La Antropología Teatral según Eugenio Barba

The foundation of Bolgatanga: interpreting settlement histories

In this part, I will engage with the endogenous articulation of the formation of the town. This will give me the chance to compare different settlement histories as well as different ways of historicizing the events that led to the foundation of Bolgatanga. This part will demonstrate that before the colonial intrusion, there was a communal identity in Bolgatanga, even though it was composed of different settlements. Moreover, the histories surrounding the foundation confirm and endorse the above analysis of the overall Gurensi settlement pattern for the case of Bolgatanga. In the second section, I will demonstrate that Bolgatanga was frequented and inhabited by foreign traders’

communities well before colonial arrival, further demonstrating its connection with extensive commercial networks.

The first foundation history on Bolgatanga that I will consider follows a common narrative pattern on the genesis of the settlements in the Volta Basin. This topos is based on the encounter between two different groups, one that already lived in the area and another one that migrated from another place to settle there. Robert S. Rattray and Victor Aboya were among the first to write on the first-comers’ and late-comers’ histories in the Gurensi region⁷⁷. According to them, the kinship-based societies in this region were divided internally into two groups. The first one was that of the pioneers, the first founders of a settlement and owners of the land, who followed the authority of the tendaana.

Subsequent migrations led other groups on the scene, the ones who brought the office of the naba.

These two groups mixed together, keeping, however, their different forms of authority and their separate functions⁷⁸. The history that I will present is a synthesis of different versions of it collected through different sources, that however follows this same overall pattern⁷⁹. After its presentation, I

77 For more details on Rattray and Aboya see chapter 5.

78 Rattray, The Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland, xii.

79 The accounts I analysed are gathered from the interviews I made and crosschecked with the unpublished work of Christopher Azaare. Moreover, parts of these settlements’ histories were also collected by the White Fathers and in the Zuarungu District Record Book. See Journal de la Mission, Bolgatanga, 22.08.1929 and NAG ADM 68/5/5, Zuarungu District Record Book

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will discuss and analyse it in order to understand how it will help to frame the history of Bolgatanga and its settlement pattern.

The name “Bolgatanga” subsumes its mythical foundation and distils the histories of migration of each settlement that today compose the town. In conformity with the settlement pattern depicted in the previous section, the foundation is linked with the kinship relation of all the settlements of the area. The myths recollect indeed that each of the settlements is related through two remote ancestors, Abolga and Anabila⁸⁰. The histories of migration of the descendants of both Anabila and Abolga starts from Yikene, a community not too far from Bolgatanga. From this settlement, the various sons of the two ancestors spread in the area that composes Bolgatanga today.

The histories of these migrations reveal conflicts, marriages, famines and slave raiding as the main driving forces behind the new foundations.

Abolga is the apical ancestor from which the town takes its name. He is believed to be the man who founded the first settlement from which all the other clans spread, Yikene. His direct descendants compose the Tindaambisi, a macro group of clans divided into four minor segments. The members of the Tindaambisi in Bolgatanga are those that by right of descent possess the office of the tendaanaship, the ritual ownership of the land. These patriclans live in settlements founded by the sons of Abolga and from where the tendaanas of Bolgatanga came by virtue of their ancestry⁸¹. Since Abolga’s shrine was kept under some rocks, then the name Bolgatanga would derive from Abolga-tanga or Abolga’s rock/Abolga under a rock⁸². This kind of toponymy is widespread in the region.

Both Fortes and Azaare confirm indeed that it was not uncommon to give a name to a place from its topographical or geographical features or from a shrine/teŋane in the area⁸³.

Anabila, on the other side, is the founding ancestor of the Nabisi, the families who possess the right to be chiefs. As is still narrated by some elders, in a remote past these founding ancestors migrated from Yua to move and settle in Yikene. Here, he found Abolga and his family that decided to grant land to the stranger. This was the pivotal event at the base of the foundation of Bolgatanga, conforming in this way to the topos of first-comers and late-comers. Both Abolga and Anabila’s sons, in the following years, started migrating and founded the other settlements that today compose the town.

80 For the genealogical trees see Azaare, ‘Life in Bolga’.

81 These four settlements are Tindonmoligo, Tindonsobiligo, Dapoore-Tindongo, and Soe. If a calculation should be attempted, then the foundation of these settlements dates back to the early or mid-18^th century. The histories of foundation will not be analysed in detail both because this is beyond the scope of this thesis and also because they are today a matter of litigation in Bolgatanga.

