Bamiléké

ETHNONYMS: Aghem, Babadjou, Bafang, Bafou, Bafoussam, Bagam, Baloum, Bamaha, Bamdendjina, Bamendjou, Bamenkoumbit, Bamenyam, Bana, Bandjoun, Bangangté, Bangoua, Bangwa, Bangwa-Fontem, Bapi, Batcham, Batchingou, Bati, Batié, Dschang, Fe'e Fe'e, Fomopea, Fongondeng, Foto, Fotouni, Mbouda

Orientation

Identification. Bamiléké is a collective term referring to a loose agglomeration of some 100 kingdoms or chiefdoms of the eastern Grassfields in the Western Province of Cameroon. These kingdoms are of varying size but have similar cosmology and social and political structures; they speak distinct, although related, languages. "Bamiléké" derives from the German mispronunciation of a Bali (western Grassfields) interpreter's designation, "Mba Lekeo," or "the people down there," which has been associated with this region since at least 1910, possibly since the 1890s. Currently, Bamiléké people most often refer to themselves as "Bamiléké" when speaking with non-Bamiléké, and as members of their specific kingdoms and villages when speaking with other Bamiléké.

Location. The 6,196-square-kilometer Bamiléké region extends roughly from 5° to 6° N and 10° to 11° E. It is bounded by the Bamboutos Mountains on the northwest and by the Noun River on the southeast. With the Bamoun area it constitutes the southeastern half of the Grassfields, a mountainous plateau spanning the Western and Northwestern provinces of the Republic of Cameroon. The Bamiléké region is made up of five administrative divisions within the Western Province: Bamboutos, Haut-Nkam, Mifi, Menoua, and Ndé. The region is characterized by its irregular, hilly relief and great differences in soil quality. Valleys, which have the richer soils, are mixed savanna and forest. Basalt and other volcanic rocks are common. The high-altitude prairie, for which the Grassfields are named, consists of noncultivated land at an average elevation of 1,400 meters. Temperatures range from 13° C to 23° C, and rainfall amounts to more than 160 centimeters per year. The dry season lasts from mid-November to mid-February, with a fluctuating rainy season occurring during the remaining months.

Demography. No census data exist on the Bamiléké as a people, but scholars estimate that they constitute about 25 percent of Cameroon's diverse population. The overall population of the Bamiléké in the late 1980s was approximately 2 million, 1 million of whom resided on the Bamiléké plateau. Average population density is 125 persons per square kilometer but ranges from 15 to over 400 inhabitants per square kilometer. The Bamiléké region represents a pocket of relatively high fertility within the central African "infertility belt." The birthrate is 49 per thousand, and completed fertility is 6.3. Infant mortality is 158 per thousand; life expectancy is 39.9 at birth, increasing to 49.2 at age 5.

The Bamiléké area has served as a labor reserve since the early colonial period. Emigration, beginning at the turn of the twentieth century and intensifying in the 1930s, has greatly influenced Bamiléké demography and social life. The order, intensity, and scale of emigration have varied over time. Most immigrants were Bana during German colonization; Bafang, Bafoussam, Bangangté, and Dschang in the 1940s; and Bangangté in the late 1950s and 1960s. In urban centers and peripheral regions of agricultural colonization, Bangangté continue to provide the largest numbers of emigrés. This predominantly male migration continues, as youths search for jobs to earn cash for consumer goods, bride-wealth, and to gain titles. Kingdom-specific voluntary associations play an important role in the social life of urban emigrés and help link them socially, politically, and economically to their place of origin. Many Bamiléké maintain land in their home areas ("a foot in the land of the ancestors"), and movement back and forth between urban centers and rural villages is common.

Linguistic Affiliation. Bamiléké languages, which are tonal, belong to the Grasslands Bantu Group of Broad Bantu languages. While Voegelin (1977) lists twenty-four Bamiléké languages, nearly every kingdom names its own dialect as a separate language. Bamiléké languages are not always mutually intelligible. Bordering kingdoms may speak languages that differ only slightly, but, because of intense migration over the past three hundred years, geographic proximity is not always a predictor of mutual intelligibility. Many contemporary Bamiléké also speak French, and quite a few speak Wes Cos Pidgin and/or English.

