Society
Farming was the leading occupation of Maguzawas, while cattle herding was left to the Fulani. During the dry season, when farming activity is low, the men engage in dyeing, iron working and basketry. The female Maguzawa were known to show an independent streak in economic activity in contrast to an imported harem culture in many other households. Many wives and female slaves engaged in trading and use their profit to buy clothes for themselves and their offsprings. In terms of a socio-political organization, most Maguzawa communities are made up of scattered compounds and like their Hausa counterparts are led by a Sarki. However, predominant Maguzawa communities have three patrilineal cultural leaders. The Sarki'n Noma, who is the head of farming, the Sarki'n Arna, known as the head of the pagans and the Sarki'n Dawa, the headman of the bush. The latter two heads or Sarkis share equal power. The Sarki'n Arna is usually given to the best beer drinker in the community while the defunct Sarki'n Dawa is the best hunter in the community.
Read more about this topic: Maguzawa Hausa People
Famous quotes containing the word society:
“Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest “swell,” but he simply cannot buy the right things.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“In the latter part of the seventeenth century, according to the historian of Dunstable, “Towns were directed to erect ‘a cage’ near the meeting-house, and in this all offenders against the sanctity of the Sabbath were confined.” Society has relaxed a little from its strictness, one would say, but I presume that there is not less religion than formerly. If the ligature is found to be loosened in one part, it is only drawn the tighter in another.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“As the saffron tints and crimson flushes of morn herald the coming day, so the social and political advancement which woman has already gained bears the promise of the rising of the full-orbed sun of emancipation. The result will be not to make home less happy, but society more holy.”
—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)