82 Azaare, ‘Life in Bolga’. The other history that explain the meaning of Bolgatanga is considered in chapter 2.

83 Azaare, ‘Recollections of Past Events of British Colonial Rule in Northern Ghana, 1900-1956’, 135; Fortes, The Dynamics of Clanship among the Tallensi, 157–58.

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Interpreting Gurensi political thought: the first-comers vs late-comers topos

The histories of the first-comers and the late-comers are widespread in West Africa and subsume the main local theories of land ownership and political thought. Even if this narration is still maintained locally⁸⁴, some scholars argued that this pattern simplifies the complexity of the historical processes and create easy dichotomies such as invaders and autochthonous, state and stateless, secular and religious, chiefs and priests⁸⁵.

Apart from the historical veracity of the mythical narration, Amselle suggests that the topos represents an organizing principle of the local political thought⁸⁶. This means that it is a way of defining, explaining and legitimizing political relationships in this area. Lentz also stresses that the configuration between first-comers and late-comers is an outcome of the local balances of power and that these balances affect the histories themselves⁸⁷. As a matter of fact, these recollections are functional to give meaning to a particular socio-political asset, and, at the same time, are useful devices to recall the past, in that they «bundle a multiplicity of diffuse events into a single account that is easily remembered and understood by listeners, condensing protracted processes into a single event»⁸⁸. Moreover, these histories contain narrative patterns that elucidate rules concerning land tenure and inheritance. In this way, they are «a widespread social and cultural grammar» that provided

«the framework in which mobility and contact, competition and cooperation, assimilation and segregation could be negotiated»⁸⁹.

In conclusion, Lentz argues that there is no one good history, nor one dominant institution that regulates and sanctions it. What makes a narrative dominant over the others is «the social networks and the political power that can be brought into play to support one’s own story»⁹⁰. The histories of families’ migration and settlements’ foundation enclosed in the foundation history of Bolgatanga are therefore narratives functional to the maintenance of the determined socio-political asset of the town.

84 Apart from the account provided above see also Moses Anafu, ‘The Impact of Colonial Rule on Tallensi Political Institutions, 1898-1967’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 14, no. 1 (1973): 17–37; Azaare, ‘Recollections of Past Events of British Colonial Rule in Northern Ghana, 1900-1956’.

85 Wyatt MacGaffey, ‘The Residue of Colonial Anthropology in the History and Political Discourse of Northern Ghana:

Critique and Revision’, History Compass 8, no. 6 (2010): 431–39.

86 Jean-Loup Amselle and Marco Aime, Logiche Meticce: Antropologia Dell’identità in Africa e Altrove (Bollati Boringhieri, 1999), 89.

87 Lentz, Ethnicity and the Making of History in Northern Ghana, 20.

88 Kuba and Lentz, Land Rights and the Politics of Belonging in West Africa, 36.

89 Kuba and Lentz, 50.

90 Kuba and Lentz, 54.

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In many foundation histories in the Gurensi region, the invaders or late-comers are usually coming from the centralized societies of the South, such as the Mamprusi, bringing with them the office of the naam, what will then become the chieftaincy office in the colonial period. The role of the na or naba is still today much debated and cause of conflicts and his specific functions before the British arrival in the Gurensi area are difficult to assess precisely. However, based on the studies done on it, it is possible to draw a short historical outline of this figure⁹¹.

The absence of the chieftaincy institution in pre-colonial Bolgatanga

The naam, the ritual power needed to exercise the chief’s role, is adopted from Mamprusi⁹². Even though the Mamprugu kingdom did not have strict control over the Gurensi region, Mamprusi outposts were founded in places such as Kurugu, Bongo, Tongo, Nangodi⁹³. These first migrations are dated around the mid-18^th century and could have been stimulated by the necessity to participate in the caravan network and to provide escorts and protection for the passing traders⁹⁴. The immigrant Mamprusis brought with them their political office in the places where they decided to settle.

However, both archival sources and foundation histories point to the fact that in Bolgatanga there was no connection at all with Mamprugu, and therefore there were no nabas⁹⁵. What the records suggest, in accordance with the foundation histories, is that relationships between different Gurensi settlements, especially those around Bolgatanga, at the end of the 19^th century were constantly

91 For studies on the contemporary conflicts on chieftaincy see Awedoba, An Ethnographic Study of Northern Ghanaian Conflicts; Lund, Local Politics and the Dynamics of Property in Africa. For studies related to the historical development of this institution see Ladouceur, Chiefs and Politicians: The Politics of Regionalism in Northern Ghana; Azaare,

‘Recollections of Past Events of British Colonial Rule in Northern Ghana, 1900-1956’; Ignatov, ‘The Skin and the Stool:

Re-Crafting Histories of Belonging in Northern Ghana’; Anafu, ‘The Impact of Colonial Rule on Tallensi Political Institutions, 1898-1967’; Iliasu, ‘The Establishment of British Administration in Mamprugu, 1898-1937’.

