History of the Nuer Tribe - Essay Example

1 THE NUER TRIBE Sudan, the largest country in Africa governs more than 500 indigenous tribes. The northern tribes like the Rashaida are mostly Muslims and Arabs and make up a part of Sudan's 70% Muslim population. The southern tribes who are mainly Negroid or blacks mostly embrace traditional beliefs or animist religion and are partly Christians (around 6%) (Caputo 346-357). Most northern tribes inhabit the vast expanse of the arid Sahara and Nubian deserts while the southern tribes dwell in diverse topography ranging from dry grasslands, savannahs, mountains and in the far south, the great swampy region called the Sudd (American Association of Physical Anthropologists 379). Central Sudan, where the capital Khartoum is located, is the urban region where most of the population resides. Speaking 300 different languages, the different tribes have a history of infighting since time immemorial. Famine and the almost incessant fighting between the tribes have always been catalysts for the social and economic deterioration of Sudan (Sharp 147). The main ethnic tribes are the Dinka (12%), Nuba (8%), Beja (6%), Nuer (5%) and Azande (3%) (Lye 294). Probably the most important of these is the Nuer tribe not only because its habitat, the swamps of Sudd, might contain vast oil deposits that is currently being explored by Chevron Oil Company (Luciani 88) but it is 'the largest political segment of a people defined by a common language and a sense of common identity" and "the tribe was the largest population who not only claims a common territory but acknowledge the right of their members to compensation for injury" (Bhushan & Malik 106). The Nuer tribe, a tribe of modified Negroids, resides in the Upper Nile, specifically the White Nile area in the vicinity of its tributaries, the Bahr el Ghazal and Bahr el Jebel rivers in 2 southern Sudan in the region called the Sudd, which is a Nile-fed swamp as large as the US state of Maine. The Nuer tribe habitat is therefore the flood-plains of the White Nile and its tributaries and extends southwards to Abyssinia (Wellcome Tropical Research Laboratories 325). The Nuer habitat is about 500 kilometers south of Khartoum. The Nuer tribe is part of the 3 major Nilotic tribes in southern Sudan, the other two being the Dinka and the Shilluk tribes, which physically bear resemblance to each other but each speak different languages and has its own customs and traditions. As a people, the Nuer tribe is divided into clans that in the 1930 census were identified to have numbered to 17 clans with a total population of 247,000 and which are scattered throughout southern Sudan in their own villages. Each clan averages about 14,529 Nuers in the 1930 census which had grown to 35,351 Nuers per clan in the 1955 census (Kelly 161). Recent years have placed the Nuer population at 1.5 million. The different Nuer clans are predatory and are very successful in their belligerent activities because albeit scattered, they are unified, manifesting capacity to unite on a large scale and to organize swift large-scale raids. The Nuer internal unity and its organizational skills are impressive unlike its main warfare victim, the Dinka tribe groups which are "politically autonomous and do not unite in warfare or for any other purpose". A chink in the Nuer unity and kinship however shows, when a few Nuer clans i.e. the Jagei, the Western Jikany and Eastern Jikany oftentimes clash not only with the Dinka enemy but also with fellow Nuer clans (Kelly 160). The Nuer clans always fight for territorial expansion and this expansionism and predisposition to territorial appropriation had been rooted in the Nuer sociocultural system (Kelly 226). Since early times, the Nuer tribes had sought for territorial expansion. Thus, from 1820-1890, the Nuer had expanded its territory fourfold. In 1879, the Anuak territory was subjected 3 to Nuer onslaught and the Nuer tribe was able to push 140 miles deep to the Anuak land in southeastern Sudan. But its most favored victims are the Dinka tribes specifically the southern and western Dinka tribes which share a similar culture to that of the Nuer tribe. The Nuer assault against the Dinka is seasonal and happens every two or three years although some part of the Dinka is raided annually. The offensive usually happens after the rainy season i.e. the dry season when the Nuer tribes are compelled to search for water and pasturage. Other than these the Nuer tribe is interested in Dinka cattle and iron tools. Spared from Nuer expansionism are the Dinka Ngo tribes because of the paucity of grazing and stock opportunities in their homeland; the riverain Anuak and the powerful Shilluk kingdom because of its poor pasturage land. Many of the 900,000 strong Dinka thus become integrated with the Nuer after the Nuer conquest and the integration is made easy because of the similarity of cultures between the two tribes (Cohen 217-218). This expansionism success is partly facilitated by the Nuer emphasis on kinship and this can be better understood by tracing the Nuer history and origins. The Nuer tribe had been identified by archaeologists as descendants of mutated Negroids from west of the Nile River. As early as 200 years