Oral Tradition and Sierra Leone History

1985 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 65-72
Author(s):  
C. Magbaily Fyle
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Human Problem ◽  
Written Sources

This paper attempts to examine specific problems encountered with the collection and interpretation of oral traditions in Sierra Leone and ways in which these were approached. I will suggest with examples that problems facing oral traditions are not always peculiar to them, as the researcher with written sources faces some similar problems.Much has been said about methodology in collecting oral tradition for it to warrant much discussion here. One point that has been, brought out, however, is that methods which work well for one situation might prove disastrous or unproductive in another. It is thus necessary to bring out specific examples of situations encountered so as to improve our knowledge of the possible variety of approaches that could be used, while emphasizing that the researcher, as a detective, should have enough room for initiative.For the past eight years, I have been collecting oral histories from among the Yalunka (Dialonke) and Koranko of Upper Guinea, both southern Mande peoples, and the Limba and Temne, grouped under the ‘West Atlantic.’ Extensive exploration into written sources has indicated that similar problems arise in both cases. In both situations, the human problem was evident. For the oral traditionist this problem is more alive as he is dealing first hand with human beings. A number of factors therefore, like his appearance, approach to his informants, his ability to ‘identify’ with the society in question, may affect the information he receives. These could provide reasons for distortion which are not necessarily present with written sources.

Oral Traditions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chip Colwell
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Oral Narratives ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Southwest Archaeology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
Native Literature ◽  
Descendant Communities

Never before have oral narratives been more important in Southwest archaeology than they are today. Spoken histories—variously known as oral traditions, oral histories, Native literature, and verbal arts—play key roles in fostering a dialogue between descendant communities and archaeologists, affording broader anthropological understandings of Native cultures and their heritage, and providing novel and more informed understandings of the past. Ultimately, oral traditions are a cultural act of memory, often enveloped in metaphor but grounded in real historic events, personalities, and processes. Oral tradition and archaeology are, at base, not irreconcilably different, but rather two complementary ways of thinking and talking about the past.

scholarly journals Past as the Other – The Other as Past

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-268
Author(s):  
Staša Babić
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
The Times ◽  
Modern Identity ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Written Sources

Modern academic disciplines of anthropology, history and archaeology are founded in the cultural, social, political context of the 18th and 19th centuries, at the times of the colonial expansion of the West European countries. Although demarcated by the objects of their study ("primitive societies", the past according to written sources, or material evidence), all these disciplines are grounded in the need to distinguish and strengthen the modern identity of the Europeans as opposed to the Others in space and time.

Impossible to Disprove Yet Impossible to Believe: the Unforgiving Epistemology of Deep-Time Oral Tradition

2009 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 127-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Henige
Keyword(s):  
American Indian ◽  
Carrying Capacity ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Deep Time ◽  
The Past ◽  
State Of Affairs

This is not a real old time myth but it is what they say now, and it must have been like that.This man from Ulimang was highly skilled in the art of warfare—like Eisenhower.A Tahitian businessman who provides ‘Polynesian’ entertainment for tourists in Hawaii with a young Marquesan man whom he took to Samoa to be tattooed by their artistsfollowing designs recorded by early European visitors.… as for oral Traditions, what certainty can there be in them? What foundation of truth can be laid upon the breath of man? How do we see the reports vary, of those things which our eyes have seen done? How do they multiply in their passage, and either grow, or die upon hazards?Writing about American Indian reactions to their discovery of large fossil remains, Adrienne Mayor observes in passing that “[f]olklore scholars now generally accept that oral traditions about historical events endure for about a thousand years, although some oral myths about geological and astronomical events can be reliably dated to about seven thousand years.” Mayor's chosen task is to demonstrate that American Indian legends suggest that they rightly regarded fossils as the remains of long extinct megafauna populations. In aid of this, Mayor accepts these arguments in her own work. While this claim might seem extravagantprima facie, and while most folklorists would disown Mayor's claim, she is not without support from the work of a relatively small, but not uninfluential (and possibly growing), cadre of anthropologists, mythographers, geologists, and historians, whose efforts on behalf of deep-time oral tradition I address here.Some interesting—even intriguing—things have been happening recently in discussions of the carrying capacity of oral tradition—its long-term historicity, in particular.À laMayor, the thrust of this is to credit tradition with being able to preserve “intact” various pieces of information for as long as tens of thousands of years. To the historian interested in the reality of the past in oral societies, this state of affairs is challenging, perplexing, and no doubt to some, highly promising. If, for instance, it can be demonstrated that certain information in oral data is thousands of years old and at the same time an accurate recollection, then reservations about much later (say, several centuries old) orally transmitted information might need to be reassessed, and with such rethinking would come new ways to approach great swaths of the past.

