Organigrama

In a geographical typology of traditional West African societies in the 19th century, Keith Hart (1982: 29) distinguishes five separate zones along the north-south axis: the desert margins, the savannah, the transition from savannah to forest, the rainforest and the seacoast. In this classi- fication, my research area is included in the ‘transition from savannah to forest’. Hart de- scribes this zone as:

…a middle belt straddling the ecological divide between forest and savannah, an interstitial zone in several ways. Being farthest removed from both northern and southern centres of state formation this area contained large pockets of acephalous peoples, societies that managed to avoid incorpora- tion into larger estates, if not involvement in slaving (often as the unwilling victims of marauding armies). They were aided in their resistance by the existence here of (...) a terrain of orchard bush- land frequently broken by hills and nonnavigable streams. Entrepôts and petty kingdoms rose and fell in a subregion marked by chronic political instability and continuous population movements,

1 _{The life histories and pathways that I describe in chapter eight are all of people who are born between 1941} and 1954. Without drawing a very sharp line, the present chapter will treat the historical background of the research area until Ghana’s path to Independence in the 1950s.

and one frequent result was dense concentrations of refugees in areas sometimes self-consciously maintained by neighboring states as reservoirs for slave raiding. The area is best known for [its] stateless peoples [with] highly corporate social structures, based on segmentary lineage organiza- tion and animist religion (...). These ancient people are fighting cultivators who have refused rulers and whose society, although poor, is self-consciously organized on an egalitarian basis to maintain its freedom when geography offers a relatively secure refuge. (Hart 1982: 31).

This description, although of a large ecological zone, seems to provide quite a good outline of the situation one would have encountered in the research area on the eve of ‘pacification’

and colonisation of the Northern Territories by the British.2 It depicts some important

characteristics of pre-colonial Dagara society.3 A picture is drawn of decentralised groups of people who were quite mobile. The Dagara were cultivators for whom it was not unusual to migrate perhaps once or twice in a lifetime, either forced and en masse to escape from exter- nal pressure, or voluntarily and piecemeal in search of fertile farmland.4 The latter type of

migration was the more common of the two. Possibly, forced and en masse migration to

escape external pressure has never occurred in the case of Dagara.5 It is uncertain whether the Dagara ever had to fight to resist incorporation into centralised kingdoms.

Was the area north of Wa inhabited by “dense concentrations of refugees” and “self- consciously maintained by neighbouring states as reservoirs for slave raiding”? Although this description is rather dramatic, there have most likely been episodes in the past when the research area was indeed not quite a ‘safe environment’ for sedentary agriculture.

According to most Dagara authors6, the oral traditions of the Dagara have it that they migrated from western Dagbon (around Tamale in the present Northern Region) or Yendi (same latitude, approximately 100 kilometres east of Tamale) to escape the tyranny of Dagomba chiefs and succession disputes. This secession is supposed to have taken place

during the reign of Dagomba chief Na Nyagse in the late 15th century. This so-called

‘Dagomba thesis of Dagara origin’ is mainly propagated by Dagara intellectuals who, by alluding to an en masse rebellion against Dagomba rulers and a subsequent exodus, suggest that there is a historical ethnic unity among Dagara or Dagaaba people7 (Lentz 1994b: 458).

2 _{Strictly speaking, the status of the Northern Territories was not that of a British colony (like the Gold Coast} and Ashanti) but a British protectorate. In practice, the administration of the Northern Territories was under the authority of the Governor of the Gold Coast who appointed the colonial officers in the north (see Ladouceur 1979: 40).

3 _{… and to a lesser extent of Sisala society. The Sisala people seem to have had a more centralised socio-} political organisation with village chiefs.

4 _{See Goody (1967: 16) and Lentz (1994a: 69), according to whom there is a “quite radical difference”} between the historical accounts of local people and those of colonial historians and officers. The former accounts emphasize “individual piecemeal agrarian expansion”, and the latter emphasise forced migration or “mass exodus of weaker peoples”.

5 _{Personal communication with Carola Lentz (Wassenaar, the Netherlands, 28}th _{June 2001).}

6 _{For example Tengan (2000: 133-134), G. Tuurey (1982), quoted in Lentz (1994b: 458); Der (1998: 7) and} Archbishop Dery in an interview with Lentz (1994b: 458).

7 _{It has become common practice among native and ‘western’ authors to distinguish the Dagara and the} Dagaaba. Although in reality the spatial boundaries are rather blurred, it is argued that the Dagara predominantly live in and around Nandom and Lawra and in the adjacent areas across the Black Volta in Burkina Faso. The Dagaaba live more to the south, around Jirapa, Nadawli and Wa. Although there are linguistic differences, the main difference between the two is that the former have or had (the system is in transition) a double descent system with matrilineal inheritance of movable properties, and the latter have a patrilineal descent and inheritance system. ‘Dagaaba’ is alternatively spelled with one ‘a’ in the second

Although by no means impossible, the evidence for the ‘Dagomba thesis’ is weak because most Dagara villagers are not aware of this ‘oral tradition’. Moreover, in the oral and written history of the Dagomba, no exodus of subjects from their kingdom to the northwest is reported (Lentz 1994b: 484). Most migration histories of Dagara patri-clans do not go far back in distance and time. Perhaps even more importantly, their migration histories concern just their own patrilineal kin groups, supporting the thesis of a piecemeal migration in search of farmland. Lentz (1994a: 68) vividly describes the settlement histories of Dagara people:

In many accounts, particularly those of the tengansob clan which is usually the one claiming to be the ‘first-comers’ to a village, a hunter discovers promising game and sometimes farming grounds on one of his expeditions, erects a temporary shack, and later fetches his wives, children, and some brothers, who all settle at the new abode and start farming. Often, the new land turns out to be already inhabited, and the account narrates how the new immigrants met the original settlers and reached agreement about sacrifices to the land god and about the distribution of game and lost animals. All in all the stories convey the image of a piecemeal agricultural migration of small kin groups.8 _{(Lentz 1994a: 68).}

According to Goody (1967: 15), the first Dagara settled in what is presently the Lawra district sometime in the late 18th century. Before that, the Sisala, whose territory is east of the present Dagara area, were using the land around Nandom as hunting territory and for ‘bush farms’. Some Dagara villages around Nandom still bear Sisala names. Whatever the exact history, it is clear that the Nandom area can be considered an ‘old settlement’ area. After about eight to ten generations, the population density has increased to 83 inhabitants per square kilometre at the end of the 20th century (Ghana Statistical Service 2002).