Mkwawa and the Hehe WarsAuthor(s): Alison RedmayneSource: The Journal of African History, Vol. 9, No. 3 (1968), pp. 409-436Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/180274Accessed: 25/11/2009 06:58

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Journal of African History, Ix, 3 (I968), pp. 409-436

Printed in Great Britain

MKWAWA AND THE HEHE WARS*

BY ALISON REDMAYNE

THE Hehe won fame by defeating a German expedition at Lugalo on

I7 August i891 and maintaining their resistance for seven years, until chief Mkwawal shot himself. This struggle, which was extremely costly to both sides, so impressed the Germans that they acquired a respect for the military prowess and determination of the Hehe. The ambush of the German forces at Lugalo, the destruction of the Hehe fort at Kalenga on 30 October I894 and Mkwawa's death on 9 July i898 were key events in the German colonization in East Africa. Romantic descriptions of 'these coarse, reserved mountain people...a true warrior tribe who live only for war'2 could apparently find ready readers in Germany, so there is a large amount of

published German literature about the campaigns and about the Hehe themselves.

Uhehe lies between the Great Ruaha and Kilombero rivers, in the Usungwa mountains and the plateaux which lie in the northern part of the area known as the Southern Highlands. It includes areas of rain forest, high rolling grasslands, a central plateau of Brachystegia woodland and, below the escarpment in the north-east, north and west beside the Great Ruaha river and its tributaries, dry plains covered with thorn scrub. In the I957 census, the Hehe numbered just over a quarter of a million, and were the

* I have worked on the Hehe and related peoples since October 961. I spent two years in East Africa from 196I to I963, when I was financed by scholarships awarded by the Goldsmiths' Company and the Emslie Horniman Anthropological Scholarship Fund. I also received assistance from the East African Institute of Social Research at Makerere College, Uganda, where I was an Associate. Since October I963 I have held a Studentship at Nuffield College, Oxford. I was given leave of absence from February I965 until October 1966, and I returned to East Africa to do further field research, which was financed by a scholarship from The British Institute of History and Archaeology in East Africa. I am grateful to everyone who has assisted me and supported me in my research. Because my first period of research was undertaken as a social anthropologist and my D.Phil. thesis was submitted to the board of the faculty of Anthropology and Geography, I have not been primarily concerned with the pre-colonial history of the Hehe. This article therefore depends more on my knowledge of Hehe society, language and culture than on a detailed knowledge of the relevant documentary sources, which I have not yet had the opportunity to acquire. I have only cited the names of informants where my statements depend on information given by only one person, or by a number of people closely asso- ciated with each other. Copies of all my tape-recordings of historical stories and praise songs are available in the British Institute of Recorded Sound, 29 Exhibition Road, London S.W.7.

1 This name is an abbreviation of Mkwavinyika, and the way it is pronounced is more accurately represented Mkwava. In the early literature there are many different spellings of this name, incluing Kwawa, Kuawa, Qwawa, Mkwaba, Mkuanika, Mukwawi Nyika, Kwawinjika and Mkuu wa Nyika. Mkwawa is now the accepted spelling of the name used by his descendants and is the commonest version, and so I have accepted it to avoid confusion.

2 E. Liebert, Neunzig Tage im Zelt (Berlin, 1898), 24. My translation.

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ALISON REDMAYNE

eighth largest tribe in Tanganyika.3 They speak a Bantu language and their physical appearance does not distinguish them from the neighbouring peoples. Their political unity, like the name Hehe, is of relatively recent origin, and their history is obscure until appreciably later than is the case with other Tanganyika peoples of their size and importance, such as the Gogo, Nyamwezi and Chagga.

The earliest historical information concerns those areas through which the first Swahili, Arab and European traders passed.4 When the Arabs began to trade in central Tanganyika, it was a peaceful area inhabited by small dispersed groups, and there is no evidence of any large-scale political organization during the first three decades of the nineteenth century. The Arab traders ended their first regular journeys at Usanga and Usenga in Ukimbu, to the north-west of Uhehe, but after about 1830 they went farther to the north-west, to Unyamwezi. Their increasing trade in fire- arms and gun-powder, which they exchanged for slaves and ivory, was the most important factor in the complex history of tribal warfare, alliances, amalgamations, conquests and migrations. In Tanganyika there were at least two major incursions of Ngoni, and their raids and migrations also had a profound effect on the political scene. Finally, European penetration and colonization caused further wars and alliances, until the German govern- ment gained control of the whole territory and ended inter-tribal warfare.

