4.5.3. INTERPRETING THE STORY OF NAMBOLOSSÉ

NAMBOLOSSÉ, GNAPON'S SON AND SUCCESSOR AS CHIEF OF BOKHALA, IS THE DJIMINI SENUFO HERO

 

Versions of his death show how memories fit points of view.  

• A French record

When Nambolossé demands that a Hausa dealer in arms and slaves be yielded up to him, some traders leave Bokhala to found Dabakalakoro ("old Dabakala").* Then he seizes the inheritance of a Soninke who has died on his lands, "though his heirs were known." Outraged, a Dyula chief** and his men attack Bokhala when Nambolosse's warriors have left to intercept them by another route. They burn him alive in his hut.

-- Dakar archives, 1878

*Departure without the permission of the king or chief announces revolt, in France as well as here.

** "Dyula chief:" The French administrator may not distinguish between petty merchants and the much more assertive long distance traders.

• The Darhala version

There is no mention of the "Dyula" chief. Defendants of the disinherited Soninke call in "Mori," the Hausa chief of Marabadiassa, who in the 1870's and 1880's raids in the west. He arrives in Bokhala when Nambolossé's men are gone. They set fire to his hut and when he leaves it, slaughter him and burn his corpse on a prong, "like a roast." 

-- Bakari Coulibali, imam of Darhala

• The Senufo version

Nambolossé does not die, but chases Mori out of Djimini. He would have caught him except that Mori has an excellent horse, which vanishes and reappears five kilometers away. On his flight from Djimini he meets Samory (the legendary conqueror the next section describes) and says, "Watch out for Djimini. There are real men there." Later Samory takes revenge for Mori's defeat: It is he who kills Nambolossé.

Muslim and Senufo versions reveal lasting antagonism between the two groups, whose villages are separate.

• Burning Nambolosse "like a roast" indicates Muslim contempt for animists, which my teen-aged interpreter expressed by yelling insults at them from the window of a car. (I told him I'd fire him if he did it again. He didn't.)

• "Watch out for Djimini: There are real men there" expresses animist resistance to the Muslims and pride.

The animist version shows Mori foreshadowing Samory. But they are only two of a number of raiders who wrack this part of the savannah: 

    Arab slavers in East Africa, publication of 1892 / zoom

Muslims often wore long white robes and slave raiders everywhere must have looked like these.  

After about 1870 at least four others terrify populations. A record in the archives mentions one of them, Vakuba Ture, who "raids in the east with his sons."

-- Abidjan archives for the Bondoukou region (east of Djimini)

Except for the sparce notes cited here, records in the Paris, Dakar or Abidjan archives say nothing about those raiders, whom the French do not encounter. 

*    *

Most records omit 

what narrators think

does not concern them.

End of this section.

*     *    *

Next section,

4.6.

Producers win, then crumble

)