History and Cultural Relations

The earliest Bamiléké kingdoms were formed during the sixteenth century, a result of a complex dynamic of conquest, ruse, and shifting allegiance when population movements in Adamoua pushed the "pre-Tikar" Ndobo into the Bamiléké plateau. Succession disputes, the search for new hunting grounds, and demographic pressure led to the emergence of new kingdoms from the first core polities. The number, size, and shape of Bamiléké kingdoms continued to change until European colonization, when interkingdom warfare was curtailed and the limits of territories were frozen at borders partly determined by the colonizers. This history of shifting borders, alliances, and the influx of refugees from neighboring kingdoms makes each Bamiléké kingdom a political composite of diverse peoples owing allegiance to the king and to established royal institutions.

During the precolonial era, the Bamiléké fought wars among their constituent kingdoms as well as with the neighboring Nso and Bamoun. Relations among kingdoms included economic exchange and cooperation as well as territorial belligerence. German expeditions into Bamiléké territory in 1902 and 1904 found a rich and cultivated territory, maintaining multiple commercial relations, as evinced by paths and markers.

The colonial era began on 12 July 1884, when coastal Duala chiefs signed a treaty with the German Empire. Colonial German penetration into the Bamiléké highlands began in the 1890s and became increasingly important over the next decade. Between 1914 and 1916, Cameroon was conquered by French and British forces. Nearly all Bamiléké kingdoms were subsequently governed by France under League of Nations mandate and, following World War II, under United Nations Trusteeship. Independence was achieved in 1960. Political steps toward independence, especially the outlawing of the trade union-based Union des Populations Camerounaises (UPC), led to civil war in the Bamiléké region from 1958 through 1972. Bamiléké refer to this as a time of troubles; others refer to it as the Bamiléké rebellion. Both personal and political scars remain. The region continues under a nominal state of emergency. Popular discourse surrounding more recent political and economic turmoil in Cameroon makes reference to this history of civil and interethnic strife.

Settlements

Bamiléké kingdoms are divided into quarters, villages, compounds, and houses. The "quarter" is a territorial unit of traditional kingdom government. Both "quarter" and "village" are units of Cameroonian state administration. Family compounds may be monogamous (consisting of a conjugal house, a kitchen, and an outhouse) or polygynous (consisting of the husband's house surrounded by either a single semicircle or two rectangular "quarters" of his wives' kitchen-houses. All Bamiléké royal compounds are built on slopes and follow a prescribed layout. Below an entry gate made of spines of the raffia palm ("bamboo") and either thatch or corrugated iron, a wide path (the "foot" of the compound) divides the two wives' quarters, each quarter ruled by titled queens. A second gate leads to the king's palace, a variety of meeting houses of secret societies, a traditional court building, and a sacred water source used only for the king's meals. The area above the second gate is considered dry and infertile; the area below it is regarded as moist, rich, fertile, and spiritually complicated.

Each wife in a polygynous compound lives in her kitchen-house with her children. Both boys and girls live in their mother's compound until they go away to school or get married. Child fosterage is common. Most kitchen-houses have one room, with a hearth in the middle and a granary of raffia bamboo above the hearth; usually they are built of mud bricks and roofed with thatch or tin. Previously, houses were square, constructed of raffia bamboo, with sliding doors and thatched, conical roofs. Rural compounds were surrounded by fences or hedges during the precolonial and early colonial periods, but now rarely are.

Before the UPC-related civil war, settlements were dispersed, and compounds were built near cultivated land. During the time of troubles, the French authorities resettled Bamiléké in villages along roads.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. Rural Bamiléké are primarily farmers; they also keep pygmy goats and sheep. The staples are maize (the preferred food) and plantains, supplemented by beans and peanuts. Cassava is used primarily to bridge the hungry time between harvests. Tomatoes, onions, pumpkins, and condiments are grown on the ends of rows-Farms are tilled with iron hoes. The major cash crop is coffee. Some Bamiléké in lower elevations grow cocoa, and in higher elevations European vegetables such as potatoes, eggplants, and leeks for local and urban markets. A few have experimented with growing strawberries.