ago, this race began to migrate to east of the River Nile and as they make a push eastward, they also shoved the Anuak tribe into West Ethiopia. The shove into Ethiopia caused significant number of Nuer to reside in that part of Africa. The 1994 census showed that Nuer in West Ethiopia number 64,900. Around the middle of the 1800's, the Nuer migration underwent rapid, active migration and in the process integrated the Dinka nomads mainly through intermarriage. Thus, once upon a time the Nuer, the Dinka and Atuot were one and the same tribe but disputes over cattle ownership caused the alliance to 4 crumble. It had also been said that with the Nuer migration came also the introduction of cattle raising in southern Sudan (Strategyleader.org). Since time immemorial, the Nuer or Lo Nuer, who happens to also call themselves the Nath and which originally lived around Lake No, are a pastoral people who are herders and raisers of cattle but during wet season also cultivate millet and maize as well as hunt and spear fish. Since then, they were known to spend the rainy season in permanent villages on higher grounds but during the dry season they go down to reside along riverside camps. Even then, they were noted warriors who impressed everybody as the most skilled warriors in East Africa. So skilled as warriors were they that none of the conquering and thundering colonial invaders such as the British, the Ottoman Turks and the Arabs met success in making them kneel down before them. They made use of weapons made of finely crafted iron. The best that the British colonists were able to do was to make some of their tribes make accommodations with them. Until the British were compelled to utilize armaments and ammunitions during substantial military campaigns against them in 1930, the so-called Nuer Settlement that the British finally vanquished this proud race, making the Nuer the last of the Sudanese people to submit to British hegemony (Hutchinson 116). The exit of the British and the gaining of independence by Sudan in 1956 from the British worsened conditions for the Nuer tribe and other southern tribes because it gave the northern Arabic Muslims domination over the southern non-Muslim tribes. Controlling the nation's wealth and wielding full political power, the northerners moved to unify the whole Sudan by forcing the Nuer and other tribes to adapt the Islam religion and imposed Moslem Sharia laws, the Arab cultural identity and the Arab language on the Nuer tribe and other southern tribes. The 5 latter rejected the impositions and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement or SPLA under John Garang was at the phalanx of the southern rebellion movement. The successive regimes under Jaafar Nimeiri, Sadiq al-Mahdi and Omar al-Bashir were repressive, oppressive and brutal and threatened time and time again to annihilate the Nuer race and the other southern tribes to extinction. Human rights abuses were rampant and there were massive looting of properties, abduction and slave raids and finally a "sustained campaign of murder, looting, rape and forced displacement" were undertaken (Totten et al 460-462). The Nuer tribe not only came into conflict with the Arab northerners but also with fellow southern rebels. In 2006, the SPLA moved to force the Nuer to surrender their weapons in line with the United Nation dictum to disarm private citizens and militias to prevent tribal wars. However, the SPLA contingent commissioned to do so, killed and ate many Nuer cattle and thus imperiling the Nuer economy. In response, Nuer youngsters aged 14 to 20 organized themselves into an armed militia called the White Army of the Lou Nuer and waged armed conflict with the SPLA which lasted for 4 months. When the smoke of the war settled down, 1,200 White Army combatants, some 700 SPLA fighters and 200 civilians were left dead (Human Rights Watch 26). Since early days, the Nuer tribe and the Atuot, the Nuer associated subgroup, were one of the most cohesive tribes in Africa. And this is made impressive by the fact that they were not properly politically structured. There never was a centralized form of government nor a centralized political authority although at times, the various Nuer clans associate themselves to form loose federations. Instead of centralization, the Nuer clans are independent and autonomous and residing in several disparate autonomous village communities. In times of disputes, spiritual leaders, known as "leopard skin chiefs", attempt to resolve and mediate in any such disputes. 