The Rainbow and the Kings [Reprint 2020 ed.] 9780520334915

Citation preview

THE RAINBOW AND THE KINGS

THE RAINBOW AND THE KINGS A HISTORY O F THE LUBA EMPIRE TO 1891

THOMAS Q. REEFE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley Los Angeles London

University of C a l i f o r n i a Press Berkeley a n d Los Angeles, C a l i f o r n i a University of C a l i f o r n i a Press, Ltd. London, England © 1981 by T h e R e g e n t s of t h e University of C a l i f o r n i a P r i n t e d in t h e U n i t e d States of A m e r i c a 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Reefe, Thomas Q. The rainbow and the kings. Bibliography: p. 247 Includes index. 1. Luba (African People)—History. 2. Zaire—History—To 1908. I. Title. DT650.L8R43 967.5'101 80-17627 ISBN 0-520-04140-2

To Bill and Ruth

CONTENTS

List of Maps, Tables, and Figures

XI

Preface

Xlll

Acknowledgments

XVll

A N o t e o n Orthography

XIX

List of Abbreviations

XX

SECTION ONE: PEDESTRIANS, PADDLERS, AND MEN OF MEMORY I. I N T R O D U C T I O N Terms and Concepts,

3 8

II. S O U R C E S 10 Phrases and Mnemonic Codes, 10 Narrative Histories and Men of Memory, 11 The Bambudye—A Luba Secret Society, 13 Published Sources, 14 Colonial Documents, 17 SECTION TWO: FROM THE RAINBOW TO THE KINGS III. T H E MYTH

23

The Luba Genesis Myth, 24 Transmission of the Genesis Myth, IV. T H E C H A R T E R

39

41

Legitimizing Ideology and Institutions, The Bambudye—Charter and Control, V. KINGS A N D C H R O N O L O G Y Kinglists, 49 Chronology, 54 From the Rainbow to the Kings,

43 46 49

62

viii

CONTENTS

SECTION THREE: EMPIRE EMERGENT

VI. T H E EARLY R E C O R D

67

The Upemba Depression: The Archeological Record and the Ecological Perspective, 67 Patrilineal Peoples and the Matrilineal Belt: The Ethnographic Perspective, 72 Nkongolo/The Rainbow: The Linguistic Perspective, 73

VII. P Y R A M I D S U P O N P Y R A M I D S

79

Stage 1: The Sacred Center, 80 Factors in Early State Formation, 83 Stage 2: Symbols of Assimilation from the Heartland to the Zaire and Luembe Rivers,

VIII. SAVANNA T R A D E

85

93

Luba-Songye Trade, 97 Samba and the Copperbelt, 99 Empire Emergent: A Summary, 101 SECTION FOUR: THE AGE OF KINGS

IX. DYNASTIC H I S T O R Y IN T H E EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 107 Patterns of Conquest during the Age of Kings, 107 The Generations of Kings Ndaye Mwine Nkombe and Kadilo, ca. 1690 ( ±24 years) to ca. 1750 ( ± 16 years), 110 The Generation of King Kekenya, ca. 1750 ( ± 16 years) to ca. 1780 ( ± 12 years), 112

X. T H E G E N E R A T I O N O F KING ILUNGA SUNGU, CA. 1780 ( ± 12 YEARS) TO CA. 1810 ( ± 8 YEARS) 115 Succession Struggle and Dynastic Crisis, 115 Defeat in the West: Mutombo Mukulu and the Kanyok Kingdom, 120 New Tributaries in the East: The Luvua-Lukuga Corridor and the Fire Kingdom of Kyombo Mkubwa, 124

ix

CONTENTS

XI. THE GENERATION OF KING KUMWIMBE NGOMBE, CA. 1810 ( ± 8 YEARS) TO CA. 1840 ( ± 4 YEARS) 129 Succession Struggles and Consolidation, 129 Expansion toward the Northeast: The Fire Kingdom of Buki, 130 Expansion toward the southeast, 132 Kinkondja and Mulongo: Securing the Zaire River Crossing, 133 F r o m the Upper Zaire to the Luvua, 134 Kumwimbe Ngombe versus Kanyembo (Kazembe IV), 138

XII. THE GENERATION OF KING ILUNGA KABALE, CA. 1840 (± 4 YEARS) TO CA. 1870 145 Succession Struggles and Consolidation, 145 East of the Upper Zaire River, 147 Between the Lubudi River and the Upper Zaire River: Lubende, 147 The Luba-Songye Frontier: Northwest, North, and Northeast, 148 The Death of King Ilunga Kabale, ca. 1870, 151 The Age of Kings: An Assessment, 152 SECTION FIVE: DISINTEGRATION AND COLLAPSE, 1860s TO 1891

XIII. THE CONQUEST UNDONE: THE LOSS OF THE FRONTIERS 159 The End of Luba Rule, 1860s to 1891, 159 The Arab-Swahili and the Rise of Tippu Tip, 162 The Luba-Songye Borderland, 168 Msiri and the Frontiers to the South and East, 172 Conquest States: The New Political Order, 180

XIV. DISINTEGRATION AT THE CENTER The Ovimbundu Way, 183 The Succession Struggle, ca. 1870 to 1891, Violence in the Heartland during the Ovimbundu Era, 188 Epilogue, 192

184

183

SECTION SIX: THE RAINBOW AND THE KINGS— AN AFRICAN HISTORY XV. C O N C L U S I O N S A N D C O M P A R I S O N S Finding History in the Forest of Symbols, 197 Trade and Tribute, 200 Population Density and State Formation and Growth, 202 Lineage Politics: Gaining a Competitive Edge and Losing It, 204 Notes 209 Bibliography 247 Informants 262 Index 267

LIST OF MAPS, TABLES, AND FIGURES

Maps 1. The peoples of Middle Africa 2a. Northcentral Shaba Region 2b. The Luba heartland and the Upemba depression 3. Luba Empire and Shaba-Kasai extended region trade: eighteenth century 4. Luba Empire: late eighteenth century to the 1860s 5. Traders, raiders, and invaders of the late nineteenth century

4 68 69 94 116 160

Tables 1. 2. 3. 4.

Episodes of the Luba genesis myth Kinglists of the Luba Empire Royal sacred villages of the Luba Empire Genealogy and chronology of the royal dynasty of the Luba Empire

Figures 1. Lukasa, "The Long Hand" 2. Pyramids upon pyramids

32 50 55 60

38 79

xi

PREFACE

I originally conceived of investigating the history of the Luba Empire after I started graduate school, in the mid-1960s. The Empire was a dynastic state that claimed the allegiance of the Iron Age agricultural populations who occupied the central African savanna of southern Zaire during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, if not earlier. Peoples and dynasties hundreds of kilometers away claimed Luba origins, which suggests that the Luba political system was among the first to emerge on the sweeping grasslands. According to the published literature, Luba oral historians could recite an extensive repertory of oral traditions. Archeologists were developing a useful sequence of dates for the Iron Age of southern Zaire. A major linguistic theory contended that the diaspora of Bantu-speaking peoples had started in the general vicinity of the area later dominated by the Luba Empire. Finally, no one had done research among the Luba and written a book on their history since Edmond Verhulpen had published Baluba et Baluba'ises du Katanga in 1936. In all, the task seemed well worth the effort. I went to Shaba Region (ex-Katanga Province) of the Republic of Zaire in the early 1970s. By that time the Region had settled down from the turmoil of the Katanga Secession and the rebellions of the 1960s, and I could travel freely. Significant advances had been made in African historiography, especially in the study of African oral traditions. Archeological work being done in southern Zaire promised to flesh out the chronology of the later Iron Age. A lively debate had developed about linguistic interpretations of the diaspora of the Bantu-speaking peoples. New monographs were being written on the history of neighboring groups and states in the region, but no one had preempted my research topic during the intervening years, for there were still too few scholars studying the many themes of the African past. xiii

xiv

PREFACE

Luba elders could indeed recite a large inventory of oral traditions, and the archives of Shaba were surprisingly rich depositories of colonial documents relevant to the precolonial period. Using oral data and published material, I have pushed the chronology of the Luba Empire with some precision to the beginning of the eighteenth century. Important events occurred before that time, and I have indicated a formative sequence that is compatible with the later evolution of the Empire. Nothing I discovered changed my perceptions of the importance of the Luba Empire during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. "At that time it became a large-scale dynastic state, and its fame was such that groups far beyond its frontiers evidently felt compelled to claim a putative Luba ancestry. I have stopped the story at 1891, because by that year the Empire had ceased to exist as a large-scale state dictating the course of events in this part of central Africa. This book is the result of two years' research conducted in the United States, Belgium, France, England, and the Republic of Zaire. Eleven months of that time, from October 1972 to September 1973, were spent in Zaire. With the cooperation and express permission of Zairian government officials in charge of Shaba archives, 1 I was able to microfilm over 300 reports and letters written between 1907 and 1963. Positive microfilm copies have been deposited at the Centre d'Etudes et de Documentation Africaines ( C E D A F ) in Brussels, the Co-operative Africana Microfilm Project ( C A M P ) at the University of Chicago, and the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Documentaires sur l'Afrique Centrale ( C E R D A C ) at the Lubumbashi campus of the National University of Zaire. Kamina was my base of operations while I was working among the Luba. I interviewed informants resident in and around the town, and I journeyed 200 kilometers and more to the northwest, north, and northeast to visit Luba royal courts and the former heartland of the Empire. This fieldwork was the most rewarding part of my research; without it much of the written material on the Luba Empire would have remained incomprehensible. My formal language training in kiLuba, the language of the Luba of Shaba, did not really begin until I arrived at Kamina, and the exigencies of time and money forced me to learn the language while doing my fieldwork. I only began to feel comfortable with the language as I was about to leave Zaire, and this meant that I

PREFACE

XV

had to work closely with an interpreter. The majority of my research was done with the assistance of Mbombo Ngoye Kaluhunga, who came originally from a village near the town of Kaniama. His mother tongue is kiLuba, he is fluent in French, and we conversed in French. He had just completed his sophomore year in chemistry at the National University of Zaire and was on leave from the University during the period of our work together. Permission to interview at a court was granted by the king, and informants were often recommended by the king or one of his titleholders. No apparent attempt was made to inhibit or restrict my field inquiries, and requests to interview both court personnel and people at outlying villages were always granted. Only once did I have a problem in talking to informants, and that was at the court of Mutombo Mukulu, where rivalry among three royal lineages made the recitation of historical information a particularly touchy political issue. Sometimes my interpreter and I conducted group interviews to gather data on ethnography, land tenure, salt production, etc. This information is cited in the footnotes as "Field inquiry," with location and date. Most interviews, though, were conducted privately with an informant in his own compound; rarely was I forced by circumstances to conduct group interviews about historical subjects. The amount of time spent at a court or village varied, from a day to as much as two weeks. I repaid obligations to some people with transportation and gifts in kind. Most interviews were paid for by a combination of cash and gifts. The usual payment for an interview was 30 to 35 makuta (100 makuta = 1 zaire = $1.15 on the international currency market of the time), although courtesy sometimes demanded that I pay as much as one zaire for a long interview. My need for an interpreter dictated the interview procedures. Important informants were interviewed for several days, and I conducted follow-up interviews whenever possible. My interpreter and I started out with several question-and-answer sessions. Our exchanges in French were recorded on tape and typed, in English, as field notes within an hour or two of the interview. Information obtained in this way is cited in the footnotes as "interview," with name of informant(s), location of interview, and date. During the question-and-answer sessions, we determined wheth-

xvi

PREFACE

er an informant was capable of giving a formal narrative testimony for tape recording. Informants were usually more than willing to provide these testimonies for the sake of accuracy. My interpreter made a transcript of the taped oral testimony and then wrote a word-for-word French translation directly below each line of kiLuba. Working from his transcription, he would next tape an oral prose translation of the testimony in French. As my kiLuba improved I made spot-checks of his transcriptions and was more than satisfied with their quality. Next, I typed an English translation of the testimony from the kiLuba transcription and the written and spoken French translations. Points in the taped testimonies that baffled me were clarified in subsequent interviews. In this way approximately twenty hours of taped testimonies were collected. 2 The documented tape collection, along with about eight hours of recorded music, is listed as "Thomas Q. Reefe with Mbombo Ngoye Kaluhunga, 'Oral History and Music of the Luba People of the Republic of Zaire: Tape Recordings and Documentation' (Chapel Hill, 1976), 12 tapes and 807 pages." This collection has been deposited with the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University, and a copy is to be deposited at CERDAC. The taped testimonies in this collection are listed in the footnotes by informant's name, place and date of recording, and tape code; thus, the notation "Nsenga Banza, Kabongo village, 23 April 1973, T6 II" refers to the testimony of nsenga Banza recorded at Kabongo village on 23 April 1973, which can be found in the collection on Tape #6 as Item #1. In addition, kiLuba transcriptions and English translations of praise phrases have been appended to the documentation for this collection.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work is a revision of my Ph.D. dissertation, which was accepted in 1975 by the University of California at Berkeley. The research and writing of the thesis were carried out under the supervision of Raymond Kent, Elizabeth Colson, and Martin Klein, whose advice and support I have appreciated for many years. The finances for my research were pieced together from a number of sources, to all of which I am grateful. The University of California at Berkeley provided me with a travel grant, and I was awarded a timely grant from the Mabelle McLeod Lewis Memorial Fund. The Veterans Administration provided benefits, and my bank lent me some money. Above all I thank the members of my extended family who dipped into their private resources to lend me money in truly African-like gestures of communal generosity: William and Rose Wayne, and Quentin Brown. Jan Vansina, Andrew Roberts, Joseph Miller, Roy Willis, and David Patterson took the time to read my dissertation and comment upon it before it was revised for publication, and I hope that all of them realize my gratitude. I, of course, remain responsible for the contents of the book, with whatever shortcomings it may contain. I was affiliated with the Lubumbashi campus of the National University of Zaire as a Research Associate, and its staff and student body helped me and my family in innumerable ways. I am especially appreciative of the support of Kabongo Ilunga, Valentin and Elizabeth Mudimbe, Jean-Claude Willame, Guy de Plaen, and Jean-Luc Vellut. I thank N'Dua Solol Kanampumb and Shaje'a Tshiluila for their willingness to share their information on the Lunda and Songye, respectively, as well as Walter van Dorpe for his help with some Dutch translations. Robert Schechter, Jeffrey Hoover, John Yoder, and Pierre de xvii

xviii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Maret all did doctoral research among near and distant neighbors of the Luba. They were kind enough to look over my dissertation and share their research results with me. I hope I have stolen none of their thunder by reporting and footnoting portions of some of their works. John Studstill, David and Bronwen Womersley, and Everett and Vera Woodcock all helped smooth my family's transition to life in Kamina, and my wife and I remember their many kindnesses with affection. John and David, in particular, offered invaluable advice that accelerated my field research, and I am also appreciative of Theodore Theuws's letters containing useful tips about working at Kamina. Two former residents of the town deserve special mention: I am deeply grateful to Harold Womersley, who has shared with me both his insights from forty-seven years of mission work among the Luba, and his own books and manuscript on Luba history; and I must also thank E. d'Orjo de Marchovelette for granting me an interview and outlining his quarter-century of colonial service. The Zairian government officials who assisted me are too numerous to mention here. However, special acknowledgment must go to those who granted me access to the archives under their control. My research brought me into contact with leaders of Luba society, and there is no way I can repay the four Luba kings whose cooperation made my fieldwork possible: Kasongo Nyembo, Kabongo, Kinkondja, and Mutombo Mukulu. There are dozens of Luba informants to whom I am grateful, and four men deserve special recognition: kyoni Ngoye, kyoni Kumwimbe, nsenga Banza, and tshikala Mwamba. If there was anyone who had his patience tested during my fieldwork, it was Mbombo Ngoye Kaluhunga, my interpreter. I owe him a personal debt, and I think of our work together as a professional collaboration in the investigation of a subject in which we had a mutual interest. Laurie Christesen and Mandy Hollowell typed drafts and the final manuscript for this book as well as other things I have written. I appreciate their initiative and attention to detail. Finally, I must thank my wife Pat for her active support and involvement in my research over the many years of this project, and my sons Jeremy and Christopher for their patience and goodnature throughout. Without my wife's candor and encouragement I doubt that this book would ever have been completed.

