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Nyoro Kinship1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

J. H. M. Beattie
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Extract

In this article and in a succeeding one I give a preliminary account of Nyoro kinship and affinal terms, together with some description of the expected and actual behaviour associated with the categories they denote. I hope at a later date to publish a very much fuller account, but it may in the meantime be useful to put on record a broad outline of the Nyoro system, so far undescribed except for the few pages devoted to it in Roscoe's work. In the present article I discuss Nyoro categories of kin; in the one which follows I shall consider affinal relationships and Nyoro notions about them.

Résumé

LA PARENTÉ CHEZ LES NYORO

Les Banyoro habitent un des grands royaumes bantous entre les lacs de l'Ouganda. Ils sont au nombre de 110,000 et vivent dans des villages éparpillés et s'occupent d'agriculture pour leur subsistance; ils vendent une partie de leur récolte. Ils demeurent dans des maisonnées séparées, dont chacune a son propre chef, et qui habituellement comprennent trois ou quatre personnes dépendantes. La plupart des maisonnées se trouvent à quelques centaines de mètres d'un de leurs voisins. La descendance agnatique a de l'importance, car elle détermine les rapports juridiques et les rapports concernant la propriété, et assure l'expression d'un certain degré de solidarité de groupe. Il continue d'être considéré comme souhaitable que des frères habitent à proximité les uns des autres et la majorité des hommes ont un ou plusieurs frères réels ou classificatoires comme voisins. Malgré le fait qu'il n'existe plus de groupes agnatiques solidaires basés sur le territoire, de telle sorte que l'on peut dire que les Banyoro ont une structure de lignées, on prétend qu'autrefois des groupes importants d'agnats maintenaient, en effet, une existence corporative and contrôlaient des territoires déterminés.

Dans un rapport de parenté, c'est soit la qualité du rapport dont il s'agit, sans tenir compte de l'éloignement généalogique, qui est mise en relief, ou, par contre, la gamme de personnes dénotées, depuis l'unité familiale élémentaire jusqu'au (dans un contexte agnatique) ruganda ou ‘clan’ largement dispersé. Le rapport père-fils est essentiel, car c'est par son intermédiare que le statut et la propriété sont transmis, et ce rapport exprime, par excellence, l'inégalité des générations qui se succèdent. Les autres rapports de la parenté ont une importance structurelle moindre, mais il importe de noter que les parents de la mère, plus particulièrement, sont également regardés, dans certains contextes, comme un groupe unitaire, ainsi que les membres du groupe du conjoint.

En dehors de ces catégories de parents (par exemple, dans le rapport entre petits-enfants et grands-parents) l'aspect des rapports de parenté qui a trait au groupe est relativement peu important. Cependant, les catégories de parenté sont étendues au moyen du système global de clans patrilinéaux bien au-delà des limites des liens généalogiques réels et elles fournissent, ainsi, une expression très importante d'action social réciproque.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , October 1957 , pp. 317 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1957

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References

page 317 note 2 The Bakitara or Banyoro: John Roscoe, Cambridge, 1923, pp. 18–20 and chap, x, passim.

page 318 note 1 The phrase is J. J. Maquet's: he uses it to characterize the even more rigorously stratified interlacustrine Bantu kingdom of Ruanda (Le Système des relations sociales dans le Ruanda ancien, Tervuren, 1954, chap. viii).

page 319 note 1 As our interest here is structural rather than cultural I do not give detailed accounts of Nyoro clan histories or totemic avoidances. A number of clans, together with their ‘totems’ (which include cattle of various kinds and conditions, animals and plants of different species, and sundry human artifacts), are listed in Roscoe's book (op. cit., chap. II). There are, however, some inaccuracies in Roscoe's list, and his division of the clans into pastoral, ‘freemen's’ and serfs' clans is not acceptable. I was unable to find any evidence for Roscoe's notion of an intermediate class of freemen, and I suspect that it derives from his over-formalized interpretation of the fact, conveyed to him by interpretation into Luganda, that in Bunyoro it has always been at least theoretically possible for persons of humble origin to rise to high political status. In fact the traditional but now hardly viable distinction between the pastoral people (bahuma) and the ‘serfs’ (bairu) is not correlated with any division of the clans, but rather cuts across it: many clans have both bahuma and bairu branches. This is why in Roscoe's list a number of clans appear in more than one of his three classes.

