The field of the methodology of oral tradition has become increasingly specialized and technical. This much is clear from even a casual acquaintance with publications in this area. The fact is that ever since the publication in 1961 of Jan Vansina's epoch-making book, Oral Tradition, the study of the methodology of oral tradition has become a minor academic industry among historians, psychohistorians and anthropologists. Different aspects of the problems posed by the use of this family of historical evidence--dating and chronology, reliability, methods of collection and preservation, techniques of analysis (synchronic, diachronic, and multi-disciplinary)--continue to be probed in monographs, learned journals, and higher degree theses.

This wide-ranging and laudable concern for the methodology of oral tradition has not only helped to underlie the centrality of oral tradition as a source for the history of Africa, especially of Black Africa, in the precolonial period or even in the colonial period; it has also made all would-be exploiters of this source alert to many of the problems associated with its use. Yet it must be conceded that all this feverish, if determined, activity has not established, and there is little likelihood that it will ever establish, a science of oral tradition as exact and universal in its application as the methods of physics and mathematics. Each user of oral tradition, like each user of documentary or other sources of history, still has, and always will have, to decide for himself, and in the light of criteria and parameters acceptable to him, what use to make of each corpus of tradition and of each event or strand in the corpus.

Among the goals of diachronic linguistic research, we may recognize two types of what is commonly called “reconstruction.” One of these involves postulation of a “proto-unit,” such as vowel-quality assumed to underlie an observed correspondence set, or the probable original rule of relative-clause formation. The other involves the “reconstruction” of a system or paradigm. Examples are the postulation of an ancestral set of phonemic contrasts, or determination of the original pattern of case markings. Within each type, we may further distinguish between reconstruction of the probable situation at å given point in the history of the languages (as exemplified by most reconstructions of Proto-Bantu), and postulation of a sequence of stages and changes leading up to the present situation.

The historian often has recourse to these reconstructions. If carefully used, they may be an important form of evidence in plumbing the history of the peoples speaking the languages concerned. Though such evidence should not, generally, be used alone, linguistically-based conclusions may validly add their weight to the evaluation of other data. As one might expect, the different types of linguistic reconstruction differ widely in utility to the historian. Reconstruction of the original shape of a word meaning ‘tree,’ for example, will help the historian but little, whereas reconstructing the developmental sequence of a grammatical system, with conclusions as to the nature and relative chronology of the linguistic separations and contacts involved, is likely to be more directly useful.

Throughout the entire period of the Zambezi expedition, the European members were accompanied and supported by Africans, either individually or in groups, and this essay is an attempt to list most of those who were with David Livingstone during his final three years in the Zambezi-Shire region. While the positive contributions made by Africans to the venture have been frequently overlooked, so has been the magnitude of Livingstone's problem training various African groups to carry out the tasks for which he hired them, with an end toward integrating them into the Expedition. The mere fact that circumstances caused him to turn to so many different groups of Africans in such a comparatively short period of time attests to the scope of Livingstone's difficulty. On the other hand, the problems faced by Africans in attempting to master new skills, many of which were “European” in nature, under the usually chaotic conditions in which the Expedition was immersed, can hardly be imagined. As will be indicated below, however, the African people usually served Livingstone and his men very well indeed.

Five groups of Africans will be considered: Krumen, Kololo, Sena men, “Johanna” men, and Shupanga men. In addition to delineating briefly their respective periods of service and mentioning in general terms the contributions each people made, an attempt will be made to list their personal names.

L'histoire sociale et l'histoire des mentalités permettent certainement de mieux évaluer les rapports qui se créent entre des sociétés dont les fondements culturels sont tout à fait différents. Peut-être serait-il utile de réexaminer ces orientations historiques au vu des tendances actuelles de l'historiographie contemporaine, en tenant compte de la spécificité de la conscience des sociétés africaines qui semble poser parfois des problèmes de réflexion et d'ordre méthodologique, tels que l'ethnocentrisme et l'originalité des sources de l'histoire africaine. Notre approche théorique et notre problématique concernent essentiellement le terrain préparé par l'expansion missionnaire à la faveur du mouvement de colonisation dès la fin du XIXe siècle. Cette expansion, perçue dans toutes ses formes, a nécessairement occasionné des répercussions au sein des sociétés colonisées dans un grand nombre de domaines de la vie sociale. Notre propos, ici, est de voir comment l'historien peut arriver à cerner ces effets, surtout à segmenter les divers secteurs où une station missionnaire a sécrété une influence. L'historien doit donc, dans la mesure du possible, percevoir les données historiques qui couvrent tous les domaines de l'évolution d'une société.