6 Author Evans-Pritchard presented the Nuer tribe as a classic example of an indigenous anarchist political structure without a single leader or leader group. Like their Dinka neighbors, the Nuer are polygynous patrilineal cattle herders. But unlike the Dinka, the Nuer treated their cattle as their dearest possessions and their source of identity. The Nuer regard cattle as the primary basis of their livelihood and wealth. Nuer life revolves around its cattle possession and prestige and individual worth are measured by the cattle he or she owns. Someone without cattle is virtually a pariah and is regarded with low esteem. The Nuer will gladly risk his own life to defend his cattle and will invade other tribes for possession of the latter's cattle. Cattle husbandry is definitely "one of the chief activities and dominant interests of all Nuer men". The Nuer man or woman even takes the names of his own cow and prefers to be greeted with the name of his own cow (Evans-Pritchard 16, 126). Cattle also takes a special place in Nuer society as an effective mediator to the divine and as objects of bridewealth exchange. Cattle is given off by the bridegroom to the bride's lineage and this bestowed cattle guarantees that kinship and descent belongs to the husband's lineage. The bestowed cattle marks the children as belonging solely to the husband's patrilineage and to his line of descent and even after the husband's death, any child born from the wife's womb still belongs to the deceased husband. This is called 'ghost marriage'. Thus cattle has a direct relationship with kinship. Among other tribes, the Nuer has probably the strongest bond of kinship among the different tribes so much so that in times of war different Nuer clans join together to invade enemy forces or unite together to defend one Nuer clan from the invading forces "even after they had stopped interacting with regard to subsistence" (Wilson 78). 7 As far as every Nuer is concerned, each Nuer whether belonging to his own clan or village or to another clan is his own kinsman or kinswoman. Thus, when one Nuer meets another Nuer for the first time he or she immediately feels a special bond of kinship. This concept of kinship is so strong that the Nuer "feel free to move all over Nuerland and to attach themselves to any kinsman or affine". "Thus at different seasons and in various years, the Nuer finds himself in different company" (Marx 8). The need for symbiotic kinship is further intensified because the Nuer feels that he needs to live in a cluster of families for his own security. He shares food and cooperates with fellow Nuer that he lives with in order for him to be assured against violent attacks against his person and against seasonal shortages of food. The concept of kinship is also particularly strong among the Nuer because the Nuer firmly believe that "they are descended from a common ancestor, and their various clans, lineages and other segments as together comprising a single, vast genealogy" (Fleisher 4-5). While many societies have social institutions that are clearly delineated and social life is ramified into institutions like the family, the local government, the military and the judiciary, the Nuer social institutions are virtually invisible. Evans-Pritchard called it "ordered anarchy". If they can be said to have anything corresponding to political institution, these absolutely have no physical form, no architecture of palaces and prisons, no embodiment of piles and stones-not even any territorial divisions except those made by natural features such as rivers.Even the verbal grading of different sociological levels is absent" And yet there is strong regulation of the Nuer social life. Every man knows what is due him and each man knows how to defend his own rights. Regulation exerts a strong presence in the society except that "power is diffused throughout the whole system" (Douglas 62,64). Regulations concerning rights, obligations, 8 privileges and relationships are controlled by kinsmen exemplifying that Nuer society is deeply patrilineal and patriarchal. All the Nuer clans are united by a common language, which is a Nilotic language similar to that of the Dinka and Atuot language and is generally characterized as belonging to the Eastern Sudanese language of the Nile-Saharan family. It is uniform with no definable dialects. Meanwhile, majority of the Nuer tribe practice animism or the traditional beliefs although Christianity had been preached among the Nuer members and a few had embraced the Christian faith. Today, Christianity is alive in the Nuer homeland and it is clear that the Nuer Christian church is well ensconced with about 200 congregations at the latest. But still, most of the Nuer are solid animists and worship a god called Kowth whom they pray for in search of blessings of good health and well-being. They offer sacrifices to Kowth in a ceremony that involves sacrificing of cattle, which they believe are instrumental in making them establish contact with the ghosts and spirits of their ancestors and also in making them get rid of personal spirits that are haunting and possessing them (Saharanvibe.blogspot.com). The features of Nuer culture can best be described as complex and multi-faceted. Complex it may be, but the Nuer society is closely cohesive and united because all Nuer clans possess one common language and the same customs and traditions. And all take pride in their common way of life as good and distinct and regard themselves as one special unique community with one territory called by one common name and with one common sentiment. This cohesiveness causes everyone to cooperate in warfare and defend that one common territory with all passion and zeal. All Nuer clans are also together in good times and bad times. They "take part in the same dance, intermarry, conduct feuds, go on joint raiding parties, share dry- 9 season camps or make camps in the same locality" (Redfield 118). Organized