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Pastoralism. East African Cattle Complex Tibetan Herders. “Cattle Complex”. E. African Cattle Area Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Mozambique Non-utilitarian use of cattle, i.e. more food from grain than milk, meat, blood. Cultural value of cattle rather than subsistence. Traits.
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Pastoralism East African Cattle Complex Tibetan Herders
“Cattle Complex” • E. African Cattle Area • Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Mozambique • Non-utilitarian use of cattle, i.e. more food from grain than milk, meat, blood. • Cultural value of cattle rather than subsistence.
Traits • Cattle are used for social purposes • Esteemed for prestige and social status • Not equivalent to money, only thing to acquire with cattle is wives. • “Bridewealth”-cattle in exchange for wife • Limited as a food resource, subsistence based on farming • Cattle for milk and beasts of burden. • Strong personal attachment to cattle, associated with rituals such as birth, death, marriage and initiation
Herding Habitat • Great Rift Valley, water major limitation • Areas wet enough to support plants also harbor tsetse fly, which infects cattle. • Agriculture least productive in arid regions, where cattle predominate. • Recurrent adaptation in steppes, deserts, and dry savannahs.
Transhumance • Pattern of herding where part of family (usually men) graze cattle over large area • Women and children, elders stay at permanent home site. • Karimojong • 250 people in one sq. mile for house sites. • Cattle graze over 500 sq. miles. • Cattle mean wealth, legacy for sons, formal contract for friendship, validation of marriage. • Boys given male calf to care for at their initiation.
Pastoralist “Personality” • Statistical study of Africans who herd vs. farmers • Farmers value hard work, Pastoralists do not. • Farmers consult each other, cooperate; Pastoralists work independently. • Farmers more suspicious of strangers, hostile to neighbors. • Farmers indirect, anxious; Pastoralists direct, open. • Pastoralists value independence, especially in males.
Social Organization • Patrilineal Descent • Males control cattle and family. • Sometimes practice matrilocality, however. • Male “Elder” make decisions for family/village.
Pakot, W. Central Kenya • 10-20 cattle, 10.5 goats, 3.4 sheep per male. • Steers (not cows) killed in ceremony, distribution of meat. • Eating of meat and milk on same day prohibited. • Steers not killed for family use only, large quantities of meat in hot climate with no storage-always share meat. • Ritual consumption effective way to utilize meat of large animals, promote community cooperation.
Large Herds • Government efforts to limit stock for environmental reasons. • Dodoth, Uganda • 75,000 cattle to 18 waterholes. • Losses of 10-15% in some years. • “A man who loses 1/3 of his stock is much better off if he begins with 60 cows than with 6.”
Maasai • North central Tanzania, southern Kenya • Population: 350,000 • Language: Ol Maa (Nilotic) • Neighboring Peoples: Samburu, Kikuyu, Kamba, Chaga, Meru, Pare, Kaguru, Gogo, Sukuma • Types of Art: Maasai are best known for their beautiful beadwork which plays an essential element in the ornamentation of the body. Beading patterns are determined by each age-set and identify grades. Young men, who often cover their bodies in ocher to enhance their appearance, may spend hours and days working on ornate hairstyles, which are ritually shaved as they pass into the next age-grade.
Maasai Warriors http://www.maasai.com/maasai.htm
History • Maasai are the southernmost Nilotic speakers and are linguistically most directly related to the Turkana and Kalenjin who live near Lake Turkana in west central Kenya. • According to Maasai oral history and the archaeological record, they also originated near Lake Turkana. • Maasai are pastoralist and have resisted the urging of the Tanzanian and Kenyan governments to adopt a more sedentary lifestyle. • They have demanded grazing rights to many of the national parks in both countries and routinely ignore international boundaries as they move their great cattle herds across the open savanna with the changing of the seasons. • This resistance has led to a romanticizing of the Maasai way of life that paints them as living at peace with nature.
Economy • Cattle are central to Maasai economy. • They are rarely killed, but instead are accumulated as a sign of wealth and traded or sold to settle debts. • Their traditional grazing lands span from central Kenya into central Tanzania. • Young men are responsible for tending to the herds and often live in small camps, moving frequently in the constant search for water and good grazing lands. Maasai are ruthless capitalists and due to past behavior have become notorious as cattle rustlers. • At one time young Maasai warriors set off in groups with the express purpose of acquiring illegal cattle. • Maasai often travel into towns and cities to purchase goods and supplies and to sell their cattle at regional markets. Maasai also sell their beautiful beadwork to the tourists with whom they share their grazing land.
