THE ITESO HISTORY AND CULTURE
HISTORY AND CULTURAL OF ITESO
The Teso (or Iteso, people of Teso) are an ethnic
group in eastern Uganda and western Kenya. Teso refers to the traditional
homeland of the Iteso. Teso live mainly in Teso sub-region, in the present
districts of Amuria, Soroti, Kumi, Katakwi, Ngora , Serere, Pallisa, Bukedea
and Kaberamaido, as well as Tororo and Busia District. The Iteso speak an
Eastern Nilotic language. The Eastern Nilotic Branch of Nilotic is divided into
the Teso-speaking
and Maa-speaking (Maasai)
branches. The Teso Branch is further divided into speakers of Ateso (the
language of the Iteso) and those of the Karamojong cluster, including the
Turkana, Ikaramojong, Jie, and Dodoth in Kenya and Uganda.
Iteso traditions relate that they originated
somewhere in what is now Sudan and moved south over a period of centuries. It
is not possible to calculate the time of this movement. A body of Iteso is said
to have separated from the Karamojong and moved further south. This may have
been a very early separation because the clan names and ritual customs
associated with the second of two distinctive groups of Karamojong and Jie
people are not found among the Iteso. Unlike the other Teso-speaking ethnic
groups, the Iteso have never been transhumant or nomadic; agriculture has
played as significant a role in their social, economic, and expressive lives as
cattle have among the other groups.
Iteso clan names reveal a history of long-standing
ethnic interactions. Names of Bantu and Northern Nilotic origin are found among
them. The Iteso were probably well established in their northern Uganda
heartland by the mid-eighteenth century, when they began to move farther south.
The history of the Iteso and neighboring peoples has not been extensively
documented. Traditions recorded among the JoPadhola indicate there were two
waves of Iteso migration. The first was family based and peaceful. It was
followed by a more extensive and aggressive migration that left the Iteso in
control of a large swath of territory that by 1850 extended as far as the
western highlands of Kenya. European travelers record extensive fear of Iteso
warriors; nonetheless, the Iteso soon suffered reverses that caused them to
draw back to their current territory in Kenya. Since then, the Northern and
Southern Iteso territories have been separated. Relations with other societies
throughout the precolonial period were alternately peaceful and acrimonious. As
a result of spatial intermixture and intermarriage, Iteso elements and customs
can be found among neighboring peoples and vice versa. Intermarriage has always
been extensive. It is likely thatethnic identityhardened during the colonial
period, as it has since, when resources such as land were newly defined as
belonging to "tribes."
The Iteso in Kenya and Uganda were conquered by
African colonial agents of the British and indirectly ruled through them.
Western Kenya was transferred from Uganda to Kenya in 1902. As a result, the
economic and political histories of the Northern Iteso and the part of the
Southern Iteso living in Kenya have taken vastly different courses. At
independence, the Ugandan Iteso were far more wealthy than their Kenyan
counterparts. This difference resulted from the status of Uganda as a
protectorate reserved for "African development" and Western Kenya's
status as a labor reserve for the European-owned farms in the "White
Highlands." As a minority people in Kenya, the Iteso are not well known
and have been viewed with some suspicion by surrounding peoples. On the other
hand, the Kenyan Iteso have not suffered from the political destabilization in
Uganda since 1970. Events in the colonial period and since have elaborated
cultural differences among the Iteso that were regional in origin. The language
of the Northern Iteso, for example, was extensively influenced by the Baganda
people, who ruled the Iteso on behalf of the British colonial regime, whereas
that of the Southern Iteso is in some ways closer to Turkana. As a result of
living among Bantu- and Nilotic-speaking peoples, the Southern Iteso have
probably been subject to a greater variety of cultural influences. The
economic infrastructureis far more developed in Kenya than in Uganda, and
cash income is also higher, reversing a pattern found in the 1960s. The Kenyan
Iteso undertook considerable labor migration: most men between the ages of 60
and 80 have worked outside their home territory; many served in places such as
Burma during World War II. In the early 1980s government-sponsored cooperatives
that ran cotton ginneries in western Kenya failed to pay for cotton delivered
by the Iteso and others. Consequently, they began experimenting with new cash
crops, such as tobacco, grown with the aid of loans from large agricultural
companies. In the early 1990s there was a partial revival of cotton growing,
and the ginneries have been resuscitated.
