Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 45
eastern plain of the Gwoza LGA, and as a result it was left behind in terms of modern
development.
We begin Part Three with the chapter heading 'Names and places', by first listing our
available historical sources, in particular Moisel's map from 1913, and also captain Lewis's
first colonial report from 1925. We then compare them with the results of my survey of 1994
and other oral accounts from Dghweɗe, to see how far back certain place names go. We are
then able to establish which place names must have already been there, at least during late
pre-colonial times. It turns out that quite many of the ward names were, but there is one in
particular which no longer appears in captain Lewis's list but was still mentioned by Moisel as
'Hirguse'. We identify 'Hirguse' as 'Gharguze' and we will explore further how the oral
historical meaning of 'Gharguze', which was according to our oral sources congruent to the
four wards known as Gharaza, Hudimche, Korana Basa, Korana Kwandame, should be
interpreted in the context of our other oral sources about the development of what would later
become administrative Korana Basa.
In the next chapter, we leave written history and with it much of colonial history more or less
behind in order to explore pre-colonial settlement history under the heading 'Warfare and
settlement', by relying solely on oral sources. For example we examine what we know on war
alliances and introduce the distinction of northern and southern Dghweɗe, which is almost
congruent with the two administrative village units Korana Basa and Ghwa'a. Based on such
an artificial geographical template, we explore how potential war alliances formed and how
locality could override descent in the case of smaller lineages. We then come to a first
understanding of how the most recent pre-colonial settlement development must be seen in
the context of the formation of the Vaghagaya lineages. They most likely increased in number
and expanded in late pre-colonial times and changed the balance of power in Dghweɗe. In the
context of this, we acknowledge that the place name 'Gharguze' is also congruent to the wards
occupied by the descendants of Vaghagaya. We can establish that the main oral historical
tradition to explain how modern Korana Basa came about was war between the descendants
of Vaghagaya and those of the Gudule. The descendants of Gudule were considered as the
previous settlers and we will hear more about their various roles throughout Part Three.
The discussion of oral sources regarding settlement development and warfare brings us to
acknowledge the importance of patrilineal descent for the membership of what we refer to as
clan and lineage groups. We also explore the Tur tradition as the most important south-tonorth tradition of origin for most groups of the Gwoza hills, and recognise that the Wandala
too were seen as being part of it. A wider subregional discussion of the Tur tradition then
leads us to include parallel traditions of origin found among the Mafa of the DGB area, such
as the Wula-Sakon and the Godaliy traditions. We can establish that there were presumably
several such side by side migration routes along and around the high massifs of the
northwestern Mandara Mountains. To historically further underpin the hypothesis, we link
cyclical pre-colonial climate change by comparing those traditions of origin with scientific
evidence of the changing Lake Chad water levels developed in Part Two.
Based on palaeoclimatic sources about periods of aridity and humidity in the area south of
Lake Chad, we identify the 17th century as the by far most humid century since the beginning
of our suggested contemporaneity between the DGB sites and the Wandala state in Kirawa
during the late 14th and/or early 15th century. Due to the very long period of high rainfalls,
we hypothesise that the 17th century is the likely time frame for the most prominent south-tonorth tradition of origin in Dghweɗe. Under this presumption of contemporaneity, we explore
how oral sources refer to population pressure as the most important impulse for local warfare
in southern Dghweɗe. This leads to the hypothesis that the Mughuze-Vaghagaya lineages
became not only the most recent patrilineal expansion but also the most numerous one in
comparison to all others. We subsequently discuss, in a chapter called 'The Dghweɗe house of
Mbra', how Mbra was the mythical ancestor believed to have originated from Tur, and show
how controversial some of the local traditions of origin potentially are, and how difficult it is
to construct a convincing version of a Dghweɗe lineage tree.
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