The main routes of trade and exploration through central Tanganyika kept to the north and west of the Ruaha river, so Uhehe, lying to the south and east of it, was not visited until later. Although the name Hehe was recorded earlier,5 no traveller described the plateau and mountains of Uhehe until i879, when Joseph Thomson passed through shortly after the death of chief Munyigumba,6 under whom the

3 Tanganyika Population Census 1957 (East African Statistical Department, 1958), I, p. i. The exact number was 251,624. The area which was officially recognized as Uhehe coincided exactly with the then Iringa District, of which the total population was 245,965 of whom 191,655 were Hehe. Ibid. 54.

4 The best general description of the interior of Tanganyika in the nineteenth century is contained in Oliver and Mathew, History of East Africa, I (Oxford, 1 963), ch. VIII, 'The southern interior, I840-1884', by Alison Smith.

5 The earliest reference to Hehe is in R. F. Burton, 'The lake regions of central equa- torial Africa, etc.', J.R.G.S. (I859), 123. His description of Wahehe living on the plains north of the Ruaha seems to fit people who would now be called southern Gogo or Sagara, not Hehe. Tippu Tip mentioned going to Mtengera's in Uhehe, Tippu Tip, Maisha ya Hamed bin Muhammed el Murjebiyaani Tippu Tip (Supplement of the East African Swahili Committee Journal, I958 and 1959), 42. Alison Smith estimates that this journey may have been made ca. i862 (personal communication). However, Mtengera was a chief of the Kinamanga dynasty, who ruled Utemikwila and lowland Ubena on the south-eastern border of Uhehe, and this account was not written until after Thomson had passed through Uhehe, when the name Hehe was well known to refer to the people of the highlands whom Mkwawa ruled. Therefore Tippu Tip's remark about Mtengera in Uhehe is not neces- sarily evidence that the name Hehe was used to refer to the ancestors of the present Hehe as early as ca. i862.

6 This represents what is most likely to have been the original pronunciation of his name and that which is most commonly used by the Hehe today. Other versions found in the literature are Muyugumba, Mujugumba, Njugumba, Muyigumba and Muyugamba.

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MKWAWA AND THE HEHE WARS

peoples of this area had begun to acquire a reputation for their military prowess.7

During the first part of the nineteenth century, the Usungwa mountains and the plateau of central Uhehe were inhabited by about fifteen small

independent groups, some of which were ruled by families whose members, recognizing each other to be of like status, intermarried.8 There were large uninhabited areas, and in this sparsely populated land the peoples of these chiefdoms lived in relative peace and isolation. The chiefdom of Ng'uluhe, which lay roughly in the centre of the area now known as Uhehe, was ruled

by the Muyinga dynasty to which Munyigumba belonged.9 The exact

sequence of events during his reign is not clear, but within ten or, at the most, fifteen years he managed to assert his authority over all the other chiefdoms in this area, either because the chiefs were willing to submit and be left to rule their lands as his subordinates (vanzagila), or because he

conquered them and replaced them with his own nominees. At first he was not conspicuously successful against other peoples who had acquired a

military reputation earlier than the Hehe, that is the Bena subjects of the

Kinamanga dynasty, the Sangu and the Ngoni; yet by the end of his reign he had achieved a major victory against each of these peoples, and ruled a

larger inhabited territory than any neighbouring chief. The Hehe and the lowland Bena are closely related in culture and

language. Both peoples accept that their ruling dynasties, that of Muyinga and that of Mukinamanga respectively, are agnatically related, being descended from two brothers who came from Ikombagulu, a mountain in

Usagara. The chiefs of this Mukinamanga dynasty had probably been

extending their authority over other groups in the Ubena highlands rather earlier than Munyigumba extended his rule in northern Uhehe. At the battle of Mugoda Mutitu,l1 the Hehe under Munyigumba defeated the Bena, causing them to withdraw eastwards into the foothills of the Usungwa