92 For a study on the naam see Susan Drucker-Brown, ‘The Structure of the Mamprusi Kingdom and the Cult of Naam’, in The Study of the State, by Petr Skalnik and Henri J. Claessen (The Hague: Mouton, 1981).

93 Iliasu, ‘The Establishment of British Administration in Mamprugu, 1898-1937’; Cardinall, The Natives of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast. Their Customs, Religion and Folklore, 11–12; John M. Hunter, ‘The Clans of Nangodi’, Africa 38, no. 04 (1968): 380–81; Ladouceur, Chiefs and Politicians: The Politics of Regionalism in Northern Ghana, 30–31; Binger, Du Niger au Golfe de Guinée, 2:38–39.

94 Garrard, ‘Brass-Casting among the Frafra of Northern Ghana’, 32; Iliasu, ‘The Establishment of British Administration in Mamprugu, 1898-1937’; Ladouceur, Chiefs and Politicians: The Politics of Regionalism in Northern Ghana, 31;

Azaare, ‘Bongo Clan and Skin History’.

95 In a 1913 Intelligence Report, for example, the Zuarungu District Commissioner, S.D. Nash states: «Many times in past days I have asked natives who were working in their farms what chief they followed and the answer generally was

“we have no Chief”». NAG ADM 56/1/144, Intelligence Report.

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renegotiated. This often led to fighting, divisions, resettlement but also cohesion, alliances and cooperation or «small-scale warfare over resources» within the different settlements that composed the area⁹⁶. The pre-colonial political landscape followed a pattern that was materially visible in the settlements’ outline. There was no central authority, no dominant power, but fluid and situational negotiations (in some cases of a violent character) among clans, communities and ritual authorities.

The settlements represented the «highest order of identification» and the kinship networks and the marriage dynamics helped to foster peace or create frictions⁹⁷.

Some years before the intrusion of the colonial powers in the area, something in the socio-political asset of Bolgatanga changed. The foundation histories recollect that one of the sons of Anabila, the founding father of the Nabisi, was Atulba Apase-nyԑlom, the father of the first recognized chief of Bolgatanga⁹⁸. In the same foundational histories, chieftaincy is seen not as something that came from outside but rather as an endogenous political process. In less than two generations, Bolgatanga acquired a chief without external intervention.

Atulba Apase-nyԑlom was indeed not a naba, instead he was elected a chief dancer, a wa-naba, for his skills in the yɔŋɔ, a typical Gurensi dance. According to Azaare he gained this title around 1843 and kept it until 1885⁹⁹, when his son, Apase-nyԑlom Adongo collected it. As it has already been noted, in Bolgatanga the chieftaincy was not directly related to Mamprugu. However, the mythical recollections of the installation of Apase-nyԑlom, contain in their details some of the features related to the typical enskinment of a naba in the Gurensi region¹⁰⁰. He got the chieftaincy from another chief, who was therefore entitled to enskin him. From him, he received a red fez, a goat horn believed to possess some “fetish” and was finally legitimized in his functions by the tendaana of Dapoore-Tindongo. Nonetheless, he continued to lack any authority or power over the people, being subject to the tendaana and the clan heads of Bolgatanga that followed Kumbosego, a settlement not too far¹⁰¹.

What emerges from this account is that at the end of the 19^th century, Bolgatanga did not have a central political role among the other settlements. Instead, it was part of an extensive network of communities with fluid and changing connections that did not lead one to establish clear supremacy over the others. However, this state of affairs started to change with the man who would be the first recognized Bolganaba, Apase-nyԑlom Adongo, the son of Atulba Apase-nyԑlom. The early years of

96 Allman and Parker, Tongnaab, 34.

97 Keith Hart, ‘The Economic Basis of Tallensi Social History in the Early Twentieth Century’, in Research in Economic Anthropology. An Annual Compilation of Research, ed. G. Dalton (Greenwich: Jai Press Inc., 1978), 189–90.

98 On the history of Apase-nyԑlom/Apansinyaba see also Ignatov, ‘The Skin and the Stool: Re-Crafting Histories of Belonging in Northern Ghana’, 159; Awedoba, An Ethnographic Study of Northern Ghanaian Conflicts, 93.

