MEMORIES THAT ILLUSTRATE A UNIVERSAL STORY
The narrators' most significant statements are in italics.
The map comes from my doctoral thesis.
The villages are on the trade route.
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Background
Traders arrive from Kong toward 1700-1740. The luxuries they bring strengthen the elders, who use them for fines and dowries.
When the traders become more numerous, stronger control appears. At a village on the trade route (Kondougou) a chief replaces the elders: His wives grow provisions for the newcomers and his sons bring the kola from the forest.
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Fighting breaks out. Toward 1830-1840?*
*Peasant time is based on seasons. So unless dates are connected with events, such as after traders come from Kong or before the advent of Samory (please read on), narrators do not know when they took place.
A document in the Dakar archives states that Gnapon's son (Nambolosse, whom we will come to) was killed in 1878, when he was "too old to fight." Gnapon would have become chief when he was young and vigorous.
Tofanga is captured. His opponents take him to their village. But he has a friend, the warrior Gnapon. Gnapon hides behind a tree and signals his presence by singing a pagan song. Tofanga sings back.
- The "pagan" song shows a fight between Muslims and animists.
The details of the rescue change from village to village, but all mention the "pagan" song. So Tofanga and Gnapon were animists, their opponents Muslims, that is, traders. Their village would be a commercial center that was small but expanding.
- The casus belli must be that Tofango rejects the cowrie currency.
Narrators did not know the reason for the fight or when cowries came in, simply saying that they were widespread by Samory's time, the 1890's (we will come to him). Horror of his coming makes what seem details outside the main narrative irrelevant. But since a market requires currency, we can assume that cowries appeared when the market mentioned below did, and that accepting them was the cause of the fight.
- Tofanga voluntarily cedes power to Gnapon, who as a warrior represents might.
Gnapon howls. When residents of the enemy village leave to see what is happening, Tofanga escapes. He tells Gnapon that he could give him a wife [the traditional reward] but as"a woman might come between us," he cedes power instead.
Here too the words are always the same: "A woman might come between us." The defeated Tofanga has no power to cede, but insisting on the voluntary transfer shows that the animist population approves the stronger authority.
Gnapon's authority extends over 14 villages, and his village, Bokhala, becomes a market. A marabout strengthens it with his prayers.
Like all Muslims of the region he is engaged in commerce, selling beads and other articles of little value. He is a Dyula, or petty local trader. The Soninke and Hausa have no importance yet.
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Gnapon gives merchants divisible currency and the stronger chief who can protect them from locals who detest the disruption they bring, and can affect them through boycotts, thefts, closing routes and ambushes.
For Senoufo he controls the profit-seekers, and so prevent, they hope, deeper disruption of their way of life.
At about that time Hausa are expelled from certain kingdoms and as we will see, millenarian movements begin.
The upheaval in Djimini
is part of a general transformation.
End of this section.
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