named Ouedraogo (Stallion) in memory of the horse which had carried her from her father’s house, and thanks to which she had found the husband she wanted. When Ouedraogo was fifteen, Yennenga sent him to visit his grandfather in the south. His grandfather was delighted, and gave him rich gifts of horses and cattle.

  He returned accompanied by many people, because the land of the Dagomba was overpopulated, and with them he founded the town now known as Tenkodogo. He married a number of women, and placed the sons they bore in charge of various areas that are now part of the Mossi kingdoms. He died while travelling.

  Ouedraogo’s third son, Zoumbrana, remained in Tenkodogo and inherited his father’s rule. He married Pougtoenga (the bearded woman), a woman from the Ninissi; her people had sent her to Ouedraogo, asking for the king’s help, and Ouedraogo married her to his son. They had a number of children.

  The people of Ninissi returned to Zoumbrana to ask for a ruler, and he assembled his sons. They chose Oubry, the son of Pougtoenga, who was thus of their people. But Oubry was too young to leave immediately, and it is said the Ninissi cast a spell on him to make him a cripple, so they would recognize him later and so Zoumbrana would not be tempted to substitute another.

  Oubry grew up, and eventually Zoumbrana sent him into his mother’s country. He founded a village, now thirty-five kilometres from Ouagadougou, which bears his name, and he succeeded in conquering the territory. He was the first to bear the title of Mogho-Naba, the Naba (king) of the Mossi people. Under his rule the Dogon were pushed up to the cliffs of Bandiagara and Mossi authority spread to the north.

  56

  THE DOGON OF THE BANDIAGARA ESCARPMENT

  The Dogon live in central Mali, along the Bandiagara escarpment that runs east from the town of Bandiagara and on the plateau that lies within the great northern bend of the Niger river. They are cultivators of millet who moved into their rocky homes, pushed by Mossi expansion, to escape the troubles of war, and because the cliff offers a good supply of waterholes in an otherwise arid area. While somewhat influenced by Islam (increasingly so in the modern era, when Islam is almost universal in Mali), they have preserved a traditional animist culture (the word by which the Trench knew the Dogon at the start of the twentieth century – habbe, sing. kado – is a Fulani word meaning a pagan, like the Arabic kafir) that is remarkable for the aesthetics of its masked dances. They have become one of the best-known and most studied traditional peoples in west Africa, thanks in large part to the work of the French anthropologist Marcel Griaule and his school, who have been working with the Dogon since 1931. But there is some question about Griaule’s most famous work, Dieu d’eau (in English, Conversations with Ogotemmeli), because later anthropologists have had difficulty replicating his findings. Griaule also started another controversy with his report that the Dogon believed the star Sirius to have a twin; in fact, Sirius is a binary star, but the second one is invisible to the naked eye. This report has led to the firm belief in some circles that the Dogon possess arcane knowledge derived from extraterrestrial sources.

  The Dogon are in fact far more diverse than Griaule’s team had reported; the villages, stretched over several hundred kilometres of the escarpment, offer linguistic and cultural diversity. It has been suggested that Dogon should be divided into four languages. While under French rule, the Dogon began to claim the empire of Mali as their point of origin, and said that they had reached their present territory crossing the river on a bridge of crocodiles. But by language they are more closely related to the Mossi–Gur and Dagomba groups lying to the south.

  CREATION: A POPULAR VERSION

  Amma created the world in layers separated by a metal post. He created the earth and the sky and the Nommo spirits, whom he sent down from the sky to the earth on the rainbow. The Nommo spirits are associated with water. Amma also populated the earth with beings, beginning with spirits such as the andumbulu, the little red spirits who inhabited the cliffs before the Dogon and whose ‘cities’ can still be seen high up in the cliffs, and the gyinnu, spirits placed in trees, and animals such as the chameleon and the turtle. Then he created people.

  There was a quarrel for supremacy between earth and sky. Amma knocked down the metal post that separated the earth and sky, so that the layers collapsed together and the sky crushed all the living things on the earth except for the spirits, who were not material, and the old people, who at that time took the form of snakes as they aged and so were not harmed by their burial in the earth. After that, the earth recognized the supremacy of the sky and the metal posts were restored. But the sky hung much lower than now; it was close enough for the moon to be marked by the hyena’s paws, and so low that humans could not grow to their full height.

  The separation of earth and sky occurred because of women’s work. As they raised their pestles to pound the food in the mor
tars, they would bump into the sky, and one day an old woman, irritated, pushed the sky so that it moved off.

  Amma sent down a blacksmith from heaven – one of the workers whose activity can be seen during storms when lightning flashes from their anvils – with a packet of seeds; he lowered the smith on a long chain from the sky to the earth and then drew the chain back up again.

  There are two stories about the discovery of fire. In the first, a goatherd was drawn by strange noises whose source he could not identify. He did not know it, but the sound came from invisible spirits working by an invisible fire. On his father’s instructions, he collected a pocketful of pebbles, and the next time he heard the sounds he tossed the pebbles in that direction; every spirit who was touched by a stone became visible and powerless, and the goatherd was able to bring the spirits and their tools to his family. In the second, an old woman was attracted by the fire that resulted after a stroke of lightning; having burned her hands at first, she used a stick and was able to bring fire back to the cave. In this way, humans who until then had eaten their meat raw could cook it.

  The blacksmith who came down from heaven with the seeds also taught humans the art of kindling a fire, so they did not need to keep the flame burning all the time.

  The blacksmith also played a part some time later, when earth and sky again quarrelled and Amma withheld the rain from the earth. In the drought, a leatherworker made a drum which he played, singing praises of Amma while the blacksmith beat on his anvil, to signify the power of heaven. Appeased, Amma released the rains.