D'emblée, nous tenons à souligner que nous n'aborderons pas la question de la domination culturelle d'une religion sur une autre, telle qu'on pourrait le faire pour le christianisme au cours de la situation coloniale. Au niveau de la dynamique des groupes en présence, nous serons plutôt porté à essayer de comprendre les mouvements d'interaction culturelle produit par l'installation d'une station missionnaire dans un endroit déterminé et d'en dégager les facteurs qui permettront à l'historien de faire une histoire des mentalités.

This paper attempts to examine specific problems encountered with the collection and interpretation of oral traditions in Sierra Leone and ways in which these were approached. I will suggest with examples that problems facing oral traditions are not always peculiar to them, as the researcher with written sources faces some similar problems.

Much has been said about methodology in collecting oral tradition for it to warrant much discussion here. One point that has been, brought out, however, is that methods which work well for one situation might prove disastrous or unproductive in another. It is thus necessary to bring out specific examples of situations encountered so as to improve our knowledge of the possible variety of approaches that could be used, while emphasizing that the researcher, as a detective, should have enough room for initiative.

For the past eight years, I have been collecting oral histories from among the Yalunka (Dialonke) and Koranko of Upper Guinea, both southern Mande peoples, and the Limba and Temne, grouped under the ‘West Atlantic.’ Extensive exploration into written sources has indicated that similar problems arise in both cases. In both situations, the human problem was evident. For the oral traditionist this problem is more alive as he is dealing first hand with human beings. A number of factors therefore, like his appearance, approach to his informants, his ability to ‘identify’ with the society in question, may affect the information he receives. These could provide reasons for distortion which are not necessarily present with written sources.

In 1680 Jean Barbot made the following observation about the religious institutions found in the Slave Coast Ewe communities of Keta and Anlo: “Their…religion [is] much the same as on the Gold Coast, only they have a vast quantity of idols…” A similar observation was made by Danish cartographer P. Thøning on his 1802 map of the lower Volta, when he described a site near the Anlo capitol of Anloga, as an “Amegase fetisch-plads,” an important religious shrine. Subsequently this shrine was identified as that which belonged to one of the clans from whose ranks was chosen the awoamefia, the highest leadership position in Anlo. In 1935 this clan, the Bate, was, in turn, described by the German missionary D. Westermann as composed of priests, soothsayers, and magicians. It is not surprising then, given such references, that R.A. Kea suggested that “the Anlo ruler's supremacy was based, at least initially on religious and ritual ascendancy.”

In 1978, however, when Anlo elders were consulted on this issue, most were surprisingly vehement in their denials of any such association, past or present, between religious concerns and the offices in the Anlo political system, particularly that of the awoamefia. They pointed to the popular traditions--those published in local textbooks and recited at annual festivals--to support their contention that the two clans which had gained custody of the awoamefia office, the Adzovia and Bate, had gained and retained the same through the “right of inheritance” and the “right of service” respectively.

Initial Development of the Project

I carried out field research in Gonja during the summer of 1969 and in 1972/73. The richness of both oral and archival information became something of a liability when I started writing up my research because of the practical difficulties involved in storing such a large quantity of information in a retrievable form. Drawing upon my work with Wilks, I created cross-indexed files to all articles and books, unpublished articles, archival material, and field interviews. At the same time, all of the above materials were coded so that they could be retrieved quickly on the basis of filed call numbers. Information derived from these materials was then carded and on each card the source of the information was identified by code number. This coding and carding enabled me to gain quick access to my sources of information, but I remained unable to handle rapidly the discrete pieces of information found in these sources. This problem was solved through computerized handling of information. In the following paper I shall present an account of the development of that capability and evaluate its effectiveness and potential in historical research.