A NOTE ON ORTHOGRAPHY

I have used English spelling for all proper names. Place names are listed as they appear on the maps issued by the cartographic service of the Republic of Zaire. All words and phrases in African languages are spelled according to the conventional orthography of H. W. Beckett's Hand Book of KiLuba (Luba-Katanga). Only a few peculiarities need be noted. The letter i changes to y and u changes to w before vowels. I have used the letter p, as in mulopwe (sacral king), but it should be kept in mind that p undergoes a sound shift to h among the Luba living in the former heartland of the Empire.

xix

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ARSOM ASRHL AZKamina AZM-N BJIDCC CEPSI DCBAPRS IRCB MR AC MRCB

xx

Academie Royale des Sciences d'Outre-Mer Archive of the Sous-Région du Haut-Lomami Archive of the Zone de Kamina Archive of the Zone de Malemba-Nkulu Bulletin des Juridictions Indigènes du Droit Coutumier Congolais Centre d'Etude des Problèmes Sociaux Indigènes Dossiers des Chefs in the archive of the Bureau des Affaires Politiques of the Région de Shaba Institut Royal Colonial Belge Musée Royal de l'Afrique Centrale Musée Royal du Congo Belge

I. INTRODUCTION

Luba land is located in the middle of central Africa, on the savanna just south of the rainforest in the Republic of Zaire. The trade in slaves and ivory, and the other intrusive forces of the international economy that affected people and polities toward the west and east coasts from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, had little or no impact upon the creation and maturation of Luba institutions. The Luba Empire was a fully developed dynastic state well before even the most indirect effects of the international economy were felt this far in the interior. Ironically, or tragically, the slave and ivory trade played a role in the history of the Empire only at the end, in the 1870s and 1880s, when integration into the forward edges of the expanding frontiers of international trade tore the Empire apart. Therefore, the history of the formation and expansion of the Luba Empire is the story of a truly African phenomenon. The Luba are patrilineal subsistence farmers who practice swidden (slash-and-burn) agriculture. Theirs is a relatively high country—1,000 to 1,100 meters above sea-level—where the temperature averages about 24° C. and a bit over a meter of rain falls in the course of a year. 1 Long expanses of grassland are broken by lightly wooded gallery forests; dense vegetation occurs only in occasional clusters and along the banks of streams. This stretch of the southern savanna is part of the upper Zaire basin, where small streams flow east and west to meet major rivers which run from south to north. The human story that follows is about the pedestrians and paddlers who moved across this open and accessible land and waterscape. The southern savanna has been sparsely populated. In this century the average density of different sections of Luba territory has varied between 1-2 to 4-5 people per square kilometer. 2 It is 3

4

P E D E S T R I A N S , P A D D L E R S , MEN O F M E M O R Y

political b o u n d a r i e s fringe of the rain forest swamps

1. The peoples of Middle Africa doubtful that precolonial density patterns were much different, for then, as today, no ecological or economic imperatives existed for agriculture to change to a system of intensive exploitation capable of supporting a greater population. Control of land for political gain had little meaning in this demographic context. Rather, political gain came from the ability of leaders and their clients to overcome distance in order to establish a degree of mutual loyalty and to share in the goods produced by the people who exploited the land and water for their dispersed villages and hamlet clusters. State formation occurred first in a territorially limited core area, or heartland, where allegiance to a chief or king and his court was strong. Control of subordinates in the heartland came from the sheer physical proximity of the leader, and his immediate access to local supernatural sanctions as well as force of

Introduction

5

arms was, undoubtedly, a factor in early state formation. However, as distance from the center grew, centrifugal forces increased in this society of pedestrians and paddlers, so that the loyalty of subordinates along distant frontiers became problematic. Nonetheless, the Luba Empire emerged as a large-scale state well before the eighteenth century, and by the 1860s its king could claim the allegiance of people living on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in the east; the region where the Zaire and Lomami rivers flow into the rainforest in the north; the Luembe River in the west; and territories close to the southern Zaire copperbelt. An African empire of such size could not have been sustained for long by the use of arrow, spear, and knife alone. An important theme of Luba history is the development of ideologies, insignia, and institutions which were exported to clients on the distant periphery and which enabled the king and his kinsmen to claim a degree of loyalty from them. The Empire emerged among people possessing a homogeneous religious culture. The Luba and their neighbors venerated their ancestors, for it was the ancestors who gave each person his vital life-force. Some spirits became associated with human collectivities or enjoyed reputations that extended over whole regions, and these spirits entered the pantheon of the most famous Luba ancestral deities. Ancestors provided a spiritual link between villages and between regions. Cooptation of elements of this religious system by the royal dynasty and its agents represents an important ideological breakthrough in the early history of the Empire. Tribute exchange between patron and client was the most fundamental expression of political loyalty on the central African savanna, and refusal to pay tribute was a serious act of political insubordination which led to retaliation. The Luba Empire was a tribute-monger, and informants talking to European observers in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century explained the former political relationship of their region to the Empire's royal dynasty almost exclusively in terms of tribute payment. 3 Manipulation of reciprocity and control of redistribution were keys to the functioning of the tribute system. The king and his subjects were mutually dependent. Reciprocity was expressed by a subordinate giving tribute to a superior and receiving a gift of equal value. 4 In central Africa a royal court was a major nexus of redistribution, for hard-to-get items produced in areas with unique natural resources were brought to the court and given to

6

P E D E S T R I A N S , P A D D L E R S , MEN O F M E M O R Y

tribute-bearers from areas that did not possess those resources. 5 There were, however, many obstacles to the smooth functioning of the tribute system. Despite the principle of reciprocity, tribute exchanges were subject to serious misunderstandings. Frequency of payments and quantities transferred between client and patron during past visits were not always accurately recalled in an oral society with no means of permanent bookkeeping. The quantity and quality of goods exchanged depended upon how both parties assessed their political relationship at the moment, and tribute disputes were part of the nitty-gritty of political life.6 It was the successful trade-offs that Luba kings and their clients made, between concepts of balanced and equitable exchange on the one hand and the uneven demands of day-to-day political life on the other, that sustained the Empire. Specified titleholders at a Luba royal court supervised the tribute payments of specified client states and client villages. These court personnel were allowed to retain portions of the payments, and the ability to drain the tribute flow was a principal incentive for officeholding. 7 As the Empire grew the size of the royal court increased, eventually becoming a large urban agglomeration filled with the compounds of numerous titleholders and their kin and clients. Important personalities came to court for visits that lasted weeks, and there was also a free-floating population of non-royal women from outlying lineages, who were held at court as pawns or hostages to the good behavior of their kin. The royal court became a major consumer of goods produced by the villagers of the southern savanna, considerably draining the redistributive capacity of the tribute system. Some perishable foodstuffs were produced in the fields around the court, but it was nearby villagers who bore the brunt of court demand for staples. Royal and prestige goods flowed into court along with mundane non-perishables. Court personnel thrived upon the size and diversity of tribute, and they travelled widely to supervise tribute collection. The erection of an exploitive and territorially extensive tribute-gathering system must be judged both as one of the Empire's historical achievements and as a symbol of its political life. Important natural resources were scarce. Copper came only from the copperbelt stretching along the southern Zaire and Zambia border. Raphia palms grew most abundantly from the Luba heartland northward to the Kasai Region. The upper Zaire River and its many lakes, teeming with fish, served as reservoirs of

Introduction

7

protein. Centers f o r the production of salt or iron were often separated f r o m one another by hundreds of kilometers. Scarcity led to trade—it is no coincidence that the heartland of the L u b a Empire was rich in salt and iron ore'and that it became a major emporium on extended regional trade routes. A s the dynastic state expanded, problems of lineage politics increased at its center. A n important subordinate lineage became bound to a king, in part, by sending a w o m a n to become a royal wife. A s more and more lineages were incorporated into the E m pire, the size of the king's harem grew, and the number of royal male children eligible to rule therefore multiplied. The interregnum following the death of the king could easily lead to a major succession crisis as numerous royal males, each supported by his mother's lineage, tried to eliminate one another. 8 A protracted succession dispute at the center could weaken the royal dynasty and lead to the deterioration of the allegiances of tributaries at the periphery, while unresolved conflict a m o n g royal males could divide the dynastic state into several smaller lineage-based states. M a n y central A f r i c a n polities have suffered f r o m these problems, but at least f r o m the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century the L u b a royal dynasty was able to limit the divisive impact of its succession disputes. The innovations and good fortune which made this possible are part of L u b a dynastic history. The Empire expanded by incorporating the kingdoms that lay beyond its heartland. The L u b a ruler was a king over many kings; the politics of expansion was the story of the subordination of outlying ruling lineages. Lineage politics is a game f o r opportunists, and L u b a kings were, a b o v e all, opportunists. T h e y frequently determined the succession in subordinate royal lineages, searching f o r reliable collaborators. L u b a kings often extended their overrule by intervening on behalf of one or another faction of the ruling lineage of a border kingdom. Lineage powerbrokering was an effective mechanism of expansion, and astute rulers did manipulate or coerce the loyalties of subordinate lineages f o r protracted periods. However, exclusive reliance upon lineage loyalties meant that the stability of the state would frequently run a f o u l of the ambition and changing needs and perceptions of the heads of subordinate lineages and their followers. Lineage leaders did rebel and sever tribute relations with the L u b a royal court, but the frequency of rebellion was reduced because the royal dynasty

8

P E D E S T R I A N S , P A D D L E R S , MEN O F M E M O R Y

created or gained access to politico-religious institutions that cut across lineage ties. These institutions gave Luba kings a competitive edge over neighboring monarchs who ruled without such cross-cutting mechanisms. Men of memory, the Luba oral historians, recall the past in terms of a genesis myth and a dynastic story, a tale about a man called The Rainbow who was overthrown by an heroic figure whose progeny gave rise to the line of Luba kings. There is history here: any analysis of the Luba past must begin with The Rainbow and then turn to the deeds of the kings. Terms and Concepts Some terms need explanation before they are used extensively. Defining ethnicity is a problem, for people use numerous and overlapping names to express their identity. Luba, as used in this work, refers to those people who predominate in northcentral Shaba Region and in a few adjacent areas along the southern border of the Kasai Region. Today their western boundary is marked by the Lubilash (upper Sankuru) River, which parallels 24° E. long. The Lomami River, which flows northward through the middle of the territory of the Luba people, figures prominently in their traditions. In the east the upper Zaire River parallels 25° E. long, and forms a natural barrier separating the Luba proper from their close cultural kin, the Hemba (eastern Luba). I do not intend to become involved in speculation about the etymology of the name Luba,9 but this work is based upon the safe assumption that people living in the area have called themselves baLuba since at least the eighteenth century, and probably for a long time before that. The Luba of Shaba are not to be confused with the Luba of Kasai, their cultural kin to the northwest. The earliest mention of the Luba that I have been able to find in print dates to 1756. In that year Manuel Leitao visited the kingdom of Kasanje in central Angola and learned from secondhand sources that among the neighbors of the Lunda east of Kasanje was a group known as the "quilubas." No further information is provided, and it is impossible to determine if Leitao was referring to the Luba-Shaba or the Luba-Kasai. 10 I will use the term Luba Empire here because it is the name by which this state has come to be known in the literature. However, I am not suggesting that it was different in general structure and purpose from neighboring lineage-based states that bear names

Introduction

9

like Lunda Empire or kingdom of Kazembe. The Luba Empire was a dynastic state in that it was led by a succession of males who enjoyed an hereditary right to rule by claiming descent in the same extended royal patriline. It can be argued that the Luba king became divine only after he died and entered the pantheon of major ancestral spirits; therefore I eschew a term like divine kingship to refer to the institution of the living king. Sacral kingship is a more useful term when referring to the special qualities to which all eligible royal males could lay claim, but which only became activated in the blood of those who underwent a set of sacred rituals in the royal investiture ceremony.

II. SOURCES

The first written descriptions of the Luba date only to the nineteenth century, and the Luba people were non-literate until this present century, when missionaries created an orthography for their language. However, the lack of written material until this relatively recent epoch does not present insurmountable problems for understanding the evolution of a dynastic state in which oral literature established essential links between the living and their ancestors. Of the dozens of genres of oral literature, place and praise phrases and narrative dynastic and lineage histories provided the Luba with most of their lore about the past. Phrases and Mnemonic Codes Place phrases are known in discrete areas and are descriptions of local terrain and resources and associated lineages, villages, and states. Village place-phrases frequently list streams and prominent landmarks that run through or bound village lands. Informants can still recall the phrases that described the locations of former royal courts. 1 Praise phrases are important primary sources, for they mark famous events in the lives of Luba kings. During the colonial period Luba rulers had praise phrases bestowed upon them by their subjects, and this may have been the practice in earlier times as well.2 KiLuba is a tonal language, and place and praise phrases are texts with fixed rhythms and fixed tonal patterns that serve as mnemonic codes guaranteeing their accurate retention in Luba oral lore from one generation to the next. These codes are remembered, in part, because they can be reduced to a pattern of high and low tones that can be played on the two-tone slit gong, or signal drum. Drummers strike important phrases twice in a row to make sure they are clearly understood. 3 Many Luba kings 10

Sources

11

and major ancestral figures had the same first name; there are several Kasongos and not a few Ilungas. A praise phrase had to be distinctive if listeners were to know to which royal male or ancestor the phrase applied when it was struck on the signal drum. The shaping of praise phrases to meet this requirement works to the advantage of the historian, for important identifying features were routinely inserted into royal praise-phrases—for example, the name of a royal male's mother and her lineage, the location of a king's court, or one-of-a-kind images of strength and power. Narrative Histories and Men of Memory The telling of narrative histories of major dynasties and local ruling lineages was the responsibility of Luba historical specialists called men of memory.4 They were more than storytellers: their extensive knowledge of the past helped to guarantee order and continuity in the political regime from one generation to the next. Man of memory was a descriptive term rather than an official title, and training of oral historians was not highly ritualized. Recitation of dynastic and local lineage histories was part of the training. A student would also be expected to learn relevant genealogies as well as information about events occurring during the lifetime of his elders, and in the course of his training the student acquired extensive knowledge of place and praise phrases. It was not uncommon for a man of memory to become a skilled signaldrummer or to ascend to high political office.5 A man of memory's oral testimony about the Luba royal dynasty can vary in length from fifteen to sixty minutes. It is shaped like an hourglass: a dynastic history begins with a lengthy account of the Luba genesis myth, the neck of the glass is a list of royal males believed to be descended from the heroes of the myth, and the base of the hourglass is a broad account of the events of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that this man of memory either witnessed himself or heard about from members of a preceding generation. The versions of Luba dynastic history that have come down to us are among the most valuable of sources. Portions of these testimonies were pegged to the mnemonic codes of royal praisephrases and other memory aids. The senior oral historians who provided the Belgians with testimonies earlier in this century and who trained the current generation of men of memory in the 1920s

12

PEDESTRIANS, P A D D L E R S , MEN O F M E M O R Y

and 1930s were young adults when the Luba Empire was still intact, before 1870. Their accounts of the turbulent era of the late nineteenth century thus came from firsthand experience. The generation of these elderly men of memory spanned many more years than was the norm for most people in a society where lifeexpectancy was short; early colonial-era informants were only one or two generations removed from the events of the eighteenth century. Two independent sets of traditions now exist that can be traced back to the dynastic history of the Luba Empire recited in the nineteenth century, for when the Empire disintegrated, the royal dynasty split into two lines. One line was headed by king Kabongo and the other was headed by his brother king Kasongo Nyembo. The colonial and post-independence courts of each line have maintained their own versions of Luba dynastic history, and a sufficient number of these versions have been written down on several occasions in the past sixty years to be usefully compared and contrasted. Local lineage histories usually start with an account of how the ruling line of a village or group of villages believes that it came to be incorporated into the Luba Empire. A man came from the royal court; he settled down; he died; and he became the local protective spirit. From local histories collected in and around the Luba heartland that claim an ancestry as far back as one of the heroes of the Luba genesis myth, the degree of integration of local lineage identity with the prestige of the royal dynasty can be deduced. In certain well-defined areas, local traditions elaborate upon specific themes and episodes in the genesis myth, and these traditions reflect old patterns of political assimilation. Local histories which recounted events during an elderly informant's lifetime were collected by missionaries and Belgian administrators earlier in this century; these records tell us much about the events of the late nineteenth century. Lineage histories have undergone many changes in the past hundred years. When the Luba Empire collapsed a century ago, its client states also disintegrated, and many areas were reorganized and consolidated under new conquerors. Later, under Belgian rule, Luba political groupings underwent another set of changes. Often new lineages were officially recognized, and boundaries of local political authority have been redrawn on many occasions. All these changes provide grist for contemporary

Sources

13

lineage disputes and the manipulation of lineage histories. Dynastic histories have been altered as well. The names of many royal males from the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century were still remembered by Luba informants in the first decades of this century. These names were recorded by the Belgians, but informants quickly learned that the colonial authorities were looking for a genealogy where the rule of primogeniture applied. If an informant said that an ancestor of the present chief or king had been a younger son, then the Belgians could all too easily assume that he was an usurper, which embarrassed the ruling lineage and undercut the informant's claims. Naturally enough, the genealogies tended to tighten up and the Western logic of father-to-eldest-son succession was imposed upon what had once been remembered as a much more complex genealogical framework. 6 Although these alterations must be taken into account when analyzing narrative histories, at least one common problem of African historical research has not seriously affected the transmission of Luba oral traditions: feedback of information from written works into oral sources has not occurred to any significant degree. Elders and men of memory with whom I consulted had received little or no mission education and almost all of them were non-literate. Those few who were literate could only read and write the Luba language, and I know of no published historical narratives in their language. All the published material is in French, Dutch, or English, and colonial documents containing Luba dynastic histories are stored in major administrative posts far from most of the courts and villages where I taped oral testimonies. The Bambudye—a Luba Secret Society The bambudye, a secret society unique to the Luba Empire and an institution intimately associated with its overrule, was an important storehouse of oral historical lore. Members accompanied the king on his journeys. They gave public dances, sang their ruler's praise phrases, and proclaimed his achievements and those of his ancestors throughout the regions where he travelled. 7 The society had its own oral historical specialists, who underwent prescribed initiations in the hidden lodges of bambudye chapters that paralleled the training of men of memory. 8 This society declined in strength in the 1930s and 1940s, but

14

PEDESTRIANS, P A D D L E R S , MEN O F M E M O R Y

although it had become defunct in the Luba heartland by the end of the 1950s, it still plays a role in contemporary research. The bambudye survived the collapse of the Luba Empire and promoted its oral traditions for an additional fifty years or more, and the last generation of initiates is still alive. When the society disappeared, much of its esoteric lore became public knowledge, so that contemporary informants are in fact more inclined to tell what they know than were their predecessors, who feared the society's retribution for revealing its secrets. Published Sources The first information about the Luba Empire to appear in print is found in the accounts of two men: Pedroso Gamitto, the Portuguese explorer, whose diary for 1832 mentions his passage near its borders, and David Livingstone, the Scottish missionary explorer, whose 1868 journal makes note of his travels near its frontiers. Tippu Tip, the Arab-Swahili slave- and ivory-trader, who passed through the Empire in the early 1870s, recounted in his autobiography some of his experiences among the Luba. 9 Verney Cameron, an English naval officer who crossed the continent, visited the Luba Empire from September 1874 to July 1875, five months of which were spent as the unwilling guest of Kasongo Kalombo, a scion of the royal dynasty; Cameron's book, Across Africa, is an invaluable source. Several military columns of the Congo Free State pushed through the Luba area in the early 1890s on their way south to claim the copperbelt for King Leopold II. One of these columns was led by Alexandre Delcommune, who has left a description in his memoirs of his visit to the Luba during the dry season of 1891. Missionary accounts of life among the Luba have been appearing since the second decade of this century. The books and articles of Colle, Burton, Van Avermaet, and Theuws are standard sources on Luba ethnography and contain numerous references to Luba history. The long-term residence of these authors and their knowledge of the Luba language show in the quality of their work. However, these missionary publications, useful as they are, suffer from one serious limitation for the purposes of this study: they are based upon research carried out in regions that had been near the frontiers of the Luba Empire rather than toward its heartland, which was centered on Lake Boya and the village of Kabongo.

