IV.4. BACK TO DJIMINI: VIOLENCE REAPPEARS

.4.4. Djimini violence reappears

A CENTURY OF PEACE BRINGS ANOTHER CYCLE OF GROWTH 

Then conflict between new forces and those that have become archaic breaks out again.

Senufo warrior

• New forces menace

• Senufo fight back

• Warlords and big-time traders

*      *      *

Next,

New forces menace

NEW FORCES MENACE

LONG-DISTANCE TRADERS MULTIPLY AND DOMINATE   

(FROM ABOUT 1870) 

The Hausa merchant "Mori" settles in the textile center of Marabadiassa; "Karamoko Bassiri" in Bouake, farther west; the father of the 1970's imam of Darhala, a Muslim village on the route to Kong, arrives at the same time.

-- Informants in Muslim villages

William Allen, Narrative of an Expedition to the River Niger, 1848

Hausa dignitaries

Their advance is part of a general evolution:

• 1820's: Fulani from Northern Nigeria ride south, wearing white clothing, carrying banners, crying "Allahu Akhbar!" and awaiting paradise should they die in combat. At Oyo's capital they incite Muslim slaves to kill their animist masters and join them. 

-- Clapperton,
 Records of a Second Expedition to the Interior of Africa, 1825-27,
ed. Paul Lovejoy, 203-4.

• 1850's: Bornu Fulani and Kanuri move south, enslaving or killing populations or demanding tribute.  

-- Barth, II, 93.

• 1870's: Segu's Amadu Tall "seems to be less and less interested in his possessions in Kaarta, Fadugu and Bélédugu (in Senegal and Mali), which are in constant revolt... [he] is turning his efforts toward the south..."

-- Dakar archives, 1880.

• 1890's: Northerners reach the coast.

-- Dakar archives, 1894.

# # #

They colonise and enserf:  

•  The indigenous language is disappearing:

"The spirits of the land, say the Senufo of Kénédougou, have retreated to certain swamps [...]. Woe to the careless person who should pronounce words in the Bambara language, that of the conqueror, next to those swamps. He will immediately be sucked in. The country is Senufo, and its spirits wish to hear Senufo alone."

-- Dakar archives, 1888.

• Populations are becoming tributary:

North of Djimini: "It is to them [the northerners] that they [the Senufo]give their work and their harvests. In fact they are captives, except that they are not sold."  

-- Dakar archives, 1888.

Within Djimini: "They tried to steal our harvests."

 -- Serisio Coulibali, animist farmer.

The northerners preach Islam,
which in an animist context
means transforming society itself.

*      *      *

Next,
Senufo fight back 

SENUFO FIGHT BACK

GNAPON'S SON NAMBOLOSSE LEADS THEIR RESISTANCE

Djimini's best known figure after Samori "pillaged caravans and said, 'If I renounce crime, how will I eat?' He "made the traders respect us. He forced them to speak our tongue." 

 -- Serisio Coulibali, farmer

The Senufo version of his death (please see the next page) is factually inaccurate, but expresses their fight with the new forces.

Gone from the web

 

It is he who is killed in 1878, when "too old to fight."

-- Dakar archives, 1878

After his death they continue their attacks. 

# # #

"Insecurity" is a leitmotif of European records, which assume that travelers (traders) of all kinds are attacked. They do not distinguish between those who are well integrated into local society and those that menace it. In Djimini, that distinction is clear: 

• The Dyula petty traders, like the bead-selling merchant whose prayers helped found Bokhala, are so well integrated into Senufo society that their leaders are publicly drunk:

Biraima Ouattara is not very firm on the Djimini throne. The newly-arrived marabouts bitterly reproach him for having become "Bambara" (pagan). One must admit that the members of the royal family are all drunkards. 

• The "newly arrived marabouts" have their own leadership, since "Royal power is held in check by the village chief Karamoko Bagui, backed by all the Muslims."

--Journal de Braulot, Paris archives, 1893.

