IDNO

N.18927.ROS

Description

Granaries in Teso country; To the left there is a thatched, native-style hut and to the right, there are mounds of millet?. In the foreground, the shadow of the photographer (Roscoe?) is visible.

Place

E Africa; Uganda; Teso

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

Photographer

?Roscoe, John R.

Collector / Expedition

Roscoe, John R. [Mackie Ethnological Expedition, Uganda, 1919 - 1920]

Date

1919 - 1920

Collection Name

Roscoe Collection

Source

Format

Film Negative Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

This negative was kept in an envelope marked C29/86/ by the cataloguer. The envelope was kept in box marked C29/ by the cataloguer.
Previously stored on Shelf 4, in group of 4 wooden boxes numbered 180.

Publication: Similar image published in Roscoe, J., 1922. The Soul of Central Africa: An Account of the Mackie Ethnological Expedition. (London: Cassell and Co.), p. 278 with the caption: "Sabei: Houses with a Granary in the Centre”.
Similar image published in Roscoe, J., 1924. The Bagesu and other tribes of the Uganda Protectorate: The Third Part of the Report of the Mackie Ethnological Expedition to Central Africa. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.), p. 62, Plate XII, with the caption: "Sabei Granaries”. [ED 23/10/2007]

Context: "The Teso country, through which I now had to pass, is entirely different from the Bunyoro side, for it is flat with rocky hillocks dotted about, the grass is short, and the few trees to be seen are stunted and yield poor timber. The people also are quite different in language and appearance, for the tribes here belong to what are commonly called the Nilotic races. Both men and women go about nude, the men without even an attempt at clothing, while the women’s attire, where there is any, consists of small aprons of beads or string fringes four inches wide and six inches long. ... This is one of the chief cotton-growing districts, and I found single fields extending over several miles. There is a cotton company at Soroti who plough large tracts of land with motor ploughs and then let the ploughed land out to natives who sow it with cotton, paying the company for the work done with a certain proportion of their crop. The surplus grown they sell to the planters for payment in Indian currency, rupees and cents, but, as in the case of the porters and their payment, the only use they seem to have for cash is the payment of their taxes. Until they have learned the use of articles which they cannot produce for themselves and have been educated up to the standards of Western requirements, the payment offered by the planters is of no real value to them and offers no inducement to them to work.
For their own consumption the people grow millet, maize and sweet potato. They live in small villages which they encircle with growing fences of cactus or euphorbia. Owing to the dryness of the land wood is scarce and poor, and, as the people do not care to bring it from long distances, they build their bee-hive huts to the best of their ability with the frailest timber.” (Roscoe, J., 1922. The Soul of Central Africa: An Account of the Mackie Ethnological Expedition. (London: Cassell and Co.), p. 234 - 235). [ED 21/12/2007]

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Elisabeth Deane 22/10/2007]