onkings Read online

  ON KINGS

  observed for the realm of the Yatenga Mossi kings, the autochthonous “people

  of the earth,” as the first to settle the region, were already practiced in trans-

  forming the wild into cultivated land, the dangerous into docile elements, the

  dead into benevolent ancestors (1985: 18).10 Some or all of these transforma-

  tions indeed have their counterparts in the installation rites of stranger-kings,

  which are always (as far as I can determine) under the control of leaders of the

  native people. But if indigenous leaders thereby confer legitimacy on their ar-

  riviste ruler, they may have to kill him first.

  In discussing such an event among the Ndembu of Zambia, where the para-

  mount chief of Lunda extraction, the Kanongesha, is instal ed under the aegis of

  the Kafwana, the senior headmen of the autochthonous Mbwela people, Victor

  Turner speaks of these protagonists as representing “a distinction between the po-

  litical y or militarily strong [rulers] and the subdued autochthonous people, who

  are nevertheless ritual y potent” ([1969] 2008: 99). What is then described is a rite

  in which an enduring precedence of the native Mbwela people is demonstrated by

  subduing the Lunda chief who would rule them. For in the critical period of the

  ritual drama, the chief-elect together with his senior wife or a slave representing

  the sacred regalia of Lunda rule, al clad only in ragged waist-cloths, are secluded

  on a hut named from the verb “to die” and decorated with symbols of death—“for

  it is here that the chief-elect dies” (ibid.: 100).11 Here too the Kanongesha-to-be

  wil be revived when washed with medicines mixed with water from the river

  crossed by the original Lunda conqueror when he entered Ndembu territory. Such

  waters are maternal-cum-autochthonous sources of life elsewhere in Africa, as

  we shal see shortly; but in any case it is clear that the death of the Kanongesha

  chief-elect as an outsider is fol owed by his rebirth as an insider through the offices

  of the Kafwana native headmen, one of whose titles is indeed “Mother of Kanon-

  gesha” (ibid.: 98). The headman then undertakes the new chief’s maturation, as

  it were, by instructing him in the morality of the native society, while forceful y

  admonishing him to leave off the antisocial behavior of his previous existence—

  behavior characteristic of an unruly hunter living by and for himself in the wild:

  10. “By the Mossi kingdoms is meant . . . composite socio-political formations resulting

  from conquest by warriors called Mossi of the Whie Volta Basin. However, the

  process of intermarriage and also infiltration by settlement carried out by Mossi

  peasants was certainly more decisive than military conquest” (Zahan 1967: 177).

  11. Turner says he “dies from his commoner state,” but as he is of Lunda origin, he

  would be no simple commoner, and it is rather from this external state that he dies

  and is transformed, naturalized (ibid.: 100).

  THE ATEMPORAL DIMENSIONS OF HISTORY

  171

  You are a mean and selfish fool, one who is bad-tempered . . . . But today you

  are born as a new chief. . . . If you were mean, and used to eat your cassava mush

  alone, or your meat alone, today you are in the chieftainship. You must give up

  your selfish ways, you must welcome everyone, you are the chief! You must stop

  being adulterous and quarrelsome. ([1969] 2008: 101)

  The foreign hunter-conqueror living outside the rules and relations of human

  society is domesticated by being put to death, reborn, and then socialized by the

  leader of the indigenous people. Not that his transcendent powers are elimi-

  nated, any more than his foreign identity is forgotten, but they are sublimated

  and put at the service of the society he will now dominate.

  Hence if conquest there is, it is reciprocal. The Ndembu are hardly the

  only African people who integrate their foreign-derived ruler by a humiliat-

  ing ritual death and rebirth in the seclusion of a special y constructed hut

  of sinister décor or location. The Acholi, Mamprusi, and Shil uk are among

  others who are reported to do the like—the Shil uk adding the repetition of

  a royal exploit when the king-elect also has incestuous relations there with

  a paternal half-sister. Some form of public humiliation of the royal heir fol-

  lowed by seclusion is even more frequently reported than what ensues in the

  clandestine rituals. However, what is often no secret in the periodic mock

  battles that ritual y reenact the origins of the kingship is that the ruler and his

  party are defeated by priestly leaders and warriors of the indigenous stock—

  which defeat is what al ows the king to then claim his realm. Rehearsing the

  kingship origins in the annual New Year ceremonies, the Yatenga Mossi king

  is bested in mock battle three times before he is al owed to enter his palace. In

  the Shil uk instal ation, the party of the king-elect is twice beaten by the host

  of the original king Nyikang in ritual battles whose prize was the “girl of the

  ceremonies”: provided by a certain autochthonous clan—hence, again, at stake

  was the appropriation of the life of the land through a union with a marked

  daughter of the aboriginal population. Nyikang’s victories were also initiated

  by crossing a certain stream outside the capital of Fashoda, and were fol owed

  by a reconciliation of this original king with his successor, in the course of

  which the latter gained the girl.12

  12. The Shilluk installation involved a certain permutation of the confrontation of the

  foreign prince and the native authorities. Here the superseded kingly groups (the