French agricultural policy from 1920 to 1950 favored production of food crops, and many Bamiléké kings, fearing a loss of control over the fortunes of their subjects, discouraged the production of coffee. This confluence of colonial and indigenous agricultural policy encouraged the small-scale commercialization of women's food crops, starting in the 1930s, as well as male labor migration.

Trade. Trade, which has always been important for both women and men, is conducted in local markets organized around an eight-day weekly cycle, as well as in long-distance interethnic exchange. Bamiléké traded agricultural goods, game, and small livestock for salt, palm oil, and iron hoes. Weekly local and regional market centers grew during the colonial and postcolonial eras. In these centers, both local and European goods were bought or bartered. One of these market centers, Bafoussam, has grown into a bustling city of over 120,000 inhabitants. Bamiléké emigrés are known as aggressive entrepreneurs. They are active in many sectors and often dominate the taxi and transportation industries of the urban centers.

Division of Labor. Since precolonial times, women have been the primary producers of food crops (maize, beans, and peanuts). Men have been responsible for tree crops, clearing women's fields, and building fences. Men's cash-crop cultivation of coffee and cocoa, shopkeeping, and taxi and truck driving have replaced precolonial involvement in animal husbandry and war. Hunting, once the subject of heroic tales of the founders of dynasties, is now practiced only occasionally; hunters work mostly at night and must seek the local king's permission.

Land Tenure. Within each Bamiléké kingdom, the king (called fo, fon, or mfen in various Bamiléké languages) is the titular owner of all land. Quarter chiefs distribute usufruct rights to male heads of patrilineages. These lineage heads then distribute plots of land to their wives, their noninheriting brothers, and their sisters. Inheritance of usufruct rights is impartible; only one son is heir, often leaving his siblings to seek their fortune in urban centers. With increasing population pressure and increasing privatization of landownership, lineage heads now often fail to award plots of land to their sisters.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. Bamiléké practice a system of dual descent, in some kingdoms accompanied by institutionalized relations among a diffuse uterine group (pam nto' in Bangangté, atsen'ndia among the Bangwa-Fontem). Most anthropologists studying various Bamiléké groups have emphasized agnatic relations. At the center of descent groups are lines of heirs and heiresses who inherit the property, titles, and skull custodianship of their ascendants. Each lineage head chooses a single heir or heiress, who "becomes" that person in terms of titles in customary associations, as well as rights and duties toward all dependents. Patrilineal descent determines village membership and the inheritance of titles, land, compound, and wives. For nonheirs, the obligation to sacrifice to patrilineal skulls ceases after two generations. Matrilineal descent determines inheritance of titles, movable property, and moral and legal obligation to lineage members. In theory, the obligation to sacrifice to matrilineal skulls does not diminish with structural distance; in practice, facing misfortune often motivates people to renew their obligations to matrilineal ancestresses. Bamiléké have no clans.

Kinship Terminology. Bamiléké refer to their father and his heir by the same term (ta ), and to their mother and her heiress by the same term (ma). Cousins are addressed by sibling terms, but both they and half-siblings are distinguished in everyday conversation. Special sibling terms indicate birth order (e.g., firstborn) and relation to twins (e.g., born following a set of twins). A complex system of praise names, indicating the village of origin of a person's mother or father, with variations in alternating generations, are important terms of address in the Bamiléké kingdoms of Ndé Division. Joking relations of fictive, namesake kin are sometimes generated from the use of these praise names. Skill in using praise names is an important marker of cultural competence. Distinctions between "deracinated" urban dwellers and "traditional" rural relatives are becoming increasingly important.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. Marriage is exogamous, preventing individuals with patrilineal links up to the fourth generation from marrying, and preventing marriage with any matrilineal kin. Two forms of exchange govern relations between wife givers and wife receivers. In bride-price marriage, the groom gains reproductive, sexual, and domestic rights by giving gifts of palm oil, goats, blankets, firewood, and money to the family of his bride. In ta nkap marriage, no bride-price is exchanged between the bride's father and the groom. The bride's father retains rights over the marriage and patrilineal identity of his granddaughters, thus becoming their ta nkap ("father by money"). These rights of ta nkap can be inherited, and are a way of capitalizing on matrimonial rights. Although outlawed by the French in 1927 and 1928, the practice continues. In addition to these two traditional marriage options, contemporary Bamiléké may choose Christian marriage with or without bride-wealth, marriage by a justice of the peace, elopement, and single parenthood.