Identification The
Iteso comprise the second-largest ethnic group in Uganda and a
significant portion of the non-Bantu-speaking minority in Kenya's Western
Province. The Iteso of Uganda have not been well described, but significant
studies exist of the political and economic dimensions of colonial rule in
their territory. For the Iteso of Kenya, there are substantial studies of
social organization, social change, and ritual processes. The Iteso have an undeserved
reputation in Kenya for cultural conservatism, whereas in Uganda they have been
described as being among the most economically adaptable of people. In common
with many of the peoples of the Kenya-Uganda border region, they have a history
of extensive multiethnic contact and have come to share many customs with
neighboring peoples, although not at the expense of their identity or cultural
distinctiveness.
Location. In
Uganda the great majority of Iteso occupy Soroti District and some of the
adjacent areas in the north-eastern part of the country. Farther east and
south, they constitute about half of the population of Bukedi District. These
Iteso are separated from their more northern Ugandan colleagues by
Bantu-speaking peoples, notably the Gisu, Banyole, and Bagwere. They are not
separated spatially from the Kenyan Iteso of Busia District in Western
Province, with whom they share a common border. The Iteso of Soroti District,
Uganda, are called the Northern Iteso in the ethnographic literature; the Iteso
of Bukedi District, Uganda, and Busia District, Kenya, are called the Southern
Iteso. The Southern Iteso occupy the foothills of Mount Elgon and the
surrounding savanna. The Northern Iteso environment varies from low and wet
near the shores of Lake Kyoga and its neighboring swamps to high and arid in
the north. In both areas, annual rainfall is separated into two wet seasons—the
"short" and "long" rains. It varies considerably from year
to year and locality to locality, averaging 150 centimeters a year in Kenya.
The Iteso have always moved their households in response to changes in economy,
politics, and climate. After the 1950s, land scarcity and colonial (later
state) control prevented the Iteso from adapting their economy to the
environment.
Demography.
The latest reliable census for Uganda (1969) lists 600,000 Iteso living in
Soroti District and 65,000 living in Bukedi. Approximately 150,000 Iteso
resided in Kenya in 1979. Population densities range from about 32 per square
kilometer in the more arid portions of northern Uganda to over 500 in the
densely populated areas of Kenya. In Kenya, where the population has increased
dramatically in the late twentieth century, the majority of Iteso are now under
15 years of age. Life expectancy has also increased, but recent
figures are not available. Until the 1960s, half of all children died before
reaching adulthood.
Linguistic Affiliation The
Iteso speak an Eastern Nilotic language. The Eastern Nilotic Branch of Nilotic
is divided into the Teso-speaking and Maa-speaking (Maasai) branches. The Teso
Branch is further divided into speakers of Ateso (the language of the Iteso)
and those of the Karamojong cluster, including the Turkana, Ikaramojong, Jie,
and Dodoth in Kenya and Uganda.
Settlements The
culture and social organization of the Northern Iteso has been sparsely
studied. The material that follows refers primarily to the Southern Iteso.
Settlements are dispersed: each household is usually situated at the edge of
its own land but is frequently adjacent to other households. In the immediate
precolonial period, Iteso households were combined into larger settlements
centered around an important person called
the lok'auriaart, "man of the cattle-resting place." For a
considerable period of time after the establishment of colonial rule, these
important men dominated decisions to settle, but households were increasingly
dispersed. The primary organization in terms of which households currently
cooperate and interact is the adukete, "those who have built
together." This is a loosely defined territorial unit whose members do not
always agree about its membership, not unlike an urban neighborhood. It is a
network rather than a corporate group. Members of the adukete feel an
obligation to help one another and settle disputes among themselves. Because
people no longer move their households at will, there is a greater tendency for
members of the same lineage to live near one another in settlements.
