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Once upon a time the king of the ghosts, whose name was Nyami-yonga, sent a messenger to the mukama Isaza proposing that the two enter into a “blood pact of friendship.” [Note 7]
7 Close friendship was much valued by the Nyoro, and still is. However friendships can fade over time, and Nyoro sometimes sought to cement them for eternity by an institution called omukago, which is usually referred to in African English as a “blood pact.” The two parties would be seated on a cattle skin together and a coffee bean was cut in half and divided between them. The Nyoro writer John Nyakatura describes the process: “Then, with a locally made razor, each man in turn made a small incision on his stomach, just below the navel. He then rubbed the coffee bean in the blood, took it in his own right hand and offered it to his friend. The latter took the coffee bean with his lips from his friend’s hand and swallowed it without biting or chewing it. The procedure was reciprocated.” (1970:32) The ceremony continued with pledges of reciprocal loyalty and assistance, with expressions of the desire to be like brothers, and eventually with a feast.
The mukama consulted with his advisers, and they thought it was a bad idea to enter into blood pact with a ghost, but it was also a bad idea to anger him by refusing.
In the end Isaza sent his chief assistant, named Bukuku, whom he instructed to pretend to be Nyami-yonga and undertake the pact, which would therefore not be valid.
Bukuku was only an iru (a descendant of Ka-iru, and thus a farmer and commoner), and he went without complaint on behalf of his lord Isaza and met with Nyami-yonga and contracted the blood pact of friendship.
Unfortunately it was not long before Nyami-yonga discovered he had been tricked. He was furious and determined to seek vengeance.
Now as it happened, Nyami-yonga, although the king of the ghosts, had a very beautiful daughter, named Nyamata, and he sent her to Isaza’s compound where she was to seduce Isaza and bring him to Nyami-yonga’s realm. Because she was extremely beautiful, seducing Isaza was not particularly difficult. Indeed, Isaza was happy to marry her without much of a background check.
Once married, Nyamata tried to get Isaza to come with her to visit her parents, but Isaza refused, for traveling would mean leaving his cattle for a time, and like all good men he loved his cattle more than anything else in all the world.
Nyamata explained that she needed to go back to the home of her mother to bear Isaza’s child. But Isaza told her to go alone. He would not leave his beloved cows. Nyami-yonga’s daughter reported this back to her father, who therefore decided that if his daughter couldn’t bring Isaza into his power, perhaps cattle could. So he sent two magnificent cattle, which were found wandering near Isaza’s compound.
Isaza fell in love with them immediately, and they even became the favorites of all his herd. Then one day Nyami-yonga called them home, and Isaza was unable to bear their absence. So he set out to find them. He left his assistant Bukuku (now Nyami-yonga’s blood-pact brother) in charge of the kingdom of the Nyoro and began wandering the countryside in quest of Nyami-yonga’s two beautiful cows.
At length Isaza came to the kingdom of the ghosts. And there he found the two cattle, as well as his wife Nyamata, and, of course, Nyamata’s father Nyami-yonga, the king of the ghosts. The king had not forgiven Isaza for deceiving him in the blood-pact brotherhood, and he would not let him go home.
In time Isaza and Nyamata’s child was born. He was named Isimbwa, and he was raised in the kingdom of the ghosts, where he was eventually married and had a son, whose name was Kyomya, and who was destined to be a mighty king later in the story.
Isimbwa went out hunting one day and came to Isaza’s old palace compound, where the faithful Bukuku was still ruling while waiting for Isaza to come back from looking for the cows.
Bukuku was not having a particularly easy time of it, for people complained that he was an iru (commoner), and therefore had no real right to rule, which of course was quite true.
Bukuku’s daughter was named Nyina-mwiru, and a prophecy predicted that if she bore a child, things would go badly for Bukuku. Therefore Bukuku kept her locked up so that no enthusiastic young men would find out about her.
Naturally, word spread far and wide, together with rumors that she was surely amazingly beautiful. And also naturally, Isimbwa heard the rumors and resolved to find her. He did, and in the end stayed with her for three months without Bukuku quite noticing.
What Bukuku could not avoid noticing, however, was that Nyina-mwiru eventually bore a son, whom she named Nda-hura.
