THE KINGDOM OF ANKOLE IN UGANDA
By K, OBERG /. Traditional and Historical Background
NKOLE is but one of a series of small Native kingdoms stretching from north to south along the western borders of Uganda Protectorate. Both geographically and anthropologically, this is an interesting region. Bounded on the east by the great barrier of Lake Victoria and on the west by the mountain mass of Ruwenzori, and a chain of lakes extending from Lake Albert to Lake Tanganyika, it forms a corridor leading from the broad grasslands of the Upper Nile to the plateaus of Belgian Ruanda and Tanganyika Territory. Geographically this corridor is typical African savanna with its rolling grass-covered hills and sparse acacia scrub.
Some time in the dim past this region was occupied by Bantu-speaking, agricultural Negroes. The rainfall, though scanty, was sufficient to permit a fairly even distribution of the population over the country, scattered thinly in the drier plains of the east, but more densely in the hilly regions of the west, Later in the history of Africa this same corridor provided a pathway over which waves of Hamitic or Hamiticized Negro cattle people migrated southward. These pastoralists, with their vast herds of long-horned cattle, are believed to have been crowded southward from southern Abyssinia and many believe them to be of Galla origin. Whatever be the exact location of their original home or their specific tribal connexion or the reasons for their migration, there is no doubt that these people are closely linked to the Hamites in blood and in certain customs concerning cattle. What is more important, however, is the fact that whenever these pastoralists settled upon territory already occupied by the Bantu agriculturists they made a uniform adjustment, they conquered the agriculturalists, and established themselves as a ruling class. Thus when the British took over the management of Uganda, some forty years ago, they found everywhere in this corridor the pastoralists as rulers and the agriculturalists as serfs* The pastoralists calling themselves variously as Bahima or Bahuma and the agriculturalists as Bairu or