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tamale The Dakpema, the Gulkpe’Na, the Bugulana, and the Law of the Land 5 The history of Tamale in the twentieth century, especially the story of the Dakpemas, is particularly revealing concerning the relationship between tindanas and chiefs in the context of colonial and postcolonial government and the tangle of political opportunities opened in the north by colonial rule. In the mid-seventeenth century Dagbon was occupied by the Gonja, who overran Kasuleyili, Kumbungu, Yogu, Savelugu, Nanton, and Galiwe, among other places, but apparently not Tolon (or Tamale, which did not exist as such at that time). After about 1714, when the Gonja were defeated, chiefs subordinate to Yendi took their place, but neither the boundary of the territory nor sovereignty over it as a unit was clearly defined until the twentieth century. The major local chieftaincies Bamvim and Sagnarigu, in what became Tamale, were certainly extant by 1800 and are probably much older, but Na Abudulai created the chieftaincy of Lamashegu only in the 1860s. These skins are open only to princes. In northern Tamale, as it is now, the chieftaincies of Choggo and Kanvili, founded by minor royals at some generational distance from Yendi, date from the mid-eighteenth century. The Yo Na of Savelugu, holder of a gate skin, took advantage of the confusions of early British rule to assert his authority over Tolon, Kumbungu, and Nanton but lost his bid when indirect rule “restored” the structure of the kingdom. The British created Tamale in 1907 out of a cluster of indigenous villages with a total population of 1,435 to be their military and administrative headquarters in the north. The center of what is now a city of more than 400,000 still conforms to their original layout. Old Tamale, the territory of those who regard themselves as the real natives (tiŋbihi) of the city center, became the adjoining suburbs of Changli and Kakpar’yili. The name Tamale is a British term for which several Dagbani originals have been proposed, inconclusively. When Major Morris, newly handed the TAMALE 135 job of organizing the Northern Territories, arrived in what became Tamale in 1905, he found, or was offered, a man to be his go-between with the local population, whom he called the king of Tamale but who was already known locally as the Dakpema. Although some of his descendants claim that dakpema means “senior man in Dagbon,” in fact it means literally “market elder” and denotes one who collects market tithes on behalf of a tindana, in this instance the Tamale Bugulana. As market elder, he probably had the job of receiving strangers. The Tamale market, already important when the British arrived, is one of six that constitute, in sequence , a cycle of market days and thus a six-day “market week”; the others are at Tolon, Savelugu, Tampion, Nyankpala, and Kumbungu. The Dakpema whom Major Morris encountered in 1905 and made king of Tamale was Nsungna, probably the descendant of a refugee who some generations earlier had arrived in Tamale under a cloud and had been taken in by the Bugulana and given responsibility for the market. An undated manuscript note in the British political files for Tamale says that the Dakpema was a poor man with no following, but there are reasons to disregard this assessment. The British idea of a chief at the time was someone who looked the part: wealthy, with horses, impressive clothing, and many wives. Nobody in Tamale looked like that. Nsungna’s greatuncle Azim, however, had already turned the Dakpema position into one of some influence. It was he who persuaded Ya Na Abudulai (1864–1875) to create the Lamashegu skin for a friend of his, a minor aristocrat, and who arranged for neighboring chiefs to give him pieces of land. Hence the name, which was originally ilaγimshe, “cobbled together,” or so traditions tell us. Popular opinion in Tamale is unanimous that the British came to Tamale because Nsungna went to the former headquarters at Gambaga to invite them, but according to Colonel Watherston, the first chief commissioner , “The Dagomba Chiefs are a very much better class than can be found elsewhere in the country, and it was mainly due to this that the new headquarters have been moved to Tamale, situated as it is in a thickly populated part of the country under the King of Savelugu.”1 In February 1907 the acting colonial secretary laid down the principles for the European quarters: they should...

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