Traditional Bamiléké marriage is virilocal, and sons attempt to settle near their father if there is enough land. Polygyny is a goal that is increasingly difficult to achieve, especially on a grand scale, because of the inflation of bride-price and changing ideas about conjugal relations. The amount of bride-price, although higher for women with more education, seems primarily dependent upon the groom's ability to pay. The term for marriage is "to cook inside," condensing the symbolism of the married woman's confinement to her kitchen, where she literally cooks her husband's meals and figuratively "cooks" (procreates) children.

Domestic Unit. A married man is the de jure head of a household consisting of his wife or wives and their children. In polygynous compounds, co-wives have separate dwellings (see "Settlements"). Although sometimes contentious and competitive, relations among co-wives can be warm and companionable. In royal compounds, older co-wives are assigned to younger co-wives as foster mothers. Full siblings feel strong ties of solidarity, whereas half-siblings are often in competition with each other for attention and inheritance.

Inheritance. Land and real estate are inherited patrilineally and impartibly. Titles are inherited according to both matrilineal and patrilineal rule of descent (see "Land Tenure" and "Kin Groups and Descent").

Socialization. Social roles are learned through example and through stories told around the mother's hearth at mealtimes. Bamiléké report particularly warm relations among full siblings, and refer to hearthside commensality and storytelling as the source of this solidarity. Although mothers play a primary role in child rearing, small children may be left with older siblings or co-wives while their mothers do other work. After age 6, Bamiléké consider child fosterage an appropriate strategy to deal with scarce resources and to help the child learn to interact with a variety of personalities. There are no formal groupinitiation ceremonies at puberty. Boys are now usually circumcised soon after birth. In the past, girls whose families could afford it spent up to six months in seclusion (nja ), eating fattening foods and learning about marriage and sexuality from female kin. Elderly Bamiléké say that school has now replaced this custom.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. Bamiléké kingdoms are highly stratified, with kings and queen mothers at the apex, followed by various levels of title-holding nobility, royal retainers, commoners, and (prior to colonization) slaves. This system of social stratification exists alongside differences in wealth and power based upon commercial and educational success and participation in national party politics. Differences in wealth, formal education, and religious affiliation have become increasingly important.

Political Organization. In the precolonial era, Bamiléké kings had control over the life and death of their subjects. They were aided by the nobility, especially the nkam be'e (the council of nine highest nobles), royal retainers, and members of secret societies. Young men were organized into warrior associations such as mandjo. In postcolonial Cameroon, Bamiléké kings are still counseled by the nkam be'e and other societies of nobles. They have jurisdiction over civil but not criminal court cases in rural areas. They have official duties and receive salaries as justices of the peace, maintaining vital records of their rural subjects. There is no overarching Bamiléké political organization, neither traditionally nor in terms of contemporary party politics. As in the past, Bamiléké practice active interkingdom diplomacy.

Social Control. Disputes, depending upon their seriousness, were originally resolved by the lineage head, the quarter chief, or the king, each in consultation with other elders or notables. Oracles who made use of chickens, earth spiders, or poison ordeals were often consulted. Most of these forms of dispute resolution now exist alongside the Cameroonian court system, which in the Bamiléké region is fashioned after French statutory law.