Given the prophecy about Nyina-mwiru’s child being bad luck for Bukuku, Nda-hura’s birth seemed a very bad thing quite apart from Bukuku’s annoyance at Nyina-mwiru somehow getting pregnant despite being locked up. So he ordered that the baby be thrown in a river and drowned.
As in many other myths, the baby did not die in the river, but was discovered by a riverside craftsman, a potter named Rubumbi, who secretly rescued the child and told Nyina-mwiru it was safe and sound, although Bukuku believed it dead.
Nda-hura grew up to be a nuisance.
He was strong and brash and far more loyal to the potter Rubumbi than to his grandfather, the ruler Bukuku, who, after all, had tried to kill him. In the course of a dispute about whose cattle should be watered first, Nda-hura ended up killing Bukuku and sitting down on the king’s stool himself.
When Nyina-mwiru heard about it she was pleased that her son had in effect made himself king, although the death of her father seemed rather sad.
And so the boy named Nda-hura came to be the first king of a new dynasty, which was called Chwezi. Of course, because he was a descendant of ghosts, his skin was very light.
Stories about the Chwezi are common in East Africa, but historical evidence of the Chwezi is very difficult to come by. If they existed at all, the distribution of stories would suggest they must have lived sometime between about 1300 and 1500. But there is no archaeological evidence that would help in clarifying this, and without a writing system, local people could leave no clear record. Outsiders with writing did not refer to them until the British arrived in the 1800s and started recording local lore.
Most accounts seem to agree that there were only two or three Chwezi kings, but the Nyoro told Beattie wonderful things about them and clearly held them in high regard.
Story Three links them into the genealogy of the previous legendary ruling line, the so-called “Tembuzi” dynasty. Although they come to power through Nda-hura’s impetuous “usurpation” of Bukuku’s position, Bukuku was an iru or common er, not really entitled to be ruler, and in that position only because the legitimate ruler had been captured by the ghost king. So the myth incorporates the popular Chwezi, an unavoidable bit of popular lore, into a continuous tale that links them as semi-legitimate inheritors of the previous Tembuzi dynasty.
It is clear, however, that any history of Bunyoro intended to justify the claims to rulership by the Bito would have to deal with the pseudo-historical problem of how the Chwezi vanished and why it was all right for the Bito to succeed them. That happens in Story Four. [Note 8]
8 The Chwezi remained important to the Nyoro not merely because of their role in myth or history but even more because their spirits were believed to possess mediums, who played a central role in Nyoro religious beliefs. British administrator and historian A.R. Dunbar writes:
The Banyoro [Nyoro] believe that there are many powers and forces outside themselves of an immaterial or spiritual kind, which may have effects, beneficial or more usually injurious, on living people. Although these spirits are individualized, even personalized, so that human qualities are ascribed to them and they have their own proper names, they are thought of as somehow dispersed through space or perhaps not concerned with space at all. Several categories of these spirits exist but the most important are the ghosts left by dead people … and the individualized powers called embandwa, especially the pantheon of Bachwezi [Chwezi] spirits, the cult of which may be said to have constituted the traditional religion of Bunyoro-Kitara.
The Bachwezi are thought of in three ways; first the wonderful race of fair-skinned people who suddenly arrived in Bunyoro-Kitara and disappeared equally suddenly two generations later; second the small group of rulers believed to be genealogically linked in the male line to the preceding dynasty, Batembuzi [Tembuzi], and the succeeding dynasty, Babito [Bito]; third the pantheon of contemporary effective spirits, each terminologically identified with one of the long dead Bachwezi and each possessing its own individuality and special competence.
They are not thought of as the ghosts of real men who died long ago but are regarded as unchanging, timeless powers. … There are nineteen of these Bachwezi spirits and they are white, or pure, spirits, … as opposed to the black spirits, … of which a great number exist and by which people may also be possessed. The colour white signifies for the Bunyoro purity, auspiciousness, happiness, goodness, and the white spirits are concerned with the people's well-being generally and particularly with fertility. …
A loose association exists between particular Bachwezi spirits and particular clans, especially the extended family group or household. One member of the group was the accredited medium … .The black spirits, unlike the Bachwezi, are believed to be of foreign and relatively recent origin [like the Bito] and many of the older ones are said to have come from … Buganda. Some could be used for divination and others for sorcery. (Dunbar 1965: 241)
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