WARLORDS AND BIG-TIME TRADERS

 RAIDERS AND POWERFUL MERCHANTS ALLY

Accounts of Nambolosse's killing 
overlook the Dyula chief and substitute "Mori,"
a Hausa merchant and the chief of Marabadiassa,
who ravages nearby Taguana   

• Historical reality

When Nambolosse demands that a wealthy Hausa be given over to him as a slave and seizes a Soninke legacy, a Dyula chief and his men come to Bokhala when the warriors were gone and burn him alive in his hut.

-- Dakar archives, 1878

• Accounts:

° The Muslim version,
by raiders' descendants 

The dispossessed heirs call in Mori, whose men set fire to Nambolosse's hut. When he runs out they decapitate and eviscerate him, and cook his corpse on a spit, like a roast.  

-- Bakari Coulibali, imam de Darhala

° The animist version,
by victims' descendants
(The villages are understandably separate) 

Nambolosse's hut is fireproof. He does not die, but chases Mori out of Djimini. He would have caught him, but Mori's magic horse would disappear and reappear five kilometers further. In his flight Mori runs into Samory and says to him, "Watch out for Djimini. There are real men there." 

 -- Serisio Coulibali, Senufo farmer

° Other French records: silence,

which shows not the absence of raiders,
but French interest only in those they fight

After about 1870, at least four raiders besides Samory terrify populations of the northern Ivory Coast: "Mori" and Vakuba Ture who "raids in the east with his sons."

--  Vakaba Ture: 

Abidjan archives for the Bonduku region (east of Djimini

I found no other mention of raiders in the records of Paris or Dakar for that region, though the Abidjan archives and those of local administrative centers refer to them perhaps. the main source would be local memory, which may be vibrant even now.

Collective memory reveals what matters
to the people who recall it,
not the literal truth
(the belief that Equality Philip 
cast the deciding vote for the king's execution
 is a reason why there is no monarchy in France).

In Djimini,
both Muslim and animist villagers
overlook the Dyula killer
because the Dyula do not raid,
 and vanish in later attacks.

They replace him with Mori,
whose assaults elsewhere foreshadow Samory.

*       *       *

 Next,

Samory and the Senufo Judas