  Ororo) led by Nyikang and his son Dak represented the ancient regime against an

  172

  ON KINGS

  The Mamprusi offer a clear example of subduing the stranger-king in the

  critical episode of the New Year ceremonies, where he was not only defeated by

  the priest-chiefs and elders of the previous regime, but also symbolically killed

  (Drucker-Brown 1975: 95–96). Marked by successive foreign-derived dynasties,

  the Mamprusi comprise a good example too of serial stranger-kingship wherein

  the priest-chiefs, the heirs of the former rulers, take the part of the kingdom’s

  native element. In the rite in question, a group of drummers and dancers led by

  two of these great priests of the earth, war spears in hand, confronted a party of

  the king and his supporters in the enclosure in front of his house. At a certain

  moment, the dancers, also armed with spears, with the priest-chiefs apparently

  in their lead, moved toward the king with loud cries, “as if they were going to

  war.” One prince, attempting to make light of the affair, told Susan Drucker-

  Brown, the ethnographer, that the menacing shouts of the priest chiefs were

  merely a “blood-dance.” Nearing the king, the dancers raised their spears as if

  to hurl them at him, and then gently lowered them and stopped dancing. The

  king now wept “Just for the moment,” explained a young royal, “tears come

  down from his eyes. That is the most essential part of the Damba [the New Year

  rites].” A commoner elder expressing the view of the subject people in general

  on their relationship to the king provide
d what Drucker-Brown deemed “per-

  haps the most accurate analysis of the ceremony: ‘They (the priest chiefs) are

  saying “we own you” to the king. For that is how it is. We own the king and he

  owns us’” (ibid.: 96).

  Just so, the stranger-kingdom is marked by the reciprocal encompassment

  of the indigenous subjects by the foreigner king and the king by his indigenous

  subjects. Even as the king instantiates the totality of the polity and the ruling

  aristocracy unifies the diverse native communities, the native leaders, by repre-

  sentation or in combination, naturalize and integrate their foreign royalty to the

  extent that in most African stranger-kingdoms, great “empires” partially except-

  ed, the dominant identity, language, and customs of the society as a whole are

  those of the native “owners” rather than the immigrant rulers. The ethnic identi-

  ties of both may have been developed in the course of the kingdom’s formation,

  but that of the indigenous “owners” typically serves as the identity of the totality.

  Moreover, as perennial kingmakers, these native authorities not only legitimate

  upstart king-elect who, coming from the south, would in effect reproduce Nyikang’s

  original conquest—as indeed the new king famously became Nyikang in these rites.

  (See also chapter 2, this volume.)

  THE ATEMPORAL DIMENSIONS OF HISTORY

  173

  the authority of the kings of foreign origin, they thereby demonstrate their own

  residual sovereignty—in many African kingdoms they are the designated re-

  gents during the extended interregnum that follows the death of the king. Nor

  do they ever surrender their “ownership” of the earth of the kingdom—with

  which they share an existential identity.

  The kings of the old Kongo state were no exception to traditions and ritu-

  als of their sublimation and integration by an older aristocracy, especial y those

  functioning as priest-chiefs ( kitomi) of the kingdom and its several provinces. Ac-

  cording to the dominant charter tradition, an important priest-chief (Nsaku ne

  Vunda) mediated the advent of Ntinu Wene, founder of the historic dynasty, as

  we shal see; and thereafter, no prince could be invested in the kingship without

  the endorsement of the titular successors of this priest. I am unaware of any de-

  tailed text on what happened in the eight-day seclusion of the king-elect during

  the Kongo instal ation rites, although a report from 1668 tel s that the assembled

  people threw dust upon him as he was being escorted to the place of confinement

  (Dapper [1868] 1970). It is also reported that the instal ations of pre-Christian

  kings included draconian breaches of kinship on their part: they are said to have

  kil ed one or more junior kinsmen of their own clan and also had intercourse with

  a clanswoman. But we do have a revelatory notice of the instal ation rites of the

  “governor” or “duke” of the important Nsundi province in 1651 from the journal

  of the Capuchin father Giroloma da Montesarchio (Bouveignes and Cuvelier

  1951: 97–101). Nsundi was the particular patrimony of Kongo kings, reputedly

  because it was the first realm subdued by the dynastic founder, Ntinu Wene, and

  the governorship was accordingly reserved for the designated heir to the kingship.