Conflict. Bamiléké kingdoms raided and warred against each other and against their non-Bamiléké neighbors. This activity nearly stopped owing to a pax Germanica by 1905, but full cessation of armed hostilities was only achieved in the early 1930s. New conflicts arose during the struggle for independence. More recent conflicts are associated with a struggle for multiparty democracy following the end of the cold war, and extend beyond the Bamiléké area.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs. Prior to missionization, Bamiléké believed in a creator God, Nsi. Some groups believed in local deities relating to natural features (streams, groves of trees, rocks) and personal spirits. All Bamiléké believed in the power of ancestors, through the metonym of the ancestral skull (tu ), to cause good or bad fortune for their descendants. Matrilineal ancestresses were believed to be especially prone to anger. Although these beliefs persist, many Bamiléké are now members of Christian churches. The dominance of two major denominations, Catholic and the Église Evangélique du Cameroun (of French Calvinist origin), varies by locale. The Baptist, Jehovah's Witness, and Adventist churches are active in the Bamiléké area, but to a lesser degree.

Religious Practitioners. Religion and politics are not easily distinguished. The Bamiléké king is considered divine and responsible for the health and well-being of his subjects. He is aided in his religious duties by the bandansi (the men of the house of god), a secret society. Three other groups are also important in religious practice. Lineage heads, as custodians of ancestral skulls, control access to propitiary rites. Diviners and spirit mediums are active in determining the need for ceremonies and in healing. Healers and witches use the same supernatural power, ka, but to good or bad ends.

Ceremonies. Life-cycle ceremonies include burying the placenta and umbilical cord by the mother's kitchen at birth, circumcision for boys and prepuberty seclusion for girls (both termed nja), burial, and death celebrations performed approximately one year after death. Death celebrations (funerailles ) are public diplays of wealth, of the value of the deceased, and of the new heir. They mark the end of a period of mourning, when the deceased has completed the transition to ancestorhood.

Royal rituals enact the transformation of a new king from a mere mortal to a divine being, the embodiment of the office of kingship. These rituals include capturing the new king, and enclosing him and two of his queens in a special temporary structure (la' kwa ) for nine weeks. During this time they are fed medicines and taught their new duties. A ritual—complete with the symbolism of birth and feeding—marks the emergence of the king from la' kwa. He fully becomes king only after he has sired at least one male and one female child. Arts. Bamiléké are famous for their wooden sculpture, masks, and stools (often ornamented with beads and cowries), and carved house posts. Motifs include human figures (ancestors and, occasionally, witches) and animals (representing such qualities as royalty, wisdom, or fertility), as well as geometric designs. Baskets, mats, and bags, woven of raffia-palm fibers, are common and beautifully executed household items. The Bamiléké blue and white royal display cloth is distinctive. Bamiléké artisans import cotton cloth woven in the north of Cameroon, sew a pattern of raffia fibers as a resist, and send the cloth back north to be dyed in indigo vats. Although some centers of tourist art exist, these are most developed in neighboring Bamoun and in the western Grassfields. Music played by Bamiléké secret societies utilizes drums, balofons, and whistles. This music has been incorporated into the repertoires of some contemporary Cameroonian pop musicians.

Medicine. Bamiléké traditional medical practitioners include herbalists, diviners, spirit mediums, and religious specialists. Many healers combine divination with herbal medicine. In the past, diviners, spirit mediums, and religious specialists had higher status than herbalists. This relation is now reversing, along with a trend toward more individual and fee-for-service treatment. Contemporary Bamiléké seek medical assistance from both private and public hospitals and clinics as well as from their rich array of traditional practitioners (see "Religious Practitioners").

Death and Afterlife. Death may be attributed to natural causes, but in most cases Bamiléké use divination to answer the questions why this person, why now, and who did it? Varying forms of witchcraft figure prominently in causes of death, and public autopsies are performed in some Bamiléké kingdoms as part of the search for cause. Immediately following death, female kin wail, announcing the death to the neighborhood. Burial generally occurs within twenty-four hours, during a one-week period of public mourning (French: deuil; Pidgin: cry-die ). Close relatives of the deceased shave their heads and don blue or black clothes of mourning. Approximately one year later, lavish death celebrations are performed (see "Ceremonies"). Widows can resume sexual relations following the death celebration. Some time after this celebration the heir or heiress will exhume and care for ancestral skulls in clay pots or in small houselike tombs. Bamiléké believe that improper care of ancestral skulls leads to ancestral wrath, illness, infertility, and even death.

