87.

The Coming of Iron to Some More African Peoples

Author(s): G. A. Wainwright
Source: Man, Vol. 43 (Sep. - Oct., 1943), pp. 114-116
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2792370
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 Nos. 86, 87] MAN [September-October,
direction very little has been done at all, and
where somnething has been done, it has been undone
by individual caprice or neglect. In technological
work, a Museum is as important as a record office
is in administration, and it is a frequent and
painful experience that if you do not secure what
you think you do not want, you cannot obtain it
when you do want it. Africans seem to have a
keener historical sense than most Europeans.
They resent the assumption that they have con-
tributed nothing of value in the past, and have a
corresponding pride and interest in the evidence
THE COMING OF IRON TO SOME MORE AFRICAN PEOPLES. By G. A. Wainwright.
8Q7 In MAN, 1942, 61, I published the tradi-
tions about the coming of iron to the
Bushongo, to Uganda, and to Angola, and in
MAN, 1943, 67, those about the Winainwanga
between Lakes Tanganyika and Nyasa. The
dates for these occurrences could be established
with considerable certainty as A.D. 500 for the
Bushongo, about A.D. 1000 for Uganda, about
A.D. 1475 for Angola, and at some date in the
seventeenth century for the Winamwanga. The
present article adds the information which a few
more tribes can give about the early iron industry
among them.
Basuto.-In South Africa the Basuto claim that
their first ancestors were Morolong and his son
Noto. The first of these words means 'Smith '
and the second 'Hammer,' noto being the Basuto
pronunciation of the widespread Bantu root for
'iron' nyondo.1 One of the tribes of the great
Basuto family is still called Barolong after their
famous ancestor, and they take iron for their
totem in honour of their great chief Noto.2
Ellenberger and Macgregor have collected a
great number of genealogies of the various Basuto
tribes right back to Morolong and Noto, and in
this way have calculated that Morolong lived
about A.D. 1270 and Noto about A.D. 1240.3 It
may be, however, that these dates are too early,
for the authors have allowed thirty years to a
chieftainship.4
1 Crabtree in Journal of the African Society, xxx,
p. 334. As the word for ' iron 'the Basuto have replaced
noto, nyondo, with the later -rale (Sir H. H. Johnston, A
Comparative Study of the Bantu and Semi-Bantu Lan-
guages, i, p. 286), confining the older word to the special-
ized meaning of 'hammer.'
2 Dornan, Pygmies and Bushmen of the Kalahari
(London, 1925), p. 245.
3 Ellenberger and Macgregor, History of the Basuto,
p. 393.
4 Ellenberger and Macgregor, op. cit., p. 333.
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1943.
of their own past skill and taste. The new society,
built on a balanced economy, agricultural and
industrial, requires a balanced technology and
aesthetic. In surviving masterpieces of metal-
work, wood-carving, ceramic, and textiles is the
tangible proof of past proficiency, local initiative,
and continuous development, as has been realized
already in other regions nearer home. What has
been done in the last generation in Cardiff and
Dublin is possible and urgently desirable in West
Africa-a permanent and efficient exhibit and
reference-collection of the material arts.
The Barolong are able to add an interesting
piece of information to this, for they still know
that their ancestors originally came from north
of the Equator. This came out in a dispute about
land which was contested before Mr. Theal. On
this occasion it was stated that the original home
was on the shores of a great lake, where at one
time of the year shadows were cast towards the
north, and that from there the people migrated
southwards.5 They seem to have crossed the
Zambesi during the eleventh and twelfth cen-
turies,6 and the Limpopo about the middle of the
fifteenth century.7
Bergdama.-The Dama or Damara, with or
without the prefix Berg, were in South West
Africa before the Hereros arrived about A.D. 1550.
They were also the aborigines when the HIotten-
tots entered the country.8 To-day they are the
very humblest race in the country, yet it is well-
known that it is they who were the first black-
smiths there.9 They made the iron spearheads
of the Hereros and forged their iron axes,10 and at
the end of the eighteenth century those Bergdama
who lived by the sea were forging iron and copper
for the Namas.1" It was the Damas who have
taught the Namas (Hottentots) to smith iron and
copper.12 Moreover, in every instance it was
5 G. McColl Theal, Ethnography and Condition of South
Africa before A.D. 1505, p. 184.
6 Ellenberger and Macgregor, op. cit., p. 333.
7 L. Fouch6, Mapungubwe, p. 45.
8 H. Vedder, South West Africa in Early Times (trans.
C. G. Hall), pp. 152, 153 and cf. pp. 164, 165. Two
genealogical trees give this date. Id., The Berg Damara
in The Native Tribes of Soi4th West Africa (edited by
H. P. Smit, Cape Town, 1928), pp. 40, 41.
9 Id., South West Africa, pp. 28, 109.
10 Id., The Berg Damara, p. 43.
11 Id., South West Africa, p. 27.
12 Id., The Nama in The Native Tribes of South West
Africa, p. 126. The Namas are a Hottentot tribe, p. 190.
