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2. Tribute and Dependency in Late Nineteenth-Century Shambaai
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Tribute and Dependency in Late Nineteenth-Century Shambaai The death of a king remained secret until a new king had been installed in the night near Vugha, the capital. At dawn the war drum Nenkondo sounded to announce the death of a king and the accession of a king. The people of Vugha streamed out to the Council Clearing to find their new ruler seated, wearing the ostrich-feather headdress. This was the only time the king's subjects were permitted to state openly their conditions for the social contract with their ruler. They greeted him with the royal title, "Simba Mwene," and then shouted, Give us rain. Give us bananas. Give us sugar cane. Give us plantains. Give us meat. Give us food. You are our king, but if you do not feed us properly we will get rid of you. The country is yours; the people must have their stomachs filled. Give us rain. Give us food....1 Once the people accepted the ruler as Simba Mwene, "the lion," they knew that he would be free to take all the wealth of the land. It was said of the Simba Mwene that "he eats the whole land" (aja shi yoshe). Just as a lion might descend on a cow where one least expected it, so a Kilindi could descend to demand tribute anywhere within his territory. The king was Ng'wenye Shi, "Owner of the Land." Ownership in this sense implied control over the land in its political aspect, in the same way the "owner" of a village (ng'wenye mzi), its patriarch, held rights over his progeny.2 To be "Owner of the Land" implied the right to take tribute from any of his subjects. Only if all the wealth of the land was put into the hands of the king, as though his own, would he bring rain and food. A nineteenth-century proverb has it that the king cannot be bribed; you have nothing with which to bribe him, for all the wealth is his.3 The principle that the king owned the land was discussed with me by Mdoe Loti, a brilliant man, blind in old age, who had been present at the royal accession of 1895. We had talked about that accession at length, 46 Tribute and Dependency in Late Nineteenth-Century Shambaai 47 PARE ~ Mbaramo.., J' / , 00 PARE o~MTAE W?HOTO DISTRICT \ TAITA DISTRICT / of ~j \ , \ / ; \ \ \ % MLALO -~--, ~,: I \ ,'" " 1 r " ;::,........ j' HANDENI DISTRICT /" ~sal \, /" _ plantations '( PANGANI DISTRICT ZIGULA ) NGULU - - -- \, /' \ o 2 4 6 8 10 Miles Iii i \ I I o 2 4 6 810 Kilometers DIGO ethnic groups MTAE pre-colonial chiefdoms Map 1. Shambaai and Neighboring Areas I ~ i ! i Escarpments Territorial Boundary District Boundary Railroad but now we were exploring the rite of sacrifice as practiced by both peasants and royals. The rite had existed in the nineteenth century and was still practiced by some people in much the same form in the 1960s.4 The person who wished to sacrifice to his departed father invited his patrilineal relatives and then also brought a healer from outside the lineage. At the start of the rite, which took place at night, all present went out of the house in single file, circled around outside and then reentered , singing that the house now belonged to the healer. Mdoe Loti explained, "The healer must 'build' your house as though it were his own. In the morning you 'redeem' your house, you buy it back" by paying the healer. The healer must be an outsider, just as the king is seen as an outsider to whom the kingdom is given by the ancient inhabitants. The healer, Mdoe Loti insisted, is deceived. Of course the house is not his. He takes it over in a figurative action so that he can make the rite. Similarly, he explained, "The chief does not possess the land. He is deceived. It is not [3.235.249.219] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 01:11 GMT) 48 Tribute and Dependency in Late Nineteenth-Century Shambaai his land at all. It belongs to the people themselves. In this the king is like the healer" (Mdoe Loti 27 May 1967). It is difficult to know whether Mdoe Loti's skepticism about the king as true owner of the land had its origins in discussions of demokrasi which had been alive ten years earlier , in the 1950s. I suspect not. In any event it is clear that in the...