Beer Drinking and Cattle Theft in Ukaguru: Intertribal Relations in a Tanganyika Chiefdom1
DESPITE the attention currently paid to certain political implications of tribalism in Africa, little social anthropological study has been concerned with intertribal relations. Yet we know that none of the tribes in Africa exists as an isolate. Even in the past each tribe's land bordered on that of several others, and trade, raiding, migration, and marriage often linked people over comparatively large and diverse areas. The little that has been written about intertribal relations in East Africa is largely concerned with the conflicts between the Nilo-Hamitic and Bantu tribes of Kenya and Tanganyika, e.g, the Masai, Kamba, and Kikuyu, and the Tatoga and Nyaturu.2 But it seems naive and misleading to picture such relations as wholly warlike. Such relations were and still are far more complex and ambivalent than has been commonly represented. In this paper I shall try to present one example of such intertribal relations. In the chiefdom of Ukaguru in east-central Tanganyika, intertribal dependence may be characterized by beer-drinking, and intertribal conflict by cattle-theft. These two activities serve as foci for the complex and ambivalent relations between two vastly different peoples.
The religious significance of Kilumi rituals, songs and dances among the Akamba of Kitui district
This is a study of kilumi among the Akamba of Kitui District. It was undertaken because no in-depth study had been written on the Akamba religious dances and songs. The study investigates, analyzes and interprets kilumi, a type of religious dance never systematically analyzed before. By filling this gap in research literature, this study has provided scholars of religious songs and dances elsewhere with some useful insights. This study explicates the factors contributing to the decline of the kilumi dances. However, it should be noted that kilumi as an established cultural dance remains very much alive to the Akamba, although its socio-religious occasions are on the decrease. Special attention is paid to ~ilumi song texts because through them, the Akamba express deep reverence for their ancestral spirits. The researcher participated in lsilumi dances, observed and subsequently analysed the religious significance of kilumi rituals, songs and dances the main objective of the study. The respondents were sampled from the five divisions of Kitui District. The researcher constructed a flexible questionnaire which was used as a tool of procuring the necessary
A Comparative Study of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu Languages
THE comparatively small number of people in this country who care in the slightest degree about the Bantu languages must long have been aware that this volume was in preparation, and have regretted scarcely less keenly than the author himself the innumerable difficulties which have conspired to keep it from the public. It is to be hoped that the obstacles to the production of the second volume will speedily disappear, as without it a right estimate of the whole work is impossible. It is to contain “an analysis and comparison of the phonology and word-roots, and a comparative examination of the syntax of the Bantu and semi-Bantu languages,” and until these are available we shall be compelled to suspend our judgment on many important points.A Comparative Study of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu Languages.Sir Harry H. Johnston. Pp. xi + 815. (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1919.) Price 3 guineas net.