All too often Africanist historians use Arabic sources without serious consideration of the circumstances surrounding their composition. Many historians have used the Kano Chronicle, for example, as a primary source for fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Hausaland. Since it is a history of the kings of Kano, organized by reign, one could assume that successive writers, contemporaneous with the reigns, produced a documentary record of their era which was perpetuated by subsequent contributors to the chronicle. Murray Last's recent analysis reveals, however, that one man compiled the Kano Chronicle during the mid-seventeenth century, and that it was updated by subsequent writers a few reigns at a time. Although many historians found it convenient and advantageous to assume that the Kano Chronicle was a reliable primary source, Last clearly demonstrates the need for close textual analysis of any Arabic source used for historical reconstruction.

B.G. Martin errs in the opposite direction. He attributes a nineteenth-century Arabic chronicle to a twentieth-century cleric, Cierno Malik Diallo of Kidira, Senegal. Diallo is actually the custodian of one of several versions of this anonymous Arabic account of Umar Tal's jihad (hereafter Chronicle X). The Umarian chronicles, of which Chronicle X is merely an example are one group of written materials generated in the aftermath of the jihads of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century West Africa. Host of the efforts in documentary analysis have focused on the writings of Uthman dan Fodio, Muhammad Bello, and other members of the Sokoto elite.

One of the most curious aspects of Sudanese historiography is that it has almost completely ignored the ongoing attempts to apply the methods of historical criticism to oral tradition in reconstructing the African past. Though an awareness of these attempts on the part of Sudanese historians is not lacking, it has not gone beyond vague indications, casual remarks, and limited use of oral data. This paper investigates the apathy of Sudanese historiography with respect to oral traditions, drawing on articles on the writing of history in the Sudan, as well as on historical writings that have actually made use of oral traditions.

Sudanese historiography here means writings by Sudanese on history-writing in the Sudan; general histories of the Sudan; and local histories of the Northern Sudan. The history of the Southern Sudan is excluded because the contribution of oral tradition in reconstructing the history of this region has been markedly different. I also distinguish between traditional (biographers, genealogists, etc.) and amateur historians on the one hand and modern historians on the other. The modern historians, with whom this article will deal exclusively, are graduates of the Department of History in the University of Khartoum (or a similar university by extension), which was established in the late 1940s,and who have been exposed to the Western critical spirit and modern techniques of historical research and writing.2 Unlike the modern historians, traditional and amateur historians have always made use of both oral traditions and written sources.

The ethnographic record of Africa, on which anthropologists and historicans rely, is drawn from accounts of widely varying quality written by observers of varying ability. It is frequently distorted, and while we often suspect distortion in specific accounts, we are not always able to pinpoint how that distortion occurred or on what sources it was based. For this reason any use of the ethnographic record must include some form of source criticism if the modern researcher is to have any hope of assessing the quality of the ethnography, or even of discovering just what the record records.

“We knew that truth is to be had,” wrote Collingwood, “not by swallowing what our authorities tell us, but by criticizing it,” and modern anthropologists apply this principle in their theoretical reassessments of the classic ethnographies of their predecessors. Many reinterpretations of the works of such anthropologists as Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard have drawn on other sources in the ethnographic record to make their criticisms. But in general anthropologists have found it easier to confine themselves to examining intellectual influences on scholarly works by tracing the genealogy of academic theories, than to investigate what shaped the thoughts and observations of non-academics. The works of soldiers and administrators, for instance, have not always been analyzed as rigorously as the works they are used to criticize. An essential element of source criticism is therefore often missing.

Whenever historians of Africa write: “According to tradition…”, they evade the crucial question of what kind of oral tradition they are referring to. The assumption that oral tradition is something more or less of the same nature throughout Africa, or indeed the world, still permeates many studies on African history; and even those who have themselves collected oral material seldom pause to consider how significant this material is or how it compares with that available in other areas.

The majority of studies of oral tradition have been written by people who worked with fairly formal traditions; and those who, after reading such studies, go and work in societies where such traditions do not exist are often distressed and disappointed. There is therefore still a need for localized studies of oral tradition in different parts of Africa. As far as Sierra Leone is concerned, no work specifically devoted to the nature of oral tradition has been published, despite several valuable publications on the oral literature of the Limba and Mende. The notes that follow are intended to give a rough picture of the kind of oral material I obtained in a predominantly Mende-speaking area of Sierra Leone in 1977-78 (supplemented by a smaller number of interviews conducted in 1973-75, 1980, and 1984). My main interest was in the eighteenth and nineteenth century history of what I have called the Galinhas country, the southernmost corner of Sierra Leone.

