Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 146
Dghweɗe settlement units according to captain Lewis (1925)
In his introductory note, assistant district officer Lewis of the Dikwa division, who forwards
his 'very brief outline of the customs and mode of life among the hill pagans', also includes a
tax schedule which shows:
(1) the number of compounds (2) exemptions (3) number of compounds taxed and (4) the total tax
for each town … With regard to (2) these include Bulama, his council and his ward heads and the
concession has been made [still subject to approval] with the view of enlisting the help of chiefs
and insuring as far as is humanly possible a peaceful taxation.
It seems that these 'exemptions' were a way of winning over the new local officials of British
indirect rule, so that taxation could be introduced for the rest of the population. Therefore, the
whole report is less about customs and modes of life, and more about producing a list of the
new local officials in the villages belonging to what Lewis calls 'Gwoza' and 'Ashigashiya'.
These are the two districts covering the Gwoza hills area over its western and eastern parts.
However there is some important ethnographic material on local customs, which I will
highlight below for more detailed discussion in later chapters of Part Three. Part of the way
the British operated was to learn about customs, so that taxation could be introduced as
peacefully ‘as is humanly possible', but as we have seen in Chapter 2.2, this method was not
so successful in late colonial Ghwa'a.
Lewis himself does not refer to the Dghweɗe as the ethnic group occupying the settlement
units listed in Table 3 below, but we have identified them here as such. It appears that Lewis
lists all Dghweɗe wards of 1925 as being generally under 'Gwoza' rather than under
'Ashigashiya', which confirms that Dghweɗe as a whole was already then under Gwoza.
Table 3: Dghweɗe settlement units according to captain Lewis (1925)
Lewis
Modern
Village officials
Haraza
Gharaza
Kudumsa
Hudimche
Gudule
Gudule
Johode
Ghwa’a
Kolika
Kwalika
Korane
Basa and
Kwandama
Tagadigile
Taghadigile
Tokoshe
Takweshe
Chima:
Bulama:
Chima:
Bulama:
Chima:
Bulama:
Chima:
Bulama:
Chima:
Bulama:
Chima:
Bulama:
Chima:
Bulama:
Chima:
Bulama:
Buba Matagum
Hoiya
Allah Wadi
Ngilda
Jabule
Gojenge
Tada [Taɗa]
Baima [Vaima]
Yaga
Burla
Dalil
Bassa
Iya
Rua
Iya
Dawa
Houses
Customs
163
same as Korane
101
same as Korane
70
same as Korane
500 plus
methods of burial
and proclaiming
303
methods of burial
and proclaiming
115
methods of burial
and proclaiming
40
same as Tokoshe
75
methods of burial
and proclaiming
If we compare 'Johode' with all the other Dghweɗe settlement units in our list, it instantly
becomes obvious that it has the highest population of all. This confirms our conclusion that
'Johode' is Ghwa’a (see Table 3 and Figure 8). There are also quite a few 'village officials'
listed in Lewis’s list, seven altogether, which is more than for all other settlement units
mentioned. The listing of 'Johode' (the Hausa version of Dghweɗe), as separate from all other
Dghweɗe settlement units in the list, indeed indicates that Ghwa’a was then already viewed as
being apart. When we retell the settlement history from our oral accounts below, we will see
that this is in tune with Dghweɗe oral tradition. We precluded earlier that Ghwa'a already
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