 September-October,
Damas who showed the first Europeans where the
copper deposits lay.
Vedder thinks that many of the Damas had
acquired their skill as blacksmiths from the
Ovambo, for when an Ovambo smith was accused
of witchcraft he used to flee to Hereroland where
many of the Damas were living. Moreover,
travelling Ovambo smiths have been accustomed
to go south into Hereroland and even as far as
Namaland. They made a great impression and
the year 1840 is called 'The Year of the Axe '
because the Herero chief then learned the craft
from one of them and made his first axe with his
own hands.13 In order to mine and smelt their
iron the Ovambo used to go northwards into
southern Angola'.14
However, the Damas' own account of their
acquisition of the art of iron-working puts a
different light on all this. Their story is that
they originate from a number of young Ama-
Xosa, who got. separated from their tribe.
Thereupon they elected, as chief, one of their
number who understood how to make iron
weapons. He was A-a-nanub the first chief of
the Damas, and brought them safely through the
desert to Ovamboland. He taught the Ovambo
the art of working iron, and the Damas became
the slaves of the Ovambo and made their weapons
for them. Later on the Damas trekked south-
ward from Ovamboland, as they wanted to be
free.15 Otherwise it is said that after a long time
the Ovambo under their chief Narirab drove out
the Damas, when for the most part they fled
southwards to Namaland. This was in the
middle of the seventeenth century, for Narirab
was born about A.D. 1640.16
The Damas have preserved a list of their chiefs
all the way back to A-a-nanub. By means of
this and taking a chieftainship to represent twenty
five years it is computed that A-a-nanub would
have been born about A.D. 1390.17 Unfortunately
the list perhaps has to be received with a certain
amount of caution, for the names of the chiefs are
derived from the Nama (Hottentot) language, the
Damas having lost their own.18 But this need
13 Id., South West Africa, p. 158.
14 Id., op. cit., pp. 28, 158.
15 Id., op. cit., p. 114.
16 Id., op. cit., p. 115.
17 But see the section on the Ovambo for some
remarks on this date (p. 116).
18 Id., loc. cit. The Damas have everywhere given up
their own speech in favour of that of their various over-
lords. Those in the north speak the language of the
Hottentots among whom they live, p. 108; Id., The Berg
Damara, p. 41. However, they do not speak it well,
which is taken to suggest that the change is recent; Id.,
op. cit., p. 74.
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1943.] MAN [No. 87
only mean that the original namiies have been
Nama-ized or translated into Nama.
The traditional connexion between the Damas
and the Ama-Xosa is accepted by Lebzelter, yet
the Damas seem to have been originally a
dwarfish black race from central Africa,19 while
the Ama-Xosa are Bantus and full-sized men.
The apparent discords between this tradition,
their small size, and their ability as iron-workers,
can perhaps be reconciled by supposing that it
was only a few Ama-Xosa or Bechuana wanderers
who came from the north and east and estab-
lished themselves among the small-sized abori-
gines. Among such people the newcomers would
naturally have become chiefs, and it is to the
arrival of a chief and hisfollowers that the tradition
refers. It is no doubt the story of the aristocracy
who have by now become fused with the abori-
gines, so that they are no longer recognizable, and
the aborigines now tell it as their own. By about
A.D. 1400 Ama-Xosa or Bechuana such as these
immigrants would no doubt have been in full
possession of iron, and could have brought with
them the knowledge of how to work it.
It is interesting to note that even such famous
smiths as the Damas also used stone knives at
least as recently as 1842. Their cutting up a
hippopotamus with such knives is recorded in
that year.20 The Hottentot tribe of the Nama
were still making stone knives at the end of the
nineteenth century.21
The upshot of the foregoing seems to be that
about the year 1400, according to Vedder's
calculation, some wandering Bechuana or Ama
Xosa arrived in South West Africa from the east
or. north. They came under the leadership of a
man whom, like other tribes, they had elected
chief on account of his ability as a blacksmith.22
On arrival they settled down as an aristocracy
among the dwarfish black Damas whom they
would have found in the country, and inter-
married with them. Presumably they taught
these aborigines how to smelt and forge iron and
made them do it for them.23
19 Id., South West Africa, pp. 116, 117.
20 Id., op. cit., p. 233.
21 Id., The Nama, p. 126.
22 Like Mussuri in Angola (MAN, 1942, p. 107) and
Musyani of the Winamwanga (MAN, 1943, 67).
23 We have this state of affairs in Ruanda. There the
immigrant Ba-Tutsi were iron-workers, but after con-
quering the indigenous Ba-Hutu they made them do the
iron-working for them and also cultivate the fields for
them. Loupias in Anthropos, 1908, p. 9; Pages, in
Anthropos, 1919-20, p. 959.
