IDNO

P.39265.ROS

Description

Full-length portrait of three ?Bakyiga men from the Kigezi district; two holding spears and shield and one holding a spear and a bow and arrow. The background consists of an open, grassy landscape. [ED 24/9/2007]

Place

E Africa; Uganda; Kigezi District

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

Print Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

This print was found in an envelope marked C130/107/ by the cataloguer. The envelope was kept in box marked C130/ by the cataloguer. Previously stored in Large Wooden Drawer VI in Photo Archive Room.

Photograph taken on Rev. John Roscoe’s Mackie Ethnological Expedition to Central Africa, June 1919 to November 1920. See Roscoe.J. 1921.

Glass negative for this print likely to have been originally housed in ‘Box 11 Kigezi’ (C32/10/), not Box 12 as the inscription on the envelope suggests.

Publication: 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. 174, Plate XXVIII, with the caption “Bakyiga warriors”. [ED 5/11/2007]

Context: “The district of Kigezi occupies the southern part of the Ruwenzori range of mountains, bordering on Lake Edward, stretching south to the Ruanda district and west to the Belgian Congo, and bounded on the east and north by Ankole. The equator lies to the north, but so near that Kigezi may also be said to be on the equator.
The climate is an excellent one, and the district with its tropical fertility and its wonderful mountain scenery is certainly the finest in Eastern Africa. The mountains vary in height from five to thirteen thousand feet, and seem generally to be arranged in horse-shoe-shaped ranges or in circles, so that it is impossible to enter some parts of the country without climbing over a range nine or ten thousand feet high. Enclosed by these ranges are large expanses of country, often dotted with hills of considerable height. These valleys, with their luxuriant growth of trees, shrubs and flowers, their brightly coloured birds and insects, their many wild animals, and the splendid waterfalls which here and there dash from the heights of the mountains, make a spectacle hardly to be equaled.
Though the Bakyiga were a fairly large tribe, the inhabitants of the district numbering well over a million souls, their land was so large that all the traveller saw of them was a few scattered groups of huts at long intervals. Round these villages extended plots of cultivated land where each woman possessed a large field, and where the cows, goats, and sheep were pastured. The members of each village claimed as their own the sides of the hill on which their village was built, and any intrusion by strangers was fiercely resented and often led to strife and bloodshed. As each man in a village might have several wives and each wife had to have a field of their own, the hills surrounding the villages were well cultivated.
The people were of Bantu stock were mostly agricultural, though a few pastoral clans might be found on the lower slopes of the hills where the large plateaux afforded excellent pasturage. The Bakyiga were a wild race who in the past resisted all attempts to bring them into subjection, and are now only being brought into some sort of order by the British Government. Life was of little value among them, and they murdered friends, relatives and enemies indiscriminately. The men were of average height, the tallest being about five feet ten to six feet, while the women were slightly shorter. Both sexes were strong and well built, and the mountain life made them muscular. The women were deferential to the men, but not servile, and no marked affection was shown between husband and wife or between parents and children.
There was no supreme chief, but the tribes were divided into clans which were ruled by their own elders and completely isolated from each other; they were even hostile, for one clan would not associate with members of another and it was unsafe for a man to travel alone beyond the boundaries of his own clan land. When going on a journey two or three men always travelled together, and then went completely armed.” (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. 163). [ED 29/10/2007]

Clothing: “The skins of animals formed the only clothing worn by either sex. Boys and men wore a goat-skin, hanging from the right shoulder by a sling of two-legs tied together, and passing under the left arm. ... Goat-skins were valued and bought for clothing. A wealthy man who hired peasants to look after his goats might give them the meat of killed animals as payment, but he used the skins for clothing for himself and his family. An elder of a village might have as many as seventy goats and sheep. Poorer people contented themselves with sheep-skins for clothing. The generally shaved the wool off and, after drying the skin, stamped upon it until it was soft. Sheep-skins were always easily obtained, for sheep were often killed for sacrifices and the taking of auguries.” (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. 165). [ED 5/11/2007]

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Elisabeth Deane 5/11/2007]