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During the reign of the last Chwezi king, Wamara, things were taking a bad turn and Wamara decided to conduct divination by examining the intestines of an ox. The story is complicated (and gory), but in the end it was decided that the divination revealed that the days of the Chwezi dynasty among the living were ending, and that in the future the influence of the Chwezi would be wielded by Chwezi spirits through spirit mediums. In the land of the Nyoro, the Chwezi would be succeeded by new rulers, with darker skins, who would arrive from the north, the region from which, by coincidence, the diviner himself also came. [Note 9]
9 Much of Beattie’s field work focused on spirit mediums and the closely related practices of sorcery, which the British administration outlawed, or more often drove underground. Something of the challenge of this study under that situation can be glimpsed when Beattie writes:
As he headed north to the place from which he had come, the diviner encountered sons of Kyomya, the son whom Isimbwa had fathered before going hunting and having the affair with Bukuku’s daughter. Thus Kyomya was the part-ghost grandson of the ghost girl Nya-mata and Isaza, the last of the pre-Chwezi kings. Kyoma, now an old man (or old man-ghost), and his four sons were peacefully settled in the savanna lands north of the Nile, where they practiced farming.
The diviner reported to them that, based on his prophecy, the Chwezi were closing out, and that it was the perfect opportunity to head south and take over the land of the Nyoro, to which they had at least a plausible claim based on their descent from Isimbwa, the son of King Isaza. So they decided to move south and “reclaim” their dynastic position.
The four were the first members of a clan they called Bito, and the eldest of them became the adviser to the others, who all became mukamas (kings): Brother Number Two, who was named Rukidi, became king of the land of the Nyoro or Bunyoro (Bu-Nyoro). Number Three ruled over the land of the Ganda or Buganda (Bu-Ganda), and Brother Number Four became king of the land of the Soga or Busoga (Bu-Soga).
The Nyoro king Rukidi and his brothers were descended from the old, pre-Chwezi royal line, but they hardly seemed like mukama material. They didn’t know anything about keeping cattle, or about the etiquette of drinking milk properly. It was even said that Rukidi didn’t even look like a mukama because his body was half black like a person and half white like a ghost because of the brothers’ mixed ancestry.
But they worked hard, and the elders tried to teach them everything they needed to know. Nobody knew where the Chwezi had gone, but the Chwezi had left behind every kind of magical object to help them. And so the first Bito dynasty was established. This was the dynasty that held the mukama-ship at the time Beattie visited Bunyoro in the 1950s.
Obviously Story Four links the Bito dynasty to the “Tembuzi” dynasty that preceded the Chwezi and that dated from the first man and the naming of his sons. The royal family during Beattie’s research could claim to have a right to rule dating to the creation of humanity.
But Story Four also uses the story of the divination that told the Chwezi to leave to justify a claim that the Bito received their symbols of power directly from the wonderful Chwezi. (Some of these objects may be viewed on the internet at www.bunyoro-kitara.org/56.html.)
Beattie noted that a myth of this kind uses the idea of status based on heredity to justify royal authority. But in using genealogy this way, the myth also constitutes an approval of using heredity to justify privilege in general. In effect, it not only says that the Bito have good ancestors, but that ancestors are what matter to a person’s social position.
As implied in the myths, farmers/commoners (iru) are locally regarded as inferior to herders, and Beattie found that the symbolism of cattle and milk was powerful in asserting one’s social status in this region, not just among the Nyoro, but among other peoples as well, and we shall see cattle-related symbols used in Bito assertions of royal authority. Ka-huma, the second, herder, son of Father Ki-Ntu, because he kept cattle, would naturally have been superior to his older brother, Ka-iru the peasant, and even to his younger brother Ka-kama whose very name includes the element kama (ruler).
Beattie found that Nyoro herders well into the twentieth century had disdain for non-herders including Bito outside the royal family itself.
In view of this widespread prejudice, somehow the non-herding origin of the Bito needed to be justified. Story Four tells us that Rukidi and his brothers, the first mukamas of the Bito line, were taught about cattle, and already in Story One the stage is set for this when Ka-kama was the son who received the ox head along the road, symbolizing leadership, but associated with pastoralism and cattle.
Thus the myths help to paper over the tension between the “superior” herders and the descendants of Ka-kama ruling over them.
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