Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 157
introduced themselves to them (the Mafa) in the first place. This narrative introduces a
sequence of events which belongs to the late pre-colonial period, after the Mafa had formed.
We were told in Gudule (1995), that they fought a lot with the 'Matakam' of Huduwa. When
they fought with Huduwa, the Gathaghure joined in to aid them. That Gudule and Gathaghure
fought together against the Mafa was presumably because they were immediate neighbours
bordering the Mafa in the most southeasterly corner of Dghweɗe (see Figure 8).
In Kwalika (1995) they used to fight with 'Kasghwa' (an abusive term for Lamang), but also
with Huduwa and 'Gvake' (Gvoko), and they also fought on one occasion in the past with
'Ftire' (Tur). This was when 'Kem Gula' (see Table 4) had multiplied in Kwalika and felt
strong enough to take revenge against Tur. Our Kwalika friend added that now there were so
many of their people living in the plain settlements, they could no longer fight. We will return
to Kem Gula as the first settlers of Kwalika later, but can say that they were not considered to
be descendants of Mughuze-Ruwa, but had come independently from Tur.
Conclusion
We demonstrated in Chapter 3.1 how the place name Gharguze survived, not only in the
collective memory of our Dghweɗe friends from Ghwa'a, but also how it appeared on a map
made by Moisel in 1912/1913 as a pre-Korana settlement unit in southern Dghweɗe. We will
explore the term ‘pre-Korana’ later, but have now introduced our reader to the importance of
tribal warfare in the southern part of Dghweɗe, in the form of recent pre-colonial events
presented by the oral history of settlement.
Local warfare was a key element for pre-colonial settlement formation in Dghweɗe,
especially when population pressure increased. This is demonstated by the example of the
conflict between the descendants of Vaghagaya and Gudule. We are certain that traditional
Ghwa’a already existed in some way in northern Dghweɗe before the Vaghagaya brought
about the rise of what would later become the centre of modern Korana Basa. Our oral
sources also suggest that Gudule pre-dated the formation of the growing Mughuze-Ruwa, the
largest clan group in southern Dghweɗe.
Mathews' (1934) references to Kwalika as the original place where the expansion of the
Mughuze-Ruwa might have started, suggests a long process, one which implies a south-tonorth and a northeast movement of settlement expansion. This is in tune with the Tur
tradition, as we will learn in Chapter 3.3, and our inference that Ghwa'a ('Johode' in Mathews'
1934 account) is indeed the older part of Dghweɗe will be underpinned there. This
chronological sequence in traditional settlement history terms is the main reason we
introduced the artificial distinction between southern and northern Dghweɗe. 1
We exemplified, with the 'Gozo people' and 'Fte Kra', previous settlers of what would
eventually become Hudimche during the expansion of the Korana and Vaghagaya lineages.
There is also a strong oral claim that Gharaza was originally part of Gudule. The story that
Mughuze was originally a local nobody and outsider, but later became the most powerful
ancestor, is a common legendary topic that is also found in other parts of the Gwoza hills. We
will examine the legend of Mughuze's rise to power in greater detail in Chapter 3.5,
concerning outsiders as founders.
We were able to see that local war alliances formed themselves according to locality issues
such as neighbourhood size and through patrilineal descent. The most general divide in
lineage terms seems to have been between Thakara and Mughuze, but in local terms the
divide between Vaghagaya and Ghwa'a was prominent. The descendants of Thakara, as the
For example we have in our fieldnotes listings of traditions in Chikiɗe (Muller-Kosack 1994) which
claim to have come from Ghwa'a, but as we have not found any major tradition of intertribal warfare in
Ghwa'a in that context, we do not discuss that here.
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