African Myths of Origin (Penguin Classics)

by Stephen Belcher

  ‘We crossed upon a strange log, soft to the touch, that appeared and lay across the flow of the stream.’

  ‘I was that log,’ said the spirit, and emerged from the cave: it was a great python, whose coils covered the ground. ‘I have brought you here to occupy the land. In exchange, you shall make me an offering of a ram or a cock and neither you nor your descendants will eat my flesh or that of my kind.’

  In this way, Koukamonzon and his brother reached an agreement with Kombolati, the spirit of the hills. Kombolati gave to Koukamonzon and his lineage the power to communicate directly with him, so that they were the guardians of the cult.

  When Koukamonzon and Farimonzon consulted the earth oracle to learn the place where they should settle, the earth oracle first disapproved of the spot they had proposed. The dove called to them again and led them further from the river to a dead baobab tree. There the dove halted, and there Koukamonzon again consulted the earth oracle. In answer, the baobab tree burst into leaf, the grass turned green, the plants flowered, and suddenly all the insects that had died around the tree returned to life and rose in a great humming of wings.

  The sign was clear. They settled there. The town was known as Gayna, and it became the capital of Dendi.

  ZWA THE HUNTER

  Like the story of Koukamonzon, and in partial contrast to the first two stories with their connections to Mali, the story of Zwa highlights the cultural continuities along the southern part of the Niger from the Songhay to the Hausa and even to the Yoruba. The story of Zwa is a fairly typical foundation story (one might compare him with the figure of the hunter in the Mossi traditions), associated in this case with the Anzuru region of Niger. This version is retold from one collected by a Nigerien scholar in the 1960s.

  When Zwa entered the land of Anzuru, he found nothing there but God, the bush and lions. He had come from Mali, forced to flee after his older brother had killed some griots (praise-singers) because of a song they sang. He came into the land of the Zarma, who at that time were ruled by Zabarkane. He encountered a hunter and offered to trade him his clothes, his belongings and his horse in exchange for his hunting equipment and the knowledge which allowed him to remain safe in the bush. The hunter agreed, and prepared for him the protective charms he would need and also made him a bow and arrows. Zwa handed over to the hunter all the belongings he had been able to bring from Mali and headed into the bush. He passed through it, avoiding all human dwellings, until he came into Anzuru.

  A lioness had gone hunting, but just as she sprang out to seize her game she stumbled, for her paw had been pierced by a great thorn. She tried to gnaw it free but failed, and wandered moaning in pain through the wilderness. She found Zwa sleeping in the shade of a bush and woke him with her paw. Zwa roused himself, saw the lioness, and then saw her paw, bloody from the thorn. Gently he worked the thorn free, and then he poured some of his water over the paw to clean the wound. He left the lioness under the bush, where her two cubs soon joined her, and went off to kill some game. Soon he returned with food for the lioness, her cubs and himself.

  After that, the lioness and Zwa hunted together, as though the lioness and her cubs were his dogs. Zwa lived for a time in the company of the lions until one day he met a man named Amara at a waterhole; Amara would become the ancestor of the people of Ceygooru. Although at first they were prepared to kill each other, they decided it would be better to talk. Zwa learned that Amara came from a village, and enquired about the possibility of getting a wife from among the women of the village.

  Amara answered that he would ask his sister, for she was a diviner. The next day they met again at the waterhole. Amara had the response from his sister.

  ‘If you wish to have children, there is only one woman you can marry. She is the daughter of the ruler of Gobir [a Hausa state].’ Amara told Zwa the tokens which would allow him to recognize this woman. Her name was Alzuma.

  Then Zwa used the magic the hunter had taught him. He cast a spell and wings grew on his back, so that he could fly over the bush. He flew south into the land of Gobir until he saw a group of maidens in a sand quarry, and among them he recognized the daughter of the chief: she wore a great silver bracelet on one arm, and an anklet on one leg. He swooped down and carried her off, flying back into Anzuru. He put her down in the middle of his lions. Alzuma was terrified, but he reassured her and offered her food. She calmed down when she saw how the lions played around him and obeyed his slightest sign.