7 Joseph Thomson, To the Central African Lakes and Back (London, I88I), 211-

44. 8 In brief summaries of Hehe history it has been frequently stated that the Hehe tribe

is the result of an amalgamation of about thirty formerly independent chiefdoms. This information has been taken from the list composed by the anthropologist Gordon Brown in the early I930s and published in G. Gordon Brown and A. McD. Bruce Hutt, Anthrop- ology in Action (London, 1935), 265-6. This list includes at least six groups which lived in areas then within Iringa District, but where the inhabitants have always considered them- selves to be Sagara rather than Hehe. In my unpublished D.Phil. thesis I have criticized the inconsistencies in Brown's list: A. H. Redmayne, 'The Wahehe People of Tanganyika' (Oxford, I964), I20-1. On the whole, Brown's work is reliable and Anthropology in Action is a good general summary of Hehe social organization.

9 There is no evidence for the date of Munyigumba's succession. It is given as ca. I855 in Ernst Nigmann, Die Wahehe (Berlin, I908), 9, and I860 in Wilhelm Arning, 'Die Wahehe', M.D.S. (1897), 60. Both authors deduced these dates from their knowledge of events in the latter part of his reign.

10 Nigmann, Wahehe, Io-II, and A. T. and G. M. Culwick, Ubena of the Rivers (Lon- don, I935), 23-4. Nigmann calculated that the date of this battle was ?i867, but the Cul- wicks, who had read Nigmann, reckoned it took place in I874-5. My knowledge of these Bena is mainly derived from Ubena of the Rivers.

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ALISON REDMAYNE

escarpment. This battle appears to have been decisive in arresting their expansion in the highlands and furthering that of the Hehe.

Excluding the Bena, the Sangu, who live mainly on the Ruaha plains in the east of Mbeya district, are the people most closely related to the Hehe in culture and language. They were generally known as Rori or Loli and, although they were a relatively small group, they had raided over a large,

Fig. i

sparsely inhabited area. Soon after 1830, probably as a result of obtaining guns and gun-powder from the Arabs, they began raiding caravans, and by 1857 they had become notorious as caravan raiders.1 Towards the end of his reign Munyigumba won decisive victories against them. He caused them to withdraw to Kiloli in northern Ukimbu and, as Elton and Cotterill witnessed when they stayed there in i877, he continued to menace them after they had returned and built a new fort at Mfumbi.l2

The Ngoni, a section of the Zulu from South Africa, had been raiding in southern Tanganyika since ca. I840. Probably within a decade of their

11 Burton, 'Lake Regions', 298-305. There is an almost parallel passage in Burton, The Lake Regions of Central Africa, n (London, i860), 269-73.

12 J. F. Elton and H. B. Cotterill, The Lakes and Mountains of Eastern and Central Africa (London, I879), 345-53. Mfumbi is about three miles from the Great North Road where it passes through Chimala at the foot of the Livingstone mountains.

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MKWAWA AND THE HEHE WARS

arrival, they had fought the Sangu, whom they forced to take temporary refuge in Usavila, a chiefdom in western Uhehe, before the ruler, Mandili mwaNyenza, had submitted to Munyigumba. However, when, at the time of Elton and Cotterill's visit, the Sangu found themselves being attacked by the Hehe, they made an alliance with a section of the Ngoni, and to- gether they drove the Hehe back to Uhehe, whereupon the Hehe took revenge by attacking Ungoni in the south, an area which now falls mainly within Songea district. By the time of Munyigumba's death in I878 or early I879, the Hehe had just beaten off the Ngoni who in a counter raid had penetrated as far as Nyamulenge in northern Uhehe.13