Economy
Subsistence and Commercial Activities. Eleusine (finger millet) and sorghum
are major food crops. In the 1920s colonial officials introduced cassava as a
supplement to these staples and as a famine-relief food. Cassava, which the
Iteso cook with finger millet and sorghum, is planted in fields that would
otherwise be fallow. Women grow vegetables in gardens next to their sleeping
houses and gather various wild foods, especially mushrooms and flying ants, a
delicacy. Men herd cattle, and the grazing of animals was regarded as a
commonly held right until the late 1960s and early 1970s; there have been
conflicts over the right to graze since then, and some people have fenced their
fields. The primary cash crop was cotton, which was grown by men and women in
separate plots (and for individual income) during the short rains. As a result,
the labor demands for cash crops did not conflict with demands for subsistence
farming. Many households have teams of oxen and plows; others trade their labor
for the use of a richer household's teams. Newly introduced cash crops such as
maize and tobacco are grown during the long rains and have caused considerable
concern about how people will manage the conflicting demands of cash and
subsistence farming. The primary commercial activities are trading in cattle,
owning small shops, and (in Kenya) employment in such public-sector jobs as
local administration and school teaching.
Industrial
Arts. The primary occupations are carpentry, tailoring, butchery, and
various indigenous skills, such as making the boards used for elee, a
game of calculation played with seeds, which is the Iteso national pastime. Few
of these are full time occupations. In some areas there are women potters, but
blacksmithing is unknown. The Iteso of Kenya traded with the Samia people for
their iron goods in the precolonial period.
Trade. There
were a few markets at independence; some have grown much larger with the
addition of government facilities such as schools and dispensaries. Market and
cattletrading days rotate among different major markets. These have also become
centers for an extensive trade in dried fish and goods such as used clothing
imported from the United States. Gas-operated grinding mills are now
frequently found at market centers. Women pay for the grinding of foodstuffs
through the sale of beer they have brewed and small amounts of grain and
vegetables. The Iteso is also characterized by the radical separation of the
sexes in subsistence and ritual activities. Men are responsible for building
houses and clearing land. Both men and women plant, weed, and harvest, but
women are solely responsible for processing food crops, including threshing,
grinding, and cooking. Although public rituals have largely disappeared among
the Iteso, domestic and life-cycle rituals are regularly performed by women.
Ritual is defined as part of their work—protecting the lives and health of the
children of their households. Within neighborhoods, households regularly
cooperate in tasks such as harvesting cotton; in this way, individual harvests
are quickly garnered, and labor is fluidly distributed in a period of peak
demand. The social mechanism underlying this cooperation is the beer party,
which is also a context for cooperation between husbands and wives. People who
do not work cooperatively and attend beer parties are judged to be epog ("proud"
and thoughtless of other people's needs)—a very serious insult to the Iteso.
Land Tenure process. Land
was freely available during the precolonial period. Only improvements—for
example, trees planted on the land—were owned. Today such trees are a source of
considerable conflict because people own trees on land belonging to someone
else. Land was first sold in the mid-1950s, but registration did not begin
until the early 1970s. Land was never held by corporate groups such as
lineages, and thus the transition to individual landholdings was accompanied by
less conflict than elsewhere in Kenya. Important men anticipated the impending
land scarcity and moved their former clients to large, newly claimed land
parcels. For the first time, some Iteso in Kenya are unable to grow enough food
to feed themselves. They have to work at very low rates for wealthier, usually
salaried people.
Kingship Terminology. The
Iteso use Hawaiian cousin terminology with bifurcate terms for the
first ascending generation and descending generation from Ego.
The Iteso are a patrilineal people with three
levels of patrilineal descent, each defined by the activities associated with
it. The nominal clans are nonexogamous name-bearing units associated with Iteso
historical narratives and ideas about the inheritance of character. Nominal
clans are divided into clans, within which marriage is forbidden. These
exogamous clans are further divided into lineages, with genealogies three to
five generations deep, whose primary duty is to supply support and attendance
on ritual occasions such as funeral rites. The more closely related descent
groups are bound by ties of sentiment but also divided by intrahousehold
conflicts over property, which have emerged in the late twentieth century. Descent
groups are not property-holding units but do figure significantly in Iteso
definitions of their social universe.