Sources

15

Even the articles written in the 1940s and 1950s by Makonga and Sendwe, the only two Luba authors to publish Luba history and political ethnography, were based upon research done at Kamina and to the south. The study of the history of the Luba Empire really began in 1936, with the publication of Baluba et Balubaïsés du Katanga by Edmond Verhulpen. One of the first administrators to be educated at the Colonial University of Belgium, he served in Luba areas from 1924 to 1931. He did research at Luba courts to which he was assigned, making notes from the earliest historical and ethnographic reports that had been written by administrators working among the Luba and their neighbors. 10 Despite these credentials, Verhulpen's work has been used by historians more because it is the only available book-length exposition on Luba history than because it pretends to be the result of firsthand research; indeed, doubts have recently been raised about his methodology." Baluba et Balubaïsés du Katanga is an almost completely unfootnoted synthesis of oral sources, early-colonial-era documents, and a handful of published works. Unfortunately, the logic of Verhulpen's synthesis was known only to him. Some of the documents he used are still stored in Shaba archives, and they show that he not infrequently employed several different administrative reports and glossed over apparent contradictions in order to synthesize them into a unitary history of a group or region. The portion of his book that recounts the history of the Luba Empire's royal dynasty was plagiarized from the earliest written history of the Luba Empire to be based upon investigations in its heartland: Gérard de Clerck's "Historique des Baluba," a report completed in August 1914.12 Here, Verhulpen was engaging in a practice of literary feedback commonly employed in the Belgian colonial service. Administrators were frequently asked to write reports on local history; once a group of documents had been written from firsthand field inquiries, subsequent requests were met simply by copying from these earlier documents. Verhulpen's administrative experience raises further questions about the quality of his work. He served seven years in Luba areas, but he never learned the Luba language, and although he is known to have visited Kabongo in the heartland on at least one occasion, he actually served outside this area, and his book shows

16

PEDESTRIANS, P A D D L E R S , MEN O F M E M O R Y

little awareness of the heartland's geography and its distinctive characteristics. 13 All this is not to say that Baluba et Baluba'ises du Katanga should be rejected out-of-hand, but it must be used with caution. I do not pretend to have found all or even most of Verhulpen's sources in the Shaba archives. In some cases his synthesis of whole bodies of uncited colonial-era reports about the history of a specific region may be all that is left of the information in the reports, for many documents have been lost or destroyed. The book must also be used with an awareness of where Verhulpen served, for it is there that he is most likely to have done original fieldwork. His longest tour was at the administrative post of Kalundwe, next to the court of Mutombo Mukulu, from 1924 to 1927. Mutombo Mukulu was the Luba dynastic state located west of the Luba Empire; as far as is known, it was never part of the Empire. It is the long section—unfortunately, somewhat tangential to the present study—on Mutombo Mukulu in Baluba et Baluba'ises du Katanga which shows the greatest attention to local conditions and which contains the most original material. 14 During the colonial period only one long article on history was published that was based upon fieldwork in the Luba heartland. This article, by E. d'Orjo de Marchovelette, describes the burial of king Kabongo in 1948, and it contains his translation of a lengthy testimony given at that time by the preeminent man of memory at Kabongo's court, inabanza Kataba. 15 King Kabongo was the last surviving member of the royal dynasty to have been born while the Empire was still intact, and the only European to witness his traditional burial in the bed of a stream was Harold Womersley, the Pentecostal missionary resident at the village of Kabongo. Womersley arrived at Kabongo in 1924 and spent the next fortyseven years proselytizing among the Luba with the Congo Evangelistic Mission—twenty-one of them at Kabongo. Womersley learned kiLuba and even wrote a short grammar of the language in 1931. His historical research was done in the language and in collaboration with well-known men of memory; even inabanza Kataba, who died a few years after king Kabongo, visited Womersley to recite Luba history. During the years Womersley lived away from Kabongo village he interviewed elders and men of memory in other areas, including the chief of the Ikalebwe, a central Songye group to the north who had close ties to the Luba. The results of Womersley's research have only become avail-

Sources

17

able since his retirement to England. His books have been supplemented by a 30,000-word typed manuscript entitled "Legends and History of the Baluba," which he has been kind enough to share with me. I have been in contact with the Reverend Womersley since 1974, and the twenty-seven pages of single-spaced typed correspondence he has sent me, which constitute an important body of information about his own fieldwork, will appear in the notes throughout this book. Colonial Documents The Belgians began a desultory investigation of Luba history just before and during World War I. Several books published after the war which criticized the colonial administration stirred interest in the history and ethnography of many groups in Zaire. These books appeared when Louis Franck, an apostle of indirect rule, was the Belgian colonial minister. One of the most important critiques was Les Sociétés bantoues du Congo Belge, published in 1920 and written by Georges Van der Kerken, who had served in the Katanga provincial administration from 1914 to 1919. His critique was particularly relevant to the Luba because much of it was based upon his work among them and their neighbors. 16 The fact that he was a colonial insider with firsthand experience gave his proposals for indirect rule a certain authority, and, given the thrust of Franck's ministry, it is not surprising that in 1920/21 the Katanga administration set about examining the feasibility of reconstituting the Luba Empire. 17 However, the district commissioners and territorial administrators who were polled concluded that the Empire was too fragmented for restoration to be possible. 18 This debate was only the beginning of a serious and systematic effort by the Belgian colonial administration to understand the composition of Luba society. After 1921, a move was made to assemble official reports of inquiry about the history and ethnography of groups throughout the colony, and these reports, and documents like them, are abundant in the archives. 19 Van der Kerken had complained that colonial personnel were sent to their posts in the countryside with no language training and with little understanding of the African societies they were administering. Personnel in the field were underpaid, and some of the lowest-ranking ones, the territorial agents, had not even completed primary school. Ironically, it was the lower-ranking territorial administrators and a few of the territorial agents who wrote

18

P E D E S T R I A N S , P A D D L E R S , MEN O F M E M O R Y

the reports of inquiry about the Luba and their neighbors. It would be easy to discard the reports of inquiry and related documents as the work of underpaid and inexperienced amateurs whose racial and ethnocentric attitudes seriously biased their perceptions, but this would be a mistake. The Belgians put a larger number of personnel into the field than could be mobilized in either French or British colonies in Africa. 20 Although a Belgian district commissioner was tied to his desk by paperwork, he had a sufficient number of subordinates who could go into the field and collect information firsthand. Belgian personnel sought out the recognized men of memory at royal courts and villages, or gathered information in the presence of assembled court titleholders, some of whom were men of memory. The Belgian authorities recognized the territorial administrators' and agents' lack of sophistication, and often instructed them to make inquiries according to an outline made up by higher authorities. As a result, their reports describe local history, customs, rules of succession, political insignia, and the genealogies of ruling lineages in a uniform fashion, giving the names of the groups to which the reports refer, the dates and locations where they were drafted, and the names of the colonial officials who drafted them. 21 The lack of language training was not a serious hindrance, because much of the information was so basic that an interpreter was all that was needed. Some reports were written by administrators who had taught themselves kiLuba, and the quality of their work reflects their language proficiency. 22 Finally, little effort was made by colonial personnel writing the reports to reconcile information they collected in one area with information collected elsewhere. In consequence, their reports have the quality of undigested field notes. A single document about a village or region may not say very much, but I found the dozens of reports about neighboring villages and contiguous regions to be quite helpful, especially for areas in which I was unable to conduct field investigations. Where I did work, I found that some of the early Belgian reports confirmed or complemented information I collected. Taken as a whole, these documents and the recollections of contemporary informants describe uniformly the workings of Luba political institutions in the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century, and what they describe fills out and complements Cameron's observations on Luba political ethnography made in 1874/75. Despite the fact that during the intervening years the Luba Em-

Sources

19

pire had ceased to exist as a large-scale dynastic state, these complementary sources point to the existence of a homogeneous political system of some antiquity, upon which the Luba Empire was built and which endured beyond its collapse.

III. THE MYTH

The Luba believe that the origins of the royal dynasty and the genesis of its sacral kingship are described in a popular epic story. The tale is an exciting one, for it portrays the distant past as a period of rapid change when new leaders and their followers paddled across wide rivers in dugout canoes and swept over the open savanna to create a new political order. However, linguistic, archeological, and ethnographic information suggests that the Luba and their ancestors have long been permanent residents of southern Zaire and that they experienced a relatively stable and continuous historical evolution. Before we can reconcile the message of the genesis myth with long-range patterns of evolution, we must understand the story line of the myth and its function within the Luba political order. The Luba genesis myth is not transmitted as a fixed text from one generation to the next. Rather, it is recited in free form as a set of unlabelled episodes strung together on a central story-line. The version that follows summarizes five oral testimonies collected at the royal court of Kabongo which derive either directly or indirectly from one famous man of memory: inabanza Kataba. His oral testimonies were written down in 1929, 1948, and just before his death in the early 1950s, and he trained kyoni Kumwimbe and nsenga Banza, two informants whose oral testimonies I taped in 1973. Inabanza Kataba, born in the early 1860s, was the uterine cousin of king Kabongo, at whose court he served from the 1920s to the 1940s. He was trained as an oral historian by his father, who had also been a man of memory at a Luba royal court. 1 The episodes of his story are numbered and labelled for easy reference, and Table 1 gives a sense of how episodes cited by inabanza Kataba compare with other recorded versions of the genesis myth. 23

24

FROM T H E RAINBOW T O T H E KINGS

The Luba Genesis Myth /. Nkongolo's Origins Before the lands of the Luba were inhabited, a man named Kyubaka Ubaka ("Maker of Huts") and a woman named Kibumba Bumba ("Pottery Maker") dwelt east of the upper Zaire River. They lived apart from one another and were unaware of each other until one day Kyubaka Ubaka discovered Kibumba Bumba cutting wood. By watching two hyenas coupling, they learned how a man and woman have sexual relations. Kibumba Bumba gave birth to twins: a boy named Kyungu and a girl named Kabange. There followed several generations of twins with these same names. They killed fish by poisoning the water, and they captured game in pit traps. People moved a bit further west each generation until the upper Zaire River had been crossed and the lands of the Luba were inhabited. One of the offspring of the line of Kyubaka Ubaka and Kibumba Bumba was named Mwamba. 2. Nkongolo's Qualities: RednessandCruelty Mwamba's mother was named Seya, and he took the name of Nkongolo ("The Rainbow"). Nkongolo was red, and wherever he travelled the land turned red. Nkongolo was noted for his cruelty, for when he stood up he leaned on spears which pierced people lying at his feet. With the curved nkololo knife used to scrape out the insides of mortars, he would cut off the noses, ears, arms, or hands of people who displeased him. This is why he is remembered as Nkongolo Mwamba mujya na nkololo ("Nkongolo Mwamba who dances with the nkololo knife"). 3. Nkongolo and the Ants and Termites (This episode is interchangeable with episode 15 below.) When Nkongolo was a boy he saw a group of black driver-ants destroy the much more numerous termites, and this inspired him to be a leader. Nkongolo came to rule many people and he was known as a mukalanga (a conqueror, i.e., a self-made ruler, as opposed to a mulopwe, a sacral king). Nkongolo's court was at the village of Mwibele on the shores of Lake Boya ("Mushroom Lake"). 4. Mbidi Kiluwe and Mwanana's Dog One day Mbidi Kiluwe ("Mbidi the Hunter") came from the east accompanied by his hunting dogs and his companions. Mwanana, his sister, had a famous hunting dog named Lion who had disappeared, and she

The Myth

25

blamed Mbidi Kiluwe, so Mbidi Kiluwe came in search of the animal. 5. Mbidi Kiluwe's Wanderings Mbidi Kiluwe was carried over the upper Zaire River from the east at the Kiluba river crossing. He went over the Lomami River, and his followers continued west and founded the kingdoms of Lukungu and Mutombo Mukulu. Mbidi Kiluwe went further west to the Lunda. There he slept with Luija Konda and made her pregnant, and then he came back. She gave birth to a son named Mwata Yamvo. 2 Mbidi Kiluwe's royal praise-phrase commemorating his return from the regions west of the Lomami was Ukata ku nsulo kwa Lomami kinemo kyashibikilako kya makasu ku mutwe ("He searched for the source of the Lomami, his bowstring was cut, and he returned with his hands on his head"). That is, Mbidi Kiluwe went west of the Lomami River and shot all his arrows—sent followers westward to settle new areas. He is said to have been particularly fond of his bow, and when it broke he returned weeping as women do, with hands on head. 6. Mbidi Kiluwe at the Pool Mbidi Kiluwe arrived, accompanied by a servant, at a pool near the village of Mwibele. The servant hid himself, and Mbidi Kiluwe climbed into a tree beside the pool. Two sisters of Nkongolo came to the pool to draw water. They saw the reflection of a man's face in the pool, and they looked up and saw Mbidi Kiluwe in the tree. He jumped down, and they were struck by his very black skin and his handsome features. He told them to go to their brother and announce his arrival. They returned to the village, and one sister told Nkongolo the news, but Nkongolo did not believe her and named her Mabela ("Liar"). The other sister confirmed the news with a sad and wondering gaze in her eyes, and Nkongolo named her Bulanda ("Sadness"). Nkongolo then believed them, and he had Mbidi Kiluwe brought to his village. 7. Mbidi Kiluwe's Royal Behavior Nkongolo ate and drank in full view of his people. He offered Mbidi Kiluwe food and drink, but Mbidi Kiluwe refused the offer. His servant said that Mbidi Kiluwe ate and drank in private, hidden from the gaze of all people. The servant explained how a special two-door kitchen hut had to be made in which Mbidi Kiluwe's sacred cooking fire

