This section is based
on a paper presented at the Satterthwaite colloquium on African Religion,
20-23 April 1991.
Suàgà
names a set of ritual-oaths and masquerading cults, see Zeitlyn 1990b.
Sadly the debate about the significance
of ancestors and how they should be represented quickly decayed into
arguments about definitions and the best translation of individual
words. See Kopytoff's original paper in Africa and the correspondence
in Man following Calhoun's response: Kopytoff 1971, 1981,1982;
Fortes 1981; Calhoun 1980,1981,1983.
The principal form of Mambila divination
is performed with spiders or land crabs (a single term, nggam,
is used for divination, divination spider and crab).
The extent to which this is an adaptation
in response to Christian and Islamic teachings is extremely moot.
This is consistent with Horton's
Conversion Hypothesis: that a high god cult develops as a result of
closer involvement with the wider world (Horton 1971, 1975).
This closely resembles the Kalabari
notion of "tamuno" (Horton, 1970) although
it should be remembered that the Mambila language lacks genders so
one cannot ascribe a gender to Càng.
Some examples are described by de
Surgy 1983, Buhan & Kange Essiben 1986 and Onwuejeogwu 1981.
The idea of tying corpses to ladders
suggest the practise of "corpse-carrying" (the divinatory
rite practised by some Ghanaian groups in order to discover the witch
responsible for the death) but so far my questions on this point have
not gained any response.
Both they and gourd trumpets are
called kùrùm.
For example, at the suàgà-oath
taken at Sonkolong in November 1986 to establish peace between Somié
and Sonkolong.
Nggwun is the wardance
which accompanies the installation of a new chief. It is repeated
every two years when the Chief repeats his oath of office.
The lom rite is
also held to have had similar effects. Lom is now
defunct, so data about it is hearsay. It appears to have been a masquerade
society, possibly recruited through illness.
The clearest evidence for this are
the land tenure maps produced by Jean Hurault after his field trip
to the Mambila Plateau in 1988. Mambilla hold the titles to very
little land indeed.
Is this so different from Mbeere
exposure in the bush?
E.g. From the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York (Gebauer Collection) photo 347#2 shows a cloth wrappa
being worn at kati dance; photo 79#23 commercial
loin cloth worn by player of tawong or tung
flute. Gilbert Schneider photographed a funeral in Warwar in the
early 1950's (soon before Rehfisch did his fieldwork) at which
cloth was being worn.