  The chief of Gobir got no peace after the abduction of his daughter. He sent all his people to seek her, but they had little to go by: there were the footprints in the sand quarry, so they knew a man had appeared and seized her, but there the track disappeared. A Fulani came to him one day and admired one of the cattle in the chief’s herd. He heard of the chief’s loss, and went into the bush. Herdsmen, like hunters, wander far from the houses of men.

  He came to Zwa’s camp in Anzuru, while Zwa was away hunting. He found the chief of Gobir’s daughter and greeted her; immediately the lions pounced on him and prepared to kill him. Then Alzuma spoke up. ‘Come, find something better to do than kill a Fulani.’ The lions got up and left him alone. Alzuma gave the Fulani her bracelet and he left. When Zwa returned from his hunting, he was suspicious; he sensed that a human being had come and gone, but Alzuma denied that anything had happened.

  The Fulani returned to the ruler of Gobir and asked for the cow he had admired as a reward. When he had heard the Fulani’s news, the chief of Gobir gladly gave it to him, and then he assembled his army and marched out. Soon, from a height, he recognized the signs the Fulani had indicated: a great tree stood out in the flat plains below. By the tree was Zwa’s camp.

  Zwa quickly became aware of the strangers in his valley. He and one of the lions prepared for battle. He shot his arrows, and wherever they fell they slew the men around them. The lion raced here and there knocking men to the ground. But the men of Gobir speared it at last, and suffering from the iron it took cover under a bush. Immediately the men of Gobir brought torches and wood and prepared to burn the lion out of its cover.

  Zwa uttered a prayer: ‘Do not let me see my lion burned before my eyes.’ Immediately clouds formed over the place of the struggle and rain poured down on the men of Gobir, extinguishing their torches. Stunned by this wonder, the people of Gobir paused.

  ‘You in the bush,’ called the chief of Gobir, ‘I am looking for my daughter who is lost. I was told you held her captive, and that is why I have come after you.’

  ‘I did not take your daughter to make a slave of her,’ answered Zwa. ‘I was told that if I wished to have children there was only one woman I could marry, and it was your daughter.’

  ‘You have killed many of your in-laws,’ answered the chief of Gobir. ‘This is a strange way to greet your kin.’

  ‘You came with an army,’ answered Zwa. ‘I would not let you kill me first.’

  So the chief of Gobir and Zwa came to an agreement, and Alzuma stayed with Zwa to become his wife and the mother of his heirs. Other people came later, bringing skills and knowledge which Zwa and his people needed to appease the local spirits of the earth and to protect the land against the raids of the Tuareg and others. This is how Anzuru was populated.

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  THE CITY OF DJENNE

  Djenne is an almost legendary city lying on the Bani river, upstream from its confluence with the Niger. Although Muslim sources such as the Tarikh es-Sudan say the city was founded in the ninth century, archaeology shows that the settlement is much older, although the city has moved from its former site (Djenne-Jeno) to its current location. The town lies in a floodplain and becomes an island during the rainy season. Its importance came from trade: Djenne was the southern end of the Songhay river trade routes paired with Timbuktu to the north. From Djenne rock salt from the Sahara and luxury goods from the Mediterranean travelled south, while in return gold, ivory, kola, slaves and other commodities travelled north. Although subject to the various empires, a
nd occasionally sacked by the Mossi raiding to the north, Djenne enjoyed a certain autonomy. The stories are retold from versions collected early in the colonial era.

  A MUSLIM VERSION

  At the battle of Badr, against the people of Mecca, the Prophet Muhammad noted one man fighting with unmatched valour. After the battle he summoned the warrior and asked who he was. The warrior said he had come from a land in the west.

  ‘Return to your country,’ said the Prophet. ‘There you shall found a great town lying underneath Paradise [al-Jana in Arabic] which shall become a centre of the faith.’