26

F R O M THE RAINBOW TO T H E KINGS

was guarded and in which he could eat. When Mbidi Kiluwe drank, he was hidden by a screen held by two wives kneeling with their backs to him. When he was done he snapped his fingers as a signal for the screen to be lowered. Nkongolo then learned many other things about truly royal behavior from Mbidi Kiluwe. 8. Mbidi Kiluwe's Filed Teeth Later on, Nkongolo asked his sisters if they had ever seen Mbidi Kiluwe laugh, and they said no. Nkongolo decided that he wanted to see Mbidi Kiluwe laugh. The next time he saw Mbidi Kiluwe, Nkongolo told him a dirty joke and Mbidi Kiluwe laughed. Nkongolo saw that Mbidi Kiluwe's two front teeth had been filed and immediately commented on this unusual feature. Mbidi Kiluwe took this comment as an insult and decided to return to his homeland in the east. 9. Mbidi Kiluwe Commissions Mijibu Kalenga Nkongolo had given his two sisters to Mbidi Kiluwe as wives and both were pregnant. Before leaving, Mbidi Kiluwe summoned his wives and the god Mijibu Kalenga to a meeting. He told them if the children born were black-skinned like himself, then they were his children, but if they were born red-skinned, then they were Nkongolo's offspring. Mbidi Kiluwe commissioned Mijibu Kalenga to look after his children, and he gave the god a basket containing a magic iron ball, a magic rubber ball, and specially shaped arrows. Mbidi Kiluwe told Mijibu Kalenga that if his children followed him to his homeland, they should carry with them one of the special arrows so that he could recognize them. 10. Mbidi Kiluwe at Kiluba River Crossing Mbidi Kiluwe then returned to the east. He arrived at Kiluba on the upper Zaire River, and Mbidi Kiluwe told the ferryman that if he saw a red man, he should not let that man cross. If, however, the person was truly black-skinned, he should be ferried across. Mbidi Kiluwe was then carried over the river and returned to his home in the east. 11. Unusual Birth of Kalala Ilunga Bulanda gave birth to a black-skinned son named Kalala Ilunga ("Ilunga the Warrior"). The child was precocious, for he was born uttering his own royal praise-phrases: Kantangala Mwadi Kalonzo, kana kawa butwidile ku nyansha bekadilanga mukunda ("Kantangala Mwadi Ka-

The Myth

27

lonzo, the child who was born in the morning, he cries out"); Eami monji wa mutandabela ulupuka dito utwela dito ("I am the long [umbilical] cord which stretches from one forest to another forest"). Mabela gave birth to a boy named Kisula. Kalala Ilunga grew up in the village of his maternal uncle Nkongolo and quickly became famous as an athlete and hunter. 12. The Masoko Game When Kalala Ilunga was an adult, Nkongolo challenged him to the masoko game (the Luba version of marbles, played with the nuts of the musoko vine). Before the game, Kalala Ilunga went to Mijibu Kalenga and told him of Nkongolo's challenge. Mijibu gave him the magic iron ball that Mbidi Kiluwe had left for him. Kalala Ilunga used his iron ball, which was more powerful than the ones used by Nkongolo, and won the game. Kalala Ilunga then proclaimed himself Dikoko dya mabalajya, kele bukidi, ulengela bamashinda kulowa ("The wild dikoko fruit, though it has blotches [signs of coming ripeness] it does not ripen quickly; people wear a path in going to look for its fall"). Thus, he stated that he was invincible and that people would have to wait a long time before he died. 13. The Bulundu Game Nkongolo then challenged Kalala Ilunga to a game of bulundu (a kick game played with a ball made from latex). Once again, Kalala Ilunga went to Mijibu Kalenga, who gave him the magic rubber ball left by his father. When Nkongolo and Kalala Ilunga played the game and Kalala Ilunga kicked his rubber ball, it rolled into Nkongolo's cooking hut and bounced around destroying all the utensils. 14. Nkongolo's Mother's Laugh Nkongolo's mother witnessed these defeats, and she laughed at him. This enraged Nkongolo and he had his mother buried alive. That is why when someone laughs out of turn or in a boorish fashion he is warned with the proverb Kisadi malwa kyasepele inaNkongolo ("It was a dreadful laugh that Nkongolo's mother laughed"). 15. Kalala Ilunga and the Ants and Termites (This episode is interchangeable with episode 3 above.) Kalala Ilunga noticed large black ants carrying off termites, which he took as a sign that he should make war. He then attacked Nkongolo's people and killed some of them.

28

FROM T H E RAINBOW TO T H E KINGS

16. The Pit Trap The loss of the games and the loss of his men infuriated Nkongolo. He decided to kill Kalala Ilunga, who was sent away to collect tribute and conquer people while secret preparations were made for his return. A pit trap was dug. Spears were placed in the bottom, and mats were placed over the hole to hide it. Upon his return, Kalala Ilunga was summoned by Nkongolo to dance in front of him. The god Mijibu Kalenga was forewarned of the pit trap, and he told Kalala Ilunga to listen to the message the drummer would send during the dance. Kalala Ilunga began to dance, but every time he approached the pit trap, Mungedi, the drummer, beat on his signal drum a warning message: Utomboka, ushinshila! Utomboka, ushinshila! Munshi mudi bwine nkalal Munshi mudi bwine nkalal ("As you dance, spring back! As you dance, spring back! There is death below! There is death below!"). Kalala Ilunga became suspicious and threw his spear into the mats, revealing the trap. Kalala Ilunga vaulted over the heads of the crowd assembled to watch him dance. He ran to Mijibu Kalenga, who gave him one of the special arrows of recognition left by his father. Kalala Ilunga then fled east and was carried across the upper Zaire River by the Kiluba ferryman. 17. Mijibu Kalenga and Mungedi in the Tree Nkongolohad Mijibu Kalenga and Mungedi climb up into a large muvula tree on a ladder made from vines. The vines were cut away and Mijibu Kalenga and Mungedi were told to call back Kalala Ilunga, since they had helped him to escape. Mungedi beat out the recall on his signal drum, and Mijibu Kalenga did the same on the royal double bells: Kalala Ilunga impungwe manyema, nafu, namone malwa, namone kintu kyokimonanga amo enka nyaa! Kalala Ilunga pinga bukidi, nafu, namone malwa, namone kintu kyokimonanga! ("Kalala Ilunga, come back, I am dying, I see evil, I see a thing I have never seen before! Kalala Ilunga, return quickly, I am dying, I see evil, I see a thing I have never seen before!"). Kalala Ilunga did not come back, and Mijibu Kalenga and Mungedi remained trapped in the tree. Mijibu Kalenga told Mungedi to grab onto his belt and they would fly away, but Mungedi was afraid and refused. So Mijibu Kalenga flew away and escaped, while Mungedi died in the tree. 18. Nkongolo at Kiluba River Crossing Nkongolo and his forces pursued Kalala Ilunga to Kiluba, but the ferryman hid the canoes

The Myth

29

from this red-skinned man. Nkongolo then had his people construct rafts from the papyrus reeds growing along the shore, but the rafts sank and the people drowned. Nkongolo's people next built a bridge, but it broke and many people perished. Nkongolo then returned to Mwibele. 19. Return of Kalala Ilunga Kalala Ilunga assembled an army from among the people of his father's realm, and he crossed the upper Zaire River to conquer Nkongolo. 20. Nkongolo and the Island Nkongolo heard of Kalala Ilunga's coming. He fled Mwibele village with his followers and went downstream on the Luguvu River to its junction with the Lomami River. There, near the village of Mwadi Katoloka, he set people to diverting part of the Lomami around a piece of land in order to make a fortified island. However, before the work was completed Kalala Ilunga's army appeared, and Nkongolo had to flee westward across the Lomami River. 21. The Caverns of Kai Nkongolo fled to the caverns of Kai on the Luembe River. Kalala Ilunga and his followers approached Kai and searched for Nkongolo, but they could not find him. One day, the wife of a titleholder stumbled upon Nkongolo's hiding place while she was looking for firewood. She told Kalala Ilunga and led him and his warriors to the caverns during the night. The next morning Kalala Ilunga and his men captured Nkongolo as he came out of a cave to sun himself. 22. The Miraculous Anthill Nkongolo was executed, and his head and genitals were severed from his body and placed in a sacred basket. Kalala Ilunga and his followers brought the basket to Nkongolo's former realm. One day they arrived at the village of Kimona. The sacred basket was placed on the ground overnight, and, when everyone awoke the next morning they found that an anthill had risen in its place. This was taken as a sign that the spirit of Nkongolo wished to remain at Kimona village, and that is why the place phrase of the village is Kimona kyamwene Nkongolo ("The place that Nkongolo saw [chose]"). Kimona then became the first sacred village (kitenta) of the Luba. 23. Kalala Ilunga Becomes Mwine Munza Kalala Ilunga and his followers moved on and established a court on Mwilunde wa

30

FROM THE RAINBOW TO THE KINGS

Nkonda hill near the village of Makwidi in the region called Munza. He then took the title Mwine Munza ("lord of Munza"), and all the country brought him tribute. He remained at Munza, and no region remained outside his control. Many of his praise phrases reflect this: Ami ne dibwe dya kyalantanda; kekudipo ntanda ya shile ("I am the great rock that spreads all over the lands; there is no land that it does not reach"); Ami nkidopo mukalo na muntu ("I have no boundaries with any man"). 24. The Lost Heir Mwine Munza had most of his children killed, lest too many offspring become rivals to succeed him. Only two children survived. One was a normal son named Kazadi Milele. The other was an abnormal son covered with animal hair, named Ilunga Mwila and known by several descriptive phrases: Ilunga Mwevu/ Ilunga wa Lwevu ("Ilunga the bearded one"); Ilunga kya Moya ("Ilunga with hair on his body"); and Ilunga kya Maimbi ("Ilunga with pubic hair"). Mwine Munza was furious that Ilunga Mwila resembled an animal and told his titleholders mwelwa and kitapa (the royal executioner) to kill his son. Instead, they consulted with the titleholder called twite, who advised them to hide the child in case he was needed in the future. Twite took Ilunga Mwila to be raised at Bisonge, the region to the north that is the southern border for the Songye people, where Ilunga Mwila's maternal kin lived. As proof that his animal-like son had been killed, Mwine Munza was shown a spear covered with the blood of an animal. Kazadi Milele died while away from the court on a mission for his father. Kazadi Milele's head was placed in a sacred basket which was deposited at Shinta village, just west of the Lomami River, which became the sacred village dedicated to his worship. Mwine Munza was distraught at the news of Kazadi Milele's death, for he feared there would be no male heir to transmit the qualities of sacral kingship to later generations. Twite then asked Mwine Munza in an oblique way whether he would accept that which he had previously refused, for wise titleholders never ask their king a direct question. Mwine Munza was puzzled by the question but responded affirmatively. Twite then went to Bisonge and brought Ilunga Mwila back. Mwine Munza was so overjoyed that the sacral kingship was saved that he made twite his chief counselor and designated him "father to the king." Ilunga Mwila then called out his praise phrase, Ilunga Kibipile,

The Myth

31

kyakanengele, kyakanengelelanga mu lubelo ("Ilunga the Ugly One, I was not wanted for I had no beauty, but now I am accepted [glorious] in the concourse of my people"). Ilunga Mwila succeeded to the kingship upon Mwine Munza's death, but he only ruled for a short time. When Ilunga Mwila died his sacred village was established at Kalongo. 25. The Adulterous Son Kasongo Mwine Kibanza ("Kasongo lord of Kibanza") succeeded Ilunga Mwila. He established his court at Myumbu village near the Luguvu River in the region of Kibanza. Kasongo Mwine Kibanza had four children who were physically abnormal. They were ineligible to rule, because deformed or blemished royal males threatened the health of the people and the well-being of the realm. Later, he had physically normal children. The first of these was Ilunga Mpunji; others included Manyono, Ngoye Mufungwa, Kabamba, Kapole, Disolwa Mutole, and Ndibu Yakubwanga. Ilunga Mpunji was caught in adultery with his father's senior wife, and Kasongo Mwine Kibanza had them drowned in the Luguvu River. Manyono then drowned himself at the same spot in the river in grief over his brother's death. The spirits of Ilunga Mpunji, Manyono, and the senior wife came back to the area of Kasongo Mwine Kibanza's court as a leopard, a lion, and an elephant, and they killed people. Kasongo Mwine Kibanza consulted the diviner of the spirit Nkulu, who told him to put cooked food and beer at a crossroads. This was done, and when the three animals came to eat and drink, they were killed. 26. The Faithful Child Kasongo Bonswe was the son of Manyono, and he was the favorite grandson of Kasongo Mwine Kibanza. One day, when Kasongo Mwine Kibanza was watching a hunt, he became thirsty and asked his son Kabamba to fetch some water. Kabamba refused. Kasongo Mwine Kibanza asked his other son, Kapole, but he too refused. Finally, Kasongo Mwine Kibanza asked Kasongo Bonswe to bring him some water. Kasongo Bonswe agreed and carried with him the royal double bell. On his way to a stream to get the water he saw a beehive. He filled one bell with honey and the other with water and brought them to Kasongo Mwine Kibanza, who was pleased. The next day Kasongo Mwine Kibanza proclaimed that Kasongo Bonswe would be the one to succeed him after his death, and to affirm this Kasongo

IX I I X X X X X

IXXX

C

X> E

I IXXXXXXXXX

•s'¡ Cl ç

xxxxxxxxxxxx I

e o

Is

O) Oí "í>

~

>

Su oo ps s

X

XII

X IXXXX IX X

=8XI I I I X X I

o S uS 5 Q«

IXl

IX

e00 g **' .Se/3 ¿ 2 DJ

15

o

Q

=3 o

•op

« aS S ccuo« « , H JS

•S

8 •C (A

X

X

X

X

I

X

X

X

X

X

X

X

I a E

00

tu

A

-a

m

£ «

3 •a 03

C - i t I

X

X

X

X

X

I

X

X

X

X

I

I

e o •O

O

ri .

.. al

c

E

«

ï

>N U< O

O .0

x x x x x x x x x x x

.a

1 ^

= -

1 «

.

o ?? -

flc

i. o

0 « s i

2

5

U »

S

o

J

\

m « s -

£

O

a>

O

—'

T3 CQ ^ e o « s

I x x x x x x x x x x x

â

ri

o

c

•• s c

c

•

00

a

22 O s ^ 3 3 M -i

S

:

Í

Í "S

ê 5 « a ed

«

M S

5

Z

2

H

s

sr

'o O ^

Û " ' S V,

'

> a - C

î

c

3

H

S

•o •5 s

£

•o


< S . ® - s J

S I CT O

»

0

5

ë

^

s

S

< w -

ri

2

g , ® g

£

m

a

i

1

« 1

e

S a ; : ça ~ M 1 vi P - c & ¿

s

i

0 1

¡m

ils

X

I X

I

C XI f-

äSz

•O S « .5 -o i c £2 leâ&p

S m

C O

I

I

I X

X

X X X

I

C a > *t en 3 -

I

X I

I

I

I

I X X X

X

I X X

X

I X X

I

I

X

X X X X X X X X X

I

I

I

I

I X X

X X X I

X X

I X

I X

X

U »

I

I

I

I

I X

I

I X

I

I X

I

I

I

X

I

d5 S c (U O « .n 3 -I

O ~ 00

00 o o

3

•O

S M) g •S Ô « S c « s « J3 > wr ajc ", J2- Í .-43 S S J= 0> 00 00 OQ c c TÍ 53 ?S 3 •a -o o o OÍ O ¡ XIIS 3 ; S S

AC C _3

•a -o •a -a

3 S S

3 3 S S

3 ^ =5 O U 5 3 C £I £ S D H H

X X

I X

I

I X

I

I

I

c0 bo C •2

I

3 J M 4> X u H

l i l i l í

X X

I X I

I X I

I X X

I X

I X I

I X

I

I

l i l i

SO 00 o

6 0> A o 2 o 3 ^s s O rV un V -s ¡5 O 05 o o 3 t^ 3 w 7 o ; 3 3w ft S) 0 ¡J ~ 3 '5 « « ^ • Oc í ¿i 3 * -2 « -J os •".25 5* « •O O

J I oí 03
O) 6 0 6 0 — w 4Í - a O « « » c » 3 3 > > § V"

-o

l

5

1 3

0> U a ed ® ®

s

.

s

Z f c 2 OJ

i

£

ffl

g

•s ed M

l

O * », e ce £ „«ß ®

e r -

o £ Ë 3

^

p

S " ^ o m ed . . o, a

s

3 o

s 3 ed o"-> X

X

z

'

ss a ¡*¡ ^ S;

; r - oo o í o

^h

54

F R O M T H E RAINBOW T O T H E KINGS

Luba ancestral deities. The mechanism by which this was done is spelled out in the genesis myth. Luba informants clearly state that the first sacred village (kitenta) commemorated Nkongolo. Just as Nkongolo's head and genitals were believed to have been placed in a basket and stored at Kimona, his sacred village (episode 22), so the genitals of each deceased Luba king, with other objects associated with him, were placed in a special basket and stored at his court, which became his sacred village. This village became the residence of the dead king's female spirit-medium (mwadi, "guardian") and the interregnal stakeholder (kyoni, "big bird"), who protected the objects in the special basket. A royal sacred village dominated neighboring villages, and the political leader of this village cluster was the former symbolic father of the king, the twite. Over time the political rule of the royal sacred-village grouping became hereditary in the twite's line.1 Royal sacred villages and village groupings were permanent memorials to the continuity and longevity of the Luba royal dynasty. Oral historians memorized the names of past kings in association with the sacred villages they knew. Sacred village groupings were ranked according to the position of their respective royal names on the kinglist and, when the political leaders of these groupings attended a meeting at the royal court, their order of seating was determined by this ranking. 2 Kings' names were also memorized by the bambudye historical specialists in relationship to a sequence of beads on the same memory board that aided them in telling the episodes of the genesis myth. 3 Although many royal sacred villages have now disappeared, they once dotted the landscape of the former central regions of the Empire, and their names are listed in Table 3. Chronology Kinglists are used to establish approximate chronologies for dynastic states in non-literate societies. Working with verifiable dates from written sources, historians attempt to determine earlier dates for rulers on kinglists by working back in time, using estimated averages for reign lengths and dynastic generations. Although the Luba kinglist seems particularly inviting for this dating technique, there are problems, for not all thirteen names on the list are those of verifiable personalities. Until new information comes along, I reject out-of-hand the