I conducted nearly all of my interviews through interpreters and did not use a tape recorder more than a very few times. This was partly because the amount of baggage I could carry on foot was limited, but also because I soon found that some informants were disturbed by the tape recorder, and because it was difficult to catch on tape the contributions of all the bystanders.

The analysis of the relationship between oral and written documentation and the expression or articulation of political power and interest is now extremely sophisticated for the Asante case, yet it remains obstinately one-sided, as Asante history has tended to be interpreted from the political center, Kumase. Some scholars have intermittently called for another, more broadening and less constraining, perspective, and a very few have acted upon this plea by considering the nature of historic Asante society from various points on the ‘periphery.’ Among other things the present paper is a contribution to this ill-developed but much-needed ‘view from the periphery,’ even though the ‘periphery’ in the present case is as politically central as could be envisaged without resorting to the heavily researched Kumase perspective. I deal here essentially with oral historical perceptions of power--and struggles for it and validations of it--in the major territorial division of Mampon, but first I address one or two more general points, obvious perhaps, but usefully alluded to in the present context nonetheless.

First, there is now a respectably large literature concerning the use (and usefulness) of African oral historical materials. This literature evinces two broad tendencies. One is a very proper scepticism about and mistrust of the regrettably widespread reliance on unsupported oral tradition. The other is an intellectualist attempt to divorce such traditions from ‘actual’ historical experience by interpreting them within a synchronic, often ‘structuralist,’ framework. Both approaches are valid, but they are ultimately ordained by a simple absence of ‘external’ or qualifying data. Asante is favored here in the sense that the ability to cross-check between oral memory and the written record is the most developed for all of Sub-Saharan Africa.

The entry into the Zulu territory of Natal in 1837 of the Trekker leader Piet Retief; his meeting with the Zulu Chief Dingane; the resultant agreement (Retief recovers some stolen cattle in return for a concession to a part of Natal); the subsequent meeting of the two leaders; the untoward actions of Dingane (the killing in February 1838 of the unsuspecting Retief and his sixty-seven followers, and the mortifying and widespread attacks on all the Trekker encampments in Natal); the gathering of a new contingent of Trekkers; the defeat of Ding-ane's forces ten months later at ‘Blood River’; and, finally, the discovery in December 1838 (near the identifiable remains of Retief) of the agreement, the title deed to Natal--these events, tragic and dramatic, constitute a brief but special chapter of settler and, notably, of Afrikaner history.

The treaty's miraculous recovery, the eyewitness reports of its finding, the long line of historians crediting its authenticity, and the title deed's very genuineness all came under unexpected--and unwelcomed, suspicion, scrutiny and debate in the 1920s, however. To appreciate that debate it is necessary to begin at the beginning.

The French naturalist, traveler, and writer Louis A. Dele-gorgue, who was with the Trekkers during some of the time between 1838 and 1840, was probably one of the first to provide a connected published account--after the discovery of the treaty in December 1838--of the Retief-Dingane encounter. Thereafter Hendrik Cloete, who was sent by the Cape Government as a special commissioner to negotiate with the Volksraad of Natal in May 1843, set out a relatively full account of Retiefs misadventures in Natal.

Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey (1903-72) was a man of immense ability and variety. Apart from his numerous activities in the fields of paleontology, archeology, and anthropology, he achieved prominence as a naturalist, historian, political analyst, handwriting expert, and administrator. His writings not only reflect these interests but also serve as an important focal point for future research about East Africa.

Especially valuable are Leakey's often overlooked contributions to newspapers such as The East African Standard (Nairobi), Kenya Weekly News (Nakuru), and The Times (London). In addition to expanding on the topics mentioned above these items, which included feature articles as well as letters to the editor, outlined Leakey's views on everything from the price of maize to the activities of Kenya's dalmation club.

Because of his intimate knowledge of the Kikuyu people, Leakey rendered useful service to the British colonial government during the Mau Mau revolt. His experiences were reflected in his Mau Mau and the Kikuyu (1952), Defeating Mau Mau (1954), First Lessons in Kikuyu (1959), and Kenya: Contrasts and Problems (1966). Related articles in the Manchester Guardian (Manchester) and The Observer (London) also provided essential material for understanding Leakey's attitude towards the emergency.

