Chagga

By SALLY FALK MOORE

Chaga, Dschagga, Jagga, Wa-caga, Waschagga (sing., Mchagga; contemporary self-designation)

In the nineteenth century the Kichagga-speaking people on Mount Kilimanjaro were divided into many small, autonomous chiefdoms. Early accounts frequently identify the inhabitants of each chiefdom as a separate “tribe.” Although the Chagga are principally located on Mount Kilimanjaro in northern Tanzania, numerous families have migrated elsewhere over the course of the twentieth century.

Around the beginning of the twentieth century, the German colonial government estimated that there were about 28,000 households on Kilimanjaro. The 1988 Tanzanian census counted 744,271 individuals. In 2002, The Tanzanian National Bureau of Statistics estimated the residents of Kilimanjaro at about 1,376,702. (With very few exceptions, only Chagga live on Kilimanjaro.) Obviously, the mountain population has increased at a rapid rate during the twentieth century, and the high rate of increase seems to be continuing.

Kichagga is a Bantu language. There are significant dialectal differences in the Kichagga spoken in the easterly, central, and westerly divisions of Kilimanjaro. The inhabitants of Ugweno, which was once the northernmost chiefdom of the Pare Mountains, speak a language related to Kichagga.

As far back into local history as the accounts go, Chagga chiefdoms were chronically at war with one another and with nearby peoples. Various alliances and consolidations were achieved through conquest, others through diplomacy, but the resulting political units were not always durable. Alignments changed and were reorganized with the ebb and flow of the fortunes of war and trade. Presumably, the fighting between the chiefdoms was over control of trade routes, over monopolies on the provisioning of caravans, over ivory, slaves, cattle, iron, and other booty of war, and over the right to exact tribute. Outlines of the process are known from the eighteenth century onward. As large as some of the blocs of allies became, at no time in the precolonial period did any one chiefdom rule all the others. That unitary consolidation was not achieved until the German colonial government imposed it.

Warfare came to an end and, with it, Chagga military organization, which had been a system of male age grades. Christianity spread, and, eventually, most Chagga became, at least nominally, Christians. The churches, Catholic and Lutheran, were allocated religious control over different parts of Kilimanjaro. As part of their mission, they introduced schools and coffee-growing clinics. Thus, a Western religion was imposed on the Chagga, along with a Western medicine, Western education, and a cash crop. These developments parallel the major political reorganization effectuated by colonization and the fundamental change in the local economy. Long-distance trade became a European monopoly. Coffee growing spread rapidly over the mountain.

Initially (i.e., before the German conquest), various Chagga chiefdoms welcomed missionaries, travelers, and foreign representatives as they did traders; in the 1880s, however, when the Chagga gradually lost their autonomy, they became more hostile. In 1886 Germany and Britain divided their spheres of influence in East Africa; Kilimanjaro was allocated to the Germans. Some Chagga chiefs became German allies and helped the Germans to defeat old rivals in other Chagga chiefdoms. Sudanese and Zulu troops were also brought in when some strong chiefly resistance to German control manifested itself. By the 1890s, all the Chagga had been subjugated.

This general economic transformation was well under way when the colonial government passed from German hands into those of the British in 1916. Arabica coffee remains a major cash crop produced locally. Since 1961, Tanzania has been an independent nation and, among other products, relies on coffee exportation for foreign exchange.

Chagga society experienced a radical change. Taxes in cash were imposed to force Africans to work for Europeans from whom they could receive wages. A native system of corvée was expanded for the benefit of the colonial government. A handful of armed Germans successfully ruled a hundred thousand Chagga by controlling them through their chiefs. The chiefs who cooperated were rewarded with more power than they had ever known. The resisting chiefs were deposed or hanged, and more malleable substitutes were appointed in their stead.