The Conquest That Never Was: Ghana and the Almoravids, 1076. II. The Local Oral Sources

1983 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 53-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Conrad ◽  
Humphrey J. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Time Scale ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Positive Identification ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Oral Evidence ◽  
Remote Past ◽  
Written Sources

“The land took the name of the wells, the wells that had no bottom.”In Part I of this paper we examined the external written sources and found no unambiguous evidence that an Almoravid conquest of ancient Ghana ever occurred. The local oral evidence reviewed in this part of our study supports our earlier hypothesis, in that we find nothing in the traditions to indicate any conquest of the eleventh-century sahelian state known to Arab geographers as “Ghana.” Instead, the oral traditions emphasize drought as having had much to do with the eventual disintegration of the Soninke state known locally as “Wagadu.”An immediate problem involved in sifting the oral sources for evidence of an Almoravid conquest is that a positive identification between the Wagadu of oral tradition and the Ghana of written sources has never been established. Early observers like Tautain (1887) entertained no doubts in this regard, and recently Meillassoux seems to have accepted a connection, if not an identification, between Ghana and Wagadu when he notes that “les Wago, dont le nom a donné Wagadu, sont les plus clairement associés à l'histoire du Ghana.” However, much continues to be written on the subject, and the question remains a thorny one. On the lips of griots (traditional bards) and other local informants, Wagadu is a timeless concept, so a reliable temporal connection between people and events in the oral sources on one hand and Ghana at the time of the Almoravids on the other, is particularly elusive. Indeed, any link between the traditions discussed here and a specific date like 1076 must be regarded as very tenuous, as must any association of legendary events with Islamic dates. In western Sudanic tradition influenced by Islam, the hijra (A.D. 622) is both prestigious and convenient, a date with which virtually any event in the remote past can be associated, though such a claim may have nothing to do with any useful time scale.

The Amazons of Dahomey

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agbenyega Adedze
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
West African ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
The West ◽  
West African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Female Fighters

The Amazons in general come from Greek legend and myth without any palpable historical evidence. However, there is no doubt about the historical female fighters of the erstwhile Kingdom of Dahomey (Danhome or Danxome) in West Africa, which survived until their defeat by the French colonial forces in 1893. The history of the historical Amazons of the Kingdom of Dahomey stems from vast amounts of oral tradition collected and analyzed over the years, as well as written accounts by Europeans who happened to have visited the kingdom or lived on the West African coast since Dahomey’s foundation in the 17th century to its demise in the late 19th century. These sources have been reviewed and debated by several scholars (including Amélie Degbelo, Stanley B. Alpern, Melville J. Herskovits, Hélène d’Almeida-Topor, Boniface Obichere, Edna G. Bay, Robin Law, Susan Preston Blier, Auguste Le Herisse, etc.), who may or may not agree on the narrative of the founding of the kingdom or the genesis of female fighters in the Dahomean army. Nonetheless, all scholars agree that the female forces traditionally called Ahosi/Mino did exist and fought valiantly in many of Dahomey’s battles against their neighbors (Oyo, Ouemenou, Ouidah, etc.) and France. The history of the Ahosi/Mino is intricately linked to the origins and political and social development of the Kingdom of Dahomey. Ahosi/Mino are still celebrated in the oral traditions of the Fon.

African Testimony Reported in European Travel Literature: What Did Paul Soleillet and Camille Piétri Hear and Why Does No One Recount It Now?

1991 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 143-158
Author(s):  
John H. Hanson
Keyword(s):  
Travel Literature ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Textual Criticism ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Oral Narratives ◽  
Source Criticism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Principal Value ◽  
Special Category ◽  
Written Sources

European visitors to Africa frequently report versions of oral narratives in their travel accounts from the precolonial era. Beatrix Heintze cautions against the uncritical use of these narratives, arguing that they are a “special category of source to which one must apply not only all the criteria for the analysis of oral traditions, but also the sort of source criticism specific to written sources.” Her call for textual criticism is appropriate, but her recommendations regarding the oral aspects of the information raise several issues: what criteria should be adopted for the analysis of oral narratives and what insights into the past do these materials provide? Heintze assumes that oral narratives present “concrete historical data” with “literal” meanings which become “more abstract over the course of time.” She sees the principal value of European-mediated accounts as providing access to the factual statements and initial metaphors from which emerged the more abstract historical clichés expressed by informants in contemporary Africa.

scholarly journals The Apai-Bori Union in the context of Basmyl-Karluk relations (from the experience of legend analysis)

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 32-43
Author(s):  
Zh.O. Artykbayev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Tribal Group ◽  
The Past ◽  
Generic Groups ◽  
Chinese Texts ◽  
Excellent Source