After Kenya gained its independence in 1963, Leakey continued to use newspapers as a forum for his political beliefs. In The East African Standard, for example, “Congratulations on Model Democracy” and “Controversial Report on Kenya Answered” defended the performance of the country's new government. His autobiography, By the Evidence: Memoirs, 1932-1951 also contained a great deal of information about Leakey's position toward Kenya's political and social evolution.

Scepticism has fairly consistently had a bad press from those in a position of authority. The usual reasons for its disrepute are not themselves particularly reputable. They generally include at least the following claims: scepticism is a negative philosophy and hence incapable of making positive contributions to humanity, science, or religion; sceptics are nihilists who wreak havoc on social structure, science, and religion; and, though scepticism can on occasion be beneficial, the idea that we do not know anything is preposterous. These attitudes are widespread in the general populace but less common in the scientific community, where various ideas such as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle or Einstein's theory of relativity have made scepticism more acceptable. Although the usual reasons listed above might be remotely accurate representations of dogmatic scepticism, they completely misrepresent Pyrrhonic scepticism, that form of scepticism which has had most influence on Western civilization.

The position taken here is that Pyrrhonic scepticism need not be considered primarily a philosophical position. Historically, it was set forth as a philosophical position but only because philosophy once encompassed all of humanity's attempts to arrive at knowledge. Today, when science has primary claim to including under its roof most of our attempts to wrest knowledge from the world, Pyrrhonic scepticism is more approp-priately viewed as a scientific position having general implications for scientific research.

It is ironic that negative attitudes towards scepticism continue, since the dramatic historical failures of social structure, ethical beliefs, and human progress have been due to dogmatic pretensions of one sort or another, not to scepticism. This is not by chance. Scepticism is, after all, difficult to use as the justification for authority, obedience, or power.

The very idea that the Xhosa chiefs and their allies engineered the great cattle-killing which finally broke their power seems so absurd that most people who hear of it dismiss it instinctively. And indeed, they are perfectly correct to do so. Yet the sheer mass of documentary evidence in support of the proposition is such that all historians who have come into contact with it have been forced to be more circumspect with regard to the “chiefs' plot.” We have to look very carefully at this evidence before we reject its conclusions, and once we have done so, we have to answer a further and even more significant question: If the “chiefs' plot” did not exist, why did the Colonial authorities maintain that it did? Paradoxically, we will discover that an investigation of the “chiefs' plot” can tell us nothing about the Xhosa or the cattle-killing, but it can tell us a great deal about the mind and methods of Sir George Grey, that colossus of early Victorian imperialism.

After nearly seventy years of epic struggle, the catastrophic defeats of the Seventh (1846-47) and Eighth (1850-53) Frontier Wars finally broke the military capacity of the Xhosa people to resist the Colonial advance from the Cape of Good Hope. Their political structures fragmented by partial incorporation into the Crown Colony of British Kaffraria; their belief structures fractured by the victories of missionary teaching and European technology; the slender remnants of their economic resources decimated by the onslaught of the lung-sickness epizootic in their cattle from 1855, the Xhosa turned, as other peoples have done in like situations, to millennarian hopes.

In the 1960s, when the use of non-documentary sources of evidence to reconstruct history in Africa first achieved prominence, physical anthropology was thought to offer some potential. Of particular interest to African historians was the new genetic approach, with its emphasis on comparative studies of blood group distributions. This resulted in several papers in books and journals of African history, where the promise of these new physical anthropological techniques was pointed out to historians. The influence of these early articles has waned, however, and recent books on historical method in Africa give physical anthropology little prominence.

References to physical anthropology in the book by Thomas Spear, for instance, a book that introduces “historical method” in Africa, are relegated to the chapter on “the archaeological record” and are perfunctory. In particular there is a failure to appreciate the implications of the fundamental difference between the analysis of excavated human biological remains--a branch of physical anthropology which has much in common with archeology--and the deduction of more recent evolutionary and non-evolutionary history from the comparative analysis of the biological characteristics of living peoples--a branch of physical anthropology that is much more similar to linguistics than to archeology.