Kings and Chronology

55

TABLE 3. Royal Sacred Villages of the Luba Empire Royal Name Nkongolo 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Kalala Ilunga/Mwine Munza Ilunga Mwila Kasongo Mwine Kibanza Kasongo Bonswe Kasongo Kabundulu Ngoye Sanza Kumwimbe Mputu Ndaye Mwine Nkombe Kadilo Kekenya Ilunga Sungu

12. Kumwimbe Ngombe 13. Ilunga Kabale

Sacred Village Kimona 1 Makwidi 2 Kalongo 3 Myumbu 4 Kabanda (Nyembo) 5 Katumpa 6 Djingile 7 Kitabi (Kombe) 8 Katunda 9 Katala (Bwila) 10 Gonzo (Kabondo) (Sungu-Katende) 1 1 Kitenta kya Kumwimbe Ngombe (Kimiba) (Budyende) 1 2 Kitenta kya Ilunga Kabale (Kimungu) 1 3

1. Agnes C. L. Donohugh and Priscilla Berry, "A Luba Tribe in Katanga: Customs and Folklore," Africa 5, no. 2 (1932): 183; E. d'Orjo de Marchovelette, "Notes sur les funérailles des chefs Ilunga Kabale et Kabongo Kumwimbe: Historique de la chefferie Kabongo; Historique Kongolo: Histoire de la chefferie Kongolo," BJIDCC 18, no. 12 (1950): 358. 2. D'Orjo de Marchovelette, "Notes sur les funérailles," BJIDCC 18, no. 12 (1950): 358; field inquiries, Makwidi village, 28-30 May 1973. 3. William F. P. Burton, Luba Religion and Magic in Custom and Belief (MRAC Sciences Humaines no. 35, Tervuren, 1961), p. 53; "Chefferie Ilunga Muila" (n.d.), AZM-N; interview, Ilunga Kyevu, Kamina cité, 13 July 1973. 4. D'Orjo de Marchovelette, "Notes sur les funérailles," BJIDCC 18, no. 12 (1950): 359; field inquiries, Kabombwe village, 24-28 May 1973. 5. D'Orjo de Marchovelette, "Notes sur les funérailles," BJIDCC 18, no. 12 (1950): 361, lists the sacred village of Kasongo Bonswe as Nyembo wa Katanda [s/c] by which is meant Kabanda village in Nyembo groupement of what was then called the circonscription indigène of Kabongo. Informants in the Nyembo area stated that in their childhood Kabanda village was the sacred village of Kasongo Kabundulu (field inquiry, Kitenge village, 3 June 1973). 6. Edmond Verhulpen, Baluba et Balubaïses du Katanga (Anvers, 1936), pp. 127, 206; "Historique de la chefferie Goy a Sanza"[1952?], DCBAPRS; field inquiries, Lulenge village, 2 June 1973; field inquiries, Katala and Kitenge villages, 3 June 1973. 7. Burton, Luba Religion and Magic, p. 16; Adrien Van der Noot, "Quelques éléments historiques sur l'Empire Luba, son organisation et sa direction," BJIDCC 4, no. 7 (1936): 142; interviews, nsenga Banza, Kabongo village, 23 and 27 April 1973. 8. D'Orjo de Marchovelette, "Notes sur les funérailles," BJIDCC 18, no. 12 (1950): 361; Gérard de Clerck, "Historique des Baluba" (August 1914), AZKamina, ASRHL; interview, Fwandu Nkombe, Kombe village, 3 June 1973. Kitabi village is located in the Kombe groupement of the collectivité locale of Kabongo. 9. "Historique de la chefferie Kadilo Kalombo, p.v. no. 6 4 " (1932), DCBAPRS; field inquiry, Kashiukulu village, 1 June 1973. 10. D'Orjo de Marchovelette, "Notes sur les funérailles," BJIDCC 18, no. 12 (1950): 362; interview, Katombe Kaseba, Lulenge village, 2 June 1973. Katala village was located in the Bwila groupement of the collectivité locale of Kabongo.

56

F R O M T H E RAINBOW TO T H E KINGS

notion that the names of Kalala Ilunga/Mwine Munza, Ilunga Mwila, and Kasongo Mwine Kibanza—names associated with the structural time of myth—can be used for dating purposes. The second part of the list, containing the names of Kasongo Bonswe, Kasongo Kabundulu, Ngoye Sanza, and Kumwimbe Mputu, is another, and more puzzling, matter. This part is not unlike the middle section of kinglists from elsewhere in Africa and the rest of the world, for names found in one version of the kinglist are not all found in another version and the sequences of names vary between versions. The fact that these four names appear on kinglists at all could be taken as prima facie evidence that they are the names of past Luba rulers. However, the differences between versions of the kinglist, and circumstantial evidence suggesting that this part of the list has been artificially lengthened, raise doubts. Here, possibilities are more apparent than definite conclusions, and I prefer to express myself in the conditional tense. "Antiquity is evidently venerated almost everywhere." 4 Nowhere was this more true than with the Luba, and we cannot discount the possibility that the kinglist has been artificially lengthened to add an extra degree of legitimacy to the royal dynasty. Such a process does not have to have been done with forethought, though. According to inabanza Kataba, Kasongo Bonswe and Kasongo Kabundulu were names for only one character in the Faithful Child episode (26), and most kinglists cite one or the other name but not both. Two names may very well represent one character, for in this century a single sacred village and village grouping can be associated with Kasongo Bonswe and Kasongo Kabundulu—Kabanda village in Nyembo groupement. 11. D'Orjo de Marchovelette, "Notes sur les funérailles," BJIDCC 18, no. 12 (1950): 363; Harold Womersley, "Legends and History of the Baluba" (Heysham, Morecambe, 5 January 1976), p. 60; field inquiry, Gonzo village, 7 January 1973. The royal court of king Ilunga Sungu was established in the Lubala region, and the subsequent royal sacred village was known as Sungu-Katende or simply as Katende. This village's lands were adjacent to those of the village of Kabondo, which is also associated with the memory of Ilunga Sungu. 12. Paul Orban, "Cheffesses chez les Baluba" (14 May 1916), DCBAPRS; field inquiries, Ritenta kya Kumwimbe Ngombe, 11 and 12 May 1973. The original site of king Kumwimbe Ngombe's court was known as Budyende village on Kimiba savanna, while the village title was Ritenta kya Kumwimbe Ngombe. 13. Verney L. Cameron, Across Africa (2 vols., New York, 1877), 2, pp. 66-67; d'Orjo de Marchovelette, "Notes sur les funérailles," BJIDCC 18, no. 12 (19S0): 364; field inquiries, Dyombo village and Ritenta kya Ilunga Kabale, 15-18 May 1973. The original site of king Ilunga Rabale's court was on Rimungu savanna, and the village title was Ritenta kya Ilunga Kabale.

Kings and Chronology

57

Still, there are sources that list these two names as separate kings, and it seems that two praise-names for one royal personality came to be t h o u g h t of by some L u b a i n f o r m a n t s as praise names f o r two separate rulers. Certainly the confusion a b o u t the association of praise phrases with the royal name of Kasongo tends to support this view: some i n f o r m a n t s attributed the praise phrase Ami ne Kasongo Kamatatu, kapwananga ne betatula ("I a m Kasongo, C o n q u e r o r of Arrogance, who m a d e no covenant with the little arrogant ones") to Kasongo Mwine Kibanza, while others associated it with Kasongo Bonswe and Kasongo K a b u n d u l u . 5 As has been done elsewhere in the world, the L u b a may have grafted ancestral-spirit names to kinglists and dynasties, a n d sacred villages may have been manipulated as m n e m o n i c markers in the process. 6 Royal sacred villages were almost identical in structure to non-royal sacred villages c o m m e m o r a t i n g o r d i n a r y L u b a ancestral spirits, the only difference being that members of the political regime and men of m e m o r y made a conscious distinction between the two types of village. Versions of the genesis m y t h collected earlier in this century appended the names of ancestral spirits and their sacred villages to the royal dynasty as sons w h o did not rule. The Lost Heir episode (24), for example, accounts for the existence of Shinta as the sacred village of Kazadi Milele, the lost heir's brother. Ngoye M u f u n g w a is cited in the Adulterous Son episode (25) as a son of Kasongo Mwine Kibanza w h o did not rule, and his spirit was worshipped at the sacred village of N t u m b o . 7 Individual L u b a i n f o r m a n t s may even have gratuitously added the n a m e of an ancestral spirit to the kinglist, f o r K u m wimbe M p u t u appears as a royal name on only two kinglists a n d is closely associated with the sacred village grouping of Djingile. Ngoye Sanza is the best example of an ancestral-spirit n a m e that may have been added to the royal kinglist. His sacred village was located in the Lusanza River valley, a n area northeast of the Empire's heartland and k n o w n for its salt marshes. Ngoye Sanza is said to be related to Kalenga Masanza, a non-royal ancestral spirit believed to be the f o u n d i n g and protective spirit of the M a s h y o salt marshes in the heartland. The names of Ngoye Sanza, Kalenga M a s a n z a , and Lusanza all derive f r o m the root -sanza, which refers to the grassy plains on b o t h sides of a stream. W h e n salt-bearing streams flooded these plains, the L u b a distilled salt f r o m the m u d after having placated a protective spirit of the plains like Kalenga Masanza. 8 It is possible, then, that Ngoye

58

F R O M T H E RAINBOW TO T H E KINGS

Sanza was originally a protective spirit associated with saltmaking and the salt marshes of the Lusanza River valley. Although the middle section of the kinglist has little utility for dating by estimated averages, the four names and associated oral traditions probably do represent the transition point from myth to consciously remembered history. The succession struggle between Kasongo Bonswe/Kasongo Kabundulu and his uncles Kabamba and Kapole, described at the end of the Faithful Child episode (26), seem to recall past interregna. The problem is that the description, and the praise phrases and place phrases which make the Faithful Child episode sound plausible, actually refer to the nonspecific royal name of Kasongo. Phrases and actions associated with Kasongo, Kabamba, and Kapole, then, could describe events occurring at widely separated intervals that have been telescoped into this one episode and tied to Kasongo Bonswe/ Kasongo Kabundulu. The last six names—Ndaye Mwine Nkombe, Kadilo, Kekenya, Ilunga Sungu, Kumwimbe Ngombe, and Ilunga Kabale—seem to be an accurately remembered sequence of real historical personalities, for they are listed in the same order by almost all sources. Chronology must begin with Ilunga Kabale. He was the last king to rule the Luba Empire when it was intact and the first king whose death date can be established with any precision. On 23 October 1868 Livingstone was told by an Arab-Swahili trader living at the village of Pweto at the north end of Lake Mweru that Lungabale (Ilunga Kabale) was the chief of the Rua (Luba). When Cameron visited the Luba heartland in late 1874, he found that Ilunga Kabale had been dead for some time and that Ilunga Kabale's son, Kasongo Kalombo, was the primary contender in the succession dispute then going on. The Portuguese explorers Capello and Ivens learned during their journey through central Angola between 1877 and 1880 that Kasongo Kalombo was by late 1870 an important Luba ruler. 9 Therefore, king Ilunga Kabale died sometime between late 1868 and late 1870; I am suggesting 1870 as the approximate year of his death, while recognizing that it could have been just a little earlier. Each of the last six names on the Luba kinglist represents a single dynastic generation. The best estimate is that 30 years with an error factor of ± 4 years is the average length of royal dynastic generations in Africa and other parts of the world. 10 Table 4 shows the estimated dates for the six dynastic generations; al-

Kings and Chronology

59

though they are not reign dates, they are approximate dates when any given generation of Luba royal males competed for power and ruled. The relative accuracy of these generational dates is suggested by dates associated with the reigns of Kumwimbe Ngombe and Ndaye Mwine Nkombe. Kumwimbe Ngombe is the first ruler of the Luba Empire to have been mentioned in contemporary written records. Gamitto reported the visit of envoys of Kumwimbe Ngombe to the court of the kingdom of Kazembe in late January and early February 1832, a date that is compatible with the estimated dates for his dynastic generation." Men of memory recall a praise phrase of Ndaye Mwine Nkombe—Ami ne Mwine Nkombe wakatele Kalundwe mushima uswa kuta Kimpanga Mwadi ("I am the lord of Nkombe who hunted on the Kalundwe savanna, [but] in his heart he wanted to hunt [on the savanna of] Kimpanga Mwadi")—that suggests he ruled about 1700 or shortly afterward, a period within the span of estimated dates for his generation. 12 It is the reference to Kalundwe savanna which is the most important part of this praise phrase. Kalundwe comes from lulundwe, a Luba word for manioc, and means "the place of the manioc." As a by-product of trade during the seventeenth century, American food crops were brought into the central African interior from the Atlantic coast, and manioc was the most important of these American crops. The plant was introduced to the Kuba, northwest of the Luba, before 1680.13 It arrived among the Lunda to the west by about 1650 and is associated in oral traditions with subsequent Lunda migrations and conquests. The eastern Lunda, who lived southwest of the Luba Empire between about 1670 and 1700, adopted manioc well before 1740, when they settled in the lower Luapula River valley.14 Manioc was passed from the nuclear Lunda westward to the people of the kingdom of Mutombo Mukulu, who adopted it enthusiastically, for they came to call themselves the Bene Kalundwe ("the Manioc People"). 15 The plant was then passed from Mutombo Mukulu to the Luba, for the court title of mutombo mukulu is associated with manioc. The praise phrase for this title at the court of the kingdom of Kinkondja, across the Luba heartland and 350 kilometers east of Mutombo Mukulu, is Mwine Kalundu, bambudya kuntonga bamushimbanga ku miji ("Lord of the little manioc root, its leaves are eaten and its roots are crushed"). 16 Manioc would not have been introduced to the people of Mutombo Mu-

cd cd tü Q g •o O

cd cd o ed

O

O

1 /5 1 C /5i M — cd cd D

«-*

ed V

>» >>

^t o (N , g — ra C •O > cd Z S Ä

ci 3 M M -C c _

W hJ «

< H

Le o H

e « eo

r* « z

s m

" 3 bM û »-

_C « O ed

s

W o-

BO 5 c ^ _ 5 cd Ua U3

Äed S « « « ÛT3 ° Û 3 S

«

cd cd « S L>..S •3-3 2 S

4) 4> a ¡g 5-0 ^ o O o5 - « S " *« -a n •a ¿g¿ » Ê a « -S Z " o* a . J3 -3 .S ~ o.'; •O fri — g O a ËT3 ï f W o> a «a I I I : 6 - 3 3 c « § n fe s i ¿ 5 T3 ? a O - O c« 73 "3 ¿ i o" —"M .2 P ; ai co c®j c . 5 0 J - » «W g u -c 3 .2 •S c a V «•S £Offl 1 1JS m j= E O .-»Jl l ^ l a « « o o o ** o 4> (A 4) « -S 13 » » «(9 5CO°0 1 »S "O a ^ js ~ X o ai CU m ® 2 2 * 5 » «1 " o I I i- a " e "3 C \3 a a S m u o ^ U- 3, » rt O a « >o 3' ® ® s 5 •• bfi ^ W S r. "a J g> - s u CC I S. •3 " « « i S c 3 O „ :S2 > S -3 e •? M O . c T3 7 3 .S .3 Ov 2 £ 00 —.2 .2 E - S r , fc?« 0 v. 3Vm öo w o •0 i-< a c . s . ®« s e ^ l u r- C .A M 3 CT &5S : o r» c Ç " I XI — ; ^ — a00¿ • S N I " . 3 J ^ — c j= < m O O "2 ' 5 — ® - cSu - i e j S â i . «iSP m " 1 X M 3 _ ÍO JJ — — a > *o S 0ffl efl kl u 3 M » . . g t» c5 1 à ' a » 3 si S o s £ j -á o e Q ^ 1 • 05 . S s : J 0« S - ua Q „ g g s s s « ) : « ts s ft ^«v ^ 13 • O.T3 c 5.8 o ^ « o -H C ' i2 -S S « a —u j a -S M J2 2 . u C K,¡ S . S - ' - a « -o g § :-, — a MN — g 2 2 5 - c e ^ « o •= « S s - S S ì S s r 2 a-S-s ë-- S i £UriM IA o. . 2 ï ^ o H 3" â S a » > o 6 5 S 3a • 0 o£ U '* e ,« — ¿ 00 c .2 >. s s 3-8-"SS o .a .. s 3 « o í s P-.2.2 . »á"a V C c w t. G ^ o ' í p u s Se < ¡ o 5K-o < 2 -E m w ^^ s i ) a i/i , S -O "2 o o "3 » I> ?.a >o -5 1 _ •£ m ° .a 13 a »^ VJf ^ •o - 5o OS o « ! « f i « bd —- ob o . ."íS .S3 ™ 5 a « s s , a s a> oNÜ 3 s r!e. U S o 00 —< no S-o « ® ^ Op ° 0 « t ^ a Z >, c 3 O ai .=5 a s -a M > a •d M £ -a «

«r-p í r s r ^ O S « O O i î • o y m g »1 « S o s J ¿¡ » — •a qj a) Ä

00 o\

•o ^ ! -a , S S SP OE -g 00 •5 -H. "W5 -M 4J - I 2

ä T3 — —

S

* 3 2

u 00 C

>,

-O -o -H S

3 °°

XI E P E

•3

>.0 — .0 r1 ^ 2 £ -S

•

¿¿3 3

>, . ^ « _Q,T3 — c £ CT\ 3 3 2

k l ' 2 3 3 S

¿2

a * c— O T3 X) a) rt ~

.

