Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 162
consist of many more inselbergs, and the river Tsanaga separates the northeast from the
central plateau by connecting both with the plain of Diamare (see Figure 4). By examining the
topography of the northwestern Mandara Mountains we can see that they have the highest
range of massifs to the east of the Tur heights. We cannot visualise the migration, but perhaps
it consisted more of individuals than of small groups, who then integrated northwards along
the heights of Tur. We tend to think, especially with the climate being more humid, that more
people ended up in the Gwoza hills. We allocate such a possibility to the 17th century as
being the most likely last intense period of south-to-north migration. This in turn might have
caused population pressure, which eventually led to the formation of southern Dghweɗe with
the violent rise of the Mughuze-Ruwa lineages, at the geographical entry point to the Gwoza
hills.
All our oral sources, including those recorded by Mathews in 1934, suggest that Ghwa'a (or
'Johode') already existed in one form or another at that time. We suggested allocating the 16th
century as a possible preliminary pre-colonial time frame, as it is the more ancient northern
part of Dghweɗe. This hypothesis gave us, in our Table of Contemporaneity (Chapter 2.1),
two distinct periods of climate change in which we allocated the earlier period as the one in
which the DGB sites, as well as Kirawa as the capital of Wandala, were still in place. By
connecting that hypothesis to our tree of Tur traditions presented in Figure 9, we can perhaps
conclude that not only Dghweɗe, but also some of the other groups already existed as part of
the Tur tradition during that earlier period. Things diversified again during the more humid
second period when the Mughuze-Ruwa came about as a result of population pressure from
the south, and perhaps also as a result of increasing slave raiding by the Wandala along the
foothills of the western plains.
Migratory traditions and the proximity of the DGB sites
Our Table of Contemporaneity in the chapter on the pre-colonial importance of the Wandala
has shown that terrace cultivation possibly developed at a very early time in our subregion,
and presumably long before the Tur tradition came into existence. During that early period
there might have been a north-to-south migration, which not only led to the foundation of
Kirawa as the first capital of a pre-Islamic Wandala state, but was perhaps also linked to the
development of terrace cultivation as a new way of food production. In the context of this,
perhaps rainmaking and manure production interconnected for the first time, to bring about a
mountain culture which was both inspired by early state formation at its northeastern foot, and
by the achievement of connecting animal husbandry and terrace farming.
The early dates of the DGB sites suggest that this initial phase did not last very long, but it
was perhaps enough to establish a new way of interacting with the environment, and, as we
will see throughout this book, it most likely had an impact on the way of life for the people of
the Gwoza hills. After all, they were by far the most northerly extension of the Mandara
Mountains to be intensely affected by very dry periods. The Gwoza hills were also a cul de
sac in terms of south-to-north migration across the heights of Tur. This gave them additional
significance as a place where cultural strategies of crisis management from the distant past
endured for longer. We also need to consider that coping with specific environmental threats
might not only have been the result of aridity, but also of locusts or other plagues and
diseases, as well as the threat of enslavement in the surrounding plains. The ongoing
confrontation with potential crisis situations might have brought about methods of cultural
continuity, as a way of achieving environmental sustainability that was somehow independent
of ethnicity.
Therefore we think that the Tur tradition is an oral metaphor for a general south-to-north
migratory tradition, and when we look at the physical geography of the Gwoza hills we see
there are two possible routes as to how that tradition might have unfolded. One is from Tur to
Gvoko, via southern into northern Dghweɗe, from where it moves on via Chikiɗe and across
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