page 320 note 1 In fact if a Munyoro were questioning, say, a possible son-in-law he would first ask him what his clan avoidance object is: ‘What do you avoid (zira)?’ he would say.

page 321 note 1 Banyoro often asked me what my totemic avoidance was, that is, what clan I belonged to. As the reply that clans were no longer recognized in England was quite unacceptable and indeed cast grave doubts on my good faith, I soon acquired honorary membership in a Nyoro clan. This in itself may be regarded as in some degree corroborative of the view that for Banyoro clans are not kinds of descent groups, however large, but rather categories into which all people everywhere are divided. Banyoro were surprised and sceptical when told that certain important Nyoro clans were not represented in Europe.

page 321 note 2 The royal Babito clan forms the one exception to the rule of clan exogamy: Babito can marry their clan ‘sisters’. They would not, however, marry a sister born of the same ‘mother’ (i.e. two Babito whose mothers were of the same clan could not marry) nor, as a rule, would two very close agnates marry.

page 322 note 1 ‘Oruganda orukaguza nk'oku ruganjana, torukaguza nk'oku ruzarwa.’

page 324 note 1 I should say here that though I believe that what I have written is true for the greater part of Bunyoro it is not true for every part of Bunyoro. There are some isolated settlements on the Lake Albert shore in which the residential groups are still definitely structured in terms of unilineal descent. These are, however, quite atypical of Bunyoro as a whole, and I do not describe them here.

page 327 note 1 The restricted rights held by a wife over her domestic utensils, &c., form a partial exception to this statement. But these rights are in a sense conditional, since she acknowledges her husband's authority and is dependent for her status on him, and she retains these rights only so long as she remains his wife.

page 328 note 1 The Nyoro verb is kuhhesa, and the English ‘fine’ is only a vety rough translation of it. It involves the making of a payment, traditionally of meat and beer, to the offended party. These comestibles are then jointly consumed by the parties to the dispute and by any relatives and neighbours who may have adjudicated upon it.

page 332 note 1 This proverb and the preceding one are quoted in an article by Davis, M. B., ‘Lunyoro Proverbs’ Uganda Journal, vol. viii, No. 3.Google Scholar

page 332 note 2 Classically expounded by Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. in ‘The Mother's Brother in South Africa’ in Structure and Function in Primitive Society, London, 1925, chap. 1.Google Scholar

page 333 note 1 I use the term ‘group’ here somewhat uncritically, as a matter of convenience. Close agnates do, in certain contexts, act and see themselves as forming groups in some sense of the term. This is especially so in the context of marriage and affinal relationships.

page 335 note 1 There is plenty of evidence that this is so. Thus a man announcing himself, for example, to a chief would, in order fully to identify himself, name both his own and his mother's clan. He might say, for instance, ‘Ndi Muhinda mwihwa wa Babyasi’, ‘I am a Muhinda man and “sister's son” to the Babyasi clan’. And the Nyoro author H. K. Karubanga, writing of the blood pact (mukago), says that after the ceremony each party to it ‘goes and tells his own ruganda and the ruganda of his banyinarumi’ (Buky Nibwira, Nairobi, 1949, p. 35). The point is tha here both one's own people and one's mother' people are seen as distinct unitary groups.

page 335 note 2 In attempting to interpret Nyoro usages I found Sol Tax's discussion of the Omaha and Crow system of cross-cousin terminology (in The Social Anthropology of North American Tribes, Chicago, 1937) particularly helpful.

page 338 note 1 This ‘merging’ is not thought of as occurring at the great-grandparent—great-grandchild level. A man calls his great-grandchild katarabanyuma (literally ‘that which may not pass behind one's back’), and a great-grandchild is subject to certain prohibitions in his relations with his great-grandfather, just as a son is in relation to his father. Thus, in conformity with Radcliffe-Brown's principle, ego is ‘merged’ with his grandfather, ego's father with his grandfather.

page 339 note 1 Male Banyoro often refer to the preparation (where a relationship to a woman is concerned) or sharing (where a relationship to a man is concerned) of food when they wish to indicate that there is, or should be, close and friendly attachment between kinsfolk.