Nyakyusa People - Culture and Society

Culture and Society

Collectively, the Nyakyusa are traditionally thought of as being related to the Kinga of the Livingston Mountains, who had themselves spread westwards as immigrants. 'Nobles', ruling the land, were credited with divine powers, lived in strict religious seclusion, their chiefs (Princes), being strangled by their councillors in old age or illness in order to maintain rain, fertility, and the health of the village. The chief's advisers were never his kinsmen, but only non-hereditary commoners with considerable power over the chief.

The Nyakyusa were a colonizing people where success and survival depended on individual effort. According to M. Wilson slavery was reported as being totally unknown in 1892, although the slave trade certainly existed in the vicinity of the Konde of Karonga. They lived in very small chiefdoms, not in groups of relatives, but in groups of age-mates attempting to live in harmony to avoid misfortune.

The Nyakyusa were eager agriculturists. They practiced intensive crop rotation with corn, beans, squash, sorghum, millet, yams, etc., with banana plantations stretching for miles. Clearing and hoeing the land three to four hours a day was the responsibility of the men and his sons, never the women. The crops were used for food, beer, and hospitality, as well as for sale and barter. Neither old age nor high status excused a man from his duty to hoe. They were said to fear leaving their area for concern of being unable to exist without their accustomed food of meat, milk, bananas etc. Each year at the beginning of the rainy season, the Nyakyusa assemble at a place called 'Chikungu' where their chief Kyungu calls for rain. All villagers are told not to light fire in their homes in the morning of the ritual rain-calling ceremony. All the villagers wait for the sacred fire from the shrine called moto ufya to be distributed.

Arbitration in disputes by a friend or neighbor is considered very important. The headman or prince had no power to enforce decisions and while there was no attempt to quiet a quarrel it is considered most proper to arrive at a settlement through some group opinion of equals, established before adolescence, resting on friendship, assistance, and cooperation.

There were no clans, or descent groups with a common name and by the third generation kinship bonds were often forgotten. Tradition rarely mentions warfare, although boundary disputes were normal and could lead to fights. Hunters, not warriors, were heroes, and they hunted for the protection of life and property, although the selection of weapons indicates they also organized for war. Missionary Nauhaus was told of a boundary dispute in November, 1893, in which six men fell on one side and only one on the other. Such friction was not called war, "I was told it only happens so that there would be something to talk about".

Outside the chiefdom the world could also be dangerous. A journey of twenty-five miles could take three days because of the need to often take cover. Not only were there unfriendly villages, but also because leopards, elephants, buffalos, hippos, crocodiles, etc., were plentiful. Before the arrival of German missionaries, the Nyakyusa just 'cast their dead away' or left them at 'itago' to die.