Luo connection in the interlucustrine region
PRESIDENT Museveni’s recent claim that all Uganda kings were Luo touched me personally since my ancestors in the biito clan founded the Bunyoro-Kitara kingdom around 1350 AD having replaced the earlier Chwezi dynasty which had ruled the area and according to legend just disappeared.
By Peter Mulira
PRESIDENT Museveni’s recent claim that all Uganda kings were Luo touched me personally since my ancestors in the biito clan founded the Bunyoro-Kitara kingdom around 1350 AD having replaced the earlier Chwezi dynasty which had ruled the area and according to legend just disappeared.
Although Museveni’s opponents saw his statement as yet another mischievous ploy to provoke a political fight, there is ample evidence in Luo mythology and history to show that at least the babiito people trace their genealogy to the Luo either directly or through intermarriage since the group straddled a large area. Unlike other people such as the Masaai who abhorred any change in their ecology, the Luo were very adaptive.
They moved across what is now Uganda in myriad movements by small groups and covered a a wide territory. Most Luo peoples claim an environmental basis for their identity by calling themselves ‘Jonam’, meaning “people of lakes and rivers.â€
Historically, the Luo are divided into northern and southern Luos. According to tradition, the northern Luo trace their origin to two brothers and their children and grandchildren who were living together.
After family quarrels broke out, the group segments went off in different directions from the Luo cradleland, Pubungu along the Albert Nile. The Shilluk left first while the remaining group split into three sections: the Anuak, the Jur and the ancestors of the southern Luo who ultimately split in various ways and gave their languages to many of the peoples of Uganda.
Our interest is in the southern Luo whose separation mythology centres on the story of the spear and the bead and the quarrels of two brothers Nyipiir and Nyabongo. The brothers’ quarrels started with Nyabongo’s spear which Nyipiir had hurled at an elephant that had come into his field. The elephant went off with the spear hanging from its side. Nyabongo forced his brother to follow the animal and bring back his spear.
After many tribulations in the wilderness Nyipiir found the spear and some beads that became the royal beads.
When Nyabongo’s daughter swallowed one of the beads, Nyipiir split her stomach to retrieve it, so the story goes. Distraught at the death of his daughter, Nyabongo with his dependants, left their settlement at Pubungu followed by his brothers’ group.
One group travelled east of the Nile while the other headed west having sunk a sacrificial axe in the Nile to signify their separation. The group which went westwards must have reached Bunyoro considering that the name Nyabongo is revered as a royal name there and beads are important adjuncts to royal regalia all of which suggest a Luo connection.
However, there are other theories which compete with the Luo connection in the genesis of kingdoms in Uganda. The fishing stage after the hunting and gathering phase led to sedentary populations in lakeside and riverside settings.
This was followed by the spread of the cattle keeping lifestyle beginning about 1000 BC in which stone bowls and stone platters were used as excavations at sites in Kenya’s Rift Valley have revealed. These items were connected with the Cushites who originated from Nubia and entered East Africa through Ethiopia following their military defeat in Nubia.
As a territory under Egyptian control, Nubia was divided into two administrative units: Wawat in the north and Cush in the south.
By the 8th century BC, the kings of Cush came from hereditary ruling families of Egyptianised Nubian chiefs deeply influenced by Egyptian culture but with no connection with Egypt. Under one such king, Nubia acquired control of upper Egypt and under his son Pianki (751-716 BC) the whole of Egypt before they were driven out by the Assyrians who invaded in 671BC but not before Egyptian culture had taken hold in their ways.
The Cushites moved down south setting up their capital at Meroe where they intermarried with their Luo brethren and flourished in wealth which flowed from mines and the control of trade routes before they were driven to virtual extinction through an invasion by the king of Aksum from the Ethiopian highlands in 350 AD. The remnants of the Cushites moved to present Ethiopia (the Galas) Kenya ( the Borans) Somalia and Tanzania.