Munyigumba had either intended his enlarged chiefdom to be inherited by his brother, Muhalwike, or he had intended it to be divided between his sons Muhenga and Mkwawa,14 but whatever plans he had made were disrupted by Mwambambe, an important subordinate ruler of Nyamwezi origin who had married one of his daughters.15 Mwambambe, whose other names were Mamle and Mwanakimamule, is generally acknowledged to be the villain of Hehe history, and is often referred to as Limwambambe, the prefix denoting both size and evil. Soon after Munyigumba's death, Mwambambe seized power by killing some of the possible heirs and by using Muhenga, son of Munyigumba, as his puppet in his attempt to rule himself. Mkwawa fled to Ugogo, and Mwambambe ruled Uhehe and part of northern Ubena, which had been acquired by Munyigumba after the Hehe had defeated the Sangu, who themselves had earlier defeated some highland Bena. Then, in 1879, Thomson passed through Uhehe and, although he described him as 'a coarse and boney savage', agreed to Mwambambe's request that they should make blood brotherhood by proxy.16 Malavanu mwaMbalinga, a subordinate ruler of the Image area in north-eastern Uhehe, who never submitted to Mwambambe, together with some of Mkwawa's agnates, persuaded Mkwawa to return to Uhehe. His supporters fought those of Mwambambe and, after a battle in which one of Mwambambe's most important supporters, Mtumbikavana, was killed, Mwambambe fled to Kiwele to seek help from Nyungu-ya-mawe, the successful Nyamwezi war-lord who was ruling Ukimbu. While Mwambambe was recruiting forces in Kiwele, Mkwawa consolidated his position by building his first fort at Kalenga and gaining a major victory

13 Nigmann, Wahehe, I-Iz2; Elzear Ebner, History of the Wangoni (Peramiho, Tanga- nyika, I959), 97-Ioo.

14 Arning, 'Die Wahehe' (I896), 244; Nigmann, Wahehe, I2. 15 Other versions of his name found in print are Muhambambe, Mambambe and

Mwambamba. There are many oral and published sources for the story of Mwambambe. Oral evidence collected byAylward Shorter among the Kimbu agrees with what I collected from the Hehe. The most important published sources are as follows: Thomson, Central African Lakes, I, 211-44; II, 207-8. Slightly different information is given by Thomson in Note on the route taken by the Royal Geographical Society's East African Expedition

from Dar-es-Salaam to Uhehe; May 9Ith to August 29th, I879', P.R.G.S. (I880) N.S. II, 102-22; Arning, 'Die Wahehe' (I896), 243-6; Nigmann, Wahehe, 12-14; 0. Dempwolff, 'Beitigre zur Volksbeschreibung der Hehe', Baessler Archiv (I 93), I9-20.

16 Thomson, Central African Lakes, I, 243.

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ALISON REDMAYNE

over the Ngoni.17 Soon afterwards Mwambambe returned with many followers who had guns, and he joined battle with the supporters of Mkwawa. After very fierce fighting, Mwambambe and many of his forces were killed, while others fled by various routes back to Kiwele. The battlefield acquired the name Ilundamatwe, meaning 'the place where many heads are piled up'. When the French traveller Victor Giraud stayed at Kalenga in February 1883, Mkwawa was apparently unchallenged ruler of all Uhehe,18 and under him the Hehe had extraordinary military success during the next decade.

No precise sequence of raids during Mkwawa's reign has been recorded and it can never be known exactly, for it appears that the Hehe campaigned both in the wet and in the dry seasons, and different sections of their forces may have fought in two or more places at the same time.19 Under Mkwawa, the Hehe campaigned in many places where they had fought under Munyigumba, but these campaigns followed one upon another with greater success and intensity than before.

At the end of the Ngoni-Hehe war in I88I,20 the two peoples made a truce, became joking partners, and agreed not to fight until their sons had grown up, by which time German intervention prevented further wars. In spite of the affinal links between the two ruling families, the Hehe attacks on the Sangu had caused them to flee from the Ruaha plains to the hills of Usafwa, where they built a fort with a stone wall at the place now known as Utengule Usongwe (to distinguish it from their new Utengule in Usangu).21 Although the Hehe attacked this fort on at least two occasions, they never broke in, and the two peoples remained at war until the death of Mkwawa, the Sangu assisting the Germans in their campaigns against the Hehe. There were Baluchi and Arabs in the Sangu fort, and, through

17 It is not certain whether the Hehe under Mkwawa fought the Ngoni before or after Mwambambe's death. Arning was uncertain about the sequence of events, but considered that the war with the Ngoni probably took place very soon after Mwambambe's death, ' Die Wahehe' (I896), 47. A text collected by Dempwolff also placed the Ngoni war after Mwambambe's death, 'Beitraige', 120. However, Nigmann, who had read Arning, placed the Ngoni war between Mkwawa's return from Ugogo and the death of Mwambambe, Wahehe, 13. Some elderly Hehe agree with Nigmann's sequence of events, but it is possible that they are repeating what they have heard from one or other of the two Swahili accounts drawn from Nigmann: the school textbook Zamani Mpaka Siku Hizi (East African Literature Bureau, ist ed. I930), 75, or Mhustasari ya Furu La Kichwa cha Chief Mkwawa wa Uhehe (Dar es Salaam, I954), I-2.