  The warrior returned to the land near Djenne. There he found the Bozo fishermen and the Nono living. They agreed to cede him land for his new town, and so he and his followers began to set up the town and to surround it with earthen walls. But the walls collapsed regularly, and so the warrior went to the Bozo and Nono for their assistance in learning the cause. They helped him to reach a bargain with Shamawruchi, chief of the spirits of the place. They were told they must bury a maiden alive in the walls to obtain the jinn’s favour. The chief of the Bozo fishermen gave his daughter; as she stood in the pit and the earth mounted around her body she called on the spirits to bless the Bozo and Nono people of the town. After that, the walls stood, and the tomb of the Bozo maiden can still be seen on the south side of the town.

  A VARIANT

  A man named Sunta Mori was travelling to bury his sister, who lived in a town on the eastern border of the empire of Mali, when he encountered a spirit in the region where Djenne is now situated. The spirit told him that after he had buried his sister he should return to this place and found a city. He followed the spirit’s instructions; he returned to the place with followers who were interested in the new and well-watered lands, and they began the construction of the city. His followers were largely composed of Bozo fishermen. They laid out the sites of the gates and began to build the walls. But the walls would not stand; each morning they found the previous day’s work destroyed.

  The cause was the hostility of the local spirit, a female named Pama. She was married and had a young daughter. Another female spirit named Wono came to visit her, and at the end of the visit warned Pama that her husband was paying too much attention to the pretty Bozo girls who were gathered at the place where the men were building their new city, and she advised Pama to find a way to drive them off. Pama summoned her spirit slave, Musa, and told him that he was to go and destroy the walls of the city each day.

  ‘If you do so,’ she promised, ‘you shall have my daughter in marriage without paying any brideprice. Your work on the walls will be payment enough.’

  So each day Musa destroyed the walls of the city. Eventually Sunta Mori consulted a diviner and learned why the walls were collapsing. Through the diviner, he reached an agreement with Musa: Musa would be given a maiden in marriage, and he would let the walls stand.

  Sunta Mori gave his own beautiful daughter as a bride to the spirit Musa. She was buried standing in the foundation of the walls; her last words were ‘Now I am become bride to a slave.’ And after that the walls stood. When the spirit Pama asked Musa why he had ceased destroying the walls he answered that he had found a bride and no longer needed her daughter. Pama was furious, but she had no one else to send on this task.

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  THE SONINKE

  The Soninke are generally accorded precedence among the sedentary agricultural peoples of the upper Niger valley; they first established a kingdom recalled in modern oral tradition (Wagadu, known to the Arabs as the kingdom of Ghana), and although it fell in due course – the Arabs claim that it fell to the Almoravids in the eleventh century, but Soninke tradition speaks rather of drought and a migration towards the river – its precedence was recognized by subsequent states. Soninke praise-singers influenced court practice in Mali and Songhay (among the Songhay, the word for a griot is the Soninke term gesere). Today the Soninke are spread in groups from the upper Senegal river, in the Guidimakha region of Mauritania and eastern Gambia, through Mali to the Niger, and they clearly moved east into Songhay territory as well. While agriculture is part of their lifestyle, they have also been traders and warriors, working in relatively close relationship with the peoples of the desert. A pattern of migrant labour, in which men travel afar and send money and food back to their home villages, seems to have marked Soninke communities for several centuries, and continues today. There are many versions of each of these two stories, recorded over the past century by locals and foreigners.

  THE LEGEND OF WAGADU

  Mama Dinga came from the east with a retinue of magicians and other people. He came to a well at a place called Kumbi, and found a young woman there drawing water. He asked her for some water, and she refused to give him any. Angered, he struck her and she called out. Immediately, a female spirit came out of the well and demanded who had struck her daughter. Dinga said he had done so, because she had refused him water. The spirit cast a spell on Dinga, and he was paralysed; he cast a spell on her, and she was paralysed. She cast another spell, and he was blinded. He called on all his magic, and freed himself of her spells, and in turn was able to subdue her.

  They reached an agreement. The spirit had three daughters. Dinga married the three of them, and each bore many children, who now count as ancestors of the Soninke clans. But three of them are particularly important, each born to a different mother. The eldest was not human: it was the Bida-serpent, a great snake with a mane which immediately took refuge in the well. Of the others, Khine was the eldest human and the young Djabe is central in the story.