Three mid-nineteenth century English travellers, F.E. Forbes, R.F. Burton, and J.A. Skertchly, published books which contain detailed descriptions of the way in which the Dahoman state was then organized. The three authors' works, when taken together, form the most coherent, best researched, precolonial account of the Dahoman kingdom.

Dahomey's more recent historians, while purporting to rely on Forbes', Burton's, and Skertchly's evidence, have nevertheless advanced arguments which are incompatible with that evidence. The three authors believed that Dahomey was an Abomey area slave-raiding community, whereas the kingdom's new historians claim that Dahomey was a European-like nation state. They have, it appears, while searching for their new interpretations, lost sight of their source material. As a means of drawing attention back to these sources there follows an analysis of Forbes', Burton's, and Skertchly's testimony.

F.E. Forbes was a naval officer who became interested in Dahomey while serving on board one of the anti-slave squadron's ships. R.F. Burton, the well-known explorer and author, made a study of the kingdom while he held the position of British Consul for the Bight of Biafra. J.A. Skertchly was an entomologist who developed an interest in Dahomey while on a West African specimen collecting trip.

Forbes gathered his material in 1849/50, while Burton collected his in 1863/64. Both visited Dahomey as members of anti-slave trade factfinding missions and both considered that their instructions obliged them to find out as much as they could about the way in which the kingdom was organized. Forbes' and Burton's books are published versions of their official reports.3 Skertchly, who collected his evidence in 1871, had intended to spend only about a week in Dahomey but was detained there for almost eight months, during which he was unable to collect specimens.

Semei Kakungulu enjoyed at least nine lives in the area of the Uganda Protectorate immediately before, during, and after the imposition of British protectorate rule there at the close of last century, in his successive roles as elephant hunter, guerrilla leader, Ganda chief, border warlord, British ally in military campaigns, “native collector,” colonial client-king, President of the Busoga Lukiko, and leader of the anti-medicine Bamalaki and Bayudaya separatist sects. The purpose of these notes, however, is not to provide more details about these successive phases in Kakungulu's extraordinary career, but rather to comment briefly on the nine major surviving vernacular accounts of his very full life.

John Rowe remarks that “it was natural that biographies, particularly of men of heroic proportions, should also [have been] mobilized in the struggle against moral decline” after the First World War by Ganda vernacular authors, along with works of moral admonition and military memoir once uncritical admiration for British Christianity gave way to a more guarded and wary respect for things British with the increased penetration of Buganda by both British rule and mercantile capitalism. Rowe may also be right in saying that the many biographies of Kakungulu in Luganda “may have reflected the particular attraction of a non-conforming heroic figure who turned his back on the ‘establishment,’ carved a kingdom for himself in the east and virtually thumbed his nose at Apolo Kagwa and the British.” Certainly, this is a major attraction as regards my biographical interest in the man! But, as I hope the following notes on his nine principal vernacular lives may indicate, there are also other explanations.

One of the most prevalent and widely-accepted themes in the history of the Mandinka of Senegambia concerns the great Mandinka migrations--the westward movement of large groups of people that included the distant ancestors of today's Senegambian Mandinka population. The migrants are supposed to have come from traditional Manding homelands east and southeast of present locations of Mandinka peoples in Senegambia; conquest and longterm settlement were the ususal results of these migrations.

For over a century scholarly (and not so scholarly) works dealing with the western Mandinka have shown acceptance as fact and included discussions at varying length of the early westward migrations. At a 1980 conference in Dakar, which historians, linguists, anthropologists, traditionists, and others from four continents attended, considerable time actually went toward discussing and disputing the specific routes the major migrant leaders took and toward attempting to work out paradigms of the various “waves” of Mandinka migration. And lest I appear too smug in my implied criticism of studies of these migrations, I should admit that I, too, have written of the phenomena in ways that could be interpreted as scholarly discussion of their causes, timing, and (gulp) even their “flow.”

The major reason for the widespread acceptance of early Mandinka westward migrations and subsequent conquest and settlement--aside from the present ethnic and linguistic arrangement of the western Mandinka--is, of course, the frequency with which one hears tales of such in Senegambian traditions of origin. It is a rare Gambian Mandinka oral narrative--whether focusing on the history of a state, a village, or a separate lineage--that does not begin with where the ancestors originated.