Marriage and Family Marriage. Marriages
are defined from two points of view: they are alliances between spouses but
also between two exogamous clans. The first alliance is evident in the
practical arrangements of setting up a household, and the second is expressed
in ritual and healing practices. More than one-third of all men and a majority
of all women are married polygynously. Although the number of men with four or
more wives has decreased since the precolonial and early colonial period, it is
possible that the total number of people married polygynous is increasing in
the rural areas, as in many other Kenyan societies. The amount of bride-wealth
has remained the since the mid-twentieth century, but the time taken to hand
over the ten to fifteen head of cattle has changed, from almost immediately
after the birth of the first child to an extensive period of more than twenty
years. Post marital residence tends to be virilocal for women and neopatrilocal
for men, who soon move into a new home on family land. Divorce is rare; even
marriages said to end in divorce are often reconciled when the estranged wife
returns after an extended period of time. Bride-wealth helps constrain the
incidence of divorce because a man who receives cattle through his sister's
marriage would have to return the bride-wealth (on which his own marriage
depends) if her divorce were finalized. The result is a series of disrupted
marital exchanges.
Domestic groups are established among the Iteso
when a man marries a woman for the first time. Shortly thereafter they set up a
spatially independent household, but under normal conditions, the husband's
mother supervises her daughter-in-law. Most Iteso men strive for more than one
wife; polygynous unions are frequent, but in the late twentieth century they
have been opposed by women. Households are composed of separate
"houses" composed of mothers and their children. Cattle from bride-wealth
are supposed to belong to this "house." Relations between full
siblings are the most solidary in Iteso society. Children leave their natal
household at marriage, and women most often go to live with their youngest son
when he has married, effectively separating husband and wife at the end of
their married life. As a result, Iteso households are complex but not
generationally extended. Scarcity of land may change this pattern in areas
where population is especially dense.
Inheritance. Men
leave three kinds of property: land, cattle, and personal property such as
shops and cash. Sons assume the right to family land when they marry; when an
elder dies, any remaining land is divided among his unmarried sons. Cattle are
inherited by the sons of each mother. Men may control the cattle that come into
"houses" through their daughters' marriages, but at death only the
full brothers of the married daughter have inheritance rights to these cattle
and to cattle assigned to their mother from their father's residual herd. Male
children without the cattle they must have before they can marry may be given
excess cattle belonging to another "house." Other property is divided
equally among all the sons. Women do not inherit male property, only female personal
property such as clothing and household effects.
Socialization is not elaborately ritualized among
the Iteso. Weaning occurs at about 1 to 2 years of age. Children are
indulgently treated until they go to school or begin to take up work tasks.
Marriage is the most abrupt transition for women; it is somewhat
traumatic—especially if it is with a much older man. Men's status transitions
are easier because they do not move far away from their natal households.
Attending boarding school, which is common in Kenya for the children who manage
to get to a secondary school, may likewise be a traumatic experience. The
primary context for local cultural learning was the grandmother's hut, where
many children used to spend considerable time learning folklore and customs,
enjoying storytelling and the expressive arts. The expansion of schooling has
severely attenuated this significant setting for socialization. As a result,
many young people currently grow up with very limited knowledge of their
culture. Formal schooling will probably bring about extensive changes in the
body of Iteso knowledge.
Social and Political
Organization. The Iteso live in territorial units
of increasing scale: the household; the neighborhood; government-defined units
(the headman's area and the sub location); the location (headed by a
government-appointed chief); and the division, which also tends to correspond
to the constituency for the Iteso member of parliament. In addition, the Iteso
of Kenya recognize three dialect groups, which have had different external
cultural influences. The precolonial Iteso were organized into territorial
units called itemwan ("fireplaces"—called
"sections" in the anthropological literature; sing. item ),
which were the largest-scale political units and were organized for defense and
political expansion. An itemwan may have been led by a successful war leader.
The age system appears to have been extremely different from one part of the
Iteso territory to another. One constant element was the rituals associated
with retirement from the status of elder. After performing them, retired men
could no longer marry and were believed to have privileged access to the
divinity. Women's forms of social organization include special, ritually
defined friendships, labor cooperatives, groups formed to heal illness caused
by spirit possession, and, since the mid1980s, church groups.
Social Control. The
feud functioned as a significant mechanism for social control among the Iteso
during the precolonial period. All members of a lineage were held responsible
for the actions of their fellow lineage members. Witches and deviants, such as
persons who committed incest, were either expelled or punished. Since the
advent of colonial rule, neighborhood disputes have been adjudicated by a
council of male elders and the headman. Disputes that cannot be settled at this
level can be taken to the chiefs meeting or to the district court. Values
associated with ideals of male and female achievement, particularly those
connected with childbearing, are very significant for the Iteso. Even the words
for "adult male" and "husband" and "adult female"
and "wife" are the same. All adult Iteso strive to become successful
parents, and their sense of efficacy is tied to their reproductive status.