99 This is a personal estimation of Azaare, inferred from NAG ADM 63/5/2, District Record Book Navrongo, p. 57.

100 The process that lead to the election of a chief in northern Ghana is called enskinment.

101 NAG ADM 68/5/5, Zuarungu District Record Book, p. 4

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his office are difficult to reconstruct because of lack of sources, but most probably he was one of those who indulged in raiding. Captain Donald Stewart in reporting the information gathered on the Gurensi country stated in 1896:

There is a Chief called Tanganaba, who has established himself at a place called Larey on the main road to Wagadugu. This man has collected all the criminals and refugees from the surrounding countries. He obeys no one, but pillages caravans whenever he can find them; all the people are in terror of him¹⁰².

Apart from the biased point of view of this statement which is distorted by prejudices of primitiveness and the misspelling of the names¹⁰³, it did not stray too far from the truth on what was happening in the region. In fact, Adongo has been recognized as one of the many “strong men” in the region who was collecting wealth through raiding¹⁰⁴. However, as for the case of his father, his authority did not go beyond his family, at least since British intervention.

In conclusion, what the mythical narratives in Bolgatanga suggest then is that the Gurensi region was characterized by an intricate network of kinship, ritual obligations and raiding. This created a context in which relations among settlements were constantly renegotiated without overriding power or authority. However, by the end of the 19^th century there were individuals, such as Adongo who were able to gain wealth and a certain privileged status. Nonetheless, naam was not unknown in the Gurensi region before British arrival. Evidence points to the fact that already in this period Bolgatanga was attended by foreign traders who also carried with them also their political institutions.

102 TNA CO 879/48, Further Correspondence relative to Boundary question in the Bend of the Niger, Maxwell to Chamberlain, 05.02.1897, enc.: Stewart to Colonial Secretary, 29.12.1896

103 They should have been Bolgatanga rather than Larey and Bolga-naba rather than Tanga-naba. Larey and Tanganaba did not make sense also to my informants.

104 Azaare, ‘Life in Bolga’.

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Figure 9. Abɛkabisi (lit. the sons of Abɛka) family tree

Abɛka was the direct son of Anabila, the forefather of the chiefs’ families. Source: Azaare, ‘Life in Bolga’

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Foreign settlers and commercial networks: the importance of the marketplace

The caravan routes that crossed West Africa and the Gurensi country in the 19^th century have already been described in the first part of the chapter. In this period, the marketplace in Bolgatanga attracted a certain number of traders that travelled along these routes. This section will present the importance of the central marketplace in Bolgatanga, Ayia Daa¹⁰⁵, and its role in attracting foreign traders, some of whom decided to settle there.

The very existence and success of Bolgatanga’s market are locally explained by the presence of one earth shrine, Ayia, that oversees the fate of the market, an occurrence which is not rare in northern Ghana¹⁰⁶. Ayia, one of the most revered shrines in Bolgatanga, lies today in the heart of the old market, the main marketplace until the 1970s. This shrine is believed to have been discovered by Asamsoo, son of Abolga and the founding ancestor of Dapore-Tindongo, one of the settlements in the centre of Bolgatanga. The name of the earth shrine itself is quite emblematic, Ayia indeed means first, as it was the first earth shrine believed to be discovered in the area.

Asamsoo was the originator of the Dapore-Tindongo. Some of those [who arrived] first, they have opened [the country] before the settlers come to meet them. […] So, what you believe is that the tree you have been sitting under, is also helping me, so let me worship it. And that's how some of these people came by develop the earth gods. But they do not just take a tree that maybe...they say this is my ancestor...no. The soothsayer would say that, yes, the tree nearby your house, it's where your ancestor is hide. So, you have to perform sacrifices, so a name is given to that tree, and then everybody takes that, a naming ceremony, so the naming ceremony is pouring the libations and sacrificing something. That could be given when your family continue to perform

Asamsoo was the originator of the Dapore-Tindongo. Some of those [who arrived] first, they have opened [the country] before the settlers come to meet them. […] So, what you believe is that the tree you have been sitting under, is also helping me, so let me worship it. And that's how some of these people came by develop the earth gods. But they do not just take a tree that maybe...they say this is my ancestor...no. The soothsayer would say that, yes, the tree nearby your house, it's where your ancestor is hide. So, you have to perform sacrifices, so a name is given to that tree, and then everybody takes that, a naming ceremony, so the naming ceremony is pouring the libations and sacrificing something. That could be given when your family continue to perform