3 "3 T3 —i rï ï » (9 JÍ oû X 3 2

Si « 0 0, O 'O

s

aj >. 0Û.O _ I S -a •"3 g 3 3 2

>.0

Oil^ c 12 a o = j S ^ 3 S

- 5 - 0) 0 -o\ 1

c O -O S « 3 vì a eu

£ 3 J

1!

«i s S M tí u C

Luba Empire periphery Lunda-Kazembe Trade and tribute after c 1740 Shaba-Kasa extended regional trade

3. Luba Empire and Shaba-Kasai extended regional trade: eighteenth century tury A.D., the beginning of the era of the Classic Kisalian pottery tradition. The presence of small numbers of conus-shell disc beads, cowrie shells, and glass beads in burials shows that goods passed hand-to-hand from the east African coast arrived in the depression, probably via the Zambezi River valley and the copperbelt. 3 Shaba-Kasai trade became significant between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, during the era of the Kabambian pottery tradition. Hundreds of copper crosses have been found in graves filled with Kabambian pottery, and skeletons have been uncovered that were clutching small crosses in their hands. 4 Dates for the Kabambian pottery tradition correlate well with sixteenthcentury and seventeenth-century dates for material in burials at the archeological site of Kamoa near the town of Likasi on the copperbelt. Crosses were discovered at Kamoa that were identical in design to those found in graves in such Upemba-depression

Savanna Trade

95

sites as Sanga. 5 The Lufira River flows f r o m the Kamoa-Likasi area and joins the mainstream of the Zaire River a few kilometers from Sanga, so the Lufira valley would have been a natural communication line for trade. Copper crosses uncovered in the Upemba depression are of a uniform unflanged H-shape, cast into four or five standard sizes. The smallest and most numerous are 7 to 15 millimeters long, and the largest and least numerous are over 100 millimeters long. Some crosses were tied together in packets of varying quantities. Uniform shape, standardized sizes, and packaging are evidence that copper crosses were exchanged as units of value or currency in an expanding trade-network. 6 The Luba had a special term for a unit of value or currency, kituntwa, which applied to other items besides copper crosses. 7 Quantities of raphia-cloth strips had a specified value in relationship to commodities exchanged. 8 Salt blocks had standard values in central African commercial exchanges, 9 and durable iron hoes were more valuable yet. 10 No specialized trading groups emerged to challenge the right of political leaders to expropriate the surplus of savanna production. Rather, villagers organized themselves for a single trip into ad hoc groups under a designated leader, and after having solicited the protection of spirits, they travelled to near or distant regions to trade. These groups, which ranged in size f r o m about five to twenty individuals, consisted of adult males accompanied by their clients and by women who carried and prepared their f o o d . " Once at their destination, people might manufacture at least some of the products they needed, like salt, and remit a portion to local earth-priests in return for the right of exploitation. 1 2 However, the smelting of ore and even lake-fishing required technology that visitors often did not possess or specialized materials they could not bring with them, in which case they had to trade with local producers for all the goods they sought. The Kabambian pottery tradition came to an end during the late seventeenth century or the early eighteenth century, by which time Shaba-Kasai extended regional trade had reached its full territorial extension. Pottery closely resembling pottery of the last phase of the Kabambian tradition has been uncovered in the Bushimaie River valley in the Kasai, 400 kilometers northwest of the Upemba depression. 13 Copper from southern Shaba adorned the royal drums that served as mnemonic devices for recalling the names of eighteenth-century Luba kings. 14 The earliest written

96

EMPIRE EMERGENT

description of the copperbelt refers indirectly to Shaba-Kasai trade: Pedro J o a o Baptista, an Angolan trader, who visited the copperbelt in 1808, noted that "straw cloth" (i.e., raphia cloth), a specialty of the Kasai and northern Shaba Region, was exchanged there. 15 Small-scale state formation preceded the maturation of extended regional trade on the savanna by several centuries, but the emergence of territorially extensive states is related, in part, to the growth of trade. The decades on either side of 1700 mark the period of the full extension of Shaba-Kasai trade and the beginning of Luba dynastic history. It is no coincidence that the Luba Empire and several other states, including the kingdoms of Mutombo Mukulu and Samba, Kanyok chiefdoms, and Songye chiefly towns, lay across the path of this trade. 16 State expansion brought more and more villages into a common polity that tended to minimize conflict and facilitate travel and trade. Extended regional trade raised the standard of living by more effective distribution of resources essential to the subsistence economy than was possible through village-to-village trade. The advent of the bambudye society in the Luba Empire, with its emphasis upon cooperation and mutual support when members travelled, could only have had a salutary effect on trading voyages. Luba kings exploited this trade by demanding as tribute a portion of the goods in the hands of subordinate clientchiefs and villagers. Courts acted as magnets to attract prestige and royal goods; the larger the Empire became and the more the influence of its rulers grew, the larger became the quantity of goods collected by the royal court. Womersley has explained the role of Luba royal courts in the redistribution of such prestige goods as beads: "Baskets of unfinished beads were brought in tribute over a period of several generations to the King of the Baluba and gradually spread over the country." 17 Luba royal males who were victorious in dynastic-succession disputes gained direct access to the iron, salt, and other resources of the Luba heartland. The development of the heartland as an emporium in Shaba-Kasai trade was by the eighteenth century of major importance to the political regime. Luba kings participated directly in the benefits of tráde, because their courts were only a few dozen kilometers, at most, from the salt and iron districts of the heartland. A large volume of trade meant that a large quantity of all sorts of imported goods that were produced in areas not controlled by the Luba royal dynasty came to the villagers of the

Savanna

Trade

97

heartland. Portions of these goods were passed along to Luba kings as tribute and gifts. Conversely, the creation of a single state in the heartland during an earlier epoch and the maintenance of political order could only have served to encourage the development of the area as an emporium. Nowhere is the role of trade more vividly demonstrated than in the development of Luba relations with the Songye and the kingdom of Samba, at the northern and southern poles, respectively, of Luba influence by the eighteenth century. Luba-Songye Trade By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the territorial center of power in the Luba Empire had shifted from the heartland around Lake Boya to the nearby Luba-Songye borderland. Proof of the move comes from the distribution of sacred-village groupings commemorating the royal names of Kasongo Bonswe/Kasongo Kabundulu, Ngoye Sanza, Kumwimbe Mputu, Ndaye Mwine Nkombe, Kadilo, and Kekenya. All of these groupings are forty to seventy kilometers northeast of Lake Boya by road, and they are clustered in an area bounded on the west and north by the Lomami River. This part of the Lomami valley marks the border where Luba and Songye populations interpenetrate, and the longevity of dynastic control in the region may have been commemorated by the cooptation of local spirit-names, like Ngoye Sanza and Kumwimbe Mputu, to the Luba kinglist. This new region of extended dynastic control, as well as the adjacent heartland, lay across the Shaba-Kasai trade routes linking the Songye with the Upemba depression. Tippu Tip visited the fishermen at the northern end of the Upemba depression in 1872, and years later he recalled in his autobiography the trading activity he witnessed: Here everyone meets together from all the districts of URua [Luba land]. Some brought goods, others beads and bracelets, still others brought goats and slaves and Viramba, cloth of raffia . . . in strips six to nine inches long. . . . At this time these Viramba were the unit of exchange. People brought the things and also palm-oil to buy fish; more than 5,000 to 6,000 people collected to buy it. Some dried it over fires and took it back to their homes dried, to serve as relish; others sell it, while still others travel as far as Irandi [Ilande, southern Songye], the place where they make the Viramba—this cloth in strips. They take the fish and exchange it for Viramba. . . . They're great traders these WaRua [baLuba]!' 8

98

EMPIRE EMERGENT

Within a year Tippu Tip passed along a trade route running through the Luba heartland and journeyed to the southern Songye, where he saw weavers making raphia cloth and Luba villagers coming to them with fish to trade; Delcommune, who travelled the route in the opposite direction in 1891, remarked upon the same activities.19 The Songye were forced to trade with many of their neighbors for salt. 20 Luba men of memory living in the Mashyo salt district of the heartland have described how the Songye and other people used to come from far away to make salt or to purchase it with lengths of raphia cloth. 21 Cameron observed a century ago that Mashyo salt "is carried long distances for purposes of trade and is greedily sought after by tribes who have none in their country." 22 Songye master blacksmiths smelted iron when it was available in their territories, but they were also forced to import iron from the central regions of the Luba Empire. 23 In addition, the Songye obtained from the Luba copper crosses that they melted down and reworked or passed on to their neighbors to the north. 24 The Songye brought an array of finished products to trade, for they were well known as skilled artisans. Their blacksmiths worked iron into a variety of tools which they bartered, and ceremonial iron axes were sold to the Luba. 25 The Songye wove baskets, as well as raphia cloth, and fired pots, bowls, clay whistles, and pipes. They traded musical instruments, exporting drums, for which they were famous, and importing xylophones. 26 Trade through the Luba heartland involved journeys, by foot, of hundreds of kilometers. The Ikalebwe, a central Songye group, were allowed free access to trade in the Mashyo salt district. Ikalebwe hunters travelled 400 kilometers to the southeast, across the Luba heartland, to enjoy the special rights of exploitation they had on the Pelungu plain just north of Lake Kisale, in the Upemba depression. 27 Songye and Luba villagers went beyond the Upemba depression and into the area between the upper Zaire River valley and lakes Tanganyika and Mweru. The Luba journeyed to the Hemba east of the Zaire River, and the Hemba traded salt for iron hoes coming from the Luba heartland. 28 The Hemba and their neighbors wore raphia cloth that came by way of the Luba from the Songye. 29 Luba and Songye villagers were even known to sell raphia cloth, charms, and arrow poison on the plains east of the Upemba depression, in exchange for salt and for zebra hides, which were valued as royal goods. 30 The importance of the salt

Savanna Trade

99

and zebra-hide trade was implicit in a Luba proverb expressing the idea that a person should not avoid profitable endeavors: Lwendo Iwa Bupemba kelukolamwa ("they do not refuse to go on a journey to the east [whence came salt and zebra skins] and where the people are peaceable"). 31 The fame of some ancestral spirits was spread through trade, for Kayembe, a spirit whose protection was sought when salt was traded for raphia cloth among the Musengai villages along the Luba-Songye borderland, was said by the villagers to be the protective spirit of the Nyembwa Kunda salt pans where they traded, 500 kilometers to the southeast. 32 Samba and the Copperbelt The kingdom of Samba was centered in the Dimai River valley, some 300 kilometers south of the heartland of the Luba Empire and about 200 kilometers north of the copper workings at Kanzenze and Mwilu, located at the western end of the copperbelt. The man believed to have started the Samba royal dynasty was known as Samba a kya Buta ("Samba of the Bow"). Oral traditions say that he had been a warrior companion of Nkongolo who had fled south from the rock of Kai when Nkongolo was captured and executed by Kalala Ilunga (episodes 21 and 22);33 this claim is consistent with those oral traditions of long-term client states close to the heartland of the Luba Empire which asserted putative origins for their ruling lines from the heroes of the Luba genesis myth or in association with its episodes. Other lineages in the Samba area expressed their sense of long-term subordination to the Luba Empire in a similar idiom. 34 Samba oral traditions say that at various times in the past emissaries came from the court of the Luba Empire to act as powerbrokers in succession disputes which divided the Samba royal dynasty. 35 The presence of numerous chapters of the bambudye secret society is further evidence of the political and ideological control exercised at one time by the Luba royal dynasty in the kingdom of Samba. 36 During the early nineteenth century Samba was competing with other large dynastic states for access to the western copper-mining district. Baptista was told in 1808 that the chief of the Kanzenze and Mwilu copper diggings was a client of the rulers of both the Lunda Empire and the kingdom of Kazembe. 37 Lunda control had been established at the diggings in the course of the eastern Lunda expansion that led to the creation of the kingdom of Ka-

100

EMPIRE EMERGENT

zembe in the early eighteenth century. 38 The Angolan trader and his companions had to proceed with caution when returning in November 1812, because the ruler of the Lunda Empire and the king of Samba were dispatching forces to attack any of each other's tribute-bearers and messengers who passed through the district. Baptista, who was stalled in this area for two months because of this conflict, also learned that the king of Samba was allied with the chiefs of Quinhama and Mushima. 39 The Mushima chief claimed the allegiance of Kaonde villagers on the upper Lubudi and upper Zaire rivers on the side of the mining district opposite Samba, and Baptista's comment suggests a significant extension of Samba influence southward across the western copperbelt in the early nineteenth century. Although we are not told in whose favor this conflict was finally resolved, a Samba oral historian has stated that the western copper-diggings were subordinate to Samba kings at some indeterminate period in the past. 40 J. R. Gra?a was informed during his visit to the court of the Lunda Empire in 1847 that Mushima and Quinhama were under Lunda control but that war was going on with some unnamed chiefs who controlled the copper-producing areas. 41 Samba kings acquired goods from the copperbelt, even if they did not always receive tribute payments from the chiefs or earth priests of Kanzenze and Mwilu. Samba people went to the diggings to trade for copper and also to get salt at the nearby saline marshes along the upper Zaire River. Travel to contended areas was dangerous, and Samba people who went to the copperbelt did not always return. The dangers of the copper trade were symbolized in a song, sung at the end of the circumcision ceremony at Samba, in which an individual's successful completion of this rite de passage was described in terms of a villager's safe return from a journey to the copperbelt. 42 Samba and its people were so closely linked to the flow of prestige goods coming from the copperbelt and going to the heartland of the Luba Empire as trade and tribute that the name of Samba came to symbolize this system of exchange. Copper produced at the western mines was cast into ingots in the shape of the cross of St. Andrew. These crosses weighed as much as three to five kilograms, and batches of nine or ten could be balanced at either end of a pole for easy transportation. 43 The copper crosses, known as myambo, were sent from Samba to the royal courts of

Savanna Trade

101

the Luba Empire as tribute, and the kingdom of Samba was popularly known as Samba ya Myambo ("Samba of the Copper Crosses"). 44 By the end of the eighteenth century, shell and glass beads were among the goods brought to the copperbelt via longdistance trade routes from Angola in the west and Portuguese settlements on the lower Zambezi River in the east. 45 Beads were exchanged at the western mining district, where they passed into the Shaba-Kasai trade-net, and the name of Samba was linked with a special type of blue bead called lukanga Iwa samba that was imported in this way. Strings of these beads had a specific value in bridewealth payments and in relationship to units of other prestige goods. Eventually lukanga Iwa samba became a widespread term applied indiscriminately to any bead of value, including cowrie shells and beads made locally from blue rocks. 46 Samba tribute was sufficiently prized at the courts of the Luba Empire that a special titleholder called mwine samba ("lord of Samba") supervised its collection exclusively. 47 Empire Emergent: A Summary The proto-Luba state was one of many small-scale lineagebased states whose rulers participated in a relatively homogeneous politico-religious culture. The origins of this culture go back to the beginning centuries of this millennium, and it is likely that the earliest experiments in collective action occurred among the fishing and agricultural populations of the Upemba depression. The survival of the depression's relatively dense population in an environment of lakes, marshes, and streams required cooperation and political rule beyond the village level. No such imperatives existed among the scattered hamlets and villages of the nearby savanna, but once institutions and techniques of overrule had been developed in the Upemba depression their attraction to leaders and men of ambition on the savanna must have been irresistible. Rich deposits of salt and iron ore are located in adjacent districts approximately sixty to eighty kilometers northwest of the Upemba depression; it is no coincidence that the small-scale state that was to become the Luba Empire was located here. The Luba genesis myth contains a rich overlay of symbolic associations that tied the ruler of the Empire to the ancestral spirits venerated in this territorial center. Eventually, Luba sacral kings came to have direct and easy access to the specialized products of this heart-

102

EMPIRE EMERGENT

land, and scarcity of essential goods was manipulated to guarantee the loyalty of client villages and states. The Shaba-Kasai network of extended regional trade developed from about the fifteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth century. During the same epoch a shift occurred in the scale of political action, as some states began receiving tribute from their neighbors. Expanding trade did not cause this state growth; rather, trade and politics interacted, feeding upon one another. Extended regional trade led to improved communication between peoples and polities. The growth of states facilitated the flow of commodities essential to subsistence society while encouraging the flow of prestige and royal goods essential to political life. The Luba heartland became a major emporium on Shaba-Kasai trade routes and the general lines of the Empire's early expansion coincide with the axis of trade that ran from the Songye in the north to the kingdom of Samba in the south. The ruling lineage of the emergent Luba state acquired clients by lineage powerbrokering, conquest, and resource manipulation. Then the mechanisms and institutions of more permanent allegiance which had been created in its heartland were exported to the periphery. Special relationships were established between the Luba royal dynasty and the diviners and spirit mediums venerating the ancestral spirits from whom client kings derived their sacral authority. Oral traditions were formulated that legitimized ties between local ruling lineages and the royal dynasty by claiming a putative ancestry from primary and secondary characters of the Luba genesis myth. Political insignia were bestowed upon client kings, who then participated in the aura of a superior Luba sacral kingship. Local rule and overrule were thus merged. A Pax Luba began to emerge on the savanna. This was a peace relative to its time and place: conflict, intrigue, and political competition occurred, but centrifugal tendencies were reduced. Succession struggles might go on within subordinate polities, but increasingly they led to the reintegration of client lineages into the Empire rather than to secession from it. The bambudye secret society was introduced to client states, and local political leaders were inducted into its ranks and became subject to its internal rules and regulations. Membership in the society created lines of communication and cooperation with the royal court that cut across lineage ties and parochial interests. The most contentious

Savanna Trade

103

and intractable interlineage and intervillage disputes were m o r e likely t o be resolved within client states after the i n t r o d u c t i o n of the bambudye t h a n they had been before. Reduction of centripetal tendencies made f u r t h e r expansion possible. By the eighteenth century the L u b a Empire was becoming one of the m a j o r dynastic states in central Africa. By the beginning of the following century it would be dynamically expansive and charismatic.

