Dagara <i>bagr</i>: ritualising myth of social foundation

Tengan, Alexis B.

doi:10.2307/1160877

Cited by 3 publications

References 8 publications

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The Kamba War: Foundation Narratives, Ethnogenesis, and the Invention of the Zaramo in Precolonial East Africa

Owens¹

2012

Ethnohistory

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This article focuses on narratives told by the Zaramo people of east central Tanzania, the largest ethnic group in the regions surrounding Dar es Salaam. Their tradition includes a founder-leader known as Pazi Kilama or Pazi Kibwe Banduka who is said to have come to the aid of the Shomvi, Swahili-speaking residents of Indian Ocean coastal settlements, who were being attacked by the Kamba people of Kenya. Subsequently, the Shomvi agreed to offer the Pazi an annual tribute as ongoing payment for his assistance. Analyzing the Kamba War account as both foundation narrative and historical text, it becomes possible to recover the emergence of Zaramo ethnic consciousness in the context of a bourgeoning nineteenth-century caravan economy as well as in relation to the melding of Zaramo and Shomvi cultural patterns into a precolonial mosaic society predating the rise of Zanzibar's commercial empire as a dominant power of the mid-nineteenth century.

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The Kamba War: Foundation Narratives, Ethnogenesis, and the Invention of the Zaramo in Precolonial East Africa

Owens¹

2012

Ethnohistory

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The Dagara and their Neighbors (Burkina Faso and Ghana)

Kuba

Lentz

2001

Electronic Journal of Africana Bibliography

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The Dagara and their Neighbors (Burkina Faso and Ghana) Today, Dagara settlements can be found on both sides of the Black Volta River (Mouhoun), roughly between the 11°20' and 10° parallels. The international boundary between Ghana and Burkina Faso divides a Dagara-speaking population which should soon reach a million persons. However, given ethnic categories have been suppressed in the population censuses of both Burkina Faso and Ghana since the 1960s, this can only be a rough estimate. The region lies within the Sudanic vegetation belt of the West African savannah, where millet, sorghum, corn and yams are grown as the main staples. Migrant labour has been an important economic factor in the region from early colonial times up to the present day, with many Dagara working the gold mines and plantations of southern Ghana and the Ivory Coast. In the last two hundred years, the Black Volta region has been the site of highly successful agricultural expansion by Dagara-speaking groups. Setting out probably from the area around Wa, small groups of Dagara migrated to the north, some of them then turning westwards to cross the Black Volta river into the present-day Burkina Faso. They rarely entered unpopulated territory, but instead displaced Sisala-, Dyane-, Pwi-and Bwamu-speaking groups, who themselves moved further west and north. Today, Dagara settlements can be found in an area of about 3,500 km2 in southern Burkina Faso, where they represent the sixth largest language group. Roughly the same area is occupied by Dagara in Ghana, though they are clearly a minority group nationally. It is not easy to define what may be called 'Dagara country' (Dagara teng) in a region with many multiethnic villages and shifting settlement frontiers. One criterion for defining a particular settlement as Dagara is the existence of a Dagara earth-shrine (tengan) covering a ritual parish and served by a custodian, the tengan sob ('owner of the earth' or 'earth-priest'). Against this, however, is the fact that there are also a number of settlements where the majority of the population are Dagara but the custodian of the earth-shrine is a non-Dagara.

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Scientific Language and Thought in an African Indigenous Knowledge System: About Dagara Cultic Institutions and Frames of Thought

Tengan¹

2016

Published in IK: Other Ways of Knowing

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Dagara bagr: ritualising myth of social foundation

Cited by 3 publications

References 8 publications

The Kamba War: Foundation Narratives, Ethnogenesis, and the Invention of the Zaramo in Precolonial East Africa

The Kamba War: Foundation Narratives, Ethnogenesis, and the Invention of the Zaramo in Precolonial East Africa

The Dagara and their Neighbors (Burkina Faso and Ghana)

Scientific Language and Thought in an African Indigenous Knowledge System: About Dagara Cultic Institutions and Frames of Thought

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