Bibliography

Brain, Robert. (1972). Bangwa Kinship and Marriage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

DeLancey, Mark W. (1978). "Health and Disease on the Plantations of Cameroon, 1884-1939." In Disease in African History, edited by G. W. Hartwig and K. D. Patterson, 153-179. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

den Ouden, Jan H. B. (1980). "Incorporation and Changes in the Composite Household: The Effects of Coffee Introduction and Food Crop Commercialization in Two Bamiléké Chiefdoms, Cameroon. In The Household, Women, and Agricultural Development, edited by C. Presvelou and S. Spijkers-Zwart, 41-67. Wageningen: H. Veenman and Zonen, B.V. den Ouden, Jan H. B. (1987). "In Search of Personal Mobility: Changing Interpersonal Relations in Two Bamiléké Chiefdoms, Cameroon." Africa 57(1): 3-27.

Dongmo, J.-L. (1981). Le dynamisme bamiléké (Cameroun). Vol. 1, La maîtrise de l'espace agraire. Yaoundé: Université de Yaoundé.

Feldman-Savelsberg, Pamela (1990). "Then We Were Many': Bangangté Women's Conceptions of Health, Fertility, and Social Change in a Bamiléké Chiefdom, Cameroon." Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University.

Feldman-Savelsberg, Pamela (1995). "Cooking Inside: Kinship and Gender in Bangangté Metaphors of Marriage and Procreation." American Ethnologist 22(3): 20-37.

Ghomsi, Emmanuel (1971). "La naissance des chefferies bamiléké et les relations entre divers groupements avant la conquête allemande." Revue Camerounaise d'Histoire 1:94-121.

Hirsch, Klaus (1987). Bamiléké: Die Menschen aus den Schluchten. Berlin: Express Edition.

Hurault, Jean (1962). La structure sociale des bamiléké. Paris: Mouton.

Joseph, Richard A. (1977). Radical Nationalism in Cameroun: Social Origins of the UPC (Union des Populations du Rebellion. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Kuczynski, R. R. (1939). The Cameroons and Togoland: A Demographic Study. London: Oxford University Press.

Nkwi, Paul N., and Flavien Tiokou Ndonko (1989). "Epilepsy among the Bamiléké of Maham in the Ndé Division, West Province of Cameroon." Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 13:437-448.

Notué, Jean P., and Louis Perrois (1984). Contribution à l'étude des sociétés secrètes chez les bamiléké (ouest Cameroun). Yaoundé: ISH; ORSTOM.

Pradelles de Latour, Charles-Henry (1994). "Marriage Payments, Debt, and Fatherhood among the Bangoua: A Lacanian Analysis of a Kinship System." Africa 64:21-33.

Rohde, Eckart (1990). Chefferie Bamiléké: Traditionelle Herrschaft und Kolonialsystem. Münster: Lit Verlag.

Rowlands, Michael, and Jean-Pierre Warnier (1988). "Sorcery, Power, and the Modern State in Cameroon." Man n.s. 23:118-132.

Soen, D, and P. de Comarmon (1969-1970). "The Secret Societies and Age Groups of the Bamiléké and Their Potential Adaptability to Cooperative Organization." Wiener Völkerkundliche Mitteilungen 11-12:71-88.

Tardits, Claude (1960). Contribution à l'étude des populations bamiléké de l'ouest de Cameroun. Paris: Éditions Berger-Levrault.

Voegelin, Charles F., and F. M. Voegelin (1977). Classification and Index of the World's Languages. New York: Elsevier.

World Fertility Survey (1983). Enquête nationale sur la fécondité du Cameroun, 1978. Yaoundé: MINEP.

PAMELA FELDMAN-SAVELSBERG