around a dominant clan, feuds are resolved swiftly through external mediation conducted by the "leopardskin chief, whose authority transcends any parochial, secular limits because it is based on his sacred association with the earth". It is paramount that all feuds must be decisively resolved because according to Evans-Pritchard it is highly possible that there might be "social relations which can be broken off" and this is anathema to Nuer society (Foster & Rubinstein 300). Failure to resolve the feuds means that feuds must be resolved ultimately by force. Murders or homicides involving members of the Nuer tribe are resolved by compelling the criminal to pay blood-wealth to the victim's family. But when the culprit is a Nuer and the victim belongs to another tribe, no such blood-wealth is required (Redfield 118). The Nuer is violence-prone and the reason is that according to Evans-Pritchard "from their earliest years children are encouraged by their elders to settle their disputes by fighting, and they grow up to regard skills in fighting the most necessary accomplishment" (Marx 8) Because the Nuer consider themselves as but one people, they also strive to make themselves look uniformly the same. Thus, a Nuer can be easily identified by his physical appearance i.e. all his front teeth are absent because a Nuer youngster at puberty must undergo knocking of all front teeth at puberty; there are also six horizontal cuts across his brow called gaar and which is partly also a part of the youngsters' initiation into adulthood (Redfield 118). Youngsters also undergo circumcision as part of such initiation and in that rite each is given ritual bull, the color of which will determine the name that is to be affixed to their persona. The youngsters are taught to cherish their ritual bulls and oftentimes they compose songs of affection and eulogy for their bulls. For women, their faces are engraved with 'beauty marks' which 10 consist of dots engraved across their brows, cheeks and chins (Caputo 350). Women also as part of tradition don brief skirts of cloth or skin and wear wire and bead necklaces and headdresses. Men on the other hand go on in life frequently naked. So cohesive is Nuer society that intermarriages between the Nuer and other tribes are frowned upon. But whenever they inevitably happen, such marriages are recognized on both sides. Because kinship ties among the Nuer are accorded extreme importance, marriages between leading families are a source of great joy because they foster closer relationships and ties between political units. Incest marriages are taboos. Instead marriages between Nuer clans are considered ideal and these are legalized by the payment of cattle by the groom's clan to the bride's clan. Marriages however are not single process affairs. They are executed in stages and are perfected only when the bride has given birth to at least two children. When the wife gives birth to a third child, she and the children become fully accepted as part of the husband's clan and the marriage is then deemed as "tied". The woman is not allowed to have multiple husbands but husbands can have as many wives as they desire. This is one inequality between Nuer men and women. Another inequality is that the Nuer society is never matrilineal. The line of descent is always through the husband's lineage from a single ancestor which is male. This clan lineage shifts power to the male side because it gives the male the sole control and distribution of family resources. The Nuer women might suffer some social inequality as compared to men but women and men are considered to be in the same social strata when the subject matter is social structure. Except for the village chief, who acts as leader of the flock, the rest of the Nuer are deemed equal in the eyes of the Nuer society. Thus, there is hardly any social stratification. There are no pariahs, no governors, mayors, judges, administrators, chief priest or generals but only the 11 village chief, who is oftentimes the wealthiest and the most important in the village who is a wee bit above the rest. And the village chief is not even bestowed any political position through any political process such as an election but he merely instinctively takes upon himself to lead the village and crowns himself with the title Beng-Did or 'great lord' while the rest of the villagers act as one whole large family (Toniolo 148). Daily life in Nuer homeland illustrates a balanced sexual division of labor. Everybody in the Nuer tribe, men, women, boys and girls are expected to do their share in the Nuer family daily tasks and chores. Subsistence and economic life in the Nuer tribe centers around the family's cattle possessions and everybody has a share in the rearing of such cattle. While the cows are still tethered at their pegs in early morning, women, girls and boys are assigned to milk the cows. Afterwards, the cows are let loose and it is the men's obligation to drive the pasture but in this case only 1 or 2 herdsmen are assigned to do the job. Meanwhile the other men do other miscellaneous chores such as "twisting cord, making game traps, or leather collars for favorite bullocks" (Sudan Government 208). After the cows are set free, women go on milking