Bantu peoples came to Kilimanjaro in a succession of migrations that started at least five or six hundred years ago. It is likely that there were other peoples on the mountain for hundreds of years before they arrived. Reliable written historical accounts of the Chagga date from the nineteenth century. The first European to reach the mountain was a missionary, Johannes Rebmann, who arrived there in 1848. At that time, Rebmann found that Kilimanjaro was so actively involved in far-reaching trading connections that a chief whose court he visited had a coastal Swahili resident in his entourage. Chagga chiefdoms traded with each other, with the peoples of the regions immediately surrounding the mountain (such as the Kamba, the Maasai, and the Pare), and also with coastal caravans. Some of this trading was hand to hand, some of it at markets, which were a general feature of the area. Many chiefdoms had several produce markets largely run by women, just as they are today.

There are no nucleated villages on Kilimanjaro. Each household lives in the midst of its own banana-coffee garden, and the gardens, one next to another, stretch all over the mountain. The gardens are, for the most part, ringed with living fences that mark their boundaries. In the older areas of settlement, male kin tend to own and reside in contiguous homestead gardens, forming localized patrilineal clusters. Because of the enormous expansion of the population and the consequent land shortage, there are no large expanses of uncultivated or unoccupied land in the banana belt. It was otherwise in earlier times. Photographs and accounts from earlier in the twentieth century show that there were open fields between the localized clusters. Such residential arrangements were not static. A household, or several together, could break away from the localized patrilineage of which they had been members. There being no land shortage, they could, with the consent of the local chief or district head in the new location, establish themselves elsewhere and even found a new patrilineal cluster. As available land became more scarce, many households moved downmountain, and some moved up, pushing back the boundary of the forest. Thus, there are older and newer settlements on the mountain, older and newer patrilineal clusters, and substantial areas where the majority of residents are from unrelated households. Gradually, as the open land has filled up, the mobility of households has been increasingly restricted.

In the nineteenth century the Chagga were cultivators and cattle keepers. They grew many types of bananas, which were their staple food. Bananas are generally male property but are (with permission) traded by women in the markets. The Chagga also grew millet, maize, beans, finger millet (Eleusine corocana), cassava, sweet potatoes, yams, sugarcane, paw paws (Carica papaya), pumpkins, squashes, and tobacco. Many of the annual vegetable crops were grown by women and were women's property. The Chagga made (and continue to make) beer out of bananas and eleusine. In most of the populous parts of the mountain, a few stall-fed cows were kept by each household. In areas where there was more pasture, large herds of cattle were grazed. Some men owned considerable numbers of animals, but others had none. Milk was a highly valued food, as was meat. Local lineages held slaughtering feasts several times a year. There was a system of cattle lending whereby many households tended animals that were not their own. In return for caring for an animal, the borrower received the milk and the manure and, eventually, when the animal was slaughtered, was entitled to a portion of the meat. Lineage slaughtering feasts are still held today, both to coincide with major life-cycle rituals and on more ordinary occasions.

In the colonial and postcolonial periods, the economy has changed drastically. The cropping of coffee, the advent of land shortage, the development of many small businesses, and the inflow of the wages and salaries of the many Chagga employed on and off the mountain have altered the local economic picture considerably. A subsistence dimension of the banana-vegetable-animal domestic economy persists in the household gardens, but it operates in an entirely different context from that of former times. Like banana plants, coffee bushes are male property. Access to cash is thus much more restricted for women than it is for men, even though women do more of the agricultural and domestic labor and bear the fundamental responsibility for feeding the household.

In precolonial times, in addition to production for domestic consumption, the Chagga produced food, animals, and other items for trade and tribute. Having no domestic source of iron or salt, nor an adequate supply of clay, the chiefdoms of Kilimanjaro were dependent on trade with neighboring peoples for these essential materials. They needed iron for weapons and agricultural tools, salt and clay pots for cooking. Allusion has been made to the local regional and long-distance trades in which the Chagga were actively involved in precolonial times. Warfare also played an important role in the precolonial economy. War yielded booty for the winners and often was the basis for the exaction of tribute from the losers. Moreover, the protection of traders and trade routes had military aspects.