Could the biito clan have been composed of a band of Cushites who strayed into Uganda and established kingdoms there? There is evidence in the customs of the lacustrine kingdoms which suggests Egyptian influence such as the organisation of the state itself and the burial rituals of the kings. There is also common cultural similarities which attests to common heritage perhaps derived from somewhere else where the system of kingship had existed before.
Small movements of people must have led to overlapping of such things as titles and chiefly symbols and this could only point to the Cushites’ migrations. Early historians like James Frazer and Arthur Hocart described the African kingship and the bundle of characteristics it carried to a similarity of origin which they traced to Pharaonic Egypt before it spread while modern scholars such as John Fage and Roland Oliver of the London School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, have supported the notion of a distinct African type of kingdom which they call the “Sudanic kingdomâ€.
This theory finds is somewhat supported by Bunyoro traditions according to which the first king of Bunyoro who replaced the Chwezi is described as “black over half his body, white over the other halfâ€.
Interestingly almost all members of the biito clan are piebold (of two colours) meaning that one part of their body is lighter than the other in a clearly marked straight line. According to Nyoro tradition this means that “the spirits of Europeans have been integrated as black spiritsâ€. The Cushites were caucasoids before they intermarried with the Luo.
Whatever the truth about the integration of spirits it is indisputable that the migrant babiito found people later called the Bantu settled around the lakeside country. The origin of the term Bantu is very revealing. The Congo people on the Atlantic Ocean call a person ‘muntu’, with a plural ‘bantu’. Across on the Indian ocean the Swahili say ‘mtu’ (singular) ‘watu’ (plural) while the Duala in Cameroon say ‘moto’ (singular) ‘bato’ (plural) and the Xhosa in South Africa ‘umntu’ (singular) ‘bantu’ (plural).
The similarity of words led linguistics to call this group of languages ‘Bantu’ the term they use to designate “people.†It is now established that the migration of the Bantu people started from Nigeria which brought them first to Cameroon and Gabon before they gradually moved eastward north of the Congo forest and southward to the forest’s edge. Fishing brought them to settle along the lakeshores in Uganda.
How the Chwezi came to establish overlordship on them may never be known but how the migrants from the north and northeast came to establish their kingship is a well-documented story of conquest, legitimation and cultural assimilation.
The writer is a lawyer
PRESIDENT Museveni’s recent claim that all Uganda kings were Luo touched me personally since my ancestors in the biito clan founded the Bunyoro-Kitara kingdom around 1350 AD having replaced the earlier Chwezi dynasty which had ruled the area and according to legend just disappeared.
Although Museveni’s opponents saw his statement as yet another mischievous ploy to provoke a political fight, there is ample evidence in Luo mythology and history to show that at least the babiito people trace their genealogy to the Luo either directly or through intermarriage since the group straddled a large area. Unlike other people such as the Masaai who abhorred any change in their ecology, the Luo were very adaptive.
They moved across what is now Uganda in myriad movements by small groups and covered a a wide territory. Most Luo peoples claim an environmental basis for their identity by calling themselves ‘Jonam’, meaning “people of lakes and rivers.â€
Historically, the Luo are divided into northern and southern Luos. According to tradition, the northern Luo trace their origin to two brothers and their children and grandchildren who were living together.
After family quarrels broke out, the group segments went off in different directions from the Luo cradleland, Pubungu along the Albert Nile. The Shilluk left first while the remaining group split into three sections: the Anuak, the Jur and the ancestors of the southern Luo who ultimately split in various ways and gave their languages to many of the peoples of Uganda.
Our interest is in the southern Luo whose separation mythology centres on the story of the spear and the bead and the quarrels of two brothers Nyipiir and Nyabongo. The brothers’ quarrels started with Nyabongo’s spear which Nyipiir had hurled at an elephant that had come into his field. The elephant went off with the spear hanging from its side. Nyabongo forced his brother to follow the animal and bring back his spear.
After many tribulations in the wilderness Nyipiir found the spear and some beads that became the royal beads.
When Nyabongo’s daughter swallowed one of the beads, Nyipiir split her stomach to retrieve it, so the story goes. Distraught at the death of his daughter, Nyabongo with his dependants, left their settlement at Pubungu followed by his brothers’ group.
