IDNO

N.19587.ROS

Description

Half-length frontal portrait of a Bahera man from the Bunyoro region wearing a kanzu (white tunic) seated on a wooden box. The background consists of a white wall or screen.

Place

E Africa; Uganda; Bunyoro

Cultural Affliation

Bahera

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 C31/196/ by the cataloguer. The envelope was kept in box marked C31/ by the cataloguer.
Previously stored on Shelf 4, in group of 4 wooden boxes numbered 180.

Publication: Image published in Roscoe, J., 1923. The Bakitara (or Banyoro): The First Part of the Report of The Mackie Ethnological Expedition to Central Africa. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 336, Plate XLII, with the caption: "Agricultural class. Potter.” [ED 17/10/2007]

Context: "The people of Kitara belong to two distinct races, but by intermarriage an intermediate group was formed and the lines of demarcation between the three groups have become more and more vague and rapidly disappearing. This was a result of a policy, adopted, it is said, by a king who ruled not many generations ago, by which certain restrictions on intermarriage were removed, and some of the more progressive men of the agricultural class or serfs were raised to the rank of free-men and permitted to marry women of the pastoral clans.
The two classes of which the nation was originally composed were (a) the Bahuma, or pastoral cow-men, who invaded the country and conquered (c) the Bahera, agricultural people and artisans, who were regarded as serfs. The third group, which came into being later, was composed of (b) the Banyoro, or free-men, the wealthy and important members of class (c) who had been raised from serfdom and might marry women from (a), the pastoral people, (c), the serfs, or (b) their own class, so long as they did not marry women of their own totemic clans. The poorer members of the pastoral class, the herdsmen, allowed their daughters to marry these free-men, though they avoided intermarriage with members of class (c), the serfs. Thus members of pastoral clans (a) might marry women of their own class, observing the rules of clan exogamy, or women from class (b), the free-men. Men of class (c), the serfs, had to marry women from their own class, but again of different clans, unless they had been raised to class (b), the free-men, by the king, when they might marry from classes (a), (b), or (c), as they wished.
The pastoral people forming class (a) were not Negroes but of Negro-Hamitic stock, while class (c) was Negro, and the result of the introduction of Negro blood into (a) is evident, not only in its physical effect, but in the modifications introduced into their customs, which previously arose from and were solely concerned with the cows, while their food consisted of milk. The physical result has been to introduce a shorter and coarser type, possibly not less robust, but certainly less refined and, I imagine, less intelligent.” (Roscoe, J., 1923. The Bakitara (or Banyoro): The First Part of the Report of The Mackie Ethnological Expedition to Central Africa. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 13). [ED 16/10/2007]

Context: "Both men and women made pots, but the better kind used by the king and more wealthy chiefs were invariably made by men, and the King had his own potters who belonged to a special clan and whose sons followed in their footsteps. A potter who made pots for general sale always attached himself to some chief; he made a pot and took it to a chief as a sign that he wished to serve him, after which he settled on the chief’s estate and gave him one from every set of pots he made.
The chief requirements of the pastoral people were milk-pots, which varied in six from those containing a pint to the large pots which held a quart or more, and a few water pots, which were not like the round pot generally found but were nearer an egg-shape and held a gallon or more of water. There was also a regular demand for cooking-pots, which were like basins and very large, and great beer-pots which held fully four gallons. In addition to these the potters manufactured the heads for the ordinary tobacco pipes, the stems of which were often made of a kind of stick with a thick pith which could readily be pushed out, leaving a hollow tube.
Two kinds of clay, both found in swamps or marshy land were in general use, one being white and the other black. The common cooking and water-pots were made from the latter. Each potter procured his own clay, and when he went to get it he had to observe the taboos connected with the beginning of any work. He got men to assist him to carry the lumps, probably weighing about twenty pounds each, to his house, where he put the clay in a hole about two-feet deep and a foot wide and covered it with plantain leaves. At each new moon he had to take millet and semsem to this pit and sprinkle it there that the clay might be good.
When he wished to make pots, he took a lump of this clay, mixed it with water until it was quite soft and then added to it grit from a piece of broken pot, which he mixed well with the new clay, for he claimed that this made the clay work well and prevented it cracking during drying. The only tools he required were a few bits of gourd and a pot of water into which he dipped these to keep them from sticking to the clay.
To form the base of the pot he took a lump of clay and placed it in the hollow of a bit of gourd or in the bottom of an old pot, working it thin and smoothing the inside with a scrap of gourd. The clay for the sides was made into long rolls and coiled on, worked to the thickness required with the thumb and forefinger, and smoothed with the piece of gourd.
Coil after coil was added, increasing and diminishing the circumference in accordance with the shape required until the sides were high enough, when it was rounded in to the neck; the man had no wheel and all the shaping was done by hand and eye. It did not take him more than an hour to build the pot, and six pots were usually a day’s work.
The pot was then placed in the shade of his hut or a shed to dry, after which all rough places on the outside were rubbed off with a smooth stone. If it was for the king, the surface was then rubbed over with graphite from a mine at Kigorobya. This graphite was powdered and all light-coloured stone removed, and it was used in two different ways. Sometimes the powder was mixed with butter and blood and made into balls, which when hard were rubbed on the pot until it showed a bright polish. The usual way, however, was to mix the powder with water and the juice of a bark of a shrub called rukoma which had glutinous properties; this mixture was painted on the pot and left to dry, and the pot again rubbed with the smooth stone until a fine polish was attained.
After polishing, the pots were dried thoroughly and had to be baked. For this purpose the potter placed them round a large fire and turned them until the fire began to die down and they were very hot, when he pushed them into the remains of the fire, covered them with the hot embers and then with grass, and then left them. When they were cool, he rubbed them again with the smooth stone and the finished article showed a fine silvery black polish.
The common cooking and water-pots were made in the same way but were not finished off so carefully. They were not polished and the small milk-vessels and some more carefully made pots were plain, but the majority were decorated from the lip to about half-way down with markings in a kind of herring-bone pattern, which might be done in several different ways while the clay was still soft enough to take an impression. Some potters used straw, plaited so that the plait had four sides each showing the same pattern; this way about two-inches long and each side was about an eighth of an inch across, and it was pressed on the soft surface of the clay and rolled round the upper half of the pot with the palm of the hand. Some scratched the pattern with a pointed stick, while others had a piece of wood cut into ridges which they rubbed along the sides of the pot, pressing it with the palm of the hand, first in one and then in the opposite direction, so that the crossing of the lines formed a sort of herring-bone pattern. After drying the pot was placed under a large fire of grass which was kept for as long as the potter considered necessary.
Pots had always to be baked in the evening so that they got the night for cooling, and the baking had to be done while there was a new moon, for the work was to be successful. Should any person spit upon a pot while it was being made or touch it with fingers wet with spittle, the pot would break. If a pregnant woman looked upon pots or touched them before they were finished, they would crack.
The mine from which the graphite of the pots was taken is in the side of a hill, and the stone had been quarried for many years from this place. The entrance is only a round hole some two feet in diameter, but inside it grows bigger, until at the end, some twenty yards into the hill, the roof is five feet high and the width some three to four feet.
The graphite stone, which is called ekipiripyo, is not very hard, but it requires some instrument to quarry it. When it has been got out, it is powdered and freed from any admixture of light-coloured stone.” (Roscoe, J., 1923. The Bakitara (or Banyoro): The First Part of the Report of The Mackie Ethnological Expedition to Central Africa. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 225 - 228.). [ED 17/10/2007]

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Elisabeth Deane 17/10/2007]