As farmers, both sexes participated in agricultural work. Chagga men broke new ground, and operated and repaired irrigation ditches. Women raised taro, yams, beans, and sweet potatoes, while men worked in banana and coffee plots. Boys tended cattle, while women and girls milked and cooked.

In precolonial times land was regarded as male property, inherited patrilineally by males from males or transferred inter vivos by males to males. Widows and women in other relationships to men could occupy, hold, and use land but could not obtain a transferable interest. That pattern of landholding continues, although, formally speaking, the law has changed.

Exogamous patrilineages are the basic building blocks of the kinship system. These are sometimes called “clans” in the colonial literature. They vary in size from a few households to many dozens. Marriage is virilocal, and many lineages are localized because of the link between kinship and land tenure.

In pre-Christian days, polygynous marriage was legitimate. Over time, the churches have discouraged this practice, and monogamy (although sometimes in the form of a series of monogamous marriages) now prevails. Marriages used to be negotiated by the parents of the couple. Bride-wealth was paid and an elaborate series of ceremonies held. Some of these ceremonies persist, but indigenous cultural forms are mixed with Christian rituals. Formerly, both males and females were ritually circumcised before they were considered fit for marriage. Modified versions of these practices persist, less commonly for females than for males. Traditionally, a widow was inherited by her husband's heir. By 1980s, the husband's heir became the “guardian” of the widow and often took control of whatever property rights she had, ostensibly in her interest. Although intestate inheritance of land and most other economically significant property is from male to male, succession to such property is not just from father to son or elder to younger brother. It is complicated by the life interest of widows, by various preferred forms of primogeniture and ultimogeniture, and by the discretionary power held by the lineage over the distribution of the property of the dead.

The composition of the precolonial household changed over its life cycle and differed in polygynous households from monogamous ones. After marriage, the initial domestic unit was that of a husband, wife, and, eventually, young children. The husband later built a hut of his own, which he shared with his older sons, the wife keeping her own hut with unmarried daughters and very young sons. Households often had other single relatives (e.g., widows and widowers) attached to them. As of 1990s, households were of variable composition. Many young men left wives and children on their plots of land on Kilimanjaro while they searched for salaried jobs elsewhere.

Inheritance was patrilineal. According to Moore, intermediate sons received very little livesock and no land. In default of sons, a man’s usufruct in lineage land passed to next-of-kin in the lineage.

According to Moore, Chagga individuals, both male and female, grow closely supervised by others who often had some control over them. As children they work for their parents. They tended animals, obtained fodder, fetched water and firewood, and ran other errands. Parents could assign their children to others. Children could be “loaned” to relatives or “pawned” to others. Old women without children in their households could request a child of a young family. The third child was particularly suitable for such placement (as were all children beyond the first two). Children were deposited as pledges for debts. Girls were particularly desirable for this purpose, as the bride wealth for a girl could then be received by the creditor in lieu of the debt when the pledge child married (Moore 1986: 86).

Precolonial organized groups were founded on kinship, locality, age, and gender. Localized patrilineages formed the subunits within a district, and chiefdoms were composed of several districts. Chiefs were chosen within the chiefly lineage. Chiefs appointed the district heads. Lineages were led by the senior male, who was the ritual head, and also by a “spokesman,” or political representative for external relations. A system of male age grades crosscuts lineages and districts. Women were also grouped in age grades. From the start of the colonial period, other organizational entities became prominent. The churches were first; later, a coffee cooperative emerged.

Since independence, party (the Tanganyika African National Union, later renamed the Revolutionary party [Chama cha Mapinduzi]) and government administrative units have replaced earlier chiefs and chiefly councils. Tanzania has now introduced multiparty politics, and doubtless this will bring further changes in the future.

