Azaghvana E-Book 2003 - Flipbook - Page 94
they had captured, and they became Matakam as a result, something that happened to many
Dghweɗe, Chikiɗe, Chinene and Glavda. With the Wandala, it was never possible to buy people
back. They sold them straight on without exception. The slaves were sold along a chain of [slave]
traders. They were beaten and they had to work for them. Some people crossed the sea and died on
the way, but the Europeans already wanted slave raiding to stop before it ended [which might be a
reference to the ongoing slave raiding in early colonial times, related to Hamman Yaji].
I also asked our Dghweɗe friends whether at any point Shuwa Arabs were involved in slave
raiding:
The only Suwa [Shuwa] their great grandparents ever experienced, came together with the
Wandala from Mozogo.
The Shuwa Arabs, as collaborators of a Wandala slave raiding, are also mentioned in Major
Denham's account of 1823 (Bovill III 1966:333). Our friends concluded that the raiding by
the Wandala started at the time of their forefathers (jijha) and ended at the beginning of
colonial times, but then continued under the Plata or Plat-ha (derived from 'Fulata'), of which
the latter (Plat-ha = -ha, suffix for plural) is the Dghweɗe reference to the Fulbe of Madagali
under the leadership of Hamman Yaji, who is often referred to as 'Plata' (singular). Equally,
Madagali itself was in the past referred to as 'Plata'.
The oral accounts above clearly show that the collective memories of our Dghweɗe friends
concerning the Wandala slave raiding were all linked to late pre-colonial times. It seems that
the Wandala of Kirawa still came with their horses from Kirawa, but that tribute to appease
them had to be taken to Mozogo, which is in the Koza plain, and relates to Mora and
presumably not even to Doulo. Whether the Wandala horsemen really came from Kirawa, or
had only entered the intramountainous eastern plain from that direction, remains uncertain.
Also, the fact that the watchmen's names were remembered, as well as the man who collected
the tribute, and the one who took it to Mozogo, confirms the above conclusion.
We can also infer here that most of the above memories about slave raiding during that late
period were related to the traditional northern Dghweɗe (Ghwa'a), rather than to those of
traditional southern Dghweɗe, which was almost identical with administrative Korana Basa.
The latter faced the western plain and not only the eastern intramountainous plain, like
Ghwa'a. We have however one oral account by our friend Chika Khutsa (1995) from
Kwalika, which highlights an aspect of an oral memory concerning the history of slave
raiding facing the western plain:
Normally the slave raiders arrived at the foothills and then the people of the foothills ran uphill to
hide. This did not cause fighting between the hill populations. They only fought when there was a
misunderstanding between them. Such a misunderstanding could have appeared if somebody went
downhill and was beaten and things were taken away from them. Then people went to rescue, and
that finally led to war.
Chika Khutsa's statement not only confirms that slave raiding was mainly limited to the
foothills and plains, but that the populations of the foothills took refuge in the hills. He adds
that this was not seen as an intrusion, but acceptable, even though there might have been a
fight with someone from the hills who had gone down to the plains and been robbed by the
locals there. Chika Khuta's statement highlights a potential explanation for a common
Dghweɗe narrative about the role of outsiders as founders, which we will discuss in a separate
chapter in Part Three. Individuals who escaped a slavery attack in the adjacent plains could
become such new founder personalities in the hills. This was common, not only in Dghweɗe,
but also in other parts of the Gwoza hills, especially in the western foothills and plain areas.
We were told in Kwalika, and also other oral sources, that the Dghweɗe never sold brothers
into slavery. A source from Kunde informed us that the risk of being captured and sold into
slavery in the plains increased under population pressure in the hills, because it made the hill
population farm in the adjacent plains. This statement suggests that shortage of arable land in
the hills was already a big problem during pre-colonial times, and that farming in the adjacent
plains was a risky business, something we already concluded from the Ghwa'a watchman
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