Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 156
him. Mughuze subsequently impregnated Hembe's daughter Bughwitha and married her. At the
time, Mughuze remained fearful of Gudule, who was very strong.
Over the period of several generations, Mughuze had so many descendants that they outnumbered
Gudule and subsequently killed three Gudule men in local warfare. Over the next few days, the
Mughuze killed more and more Gudule men. The Gudule eventually planted their shields into the
ground and when the Mughuze descendants came to fight, they found nobody behind the shields.
They called upon Gudule, who answered that he could not withstand any longer and they had
decided to leave for Gudulyewe, but the Mughuze descendants called to Linga, Zhiwe, and
Mangala to come back and stay, while the rest left for Gudulyewe.
This version goes further back in time, telling us that Gudule was once the stronger group in
pre-Korana times, but that the descendants of Mughuze eventually became so numerous that
they beat the Gudule into submission. When the descendants of Gudule wanted to leave for
Gudulyewe, three were called to stay behind. This is how the Gudule lost power but gained
the ritual responsibility of starting the bull festival for the whole of Dghweɗe. We will learn
more about the unique role of the Gudule in our later chapter about the bull festival.
Mathews (1934) also mentions, about sixty years earlier, the Gudule and Hembe in
connection with Mughuze, stating that he emerged as a local outsider, eventually married
Hembe's daughter and subsequently increased in number, but Mathews never connects the
narrative to a war between Gudule and Mughuze or Vaghagaya. He adds a few new aspects to
it by saying that Hembe had originally settled in Kwalika and Gudule where Korana Basa was
located now, but subsequently moved to their current quarters. Even so, he does not link their
move to warfare as a result of overpopulation, but only mentions population increase.
Mathews (ibid) also tells us about a tradition in which Mughuze had a past relationship with
the people of Hambadga while he had been in Kwalika. In the context of that tradition,
Mughuze is described as a Mandara slave, indirectly marking him out as a stranger. We will
return to some of Mathews' oral traditions in Chapter 3.4, but want to emphasise here, that
based on our oral sources, it was overpopulation and warfare which had been at the root of the
expansion of the Mughuze-Ruwa. In the context of this, we consider Vaghagaya to be the
major lineage who fought with the Gudule, rather than the Mughuze-Ruwa maximal lineage.
The above explains why, with the Vaghagaya being at the centre of events, the expansion of
the Mughuze-Ruwa had happened from Korana and not from Kwalika. This does not exclude
the possibility that Mughuze had originally been in Kwalika as suggested by Mathews (ibid),
but perhaps after the Vaghagaya had established themselves in Korana and Hudimche they
expanded into Gharaza at a later stage. This led to the final defeat of the Gudule, which would
explain why that particular war played such a prominent role as a recent collective memory in
the oral accounts about warfare and settlement history.
War with the 'Matakam' (Mafa) and others
Our oral data suggest that intertribal warfare was mainly with the Mafa. All our Dghweɗe
protagonists refer to them as 'Matakam', and say that they all fought together against them.
This was allegedly mainly to stop the Mafa from taking slaves in Dghweɗe. Bulama Ayba
Ngwiya of Kunde (1995) specified this even more by saying that to fight against the
'Matakam' they gathered together with Taghadigile, Ghwa’a, Kunde, Hembe and Gathaghure,
but not Gudule, since they were under Vaghagaya. This indicates that northern and southern
Dghweɗe respectively used pre-existing war alliances to fight the Mafa.
From our friends in Hembe (1995) we learned that the Hembe and 'Matakam' were closer to
one another at the beginning when they exchanged iron arrow points and iron farming
implements for animals and farm products. This encouraged the Mafa to move closer to the
Dghweɗe area. Around the same time they started waging war and selling one another into
slavery, or killing one another, and we were told that they (the Hembe) regretted having
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