Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 187
Chapter 3.5
About outsiders as founders
Introduction
A local outsider or stranger who becomes socially adopted by a member of an autochthonous
clan, subsequently marries his daughter and then becomes an influential founding ancestor of
a new clan, is a common theme in the Gwoza hills. The story of Mughuze, a local nobody
who became the houseboy of Hembe, is a typical example. Another example is the story we
told of Kumba-Zadva, an outsider and grandson of an insignificant newcomer, who became
the founding ancestor of the Zelidva. There is a similar story in Glavda. In Dghweɗe it was
Hembe who took in Mughuze; in Zelidva it was a Lamang-speaking autochthonous clan
member who welcomed Ghwasa, the father of Zadva. The future ancestor of the Glavda was
homeless, but as he made himself useful to an autochthonous local man by cutting grasses for
him, he was invited to settle permanently.
The stories are not exactly the same, but they always include a locally stranded outsider or
stranger who frequently makes himself indispensable to his autochthonous host family and
potential future father-in-law by cutting grasses for his domestic animals. Unlike in the case
of Mughuze, the story of the Zelidva and Glavda specifies the place from where the outsider
came. In the latter case, a legendary migrant came from Gvoko, but was originally from Tur.1
They had come to Ngoshe Sama as a result of incest in Tur, which made them in-laws to the
Hide of Tur. In Ngoshe Sama they split again, and the future ancestor of the Glavda of
Ngoshe Kasa, together with his wife, followed a crow that had stolen an amulet, and they
ended up as strangers in what is now Glavda. In the Kumba Zadva story, it was Zadva, the
illegitimate son of Ghwasa, whose 'son' Kumba became the founding ancestor of the Zelidva.
Apart from Ghwasa, we could identify a couple of other lineages or clan groups by their
names, who allegedly left to settle in Zelidva. While we know where Ghwasa came from
before he was adopted in what would later become Zelidva, Mughuze's local origin remains
somehow blurred, which perhaps supports the view that he might indeed have been an
escaped slave.
We would like to contrast the chapter on outsiders as founders with the narrative of the 'noble
stranger' mentioned in the Wandala Chronicles. He married Katala, a daughter of the local
chief of Malgwu, who himself was a junior descendant of Mulgwe. This less senior line of the
legendary early Wandala subsequently became very numerous, which later led to Agamakiya
becoming the first ruler of Wandala. Agamakiya subsequently reconciled the fewer in number
but more senior Wandala, with the more numerous but younger Malgu descendants. He made
the more senior Wandala section the custodians of the land, while the junior Malgu line kept
the chieftaincy which marks the start of his dynasty. One difference between the narrative in
the Chronicles and those of montagnard origin is that the latter does not aim to establish
dynastic descent, only ethnic association by lineage incorporation. We provided a descriptive
summary of the legendary Malgu/Wandala narrative in the chapter about Katala of the hills
(see Chapter 2.1, Part Two).
Here we focus mainly on the Mughuze narrative as a typical montagnard example that
illustrates non-dynastic ethnic integration, but invite readers to refer back to the portrayal of
the Wandala and Malgu conflict, which is an example of how the Wandala Chronicles
incorporated their pre-Islamic origin by introducing a 'noble stranger' in hindsight. In the
context of this, it is important to remember that the Wandala Chronicles were written in the
early 18th century when the Wandala officially converted to Islam. We will retell the Kumba1
The Tur like to refer to the Gvoko as 'Ngoshe', which means ‘in-law’. Ngoshe is often used by
ethnographers as an ethnic synonym for the Gvoko, without realising what it means, which is that it
was originally only used by the Tur as a result of the Gvoko ancestor breaking an incest taboo.
185