One group travelled east of the Nile while the other headed west having sunk a sacrificial axe in the Nile to signify their separation. The group which went westwards must have reached Bunyoro considering that the name Nyabongo is revered as a royal name there and beads are important adjuncts to royal regalia all of which suggest a Luo connection.
However, there are other theories which compete with the Luo connection in the genesis of kingdoms in Uganda. The fishing stage after the hunting and gathering phase led to sedentary populations in lakeside and riverside settings.
This was followed by the spread of the cattle keeping lifestyle beginning about 1000 BC in which stone bowls and stone platters were used as excavations at sites in Kenya’s Rift Valley have revealed. These items were connected with the Cushites who originated from Nubia and entered East Africa through Ethiopia following their military defeat in Nubia.
As a territory under Egyptian control, Nubia was divided into two administrative units: Wawat in the north and Cush in the south.
By the 8th century BC, the kings of Cush came from hereditary ruling families of Egyptianised Nubian chiefs deeply influenced by Egyptian culture but with no connection with Egypt. Under one such king, Nubia acquired control of upper Egypt and under his son Pianki (751-716 BC) the whole of Egypt before they were driven out by the Assyrians who invaded in 671BC but not before Egyptian culture had taken hold in their ways.
The Cushites moved down south setting up their capital at Meroe where they intermarried with their Luo brethren and flourished in wealth which flowed from mines and the control of trade routes before they were driven to virtual extinction through an invasion by the king of Aksum from the Ethiopian highlands in 350 AD. The remnants of the Cushites moved to present Ethiopia (the Galas) Kenya ( the Borans) Somalia and Tanzania.
Could the biito clan have been composed of a band of Cushites who strayed into Uganda and established kingdoms there? There is evidence in the customs of the lacustrine kingdoms which suggests Egyptian influence such as the organisation of the state itself and the burial rituals of the kings. There is also common cultural similarities which attests to common heritage perhaps derived from somewhere else where the system of kingship had existed before.
Small movements of people must have led to overlapping of such things as titles and chiefly symbols and this could only point to the Cushites’ migrations. Early historians like James Frazer and Arthur Hocart described the African kingship and the bundle of characteristics it carried to a similarity of origin which they traced to Pharaonic Egypt before it spread while modern scholars such as John Fage and Roland Oliver of the London School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, have supported the notion of a distinct African type of kingdom which they call the “Sudanic kingdomâ€.
This theory finds is somewhat supported by Bunyoro traditions according to which the first king of Bunyoro who replaced the Chwezi is described as “black over half his body, white over the other halfâ€.
Interestingly almost all members of the biito clan are piebold (of two colours) meaning that one part of their body is lighter than the other in a clearly marked straight line. According to Nyoro tradition this means that “the spirits of Europeans have been integrated as black spiritsâ€. The Cushites were caucasoids before they intermarried with the Luo.
Whatever the truth about the integration of spirits it is indisputable that the migrant babiito found people later called the Bantu settled around the lakeside country. The origin of the term Bantu is very revealing. The Congo people on the Atlantic Ocean call a person ‘muntu’, with a plural ‘bantu’. Across on the Indian ocean the Swahili say ‘mtu’ (singular) ‘watu’ (plural) while the Duala in Cameroon say ‘moto’ (singular) ‘bato’ (plural) and the Xhosa in South Africa ‘umntu’ (singular) ‘bantu’ (plural).
The similarity of words led linguistics to call this group of languages ‘Bantu’ the term they use to designate “people.†It is now established that the migration of the Bantu people started from Nigeria which brought them first to Cameroon and Gabon before they gradually moved eastward north of the Congo forest and southward to the forest’s edge. Fishing brought them to settle along the lakeshores in Uganda.
How the Chwezi came to establish overlordship on them may never be known but how the migrants from the north and northeast came to establish their kingship is a well-documented story of conquest, legitimation and cultural assimilation.
The writer is a lawyer