As coffee production gradually expanded, coffee sales became a major source of local tax revenue, enhancing local administrative resources and becoming the economic basis for secondary local institutional development. Over time, increasing numbers of Chagga received formal education. In the 1920s, with British administrative encouragement, the Chagga organized their own sales cooperative to market their coffee and regulate production. The cooperative was owned by the Chagga but managed by a European who was their employee. Despite some political ups and downs, the cooperative was, in general, very successful. An economically sophisticated and educated Chagga elite began to form. By the midtwentieth century, political parties had taken hold that challenged local chiefs for internal political control of the mountain. The British administration periodically reorganized local administrative bodies in response to this development. In 1951, in a development that further diminished the power of the local chiefs, who by then were fairly unpopular, a paramount chief of all the Chagga was elected, backed by the Kilimanjaro Citizen's Union. The paramount, in his turn, became unpopular when he tried to make his office permanent and hereditary and sought excessive personal power. By 1961, when the British left Tanganyika (renamed Tanzania in 1964, following its union with Zanzibar), the paramount had been displaced. In any case, the new independent government abolished chieftainship; hence all the local chiefs also lost their powers. Needless to say, this move was not unwelcome in many quarters on Kilimanjaro. Local political reorganization ensued as the socialist government designed new structures. Despite considerable innovative efforts from above, however, many preexisting relationships, such as powerful kinship groupings, continued to be locally effective on Kilimanjaro.

Before 1900, conflict between chiefdoms was resolved either through chiefly diplomacy or warfare. Subsequently, colonial officials dealt with such matters administratively. Conflicts between individuals were resolved either within the lineage, between lineages, within an age grade or an irrigation consortium, or by the district heads or the chiefs. Hearings took place at every level. Fines were imposed, and persons could be expelled from whatever group was trying the case. Individuals were sometimes killed. Elements of social control were thus manifest in every group milieu. This localized control persists, with some major modifications, in the modern setting. Since the beginning of colonial times, there has been a government-designated system of officials and courts formally charged with dispute settlement and law enforcement.

In indigenous Chagga cosmology, all human activities have potential spirit-worldly significance. Thus, the seen and the unseen worlds are closely linked. Dead ancestors care how their descendants behave. Living persons are capable of invoking God or the spirits for benign or malign purposes. Incurable illness, infertility, or other misfortunes are considered likely to have been caused by human or spirit agencies. Spells, curses, amulets, and witchcraft were (and are today) common-place, both to defend and to harm.

Diviners could (and can) be consulted.

Rituals mark all life-cycle events. Christian ideas and rituals are closely intertwined with indigenous conceptions and ceremonies

The Chagga have a rich folklore and elders delight in telling stories and proverbs to the young (Gutman 1932). Other art forms include wood carvings (mostly utensils such as bowls, huge beer tubs, spoons, and ladles), basket weaving and musical instruments including wooden flutes, bells and drums.

The Chagga use diviners and traditional healers, together with western medicine offered through area hospitals and clinics.

Traditional Chagga burial practices provided the cultural logic by which individuals in each generation maintained an eternal connection both with their respective dead ancestors and land holdings. More precisely, the body of the dead was initially buried in the hut, and later exhumed and most of the remains reburied in the banana grove. The skulls and sometimes the arm bones were kept above ground. A special place in the grove marked with dracaena plants was reserved for the skulls of the ancestors. This “skull grove” of ancestors served as best evidence of the right of a descendant to that particular banana garden (Moore 1986: 81-82).

Moore, Sally Falk, and Paul Puritt, 1977. The Chagga and Meru of Tanzania. Ethnographic Survey of Africa, East Central Africa, 18. International African Institute.

Moore, Sally Falk, 1986. Social Facts and Fabrications: “Customary” Law on Kilimanjaro, 1880-1980. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Tanzanian National Bureau of Statistics, http://www.nbs.go.tz/ (accessed on 12/08/2010).

Gutmann, Bruno, 1926. Das Recht der Dschagga. Arbeiten zur Entwicklungspsychologie, edited by Felix Krueger, vol. 7. Munich: C. H. Beck. Translated by A. M. Nagler. New Haven: Human Relations Area Files.