  After some time Dinga left Kumbi and returned to the east taking with him most of his family. In the east he grew old, and his sons grew up. Khine and Djabe were of very different characters. Khine was arrogant and selfish; Djabe was more considerate. Their behaviour towards the old slave Siture can illustrate their behaviour. Siture would sit at the doorway while they ate. Rising, Khine would wipe his hands on Siture’s hair as he left. Djabe would save a handful of good food and give it to Siture as he left.

  Dinga felt his death near, and decided that he should pass on his secrets to his son. One evening he told Khine, who was a great hunter, to come to him in the morning with whatever game he had, and he would prepare him for the succession. Siture heard this, and went secretly to Djabe and told him to prepare to take his brother’s place in the morning. Djabe went to his brother and found a pretext for borrowing a bracelet which Khine always wore. He used a lambskin to simulate his brother’s hairy chest, and he relied on Dinga’s fading eyesight for the face.

  In the morning, Khine went hunting. Djabe took an animal he had already killed and went to his father, disguising his voice to mimic that of Khine. Dinga took his hand and felt the bracelet; he reached out and felt the hair on the chest, and was sure this was Khine. He then led his son into his secret chamber, where he stored the magical items that gave him his powers. He made Djabe wash himself in the water from each of seven pots, and then roll on the sand: this anointed him with royal power, and promised that his subjects would be as numerous as the grains of sand that clung to his body. Then Djabe went away.

  Khine returned some time later and went to his father. After some hesitation, Dinga realized that he had been tricked and that he had given the secret intended for the elder son to the younger. But there was no way to take it back. Instead, he gave Khine the secret of calling the rain.

  Fearing his brother, Djabe ran away. He spent a long time herding animals in the wilderness. One day, he came across a very old hyena, and the hyena spoke to him. ‘Who is the friend of God whom I hear?’

  ‘I am Djabe Cisse, son of Dinga,’ answered Djabe.

  ‘I knew Dinga,’ said the hyena, ‘and he entrusted a secret to me, for me to pass on. A debt is a thing to remember.’ And the hyena told Djabe Cisse about the land of Kumbi, and how that was to be his predestined kingdom.

  ‘But where is Kumbi?’ asked Djabe.

  ‘I cannot show you,’ said th
e hyena. ‘But I can lead you to someone who will know the way.’ The hyena led Djabe to a tree, and at the top of the tree was an ancient vulture, even older than the hyena.

  ‘This is Djabe Cisse, son of Dinga,’ said the hyena. ‘He wishes to know the path to Kumbi, of which his father spoke to us. Can you show him the way?’

  ‘I greet you, Djabe Cisse,’ said the vulture. ‘I remember Dinga, and I remember the path to Kumbi. But I have grown old, and I no longer have the strength to lead you there. But if for forty days you feed me each day the liver of a colt, and give the heart to the hyena, we shall regain the strength to show you the way to your kingdom.’

  So Djabe Cisse fed the two ancient animals the heart and liver of a young colt each day for forty days, and they became visibly younger as the time passed. At the end of the forty days they had regained their youth, and they were able to lead Djabe Cisse and his followers to the land of Kumbi.

  When he came there, he found the well and in the well was the Bida-serpent. It rose from the well to greet him as a half-brother, and asked why he had come. Djabe Cisse told him that it had been foretold that he would establish a kingdom at Kumbi. The Bida-serpent said that first they would have to come to an agreement, for he was presently the ruler of the land of Kumbi. So they bargained, and eventually agreed that each year the serpent would receive the sacrifice of one maiden and one horse. In exchange, the Bida-serpent promised an annual rain of gold which would make the kingdom rich.

  The Bida-serpent gave Djabe four drums, one of copper, one of iron, one of silver and one of gold. He said that whoever could lift the gold drum should be king in the land of Kumbi. Djabe Cisse was the only one who could do so, and so he became king. He established the kingdom with its four quarters (in Soninke, wage) and it became known as Wagadu, the land of the wage.

  For many years the kingdom prospered. Every year the serpent caused a rain of gold to fall and enrich the land; every year the humans selected a young woman and a horse and offered them to the serpent. But this age came to an end.