18 Victor Giraud, Les Lacs de l'Afrique equatoriale (Paris, I890), I29-44. 19 The longest list of places where the Hehe fought during Mkwawa's reign is given in

Dempwolff, 'Beitrage', 120. 20 This date has been deduced from other known dates in Ngoni history, Ebner,

Wangoni, 103-4. Most secondary accounts follow Nigmann, who estimated the battle took place in ca. I882, Wahehe, 13. See also Eberhard Spies, 'Observations on utani cus- toms among the Ngoni of Songea District', T.N.R. xvi (December I943), 49-52.

21 The chief sources for the Sangu sojourn in Usafwa are: A. Merensky, Deutsche Arbeit am Njassa (Berlin, I894), 229-5I; Periodical Accounts of the Moravian Missions; Nig- mann, Wahehe, 14-15; Tom von Prince, Gegen Araber und Wahehe (Berlin, I914), 246-8, 258-9; E. Kootz Kretschmer, Die Safwa, ii (Berlin, I929), I64-331 (historical texts trans- lated from Kisafwa into German), iII (the original Kisafwa and Kinyiha texts).

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MKWAWA AND THE HEHE WARS

traders, the Sangu had been known on the coast at least forty years earlier.22 Thus the news of the Hehe raids in the extreme west must have reached the coast even before the Berlin Lutheran missionaries and the Moravians, approaching from the south, arrived in Unyakyusa in i891, and from there visited the Sangu in Usafwa. Unyakyusa had suffered from Sangu raids and, earlier, also from a few brief Hehe raids.

A number of important families in Ugogo claim that they are descended from people who moved from the Uhehe highlands northwards across the Ruaha in the first half of the nineteenth century or even earlier.23 Then, about I860, Myovela, chief of Udongwe, an important chiefdom on the Uhehe plateau, fled from Munyigumba, first to Malolo in Usagara, then to Wota in Ugogo and from there to Nondwa.24 After this the Hehe were continually involved in parts of Ugogo and Usagara north of the Ruaha. Munyigumba sent Mwengelumutwa mwaMukusa to Wota to rule the Hehe there and, presumably, also to observe what was happening on the caravan route, to raid where he could and to hold back the Masai. To succeed him, Mkwawa appointed Msambapakafu mwaSamila who, at some point before February 1883, when he was visited by the C.M.S. missionary Price, had gained an important victory over the Masai, causing them to flee into a marsh of sinking sand as they were attempting to return home with cattle they had captured.25 The high plateau at Wota appears to have been the most important place in the ever-increasing activity of the Hehe north of the Ruaha. During Mkwawa's reign, the Hehe also campaigned in Ugogo at Useke, Mpembe, Loato, Mugunduku, Unyangwila and Nyambwa, and there must have been a number of smaller raids which have not been recorded.26

The most easterly outpost of the Hehe was at a place now called Ulaya, which the Hehe usually refer to as Mukondoa, a name derived from that of the river which flows by the present town of Kilosa. This was in the terri-

22 By i858 they were apparently known for taking their captives as far as the coast. Burton 'Lake Regions', 300-I, and a parallel passage in Lake Regions, II, 272.

23 Heinrich Claus, Die Wagogo (Leipzig und Berlin, 9 iI) from Baessler-Archiv, II, 61-5; Dodoma District Book, and E. M. Mnyapala, Historia mila na desturi za Wagogo wa Tanganyika (Nairobi, 1954). Sections of this appear to have been taken from the Dodoma District Book. The date is reckoned roughly from the number of generations given in these genealogies, which may be misleading.

24 Nigmann, Wahehe, 9. I collected abundant oral evidence for this, chiefly from the Hehe of Wota in Mpwapwa district. In the district files and census reports, it is usually spelt Wotta. I write Wota, which is also found in print, because this represents the pro- nunciation more accurately.