the goats and sheep and afterwards concoct butter which is a favorite family staple. Meanwhile, the boys take out the cow, goat and sheep dung and spread it under the heat of the sun to serve as family fuel. Later on, the boys take out the goats and the sheep to graze out in the pasture. In late afternoon, when the animals are all brought back, they are then watered and tethered by the men and boys. But it is the obligation of women to draw water from wells which were previously dug up by men. During hunting season, men go to prepare and set traps and then organize small hunting parties. When the game is sighted, all the men rush in with their spears and with their dogs. But 12 this is done only during the dry season. During the rainy season, most of the men are out to track giraffe, which they pursue with zeal and astonishing endurance (Sudan Government 208). At the start of the rainy season as the ground becomes moist, men prepare the ground, digging it and weeding out unwanted fauna. Then women, sow maize and millet until they are ready for harvest. Women also do some horticulture work in their gardens around the homestead. Also at the onset of the rainy season, the men bring back the cattle to the villages and because cattle this time must be grazed only in the vicinity of the family home, the boys are constrained to herd them in their limited pasture and later before sunset, tether them and take them inside the byre or cow shelter. One of the boys is assigned to sleep inside the byre to assure that the cattle are kept safe from robbers. The byre must be kept scrupulously clean every morning by both boys and girls who must take out the dung for use as fuel. The Nuer tribe subsistence pattern is inextricably connected with the family cattle possession. The family's cattle possession is not only a measure of the family prestige and value in the Nuer society but it is also important as a trading commodity, as an exchange for wives, as ceremonial sacrifice animal, as an insurer of having one's lineage assured in posterity and most importantly cattle provide meat for subsistence. Cattle meat is however, not the family's main source of subsistence because cattle is raised mainly for personal prestige and as a source of milk, butter and dung for fuel. But after the cattle is sacrificed, the whole family feasts on cattle meat which an anthropologist, Ms. Soule affirms to be "associated with the idea of increasing sexual power" (Sudan Government 209). Cattle can also be killed in times of famine where blood from the animals' necks are siphoned out to be drunk. But in normal times, the Nuer would rather eat meat from game produced from hunting and fish especially during the rainy 13 season. The family's real primary means of subsistence is milk from the cow, the sheep and the goats. "Milk is almost the only food of the main part of the population, and milk for children is always desired to keep them well nourished"(Sudan Government 209). Besides milk, the Nuer family supplements their subsistence with millet or durra and maize which they harvest from their fields and also fish. The Nuer have been considered as the chief durra growers in the White Nile area (Toniolo & Hill 148). The typical food eaten by the Nuer tribe include beef, sour dough, corn ball, Kop which is a kind of pasta, large sour dough pancake called injera bread, milk, sorghum and mangoes (Allexperts.com). Today, the Nuer tribe has adapted to modern times and many Nuer have attained high educational attainment and recognition in many fields of endeavor such as politics, military, medicine, engineering and education to name a few. Many have become active in the SPLA fighting for the liberation of southern Sudan from the grip of Arab northerners. The Nuer had discarded their metal spears and took up guns instead and learned to don modern clothes and got rid of the gaars or horizontal facial markings and all such facial scarring. But the civil war in Sudan has affected a lot of the Nuer that in 1993, the UN High Commission for refugees reported that some 53 million Sudanese have been displaced by such civil war and many of such belong to the Nuer tribe. It has also been reported that many Nuer had escaped to Ethiopia and Kenya while some 25,000 have immigrated to the United States as refugees mainly in New York, Nebraska, Georgia, Tennessee as well as in Canada in the vicinity of Toronto and a few had also immigrated to Australia (Answers.com) WORKS CITED All Experts. Nuer. 2009, http://en.allexperts.com/e/n/nu/nuer.htm Answers.com. Nuer. http://www.answers.com/topic/nuer Bhusha, Bibhuti & Bibhuti Bhusan Malik. Social Ecology of Forest Resources. Gyan Books, 2004. American Association of Physical Anthropologists. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology,Vol. 30. American Association of Physical Anthropologists,1987. Caputo, Robert. 'Sudan: Arab-African Giant'. National Geographic, Vol. 161, No.3, March 1982. Cohen, Yehudi. Man In Adaptation: The Cultural Present. Aldine Transaction, 1974. Douglas, Mary. Edward Evans-Pritchard. Routledge, 2002. Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan. The Nuer. Clarendon Press, 1960. Fleisher, Michael. 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