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Most Bito, despite being Bito, lived like anybody else, as we noted earlier. But anyone genealogically close to a mukama —especially one whose father, grandfather, or great grandfather was a mukama— was actually considered aristocracy. Because mukamas had many wives —somewhere between 70 and 90 in earlier times, Beattie was told— all of whom he sought to keep pregnant, this aristocracy was actually quite large. Such people bore the title “prince” or “princess.” Those who were children of the present or previous mukama had the slightly higher title “prince of the drum” and “princess of the drum.” Usually they received estates, with the people and revenues attached to them.
There were some limitations. For one thing, the custom of a mukama killing his brothers, if it was really carried out, would have meant that most of the male children of any mukama would eventually have been killed when his successor was selected, although of course some of them would already have left some children.
The female children, the “princesses of the drum” were considered to be extremely elegant people, far too worthy to be subordinated to husbands of any clan but the Bito.
However since clan exogamy prohibited marriage to fellow-Bito (or even to members of a Bito’s mother’s clan), the princesses of the drum were essentially too important to marry anybody at all. And so traditionally they were explicitly prohibited from marrying. In 1933, under the British administration, that prohibition was lifted. Beattie writes of the interesting result:
Today, however, the king’s daughters, like other Bito women, may marry and have children, but they usually marry men of high social standing who can afford to keep servants, for Bito princesses do not dig or carry water like ordinary women. Bridewealth [the money normally given by a man’s family to his wife’s family] is not paid in such marriages, for that would imply some degree of social equality. “How,” an informant asked, “could a Bito and a commoner haggle about bridewealth? A Bito’s word should be an order.” (Beattie 1960: 30f.)
Thus there were few children born to the princes of the drum because the princes did not long survive. And none —or no acknowledged ones— were born to princesses of the drum because they did not marry. The numbers of princes and princesses of the drum were great only because each mukama’s wives continued to bear large numbers of children.
The estates which supported them were therefore continually reallocated to new nobility as the older generations died. And naturally there were far more princesses of the drum than princes of the drum.
One brother who was not killed in succession struggles was the dead mukama’s oldest son. Like Rukidi’s oldest brother in Story Four, the oldest son of a mukama was an adviser, ineligible to be the new mukama. He bore the title of okwiri, and his job was to rule over the Bito clan itself while the mukama ruled over everybody else. (This required a certain amount of intelligence, not to say diplomacy, of course, and to ensure that a competent and cooperative person got the post, Nyoro always insisted that the mukama had the right to select a different one of his brothers as okwiri whenever he chose to do so.)
This custom interestingly separated the Bito king from the interests of his home clan, forcing him to consider the interests of all his people by making parochial Bito interests someone else’s responsibility. Given the often lordly views of many ordinary Bito that they ought to get special treatment because of their clan membership, having an excuse to ignore their claims probably made life easier for many a mukama.
Another of the mukama’s relatives also had a special role to play. One of the mukama’s many half-sisters was appointed as his “official sister” or kalyota and was in charge of the princesses of the drum, with their many estates. The kalyota had her own estates as well, of course. Like any other “feudal” vassal the kalyota settled disputes and made decisions about everything from inheritance to protocol. And like others she periodically drank milk with the mukama. [Note 13]
13 In some African societies the king’s mother is a powerful figure, both honored and feared, and allocated huge resources. This is said to have been true among the Nyoro in earlier times, but by the twentieth century she was honored, but not indulged. Perhaps her probable resentment at the killing of her other sons made it inadvisable to accord her too much real power.
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