24 Vedder, South West Africa,. pp. 164, 165. See
pp. 152, 153, for the dating of the Herero migration to
about A.D. 1550.
 No. 87] MAN [September-October,, 1943.
Ovamb)o. -It has been seen that the Ovambo are
miiuch mixed up with A-a-nanub's arrival in the
land, with the early history of the Damas, and
fromii then onwards with the Damas' iron industry.
The Ovanibo seem to have arrived at about the
samne tiine as the Herero, for the succession of
their chiefs takes us back to the same date, i.e. to
about A.D. 1550 on Vedder's calculation.24 They
belong to the same group as the Herero and
Bechuana,25 and moved westwards until they
struck the Kubango River. They crossed it, and
while some of them reached the Kunene where it
tuirns west, others followed the Kubango south-
wards. A place, Osimolo, on this river remains
a sacred centre for all the Ovambo tribes.26
In spite of what the Dama say, the Ovambo
were in possession of iron at the time of their
arrival in the country. For their tradition tells
of spears with iron shafts as well as of others with
wooden ones, of the so-called Ovambo knives,
arrows, hoes, and even of iron bows, and pots.
It also tells of the ornaments of copper worn by
the young men. All the iron utensils dating
from the time of their arrival are also said to
have been afterwards collected by the chiefs and
stored up in a certain sanctuary.27
The Dama and Ovambo traditions, however,
do not seem to be really contradictory. It is
clear that the knowledge of iron-working could
not have been obtained in the present Ovambo-
land, for it possesses neither mountains, nor
stones, nor mines of either iron or copper.28 Now,
seeing that the Ovambo entered their present
country from the north, and that they still go
back north into southern Angola to mine and
smelt their iron,29 it seems probable that they
knew how to do it before their arrival or at least
learned of it on their journey. Was it here that
the Damas and their first chief A-a-nanub taught
them the art, or, being there first, shewed them
the mine, just as later on they shewed their
copper deposits to the European prospectors ?
A-a-nanub seems to have come by much the same
route as the Ovambo, and the Damas to have
remained for a long time in Ovamboland.
Vedder worked out A-a-nanub's date as about
1400, taking 25 years to a chieftainship,30 but in
calculating the arrival of the Ovambo to about
1550 he takes onily twenty years to a chieftain-
25 Id., op. cit., p. 242.
26 Id., op. cit., pp. 154, 155.
27 Id., op. cit., p. 158.
28 Id., loc. cit.
29 Id., op. cit., pp. 28, 158.
3 I d., op. cit., p. 115.
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ship.31 If he had calculated both dates on the
same basis, they would have come out very
nearly the same, A-a-nanub being the earlier by
a couple of generations. Further, A-a-nanub is
supposed to have been an Aina-Xosa or Bechuana,
and the Ovambo and Herero as well as the
Bechuana all belong to the same group.32 More-
over, A-a-nanub and the Ovambo seem to have
come by much the same route. It, therefore,
seems legitimate to suppose that they all formed
part of the one movement, and that it was this
that introduced the art of iron-working into South
West Africa. But it would still remain a matter
of speculation whether A-a-nanub arrived about
1400 and the Ovambo about 1450, or whether the
dates should be about 1500 and 1550 respectively.
Ondulu.-Unfortunately definite and useful
information such as the foregoing is all too rare.
Only too often all knowledge of the coming of iron
has been lost, and the enquirer is regaled with
nothing more satisfactory than that which was
gathered in Ondulu. The country lies three days'
journey north of Fort Belmonte between the
River Kwanza and its tributary the Kutato..
Here the people said 'God placed our ancestors
'down by this mountain of iron. They could not
'tell what it was, but considered it to be different
'from the ordinary rocks. Somebody made a
' bellows of clay, then killed a small deer, and tied
' its skin over the cavities to cause the wind to
'blow. It would not answer, but broke. Some-
' one else said, " Let us make one of wood." So
' they went to the forest, cut a tree, made a
' bellows, made charcoal, got some of the stone
' and put it into the fire, and it got soft. Our
' ancestors before this cultivated with wooden
' hoes. They tried then to make an iron one.
' They succeeded, and that is how we began to
' cultivate with iron hoes.'33
Vague as this is, it is better than nothing, for
it shews that the people still remember a time
when they were ignorant of iron. It also shews
that though they now use wooden bellows, iron
had been introduced to them by people using
pottery ones. Yet again it shews that in this case
at any rate the wooden bellows, which are so
common in some parts of Africa, have super-
seded the original pottery ones because these are
so liable to break.
31 Id., op. cit., pp. 164, 165. He says, however, that
one chief is known to have ruled for 45 years and another
for 30 years.
32 Id., op. cit., p. 242.
33 Read Journal of the African Society, 1902, pp. 48, 49.