INTRODUCING A PATTERN OF CHANGE

MORE TRADERS COME. A CHIEFTAINCY APPEARS. WAR BREAKS OUT. A STRONGER CHIEFTAINCY TAKES OVER

 

Aubin, p.431.

The villages in oral tradition are all on a trade route.

Narrators do not know when cowries came to Djimini, saying that their use was widespread before the arrival of Samory (in 1894).

Comment that and other absences: My elderly informants might personally remember the terrifying transformation by Samory or know of it through their parents.* What came before him did not seem important. 

* They generally liked the French conquest for getting rid of him and of slavery, adding that the colonialists replaced it with forced labor.

# # #

Djimini's story of conflict and transformation 

Narrators' statements are in italics.

When traders arrive from Kong, at Kondougou a chief replaces the elders: His wives grow provisions for the traders and his sons fetch the kola (toward 1700?)  

That arrangement lasts as long as he controls exchanges. 

• Later — toward 1800? — fighting breaks out. Kondodugu's chief, Tofanga, is captured but a warrior, Gnapon, rescues him.

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:

Interlocutors do not remember who the enemy was or what caused the conflict. But though the story's details change from village to village, all mention the "pagan" song. So Tofanga and Gnapon were animists, their opponents Muslims. Since Muslims were merchants by definition, their village was a market that functioned, or wanted to function, by sales that were outside Tofanga's control. The only explanation is their wish for an easily divisible currency, which would eliminate his monopoly of exchanges.  

• Tofanga voluntarily cedes power to Gnapon, who as a warrior represents might.

Gnapon hides behind a tree and howls. When residents of the enemy village leave to see what is happening, Tofanga escapes. He tells Gnapon that he could give [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 village, Bokhala, becomes a market, which a marabout strengthens with his prayers.

The marabout [an erudite Muslim, by definition a trader] sells beads and other articles of little value.  

So he is a Dyula, or petty local trader. The Soninke and Hausa have no importance yet.

• Why place the change toward 1800:  

Peasant time is based on seasons, not on a linear series of years. So unless dates are connected with events, such as after traders come from Kong or before the advent of Samory, narrators do not know when they took place other than, for us, sometime in the 19th century.

A document in the Dakar archives, however, says that Gnapon's son was killed in 1878, when he was "too old to fight." So one can place those events at the time when he would have been young and energetic, between 1780 and 1820. 

 -- Death Gnapon's son, Dakar archives, 1878

Summing up: New forces oppose a control that has become archaic. Their victory brings a more dynamic commercial system, but also a compromise. The merchants are subject to boycotts, thefts, the closing of routes, ambushes. They need a Senufo power that will protect them, while the Senufo need the same to keep profit-seeking under control. 

That story of violence, victory and centralization will repeat itself in Djimini, in much of the savannah, in France and, one assumes, wherever economic growth threatens an archaic economy.

# # #

The last page showed Hausa traders expelled 

from certain kingdoms at about the same time, 

and we will see that is also 

when millenarian movements begin. 

The upheaval in Djimini is part of wider change, 

which takes place at the turn of the 18th century.

End of this section.

*     *     *

The next section,

.IV.3.

Cycles of growth, conflict and new power