IDNO

N.19344.ROS

Description

Distant profile view of a young Bakyiga? woman from the Kigezi region seated on a box with a baby attached to her back. It is not clearly visible what the woman is wearing; she appears to wear metal rings? around her ankles, ragged clothing and a necklace. The background consists of a mud? covered interior.

Place

E Africa; Uganda; Kigezi

Cultural Affliation

Bagesu; ?Bakyiga

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 C30/290/ by the cataloguer. The envelope was kept in box marked C30/ by the cataloguer.
Previously stored on Shelf 4, in group of 4 wooden boxes numbered 180.

Publication: See text 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). pp. 162 - 183. [ED 24/9/2007]

Context: "When we crossed the boundary of Ankole into the Kigezi district the country became wilder and fewer cattle people were found, the true inhabitants, who were encountered here and there, being an agricultural tribe. These people of Kigezi are mountaineers, and find the steep hillsides no difficulty; their fields extend up the slopes of the mountains and are marked off from each other by ridges where the weeds and stones are gathered together. ...
It was my desire to see something of the pygmies in Kigezi, but I found they had left and, having crossed into Belgian territory, were out of reach. I had been told that they had formed a camp at Kigezi, and I had hoped to spend a few days with them to learn some of their habits by actual observation of their life. It was regrettable to find them gone and not to learn where they had encamped. There were traces of their presence in the shape of large devastated areas, from which the people had fled in fear of the pugnaciousness and rapacity of these pygmies. ...
Cerebro-meningitis was prevalent in the far part of Kigezi, which made it unwise to go farther west with carriers, who were always liable to contract disease when marching. I therefore spent some days among the Bakyiga, whom I found to be a wild set of people without any cohesion or regard for authority. The more I learnt of them the more their customs reminded me of those of the Bagesu on Mount Elgon, but I found no one who could give me any satisfactory account of their early migrations. They themselves could give no account of their forefathers, merely stating that their history only went back two generations, to their great-grandfathers (Roscoe, J., 1922. The Soul of Central Africa: An Account of the Mackie Ethnological Expedition. (London: Cassell and Co.) pp. 101 - 102). [ED 24/9/2007]

Clothing: "Women wore two skins round the loins, one in front and one at the back; and they put their children in slings of sheep-skin on their backs, so that they could carry them with them as they went on with their work” (Roscoe, 1924, p.165). [ED 24/9/2007]

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Elisabeth Deane 24/9/2007]