IX. DYNASTIC HISTORY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Patterns of Conquest during the Age of Kings The Age of Kings (dynastic history) spanned the years from about 1700 to the 1860s. Expansion continued until the end of the eighteenth century, when a protracted succession dispute preoccupied the royal dynasty. The succession disputes of the next two generations were resolved quickly, and the Luba Empire went through a period of conquest and assimilation of distant neighbors under kings Ilunga Sungu, Kumwimbe Ngombe, and Ilunga Kabale. This was a period of phenomenal expansion for a dynastic state whose rulers, warriors, messengers, and tribute-bearers had to travel on foot. In order to increase the size of the Empire's tributary base, expansion was frequently directed toward regions of high population density. People in fertile river-valleys and along lake shores tended to live in large agglomerations. Luba expansion was purposefully directed at the lake-dwellers of the northern end of the Upemba depression, across and along the upper Zaire River valley downstream from the depression, along the Luvua River valley, toward the more densely packed populations of the lower Luapula River valley, and at some of the populations along the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Kings whose own courts were close to the salt and iron-producing districts of the Luba heartland were not insensitive to the tribute resources that lay beyond the Empire's frontiers. They were undoubtedly aware of the locations of emporia and districts famous for producing prestige and subsistence goods for ShabaKasai trade; it is no coincidence that Luba conquerors tended to settle as permanent residents and tribute overseers in distant salt 107

108

T H E AGE O F KINGS

and iron-producing districts. African traders in touch with Portuguese settlements far to the southeast began to approach the outer edges of the Luba Empire during the first half of the nineteenth century, and they drew Kumwimbe Ngombe's interest in that direction. A look at where Luba expansion did and did not go is revealing. Expansion occurred for the most part toward village populations organized into small-scale states; the Luba Empire did not successfully intrude into the spheres of large-scale states. This strongly suggests that the main lines of Luba expansion were directed along the path of least political and military resistance. The power and prestige of the Luba royal dynasty was sufficiently well known by the eighteenth century that unsuccessful contenders in succession disputes in small, independent border-states solicited the intervention of the Luba king on their behalf. However, as the distance between the Luba heartland and the Empire's periphery grew, the necessity for using force and terror also increased. Military operations must be understood in a central African context. A Luba king participated in major campaigns when his presence was necessary to encourage his warriors, and his twite led the small raids and minor operations. The twite and the young men holding war titles were the king's bodyguards and the only standing military force at the royal court, while other titleholders formed the cadre into which clients and members of subordinate lineages were recruited to flesh out forces for a single military operation. 1 Many of the incentives for participating in local wars and raids also motivated warriors to join in major conquests in faraway regions. Valor in battle was one means of achieving upward mobility at court that was available to a young man without kinship ties to the king. A man recognized for bravery might be given a warrior title which could lead to advancement to a title as a counselor or court functionary. 2 War booty and ransom from prisoner exchanges provided an individual with items he and his kin and clients could consume or that he could use to attract new clients. Rulers and warriors could increase their own power and prestige by assimilating unredeemed prisoners, especially women, into their kin groups. We do not have to assume, however, that forces recruited in the heartland constituted the backbone for all or even for most campaigns directed outward from distant fron-

Dynastie History in the 18th Century

109

tiers. People incorporated during one phase of a conquest often provided the muscle for assaults upon their neighbors during a subsequent phase. There was a close correlation between the order of battle of armies and the organization of royal courts in central African dynastic states like the Luba Empire, Kanyok kingdom, kingdom of Mutombo Mukulu, Lunda Empire, and kingdom of Kazembe. Royal courts were known by terms meaning "hunting camp" or "war camp," and titleholders and groups of warriors were distributed around a king on the battlefield in the same order that they resided around his royal enclosure at court. 3 During a campaign, the movements of the Luba king were kept secret; he was accompanied by a special titleholder who made esoteric marks with a ceremonial adze along the paths the king travelled so that royal messengers could locate him without asking local villagers about his whereabouts. 4 Armies and raiding parties had no supply train; warriors lived off the land and from what their wives and retainers could carry with them. For this reason campaigns were short; they probably lasted no more than several months. However, the course of major Luba conquests could not have been completed within one campaign season, and a sustained conquest in any particular direction consisted of a series of short campaigns stretched out over years. Conquest had its own rhythm and momentum, and in many cases Luba warriors with their wives and camp-followers must have settled among newly conquered peoples for a year or two before going on campaign again. Verbal exchanges were an important ingredient of warfare: opposing sides hurled insults, and shouted or sang the praises of their leaders. Morale was dependent upon how opposing sides viewed the supernatural power of their own and their enemies' protective charms. We cannot discount the role of diviners and spirit mediums. Rulers did not make important decisions without first sending representatives to consult with some of the diviners and spirit mediums of their ancestors. Timing of attacks and assessment of victories were determined through consultation with the mediums of Mpanga and Banze, the protective spirits of the royal dynasty. 5 Although battles were not characterized by mass bloodshed, it would be wrong to humanize Luba warfare by contrasting it with the unconscionable slaughter of the industrial battlefield of con-

110

THE AGE O F KINGS

temporary Western civilization. Mutilation was an accepted aspect of Luba military operations: warriors who fled from the battlefield might have a foot chopped off, and amputation was used as a terror tactic to punish subjugated populations. 6 Tippu Tip described Luba tactics during the reign of king Ilunga Kabale: Each time he went into combat, he placed in front of him all those whose arms, noses and ears had been cut off and thus he terrorized his adversaries. When he made war, at the head of his army, marched more than 7,000 persons; when these horrifying people appeared, the Warua [baLuba] trembled with fear. 7

Tippu Tip passed through territories of the Luba Empire and later described that: In all their villages one sees three or four hundred men with either their noses, ears or arms cut off. 8

More limited forms of combat were frequent; death could come suddenly in an ambush, as the missionary Arnot learned: We were visiting some Luba villages that were at war with each o t h e r . . . . We were all jogging along as quickly as possible, when one big fellow, who had been acting as our guide, with a few long strides bounded in front of me, and took the lead. He had hardly done so when four spears flashed into the back of my poor guide. We had stumbled into an ambush. . . . Our guide died that evening. We never saw our assailants. 9

A few caveats should be kept in mind when reading the description of Luba conquests which follows. The general lines of conquests can be described and can be associated with the reigns of kings and the estimated dates for their respective dynastic generations; however, it is not possible to date individual campaigns or battles or always to explain the exact chronological sequence of events that constituted a long-term conquest. It is safe to assume that in many cases campaigns and conquests were going on simultaneously in several directions; thus, geography often dictates description. The Generations of Kings Ndaye Mwine Nkombe and Kadilo, ca. 1690 ( ± 24 years) to ca. 1750 ( ± 16 years) King Ndaye Mwine Nkombe's court was located at the village of Kitabi near the Lubweye River, just beyond the northern fringe of the heartland. One or both of his sons, Kadilo and Maloba Kabedi, became impatient waiting for him to die, and they tried to

Dynastie

History in the 18th

Century

111

poison him. 10 Upon the death of Ndaye Mwine Nkombe, Maloba Kabedi apparently declared that he did not wish to rule, for he enjoyed good relations with Kadilo, who became king." The settlement that was worked out between the two brothers is cited in the proverb Ujingile babidi o unywana wa ba Maloba Kabedi ne Kumwimbe Kadilo ("The cord [made by two people is stronger] like [the cord] of Maloba Kabedi and Kumwimbe Kadilo"). 12 Kadilo consciously evoked the image of iron-working when he proclaimed his best-remembered praise phrase at the time of investiture, Kadilo Nkela motelwa pala ("The Little Fire of the Iron-Smelter, [those who wish to warm themselves from its heat] must stand far back to avoid being burned"); that is, the fire of the iron-smelting furnace may be small, but its heat is intense. With this praise phrase Kadilo evoked an image of his power while warning rivals to keep their distance from him. 13 This praise phrase most probably refers to an interest in the use of iron resources, too, if we consider the fact that Kadilo's court, marked by the royal sacred village of Katunda, was located just north of the Munza iron-producing district of the heartland. Kadilo is the first king remembered to have adopted sons, and he used adoption to establish close relationships with influential personalities at his own court. He is said to have taken in the sons of some of his important titleholders; Mulengo and Kaomba are the names of two such adopted sons. Kadilo boasted of this practice in the praise phrase Ami ne mulopwe; nki butula nenga pamo ne bampombololwe ("I am the king; if I do not have enough sons I will adopt others like the mpombololwe ants [that raid the nests of other ants]"). 14 This praise phrase suggests that Kadilo did not have a sufficient number of royal sons. Although adopted males could occupy important titled positions at court, they could not rule, so adoption may have been practiced to compensate for the loss of royal male children through infanticide. By the time of king Kadilo's reign, the Luba of the heartland and the Songye to the north were in contact through extended regional trade. De Clerck was told by Luba informants in 1914 that king Kadilo directed a conquest against the western Songye groups of the Musolo, Kibeshi, Ekiye, and Kyofo as well as the Ikalebwe, a central Songye group led by chief Kitenge. The Ekiye and the Ikalebwe formed an alliance and defeated Kadilo, who was forced to abandon his sick and wounded; these abandoned Luba warriors, taken by the Ekiye and placed in four villages,

112

THE AGE O F KINGS

became known as the Totwe people. In the course of this conflict, Kadilo and Kitenge captured each other's mothers. After the war the mothers were returned to their sons, and Kadilo and chief Kitenge formed an alliance. 15 Parts of this story are confirmed by Ekiye oral traditions, recently collected by Nancy Fairley, which say that a Luba group known as the Totwe came to settle among the Ekiye. The Totwe people still retain a separate identity in the midst of the Ekiye. The wandering hunter of the Ekiye genesis myth is said to have been a Luba male who came to a Totwe village in search of a Luba agent named Mpibwe Bwilu, who had settled among them at an earlier time. As part of their investiture ritual, Ekiye kings made sacrifices at Lake Mbebe, where the Totwe worshipped the spirit of Mpibwe Bwilu. Taken together, the Luba and Ekiye traditions suggest that a Luba group known as the Totwe settled among the Ekiye during a period of conquest directed by king Kadilo. The Totwe people collected tribute and acted as lineage powerbrokers in Ekiye succession matters. 16 Although the Totwe villagers subsequently lost their ties with the Luba royal dynasty, they did not lose their sense of Luba ancestry and they continued to exercise a ritual role in the confirmation of Ekiye rulers. The Generation of King Kekenya, ca. 1750 ( ± 16 years) to ca. 1780 ( ± 12 years) King Kadilo was survived by at least four sons who were eligible to rule: Kekenya, Kasongo Kaumbu, Tombe, and Maloba Mutombo. The oral record of the dynastic generation of Kadilo's sons gives us our first glimpse of the complexity of a Luba interregnal struggle. This generation also marks the beginning of a lineage split in the Luba royal dynasty. Upon his father's death, Kekenya was proclaimed a candidate for sacral kingship. His primary support came from his mother's kin, the Bwila people. The Bwila line had the allegiance of villages in the upper Lusanza River valley, and the lineage name was associated with salt resources. The upper Lusanza valley is known as Bwila bwa Mashyondo ("Bwila of the Salt Marshes"), because salt made from the saline marshes along the shores of the Lusanza was an important economic asset. Kekenya built his court on the rim of the Lusanza valley, about two dozen kilometers north of his father's court. 17

Dynastie

History in the 18th

Century

113

Kasongo Kaumbu also proclaimed his candidacy. His support came from his maternal kin living in the iron-producing district of Kalulu in the upper Luvidjo River valley next to Munza. The aspirations of Kasongo's line were symbolized by the name Kaumbu, which is derived from the word for the royal mumbu tree. 18 This is a variety of the fast-growing lannea tree species which is associated with royalty and ancestor worship throughout the middle of central Africa. 19 When a Luba king built his permanent royal compound, it was enclosed by cuttings from this tree; such cuttings grow within a matter of years into a barrier of tall trees, and stands of trees marked former royal-court locations. 20 Kasongo Kaumbu and his maternal kin attacked Kekenya and his Bwila supporters, but Kasongo Kaumbu's partisans were defeated and he was killed. Despite this setback, the aspirations of the Kaumbu line were not destroyed. Kasongo Kaumbu was survived by two sons, Kumwimbe Kaumbu and Miketo, and possibly by a third named Kasongo, and the Kaumbu line was to remain a threat to the Kekenya branch of the royal dynasty in later generations. 21 Kekenya next fought Tombe, whose praise phrase lists the name of his mother (Lenge) and the region from which he drew his support— Tombe a Lenge, Mukana kuya kwa Lumba ("Tombe of Lenge, [he of the region of] Mukana and Lumba"). 22 The people of Mukana and Lumba apparently could not provide their royal candidate with enough support, however, for they were beaten by Kekenya's forces and Tombe was killed. The last brother, Maloba Mutombo, did not challenge the kingship. Instead, he reached an agreement with Kekenya, eventually becoming Kekenya's ndalamba titleholder at court. 23 Men of memory recall the praise name and phrase that commemorated Kekenya's victories over his brothers as Kekenya Biseba, amba le muno mu ntanda mudi ungidilwe? ("The Eater of Pelts, is there someone in this land who does not know me?"). Only royalty could sit on leopard or lion skins, and the praise name of Eater of Pelts has a double meaning. It recalls Kekenya's destruction of male rivals entitled to sit on royal animal pelts, and, because eating is a metaphor for tribute-consumption, the name also means that as the victor in the succession dispute he received royal tribute. 24 King Kekenya maintained ties with tributaries and conducted conquests along the axis of trade running from the Upemba depression and the upper Zaire River across the heartland to the

114

THE AGE O F KINGS

Songye. He established ties with the Ilande, a southern Songye group, by taking a royal Songye woman named Dyango from the village of Kabanda. She became the mother of Kekenya's successor, king Ilunga Sungu. 25 Kekenya's attacks at the other end of the trade axis were commemorated in the praise phrase, Ami ne Kekenya Biseba, tu Hemba koka bwi tupuku, Twalaba totenya mitoke ("I am the Eater of Pelts, the little Hemba I tied up like mice, the little people of the Lualaba I thrust under the water [and drowned]"). 26 The Hemba, or eastern Luba, lived along the shores of the Zaire River downstream from the Upemba depression, while the people of the Lualaba were the riverain fishing populations of the Upemba depression. The circumstances of Kekenya's death are not recalled by men of memory, but much is remembered about the royal males who survived him, for the protracted succession-struggle following his death led to a crisis within the royal dynasty.