25 J. C. Price, 'Journal of a visit to Uhehe', C.M.I. (I884), 294. The story about the Hehe causing the Masai to flee into a marsh of sinking sand has also been recorded in Stuart Watt (ed.), In the Heart of Savagedom (London, n.d. ?19I2), 94. The Hehe insist that this took place soon after Msambapakafu had been appointed to be Mkwawa's sub- ordinate ruler at Wota. Kayala mwaMbuta claims to remember this raid, which took place on the day of his elder sister's initiation (interview 27 Nov. 65). I therefore assume that the raid did not take place 'many years ago' as Price states, but between I88o and i883. It is not certain whether these were Masai or Baraguyu.

26 Nigmann, Wahehe, I4. Dempwolff, 'Beitraige', I20.

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ALISON REDMAYNE

tory of the Sagara, a people who lacked political unity, and part of whose territory was dominated by the Hehe. Indeed, in the late i88os the whole area along the caravan route from Mpwapwa to Mukondoa appears to have suffered so severely from the Hehe raids that most of the inhabitants fled, abandoning their fields and their huts, many of which had been burnt by the Hehe. Travellers in Usagara, eastern Ugogo and Ukaguru generally blamed the Masai as well as the Hehe for this devastation, and the two peoples, as well as raiding the weaker inhabitants of the area, were also raiding each other.27 This settlement was particularly important because from there the Hehe exchanged slaves and ivory for cloth and arms with Arab and Swahili traders, who had a trading post known as Mukondoa, much nearer the site of the present Kilosa town.28 The Hehe in this area could hear about events on the coast and keep a close watch on those who

passed along the caravan route. Mkwawa also followed up the conquests of his father by harrying his

neighbours in the east. The lowland Bena did not attempt to recover their lost territory, but kept to the valley. The Ndamba submitted to the Hehe without any fighting, Mkwawa allowing their own rulers to remain in office

provided they acknowledged his supremacy.29 Some Mbunga, after being defeated in their own country by the Hehe, fled north to Kisaki, where they troubled the chief of Kutu, who summoned Mkwawa to his aid.30 Between Mukondoa and Umbunga lay the territory of Uvidunda. This was likewise raided by the Hehe, who took some captives, but could do little more when the Vidunda fled into the steep mountains.31

At the time when the Hehe were expanding towards the coast, the Germans were moving farther and farther inland.32 After the i886 Anglo-German

27 Complaints about Hehe and Masai devastating the caravan route are very frequent in the relevant literature from ca. I88o. One of the best descriptions of this is given in A. Schynse, A travers l'Afrique avec Stanley et Emin-Pacha (Paris, I890), 235-58. See also T. 0. Beidelman, 'A history of Ukaguru, I857-I916', T.N.R. LVIII and LIX

(March/Sept. 1962), I4-39. 28 The Hehe settlement was near where the local court of Ulaya now stands, about 30

miles from Kilosa town. According to Nigmann it was called Kambi Ulaya after the nick- name of Mfaluhenga, the subordinate ruler there, who was called Ulaya (Swahili for Europe) because he was said to be as clever as a European, Wahehe, 14. I have a tape- recording of the late Hermann mwaMseuli, a Gogo, telling his life-history in Kihehe. As a child he was captured by the Hehe, taken to Mukondoa and given to the Arabs in exchange for gun-powder and so acquired the nickname Baluti, the Swahili word for gun-powder. I can find no evidence to suggest when the Hehe first established their settlement at Ulaya.

29 Blasius Undole, History of the Ndamba (in Swahili), typescript at the University College, Dar es Salaam. I have the MS. and do not know the page numbers on the typed copy. 30 Arning, 'Die Wahehe' (I896), 51-2.

31 Nigmann dates this battle I887, Wahehe, 14. See also Kilosa District Book, 'Tribal History of the Vidunda'. Nigmann mentioned only one Hehe raid on Uvidunda, but the account in the Kilosa District Book mentions two. The Vidunda are known as the Vanyangwila after the name of their chief, or chief's dynasty, Ngwila. They are different from the inhabitants of Unyangwila in Ugogo and Unyangwila in Ukimbu.

32 See: Oliver and Mathew, History of East Africa, i, ch. xII, 'The German sphere 1884-I898', by G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville.