The historical legend of «The origin of the Apai-Bori Union» which is preserved in the Kazakh oral tradition gives а specific information about the grandiose migrations from the east to the west of Central Asia in the IX-XI centuries. In the context of the image of the man «in a wolfskin coat and on a gray horse», we see the tribal group of Bori (in Chinese texts also known as Fule), one of the militant components of the ancient Turkic khaganates, who retreated to the west after heavy wars on the banks of the Orkhon. Second, through the image of the Apai, and her son who was born from the karakesek, we have already penetrated the Karluk problem. Karakeseks are connected with karluks. Now they are part of the Kazakh and Kyrgyz communities. Third, during the movement to the west, the Karluks began to develop the territories freed from the Huns. Perhaps, they inherited their political values, which later helped them to create the empire of Karakhan. Fourth, it can be assumed that the fact there are generic groups of Siberian shors among the Karakesek is probably revealed through the analysis of name of the native leader of the karakeseks of Bolat Kozha. In fact, Bolat and Karluk (Karaluk) are similar synonymous. Both of these names were applied in the past to steel from which highest quality cutting weapons were prepared. The Siberian Shor people’s sacred attitude to blacksmithing has been preserved to this day. Fifth and last, the story of the Apai-Bori union in the Kazakh genealogy is an excellent source that allows researchers to study problems associated with the migration of the Basmyl-Karluk tribes. All of the above is disclosed in this article.

scholarly journals LESSON FROM THE PAST, KNOWLEDGE FOR THE FUTURE: ROLES OF HUMAN MEMORIES IN EARTHQUAKE AND TSUNAMI NARRATIVES IN MENTAWAI, INDONESIA

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juniator Tulius
Keyword(s):  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Andaman Islands ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Tectonic Plates ◽  
Mentawai Islands ◽  
The Past ◽  
Active Tectonic

<p>Oral traditions are an important part of the culture of most Indonesian communities. Mentawai, an ethnic group residing in Mentawai Islands of Indonesia, has various genres of oral tradition. Traditional knowledge and local wisdom pertaining to natural disasters are also part of their oral tradition. Mentawai Islands are located along active tectonic plates, where earthquakes commonly occur at various magnitudes. Records show that<br />great earthquakes and tsunamis hit Mentawai Islands several times in 1797, 1833, 2007, and 2010. Surprisingly, earthquakes occurring some hundred years ago do not seem to appear in Mentawai oral tradition. This is slightly different from communities in Simeulue, Solomon, and Andaman Islands whose natives still remember some devastating catastrophes that occurred in the past. People’s collective memories play an important role in upholding significant messages from past natural disasters. Some of<br />those messages contain important lessons on how to cope with natural disasters if they should occur again. As a result, the majority of inhabitants of those islands survived future catastrophes because they remembered the lessons contained in their oral tradition. This is totally different in Mentawai where more than 500 people died during the 2010 earthquake and tsunami. Because of this, the Mentawai case becomes an interesting topic of study. This paper aims, therefore, to find out the reasons behind this apparent<br />lack of oral tradition pertaining to the earthquakes and tsunamis that occurred several hundred years ago.</p>

Fieldwork, Orality, Text: Ethnographic and Historical Fields of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Gabon

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 47-77
Author(s):  
John M. Cinnamon
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Historical Anthropology ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Equatorial Africa ◽  
Written Traditions ◽  
Over Time

I can claim no direct pedigree from African Studies at Wisconsin, but one of my own graduate school mentors, Robert Harms, benefitted from David Henige's and Jan Vansina's influence; all three have profoundly marked my own approaches to the historical anthropology of equatorial Africa. In this paper I draw on David Henige's illuminating and still relevant insights into the problem of “feedback,” in light of a key methodological preoccupation in my own discipline of anthropology – “fieldwork.” In particular I want to suggest how ethnographic fields are formed over time through a layering process that involves ongoing cycles of intertwined oral and written traditions.Henige's 1973 article, “The Problem of Feedback in Oral Tradition,” prefigures by a full decade Terence Ranger's highly influential essay on “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa.” In that 1973 article, Henige argued that given traditions were “dynamic over time.” British Indirect Rule had led the Fante of the Gold Coast to devise new oral traditions in order to take advantage of opportunities of British Colonialism. In particular, he cites the ways printed sources, especially the Bible, but also the Qur'an, colonial sources, publications, and later scholarly works, have all found their way back into oral accounts. Henige also suggests that pre-colonial oral traditions also would have been continually reworked; present practices suggest considerable adaptability and flexibility in the past.

The Displacement of Indigenous Oral History

2019 ◽  
pp. 16-39
Author(s):  
Nēpia Mahuika
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Fields Of Study

This chapter examines the evolution of oral history and oral tradition as two separate fields of study with their own associations, journals, theories, and definitions. It considers how these fields have been viewed and engaged with by indigenous writers, with a particular emphasis on scholarship out of Aotearoa New Zealand. Oral history and oral tradition have often been considered the same, but over the past century have been presented as two distinctively different fields with their own theories, methods, and emphases. This chapter surveys the seminal writing and definitions popularized in oral history and tradition, which include the idea of oral history as a methodology and interview practice and oral traditions as predominantly the study of ballads and folk songs. It explores some of the arguments about the orality or textuality of oral sources, and the differing focus oral traditionalists and oral historians have proposed in their evolving theories and politics.

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