IDNO

N.19024.ROS

Description

Distant view of a woman?, two girls? and a young boy? from the Ankole region standing next to a salt pool at Katwe salt-works in Toro. The woman wears cloth in the tunic-style and appears to hold a metal? pan, while the other two girls? wear cloth wrappers (under their arms to their knees) and the boy? wears cloth in the toga-style and holds a walking stick.

Place

E Africa; Uganda; Toro; Semliki Valley

Cultural Affliation

?Ankole

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 C29/205/ 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. 113, with the caption: "Toro: The Salt Pools. Katwe Salt-Works.” [ED 21/12/2007]

Context: "When we crossed I sent off the men by a short road to the camp, while I started for one of the more important salt-works. There are two places where the salt is worked, one giving the coarser kind and one a better grade, and I elected to go to the latter. I had to cycle off the main road and make a detour of some twenty-three or twenty-four miles out of my way to see this place. I had with me a cyclist guide, who showed me the nearest way, a path which was at times rough for the machines. However, we were able to ride most of the way, which was a comfort, for this proved certainly the hottest place I had been in. I was warned that we should find the heat trying for the men, and I found it quite true.
When we reached the salt-works the head-man of the village kindly came to act as guide round the works. The place from which the salt is gathered is a depression like a huge pond on the surface of fairly level ground; it is nearly round, and about half a mile wide. At the bottom of this depression there is a stagnant pool, and scattered around are smaller pools. These are converted into holdings by salt-workers, each holding comprising one or two pools varying in width from twenty to forty feet; they are made in the soft mud, and into each water is run by channels from the main pool. When the water in the pool reaches a depth of about ten inches, the channel is stopped with a piece of clay and the stream diverted into another pool. The water is allowed to stand a day or two until a thick scum rises to its surface and hardens; this then scraped up, and the men carry it to their villages, where, assisted by their wives and children, they spread it out to dry. When dry, it is made up into packets varying from two to thirty pounds in weight, but in the market it was being sold by measure, not by weight, and the purchasers made up their packets according to the amount they wished to carry. The pools were kept constantly filled, so that the scum is always rising and hardening on them.
The head-man told me that, so far as he knew, there was no spring in the depression; the water was, he thought, surface water which drained in after the rains, and the saline properties were derived from the earth. I am inclined, however, to think that there must be a boiling spring which gives its saline qualities to the water, because there are hot springs on both sides of the Luenzori range at places I have visited on former occasions. On the west side, in the Semliki Valley, there is a large boiling cauldron which overflows, leaving its salt along the banks of the stream, and these deposits are used by the natives themselves and for barter purposes.
In the village where the salt is dried and prepared for barter there are a number of huts where the salt workers live. They do not trouble about cultivation, but devote their time to salt-making, which is more remunerative. There are several guest-houses, which are full of people waiting for salt, and under a large hut were fully a hundred purchasers busily bartering animals, food and other goods for packages of salt. A man will carry as much as one hundred pounds’ weight of salt and walk a hundred miles with it to retail it or to deliver it to his master for use in feeding cattle. (Roscoe, J., 1922. The Soul of Central Africa: An Account of the Mackie Ethnological Expedition. (London: Cassell and Co.), p. 113 - 114.). [ED 2/1/2008]

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Elisabeth Deane 2/1/2008]