 The notebook ended with the explorer writing in circles: He must have lost his mind.

I was told that it had vanished from the archives, so this footnote must be all that remains of that record.

I could not learn more about Karamoko Bagui. The imam of Darhala said he knew nothing, and would not let me ask the elders who were present. For another aspect of such silence, please read on.

The Dyula will not use Islam to defy the traditional order and the Senufo do not attack them. They assault only caravans with donkeys, which are raised in the north.*

-- Dakar archives, 1891, confirmed by interlocutors

 *Not locally, so near the forest with its tsetse flies.

So:

• "We let the little Dyula be, but the Soninke were like fish. We did not know where they came from or where they were going, and we caught them like fish."  

-- Bafétigui Coulibali, imam of Dabakalakoro.

• "We:" the imam identifies with the animists against other Muslims: Please read on.

Senufo resistance to the long-distance traders works. For 15 years they or the raiders they back devastate territories to the east and west, but spare Djimini.

# # #

Pillaging the caravans of disruptive producers

has the same goal as stymying their dynamism 

by massacring their labor, forbidding their religion,

 or destroying wealth before it can be invested.

*    *    *

Next,

Warlords and big-time traders 

*     *     *

Biraima Ouattara n'est pas très ferme sur le trône du Djimini. Les marabouts nouvellement arrivés lui rapprochent amèrement d'être devenu « bambara » (païen). Il faut reconnaitre en effet que tous le membres de la famille royale sont des parfaits ivrognes. 

Le pouvoir royal est tenu en échec par le chef du village Karamoko Bagui, appuyé de tous les musulmans. 

WARLORDS AND BIG-TIME TRADERS

RAIDERS AND POWERFUL MERCHANTS ALLY. 

Accounts of Nambolosse's death show not the literal truth, but the tie between the long-distance traders and slave raiders, and the lastingness of their memory.

• The real story: Nambolossé exacerbates traders' hostility when he demands that Bokhala Dyula yield up a Hausa arms and slave dealer, whom he wishes to make his slave. Some refuse, and leave Bokhala to found the burg of Dabakakoro ("old Dabakala"). Then he seizes the inheritance of a Soninke who has died on his lands, "though his heirs were known." Outraged by this unprecedented act, a Dyula chief attacks Bokhala when Nambolosse's warriors have left to intercept them by another route and burns him alive in his hut.

-- Dakar archives, 1878

• The Muslim version, by raiders' descendants: There is no mention of the Dyula chief. 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." 

• The animist version, by victims' descendants: Nambolosse does not die, but succeeds in chasing Mori out of Djimini. He would have caught him except that Mori has an excellent horse, which vanishes and reappears five kilometers farther away. On his flight from Djimini he meets Samori, and says, "Watch out for Djimini: There are real men there." Later Samori takes revenge for Mori's defeat: It is he who kills Nambolosse.

Reality: 

Nambolosse offends both groups of long-distance traders (from Senegal and Northern Nigeria) by demanding that a wealthy Hausa be given over to him as a slave and seizing a Soninke legacy. A Dyula chief (allied with them?) and his men come to Bokhala when the warriors are gone and, being "too old to fight," he is alone in his hut. They set fire to it and he is burned alive. 

-- Dakar archives, 1878

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 of Darhala

How the stories are told shows the lasting antagonism between the two groups, whose villages are separate.

• Burning Nambolosse "like a roast" reveals 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, and he didn't).

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

The animist version also shows Mori foreshadowing Samory (please continue). He is one raider among many: After about 1870, at least four others terrify populations of the northern Ivory Coast: "Mori" and Vakuba Ture who "raids in the east with his sons."

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

# # #

Except for the sentence above, I found no mention in the Paris or Abidjan archives of raiders whom the French did not confront.

Records in general 

leave out what the narrators think

does not concern them.

End of this section.

*     *    *

Next section,

V.5.

Commercial forces win, then crumble