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agreement, which limited the authority of the Sultan of Zanzibar to a strip along the coast ten miles wide and delimited the German sphere of influence in East Africa, the Germans began to assert their authority on the coast with no concern for the feelings of the local population, nor for those of the Sultan of Zanzibar. In I888 an Arab, Abushiri, led a rebellion which was

36?E.

Fig. 2

joined by Africans along the coast and some way inland. Abushiri was finally caught and hanged, but news of the rebellion, and of German activities, spread far.33

In 890 Julius Freiherr von Soden was appointed to be the first governor and, in order to administer the vast area marked on the map as German East Africa, the Germans began to build administrative forts, first at Mpwapwa and then at Kilosa on the caravan route. From their settlements at Wota near Mpwapwa and Ulaya near Kilosa, the Hehe continued to raid caravans and also to punish those Africans living near the forts who had submitted to the Germans. This made the Germans fear that the Hehe might even attack the coast.34

33 Schynse stated that Abushiri fled into the interior to summon the aid of the Hehe, A travers l'Afrique, 257.

34 Arning, 'Die Wahehe' (I896), 53; Nigmann, Wahehe, I5; Tom von Prince, Gegen Araber, 79.

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The two parties were now bound to enter into negotiations with each other or to fight. Each side knew something of the reputation and activities of the other, but neither can have known accurately the other's strength and intentions. The Hehe stood in the way of effective German control of the territory of German East Africa, and the Germans were becoming an obstacle to further expansion and raiding by the Hehe. The German governor wished to avoid warfare, because his limited financial resources and personnel were inadequate for the tasks of pacification and administra- tion, and because violence would disrupt the expansion of legitimate trade, which he believed to be the best hope for colonial development.

When most of the available German troops had gone to Kilimanjaro in the north, Commander Ramsay was sent to Usagara with a small force of I50 men.35 He camped at Mukondoa and, with the help of Arabs and Balu- chi, began to negotiate with Mfaluhenga, the Hehe subordinate ruler who was in charge of the settlement at Ulaya. After agreeing with the Hehe that they should go to the coast to negotiate with the governor, Ramsay returned to the coast in a hurry because he feared the rains were about to break. Some days later a group of Hehe arrived to negotiate with the governor. It is not clear whether the latter agreed to the request they had made earlier to Ramsay, that they might buy arms and ammunition, but when the Hehe

departed the Germans assumed that they had left with peaceful intentions. In June 1891 the Germans received reports that the Mafiti (Ngoni) were

raiding in the hinterland of Kilwa and that a Hehe chief, Taramakengwe,36 was taking prisoners. The Germans therefore organized an expedition under Commander Zelewski, who in the Abushiri rebellion had earned himself the Swahili nickname Nyundo, meaning 'the hammer'. He set out, intending to deal with the Mafiti first and then to go to Mpwapwa by way of Mukondoa, in Usagara, but he did not find the Mafiti, and, having had to alter his original plan because of lack of food on the route, he entered

35 I give here an abbreviated account of the events during the crucial period I890-6. The available published sources vary both in matters of fact and in interpretation. I know of no historian who has attempted to work out in detail the chronology of the campaign and the reasons for the Germans conducting it as they did. Much more knowledge could be gained from unpublished sources in the National Archives of Tanzania in Dar es Salaam and from the German Archives in Potsdam, East Germany. I am extremely grateful to Fr E. Durkin of the Holy Ghost Mission, Bromley, Kent, for sending me copies of extracts of the Bulletin general des Peres du Saint Esprit from I890 to I895. This is par- ticularly valuable, because it is the only contemporary non-German source I have obtained. My account of the defeat of the Zelewski expedition, the negotiations between the Hehe and the Germans, the Hehe attack on Mukondoa and the events leading up to the von Schele expedition is drawn from these extracts and also from the German reports published in D.K.B. (I891), 409-II, 435-8, (I892), 609-II, and (I893), 58-60. These are the best contemporary accounts I have found and are consistent with much that was told me by Ngwadanalamu mwaChula of Image who fought at Lugalo. Some information is also con- tained in Rochus Schmidt, Geschichte des Araber-Aufstandes in Ost-Afrika (Frankfurt a. Oder, I892), 304-7, 309-11; Arning, 'Die Wahehe' (I896), 53-7; Nigmann, Wahehe, I6-19; Dempwolff, 'Beitraige', I20-I; Paul Reichard, Deutsch-Ostafrika: Das Land und seine Bewohner (Leipzig, I892), 491-502; Tom von Prince, Gegen Araber, many references, especially 288-314; C. Velten, 'Suaheli-Gedichte', M.S.O.S. xx, pt. nII (1917), 80-182.