  Before he could take office at the Nsundi capital, however, the prince, to-

  gether with his wife and entourage, was obliged to travel to the village of the

  major priest-chief ( kitomi) of the province, a personage “who was venerated as if

  he were the god of the country.” Montesarchio continues:

  This Chitomi [Kitomi] was so esteemed that it was if it depended on him that

  one acquired the power and authority to rule the province. The Duke was con-

  vinced that if he did not go through the process at the Chitomi’s, he would have

  no power over the people, who would accord him neither submission nor tribute,

  and indeed his life would be cut short. (Bouveignes and Cuvelier 1951: 98)

  The encounter of the duke and the kitomi took place across a certain stream,

  apparently at the border of the village. On one side the duke, his wife, and

  174

  ON KINGS

  party, arrayed as though for battle, faced the kitomi, his wife, and their people

  on the other. There fol owed a mock combat with bows and straw arrows, in

  which the stranger-prince was subdued: “The duke and duchess were obliged

  to acknowledge themselves defeated.” But the defeat al owed them to cross the

  stream into the territory they would rule. For the kitomi then gave the duke

  a hand across, and his wife did the same for the duke’s consort. Comments

  Montesarchio: “Without that ceremony, the duke would not be able to cross

  the stream” (ibid.).

  The following day featured something of a reversal of the stranger-prince’s

  defeat in what appears to have been the symbolic form of a sexual conquest:

  “The next morning, the duke and his wife lay down on the ground before the

  door of the Kitomi’s house. The Kitomi and his wife came out of their house,

  took off their clothes so as to ostentatiously display their genitals, then dropped

  their clothes and trampled them underfoot.” In the sequel, the priest-chief

  poured some water on the earth to make a muddy mixture with which, “as if it

  were blessed earth,” he daubed the duke and his wife. The latter pair thereupon

  gave all their clothes to the priest-chief and his wife. The kitomi followed by

  entrusting the duke with several “objects of superstition” which had to be kept in

  the house of the duke’s wife, “to be worshipped there as if they were sacred relics,

  if not more” (ibid.). He also gave him a certain firebrand from which “everyone”

  would light their fire; it had to be taken to the Nsundi capital, distant some six

  days’ march. The firebrand also had to be kept in the house of the duke’s wife.

  Thus ends the account of the ceremonies.

  To comment only on the obvious: the stranger-prince is able to gain the

  rule solely on the condition of his own submission to the native priest-chief,

  god of the country, owner of the earth. There will be reason to suppose from

  comparable notices elsewhere that the remoteness of the kitomi’s village from

  Mbanza Nsundi, the capital, indicates that it is an old cultic center, the foyer

  of some of the earliest inhabitants of Nsundi. In any case, it is in this capac-

  ity that the kitomi and his spouse—the protagonists are conjugal pairs, as if to

  signify the reproductive aspects of the rites—offer themselves sexually as “wife”

  to the princely couple. Anointing the latter with earth mixed with water, the

  iconic patrimony of the autochthonous people, the kitomi,at once naturalizes

  the foreign royals, conveys the territory to them—and perhaps humiliates them.

  We are not told whether the clothes given by the princely pair to the kitomi and

  wife had special value. In any event, the firebrand the stranger king then receives

  THE ATEMPORAL DIMENSIONS OF HISTORY

  175

  from the kitomi, by which he will rekindle the hearths of the Nsundi people,

  implies he has become an inseminating source of their fertility of the land,

  analogously to his union with their priestly repres
entative. Speaking of notices

  of such priest-chiefs in early missionary texts, Anne Hilton writes: “The kitomi

  also maintained one or two fires, which were closely associated with fertility, and

  sold firebrands to supplicants” (1985: 25).

  Hilton also comments on this ritual by reference to another, more general-

  ized seventeenth-century account in which “the kitomi was said to tread the

  governor under his feet ‘to demonstrate he must be subject’ and the governor

  swore perpetual obedience” (ibid.: 47). In essence, the ritual consists of a transfer

  of sovereignty in the course of which the stranger-prince is appropriated by the

  native owners of the land, and vice versa. This recursive theme of royal ceremony

  and collective memory is not false historical consciousness, but rather, to bor-

  row a phrase from Clifford Geertz, it is “a model of and for” cultural order and

  historical action.

  ON CROSSING THE RIVER AND MARRYING THE LAND

  Not to forget a fundamental episode in the installation of the Duke of Nsundi

  in the role of stranger-prince: the crossing of the river. Crossing the river to

  take possession of the land is rather like marriage of the stranger-prince with a

  ranking woman of the native people that engenders the ruling chief. Symboli-

  cally, the crossing and the marriage are versions of one another. The similarities

  are cosmological at the same time they are political. For such very reasons, some

  Western scholars think they are not historical. They can’t be real.

  The genealogy of the founder of the Shilluk kingdom, Nyikang, leads back

  to the heavens and God (Juok) on the paternal side, and on the maternal, to

  earthly rivers. “His mother Nyikaya is associated with all riverine phenomena

  and beings, first and foremost with the crocodile, and she is associated with

  fertility and childbirth” (Schnepel 1988: 448). Nyikang is searched for in the

  White Nile at the beginning of the Shilluk installation rites, in the course of

  which he will be instantiated in the king. One of Nyikang’s titles is in fact

  “Son of the River.” Another is “The Crosser of the River,” referring to Nyikang’s

  initial traverse of the Bahr-el-Ghazal into the territory he then conquered

  and organized as the Shilluk (Col) kingdom. As we already know from several

  176