Herding Cattle http://www.maasai.com/maasai.htm
Socio-political system • Maasai community politics are embedded in age-grade systems which separate young men and prepubescent girls from the elder men and their wives and children. • When a young woman reaches puberty she is usually married immediately to an older man. • Until this time, however, she may live and have sex with the youthful warriors. • Often women maintain close ties, both social and sexual, with their former boyfriends, even after they are married. • In order for men to marry they must first acquire wealth, a process that takes time. • Women, on the other hand, are married at the onset of puberty to prevent children being born out of wedlock. All children, whether legitimate are not, are recognized as the property of the woman's husband and his family.
Religion • The cow is slaughtered as an offering during important ceremonies marking completed passage through one age-grade and movement to the next. • When warriors (moran) complete this cycle of life, they exhibit outward signs of sadness, crying over the loss of their youth and adventurous lifestyles. • Maasai diviners (laibon) are consulted whenever misfortune arises. • They also serve as healers, dispensing their herbal remedies to treat physical ailment and ritual treatments to absolve social and moral transgressions. • In recent years Maasai laibon have earned a reputation as the best healers in Tanzania. Even as western biomedicine gains ground, people also continually search out more traditional remedies. • Maasai are often portrayed as people who have not forgotten the importance of the past, and as such their knowledge of traditional healing ways has earned them respect. • Laibons are easily found peddling their knowledge and herbs in the urban centers of Tanzania and Kenya.
Maasai Rituals • There are many ceremonies in Maasai society. Enkipaata (senior boy ceremony), Emuratta (circumcision), Enkiama (marriage), Eunoto (warrior graduation), Eokoto e-kule(milk ceremony), Enkang oo-nkiri( meat ceremony), Orngesherr (junior elder ceremony), etc. • Also, there are minor boys and girls rituals such as Eudoto/Enkigerunoto oo-inkiyiaa (earlobe), and Irkipirat (leg fire marks) that boys and girls must undergo before circumcision. • However, many of these initiations concern men while women's initiations focus on circumcision and marriage. • Men will form age-sets moving them closer to adulthood. • Women do not have their own age sets but are recognized by that of their husbands. • Ceremonies are an expression of our culture and self-determination. Every ceremony is a new life. They are rites of passage, and every Maasai child is to go through these stages of life. http://maasai-infoline.org/ Website by Kakuta ole Maimai, a native Maasai.
Nomadism • Everyone in group moves along with herd. • No permanent settlements, but permanent water holes for cattle. • Large herds common, even though conditions of land don’t always support large numbers. • Among Dodoth-only 20% of herd giving milk at one time. • 300-400 lbs. milk/cow/year (U.S. 8000-12000 lbs.) • Blood taken once a month in wet season, 1-2 pints • Meat eaten once a week or less. • Keeping of large herds protection against drought and epidemics.
Nomadic Pastoralism in Tibet • The yak, to the people of the Himalayas, was what the reindeer was to Laps. • Anywhere a man could walk, a yak could be ridden. • Yaks are high-altitude creatures, adapted to the highland plateaus of the Himalayas when no other large beast of burden will thrive; where horses and cattle and camels died, yaks flourished. • Even Tibetan ponies, which can live above 1400 feet in altitude, are small and do not bear as much cargo as a yak will.
The Laya • Dedicated to yak breeding, because a large portion of the highland area can at best be used as pasture. • They live as semi-nomads and only spend a small part of the year in houses. • In the summer, most of the Laya travel with their herds to higher mountain regions and return to their home regions not before the beginning of winter. • During the warm periods of the year, tents made out of woven yak hair serve as shelters.
Role of Yaks • In the north of Bhutan, the yaks provide the source of life for these highland inhabitants. • Their hair serves not only as material for their tents, but is also woven into clothing, their meat is eaten, their milk is made into butter and hard cheese, and their dung is used as burning material. • In addition, the yaks are used as beasts of burden and are hitched in front of the plow to till the few existing fields.
Trade • In the early fall, even before the first snow makes the mountain passes impassable, the Laya herders wander back to the valleys of Central Bhutan where they sell the milk products they produced in the summer, as well as yak meat on the markets or trade them for rice, other food, salt, or tools. • In recent times, however, the money-based economy has increasingly replaced the traditional barter with material goods.