Women are closely supervised from marriage through the end of their fertile
period. One of the consequences of joining a cult of spirit possession is to
provide contexts in which male supervision of female activities is not
appropriate.
Conflict. The
Iteso are a very egalitarian people and have a quite justified reputation for
independent action. They tend to settle conflicts before they reach the formal
legal system. There are a number of sources of conflict. The first is
interethnic: the Iteso still see themselves as disputing with their traditional
enemies. Territorial disputes occur pertaining to the number of seats the Iteso
should have in parliament and to the boundaries of the location in which they
live. During the 1970s, when land was first registered, land disputes were a major
source of conflict—especially between sets of half-siblings or the descendants
of in-laws who had chosen to live together. Disputes between neighbors (over
cattle grazing) and between husbands and wives (over the allocation of labor)
are now frequent. These are the product of land scarcity and changing patterns
of cash cropping, which now conflict with the labor demands of subsistence.
Religious Beliefs. The
Iteso believe in a divinity with different aspects, variously
called akuj,"high," or edeke, "illness."
Other entities in their pantheon included the Ajokin, little spirits of the
bush, who invited people who met them to feast, providing they kept the
invitation a secret. Under missionary influence, the Ajokin have come to be
identified with the devil. Ipara, spirits of the dead, figure prominently in
their lives, but there are no special shrines for propitiation. The Ipara are
selfish and do not enforce good behavior so much as demand propitiation. When
they possess people, the Ipara bring with them exotic spirits from other
cultures who harm or make ill the people possessed. Catholic missionaries have
had considerable influence among the Iteso, and almost all of them had been
baptized by 1990. Women are especially involved in the church. The African priests
at the missions have successfully advocated the organization of local
cooperative groups called "Christian communities."
Religion. Most
Iteso religious practices are either associated with transitions in the life
cycle or are ways of managing misfortune and illness. Women are the primary
religious practitioners. The performance of domestic rituals is defined as part
of their "work." In addition to domestic ritual, women predominate in
cults of spirit possession. Men serve as diviners and healers, and some
specialize in "blocking" the effects of the spirits of the dead. In
the precolonial period, men who had been retired through the age system acted
as intermediaries between the divinity and the people.
Ceremonies. Domestic
ceremonies take place in the household and include naming rituals, the complex
rites associated with marriage and birth, and rituals held to heal ill
children. Mortuary rituals also take place within the household and involve a
series of ceremonies that invoke the entire complex of social relations of the
dead person. The rituals of the age system took place outside the home in the
"bush" and were organized in terms of the symbolic attributes of
various animals. Domestic rituals and healing rituals such as those associated
with spirit possession draw on much the same symbolic repertoire, a good deal
of which involves the ritual dramatization of female agricultural and
child-rearing tasks.
Art and craft. The
plastic arts include pottery making by women and musical-instrument making by
men, some house decoration, and, traditionally, cicatrization for women. These
are all purely aesthetic and have no religious significance. The verbal
arts—which include a cycle of trickster tales, proverbs, female storytelling,
and male rhetoric—are far more developed.
Local Iteso Medicine. Iteso
medical practices are derived from multiple sources and include a range of
Western medicines purchased at stores or obtained at government clinics;
locally known herbal cures; and resort to religious practitioners, such as
curers of illnesses caused by spirits of the dead.
Death and Afterlife. At
death, the body is separated from its eparait(spirit), which goes to live
in the bush. The spirit ideally moves deeper and deeper into the bush, but in
practice many spirits return to bother the living. Spirits of the dead are
greedy: they require offerings of food and drink. As a result of mission
influence, spirits of the dead have come to be associated by some Iteso with
the Ajokin, little creatures of the bush, and both of these have come to be
associated with the devil. The skeletons of dead people are exhumed after a
number of years so rituals can be performed to "cool" them and make
them more kindly disposed to the living. Older Iteso are very concerned that
their children will bury them in coffins and prevent this practice, thus
suffocating the dead in the earth. Funeral rituals are a major focus of Iteso
ritual life, and many Iteso point out that they are a primary reason for having
children: "Without children, who
will sacrifice at the head of your grave?"
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