Tutsi - Origins and Classification

Origins and Classification

The definitions of "Hutu" and "Tutsi" people may have changed through time and location. Social structures were not stable throughout Rwanda, even during colonial times under the Belgian rule. The Tutsi aristocracy or elite was distinguished from Tutsi commoners, and wealthy Hutu were often indistinguishable from upper-class Tutsi. When the European colonists conducted censuses, they wanted to identify the people throughout Rwanda-Burundi according to a simple classification scheme. They defined "Tutsi" as anyone owning more than ten cows (a sign of wealth) or with the physical feature of a longer nose, or longer neck, commonly associated with the Tutsi. A person could change from Hutu to Tutsi by obtaining enough cows to acquire the status.

The Europeans believed that some Tutsis had facial characteristics that were generally atypical of other Bantus. They sought to explain these purported divergent physical traits by postulating admixture with or partial descent from migrants of Caucasoid stock, who usually were said to have arrived in the Great Lakes region from the Horn of Africa and/or North Africa. Some Tutsi also believe they are descendants of the ancient Israelites and had a mystical connection to Israel.

By contrast, the Europeans considered the majority Hutu to be characteristic Bantu people of Central African origin. These various migration theories of foreign provenance were also in part inspired by the Tutsi's own long-held oral traditions asserting that they originally descended from "white" migrants, who subsequently "lost" their original language and culture as they intermarried with the local Bantus. The British explorer John Hanning Speke recorded one such account in his book Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile:

"The governor said he thought the white men were flocking this way to retake their lost country; for tradition recorded that the Wahuma were once half black and half white, with half the hair straight and the other half curly; and how was this to be accounted for unless the country formerly belonged to white men with straight hair, but was subsequently taken by black men?"