X. THE GENERATION OF KING ILUNGA SUNGU. ca. 1780 (± 12 YEARS) to ca. 1810 (± 8 YEARS)

Succession Struggle and Dynastic Crisis King Kekenya's rule spanned the latter part of his generation, and when he died he was survived by his brother Maloba Mutombo. Although Maloba Mutombo was a royal male who could expect support from his lineage, which was centered in a cluster of villages along the eastern shore of the Lomami River, he had reached such an advanced age by the time of Kekenya's death that he was probably too enfeebled by old age to be seen as a strong and healthy contender for the rigors of sacral kingship. 1 In any case, Maloba Mutombo refused investiture. Ilunga Sunga was too young at the time of his father's death to be invested. 2 On the other hand, there were at least two eligible candidates in the Kaumbu branch of the royal dynasty: Kumwimbe Kaumbu and Miketo, the sons of Kekenya's deceased brother Kasongo Kaumbu. Kumwimbe Kaumbu was invested as the sacral king, while Miketo became his senior adviser, with the title of inabanza. Kumwimbe Kaumbu's court was established in the Kalulu region of the upper Luvidjo River valley, the iron-producing area that was the Kaumbu stronghold. 3 Oral traditions recall Kumwimbe Kaumbu's wars with various Songye groups to the northwest. Although no direct mention is made of attacks upon Ilunga Sungu, it should be noted that the villages of Ilunga Sungu's southern Songye (Ilande) maternal kin lay along the line of attack. Kumwimbe Kaumbu waged several consecutive campaigns against chief Kitenge Finyangamekalo ("The Squeezer of Frontiers") of the central Songye (Ikalebwe). Much of the conflict occurred among southern Songye groups like the Mwilambwe and Ilande. 4 115

116

T H E AGE O F K I N G S

Innge ot the rain forest — — —

"

•

tuba Empire periphery 1860s swamps

y

Lunda-Kazembe tribute and long-distance trade general direction ot major expansive thrusts ot Luba Emoire

4. Luba Empire: late eighteenth century to the 1860s In a story told by inabanza Kataba, the end of the conflict with the Songye was closely associated with the death of Kumwimbe Kaumbu: Kumwimbe Kaumbu's army was decisively beaten in a battle with the forces of chief Kitenge. Miketo and the main body of the army returned to the court, but Kumwimbe Kaumbu became separated from this group during the retreat. There was a rule that the king could not be absent from his court for more than four days after the arrival of his army, and Miketo and others waited for an additional two days without knowing the fate of Kumwimbe Kaumbu. Finally, it was decided that Miketo, as an eligible royal male, should be invested as the king. Several days

Generation

of King Ilunga

Sungu

117

after the investiture ceremony, the wife of Miketo's maternal uncle, kimenkinda Kilume, discovered Kumwimbe Kaumbu sitting with a small band of supporters near the royal court. He told the woman to alert Miketo to his arrival, and she went to Miketo. Kilume advised Miketo to have Kumwimbe Kaumbu killed, reasoning that Kumwimbe Kaumbu would kill Miketo for having been invested. Some of Miketo's titleholders were dispatched, and they executed Kumwimbe Kaumbu and cut off his head, which they placed in the sacred basket used to store the heads of the king's defeated enemies. The basket was entrusted to the care of the mabuki (the court titleholder responsible for preserving royal insignia) with instructions that he not open it. Despite these warnings, the wife of the mabuki could not resist the temptation to look inside the basket, and she discovered Kumwimbe Kaumbu's head. She told her husband, who summoned the important court counselors, and they determined to appeal to Ilunga Sungu of Kekenya's line to seek investiture and kill Miketo. 5 This story, which relies in part upon a mytheme reminiscent of the story of Pandora's Box, seems to be a metaphor for the defeat of Kumwimbe Kaumbu at the hands of a Songye group, followed by a challenge from Miketo. The reigns of Kumwimbe Kaumbu and Miketo probably spanned a considerable portion of their generation, and while they ruled Ilunga Sungu was growing up among the Ilande. Ilunga Sungu's southern Songye connections were established through his mother's line and are symbolized by one of his widely known praise-phrases, Ami ne Sungu Dyango, Mukoji wa mwa Kabanda wamulambulwa nkudimba ne bankusuku milongo ("I am the Angry One of Dyango, the Mukoji of Kabanda where people line up to pay tribute with pigeons and parrots"). Ilunga Sungu proclaimed himself to be a mukoji, the Luba designation for a Songye individual. This phrase implies that Ilunga Sungu did not simply receive mundane goods like meat, salt, and raphia cloth as tribute; he was also given prestige goods, like white pigeon-feathers and scarlet parrot-feathers used in royal headdresses and for bodily adornment, that the Songye were famous for exporting from the southern fringe of the rainforest in Shaba-Kasai extended regional trade. 6 Ilunga Sungu's special ties with the Ilande may have facilitated the adoption of at least one Songye institution by the Luba. The bakasandji secret society was introduced by Luba traders return-

118

THE AGE O F KINGS

ing from the Ilande during his reign, and initiates were known as bayembe, the Luba term for people living in the direction of the Songye. 7 The bakasandji established close ties with the existing bambudye secret society, and bambudye members participated in bakasandji ceremonies. 8 The bakasandji members engaged in spirit-possession by major Luba ancestral spirits, and the name of Kalala Ilunga figured prominently in the sect's rituals. Bakasandji were doctors, and they disinterred bodies and performed rituals in order to neutralize the malevolence of the spirits of the deceased. 9 This helped to maintain order within the Luba Empire by reducing witchcraft accusations, a source of interpersonal and interlineage disputes. Burton has observed that "it is believed that they thus rid the neighborhood of evil influences, and they are regarded in the light of saviours to the whole community." 10 Ilunga Sungu and his southern Songye supporters moved toward the Luba heartland to challenge Miketo and the Kaumbu line. Intrigue was more important than combat, for before the battle Ilunga Sungu and Miketo's twite war leader secretly negotiated Miketo's defeat. When Ilunga Sungu's warriors confronted Miketo's supporters, after an initial exchange of arrows the twite and his forces quickly retreated. Miketo was abandoned, and he surrendered to Ilunga Sungu by twisting his leg around a sapling, a ceremonial gesture of submission." Thus the surrender of a member of the Kaumbu line became ritualized. The sacred mulemba vine wraps itself around the royal mumbu tree, and the union was an important symbol in ancestor worship among savanna dwellers. 12 Miketo's gesture must have evoked this union because the name Kaumbu derives from the name mumbu. After the defeat of Miketo, Ilunga Sungu was challenged by a royal male who appears to have been a member of the Kaumbu line. The challenger's praise name was Kasongo Dilungo Disenena ("Kasongo, the dilungo bead that shines"). This name, evoking the image of a small, smooth, shiny bead, taunted Ilunga Sungu who, at some time in his youth, had been scarred or mutilated in order to make him ineligible to challenge the Kaumbu line as an unblemished royal male. Oral historians who recall this story say that Ilunga Sungu's blemish was "cured" with special medicine obtained from the spirit mediums and diviners who worshipped Mpanga and Banze, the protective ancestral spirits of the Luba royal dynasty. The warriors of Ilunga Sungu and Kasongo clashed, and Kasongo was defeated and executed, thus

Generation of King Ilunga Sungu

119

ending the last known challenge by a royal male to Ilunga Sungu's kingship. 13 The struggle between the Kekenya and K a u m b u lines spanned two generations and threatened to divide the royal dynasty. This was, indeed, an epoch when a political principle expressed in the genesis myth promoted unity. The fact that sacral kingship was believed to be indivisible forced the resolution of the succession crises of the eighteenth century; however, the principle of indivisibility did not dictate that either line had to be annihilated. Although the Kaumbu line was defeated, it remained a threat to the Kekenya line during the nineteenth century. The threat was clearly recognized, and the suppression of Kaumbu royal aspirations was renewed in ritual. During the investiture of a royal male of the Kekenya line, a man and a woman f r o m the Kaumbu family were killed as a symbolic statement of Kaumbu subjugation. The man's head was buried in the king's royal enclosure with a cutting from a mumbu tree stuck in the mouth; as this cutting grew, it became the king's protective or medicine tree. The woman's head was buried at the entrance to the royal enclosure. 14 With the defeat of the Kaumbu line, Ilunga Sungu moved to establish his primacy over the Luba heartland. For a century or more, royal courts had been built northeast of Lake Boya, the center of the Luba heartland, where kings had sought protection and support in the midst of the strongholds of their maternal kin. 15 However, Ilunga Sungu could not establish his court in the midst of his maternal kin's stronghold, for they were southern Songye living a substantial distance from the Luba. His court was located at Katende, southwest of Lake Boya and over 100 kilometers by footpath from that of his father. The necessity for controlling the people and resources of the Luba heartland must have been a primary consideration in the choice of a site, for Ilunga Sungu's court was located only twenty-five kilometers west of the Mashyo salt district of the heartland. Ilunga Sungu's move close to Mashyo represented a major and permanent shift of the center of power in the heartland: the royal courts of his nineteenth-century successors were all established in Mashyo or along its fringes. This meant that during and after Ilunga Sungu's reign, Luba kings were in an excellent position to supervise directly the exploitation of Mashyo salt resources as tribute. Toward the end of his reign, Ilunga Sungu also established a residence at Kipushya village in the Kilulwe iron-produc-

120

T H E AGE O F KINGS

ing region of the upper Luvidjo River valley, on the opposite fringe of the heartland and some 200 kilometers east of Katende. 16 Between Kipushya and Katende lay all the salt and iron-producing villages of the heartland. The consolidation of king Ilunga Sungu's power in the heartland marks the beginning of a distinctive phase of frontier conflict for the Luba Empire. If the estimated date of ca. 1810 ( ± 8 years) for the end of his generation is fairly correct, then 1800 can be suggested as an approximate date for the beginning of this phase of Luba history. Expansion was directed east across the upper Zaire River and toward the small-scale polities of the Hemba. However, even as expansion occurred in one direction, tributaries were lost in the opposite direction as large dynastic states emerged along the Empire's western frontier. Defeat in the West: Mutombo Mukulu and the Kanyok Kingdom The kings of Mutombo Mukulu, the buffer state separating the Luba and Lunda empires, received tribute from villages located on the band of territory bounded by the Luembe River in the east and the Lubilash River in the west.17 Ilunga Sungu attempted through peaceful means to get Mutombo Mukulu to submit; he attacked only when that approach failed. The Luba were beaten by warriors of king Kanonge Samba, a scion of the Kabeya royal line of Mutombo Mukulu. 18 Kanonge Samba's victory and the subsequent quiescence of the Luembe borderland indicates that Mutombo Mukulu had emerged as a major power by the beginning of the nineteenth century. Mutombo Mukulu was capable of holding its own against its powerful western neighbor, too, for Gra^a noted during his 1847 visit to the Lunda royal court that Mutombo Mukulu was independent from the Lunda Empire. 19 If we are to believe Livingstone and Cameron, neither the Luba nor the Lunda kings wished to establish contact with one another during the nineteenth century. Livingstone learned, whilejourneying along a southern frontier of the Lunda Empire in 1855, that the Lunda king "prevents people from going past him, and the Luba and other savage tribes stop intercourse eastwards in the direction in which they live."20 Cameron concluded, while passing near Mutombo Mukulu in 1875, that the Lunda king had blocked Angolan traders from going to the Luba earlier in the century in

Generation

of King Ilunga Sungu

121

order to deprive the Luba king of the benefits of direct contact with international long-distance trade. 21 Long-term Luba interests among the Kanyok states were challenged by the consolidation of these states into a single Kanyok kingdom during the reign of Ilunga Sungu. The Kanyok people lived approximately 250 kilometers west of the Luba heartland in a territory bounded on the east by the Lubilash River and on the west by the Mbuji Mayi River. Kanyok oral traditions, as recently collected by John Yoder, describe the formal role Luba kings played as succession powerbrokers in states like Ngoy, Museng, Etond, and Kalemb during the eighteenth century, if not earlier. Candidates who wished to rule one of the Kanyok states went to the Luba royal court to be confirmed in office, and the procedures and rituals they were to follow were spelled out in an institution called Kuyi ku mulopwe muLuba ("To go to the Luba king"). This institution required that Kanyok candidates journey to the Luba royal court accompanied by a large entourage of supporters. Each candidate distributed generous gifts to the Luba king and his titleholders as symbols of what the Luba royal court could expect in the way of future tribute-payments. Intrigue and the manipulation of important political figures were undoubtedly part of the selection process, and each Kanyok candidate solicited the sponsorship of a major Luba court titleholder. Kanyok candidates were also expected to undergo trials and tests, including a poison ordeal. Ritual restrictions were observed, and Kanyok candidates were required to store in baskets the feces they passed while at the Luba court and to carry the baskets back to their homeland when they returned. In the final rite of confirmation, a successful candidate reenacted the Pit Trap episode (16) of the Luba genesis myth. To approach the Luba king, who was surrounded on three sides by his court personnel, he danced across a series of mats while reciting his praise-phrases and proverbs. The Kanyok candidate stopped at the last mat, which concealed a pit; there he proclaimed that he did not wish to die among the Luba and that he would return to his own land; and he threw his spear into the mat, revealing the trap. Unsuccessful candidates made public displays of loyalty to the new Kanyok ruler chosen by the Luba king, and female pawns were left at the Luba court as tokens of the Kanyok ruler's good faith. In this way Kanyok oral traditions explain how lineage conflict was con-

122

T H E AGE O F KINGS

trolled in a frontier-state system and potential succession violence was reduced to institutionalized tests and ritual performances at the Luba royal court. 22 Toward the end of the eighteenth century, Luba interests among the Kanyok states were challenged by the consolidation of these states under the rule of a single Kanyok kingdom. During the course of this century, Kaleng a Mukel, one of the small Kanyok states, began to take on the general characteristics of the type of state that had evolved in the Luba heartland at an earlier date. There are no salt marshes or pans in the Kanyok region, but people filtered salt from the ashes of burned grass and palm fronds. Kaleng a Mukel means "Salt from Grass," and saltmaking figures as a symbol in the genesis myth of the Shimat dynasty that came to rule this state. This may mean that the ruler of Kaleng a Mukel—the proto-Kanyok kingdom—enjoyed certain economic advantages by exploiting the salt made in this fashion. Several dynamic and aggressive Shimat males exploited local lineage politics and led military conquests into neighboring smallscale states. Various attempts were made to minimize the disruption of succession disputes within the Shimat dynasty; royal infanticide was practiced as one way to limit the number of royal contenders. 23 Two brothers of the Shimat dynasty, Mulaj a Cibang and Ilung a Cibang, journeyed to the Luba royal court about 1800 so that one of them could be chosen as head of what had become the Kanyok kingdom. According to Kanyok traditions, Mulaj and Ilung became disgusted both with the requirement that Kanyok candidates store their feces in baskets while at the Luba court and with the confirmation rites that the Luba king demanded. Kanyok oral historians say that as these two Kanyok royal males returned home they defiantly dropped into the Luembe River the royal axes and white chalk given to them by the Luba king. 24 In a story that uses the same images as Kanyok traditions, Luba oral historians confirm that the Kanyok revolted against king Ilunga Sungu. According to what inabanza Kataba told Womersley: The Great Town at Katende began to break up when the King became old. It was so big that "The Lord of Hygiene" ('Kikoto kya Kaumba', socalled after the 'kikoto' or scavenger beetle) could not, even with the help of his sons and relatives, keep the wide avenues between the various sections of the town cleared of refuse and excrement, even though they

Generation of King Ilunga

Sungu

123

worked all day scraping up the dirt with their special long-handled hoes. It is said that the old King himself complained that it was the Bene Kanyoka w h o were chiefly to blame and should take their dirt h o m e with them, s o the people of this western tribe went h o m e in anger and have never paid tribute since. T o this day if there is an unclean smell around, men will spit and say, "This is as bad as when Ilunga Nsungu told the Bene Kanyoka to take their refuse with them!" 25

The Kanyok still recall in detail what happened next. Mulaj ordered his people to build two defensive enclosures about three kilometers apart in the middle of the Kanyok kingdom, one for him and one for his brother Ilung. Both enclosures were monumental constructions by central African standards, and according to Yoder their outlines are still visible on the ground. Mulaj's encampment measured approximately six kilometers around, and that of Ilung measured eleven kilometers; it must have taken several dry seasons to build them. An inner wall of raised earth and palisades taller than a man was surrounded by a dry moat that was over five meters wide and three meters deep. Hundreds of hectares of land were enclosed by the wall and moat, which provided security against the constant Luba raids. 26 Because the Kanyok repelled Luba messengers demanding tribute, Luba warriors invaded the Kanyok kingdom. One of Ilunga Sungu's famous war leaders was Lubamba Mwana a Maloba Bilema ("Lubamba, Child of Maloba Bilema"), whose many victories over the Kanyok were symbolized during his lifetime by his belt, called Kikaya kya Kitapi kya Kanyoka ("The Belt of the Slayer of the Kanyok People"). 27 Frontier chiefs subordinate to the Kanyok king resisted the Luba for some time, but one or more decisive engagements were fought in the center of the kingdom, at Ilung's massive fortification. Although Kanyok sources tell of a sustained Luba siege, it is unclear how long such a siege could have lasted, given Luba military tactics and technology. Eventually, Luba warriors were forced back from the walls of Ilung's enclosure and east to the Lubilash River, but final Kanyok victory did not come easily. The Luba had built their own fortification near a ford on the Lubilash, and this served as their point of departure for continuing raids into Kanyok territory. The Luba wall and dry moat were four kilometers long on three sides, with a stream covering the fourth side. Over time, Kanyok warriors defeated the Luba in engagements along the Lubilash River and

124

T H E AGE O F KINGS

pushed them back across it, after which Luba warriors did not again invade Kanyok territory until the chaotic period of the late 1870s and 1880s.28 Not all Luba warriors returned to the Empire at the end of the Luba