36 I have not been able to find out anything else about him.

4I8

MKWAWA AND THE HEHE WARS

Usagara. The Hehe subordinate rulers of the area fled and, according to Lieutenant Tettenborn's report to the governor, and to the account of the French Holy Ghost missionaries at Ilonga (which in early reports was called Lalonga), the German forces burnt the huts which the Hehe had abandoned.

The expedition then moved towards Uhehe. When they had climbed the

escarpment they saw some Hehe at Image. A few were armed with rifles, but most had only shields and spears, so the Germans, not realizing the real strength of their enemy, fired on them and they disappeared. The German forces then destroyed a number of huts in this densely populated area and moved on towards Kalenga, which they knew from the Arabs was a large fortified settlement on the Little Ruaha river. On the night of i6 August they camped at Ilula, and early next morning they set out, with Commander Zelewski near the front, riding on a donkey. Shortly before 7.0 a.m. they halted in order to restore the cohesion of the marching column. They had

begun moving towards the side of a hill, where large pieces of rock were scattered about amid dense bush, when a shot sounded and, from the bush only about thirty paces away, a great number of Hehe rushed out to attack the invaders, who had no idea of their presence.37

This first Hehe attack decided the battle, but the German rearguard under Tettenborn assembled on a hill where they were able to defend themselves. They remained there throughout the day and night and the following day in order to give other survivors a chance to join them. Having set fire to the dry grass, so that those wounded unable to flee were burnt to death, the Hehe withdrew to Image. Tettenborn decided that it was safest for his forces to retreat by a different route, so he set out at night and went through the hills to the south-east of Ilula, probably passing Ikula and Mdene on the way to Mukondoa. He reported the German losses as follows: ten Europeans (of whom one was Commander Zelewski, three others were officers, and six were N.C.O.s), about 200 men, as many guns, three cannons, 23 donkeys, 96 porters and most of the baggage. He estimated that the Hehe numbered not less than 3,000, of whom perhaps 700 were

37 The details of this command to attack are interesting. Tettenborn, who was in the rearguard, merely wrote 'ein SignalschuBi ert6nte', but implies that the shot was fired by a Hehe, D.K.B. (1891), 435. In an essay written for Dempwolff in I907, Norbert Chelula wrote 'vahehe vakatova huti yimwi, mbevali vakavuka luvilo, vakahomanga na migoha' (the Hehe shot one gun, they all moved quickly and fought with spears): 'Beitrage', 121. Reichard's account, written in Germany in November I891, on the whole follows Tetten- born's report closely, but at this point he adds 'als ein Schuf3 ertonte, worauf die Wahahai unter dem Kriegsschrei ,,uui" in grof3er Uberzahl... auf die Karawane eindrang', Deutsch- Ostafrika, 495. This may account for two versions of the story current among the Hehe: the one that they had been instructed to attack when their leader imitated the cry of a bird, a real bird cried and so they attacked sooner than intended; the other that they had been instructed to attack when a gun was fired, by chance Zelewski shot at a bird as he was riding along and so caused them to attack. These stories, which are not necessarily incompatible with German accounts, are used to explain why the ambush was only partly successful in that they failed to destroy the German rearguard. Tettenborn attributed his escape to the Hehe lack of leadership, D.K.B. (1891), 437.

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ALISON REDMAYNE

killed. These estimates about the Hehe forces may be unreliable, because Tettenborn also stated incorrectly that the chief Kuawa and the Hehe leader Marawatu were killed.38 However, the losses were sufficient to make a deep impression on Mkwawa, who forbade any mourning for the Hehe dead for fear of depressing the survivors.39

Soon after the news of this defeat reached the coast, a small German expedition of about 50 men was sent to Usagara to reassure the inhabitants, who feared that the Hehe might attack them. The governor approached Monseigneur de Courmont of the Holy Ghost mission to assist him in negotiating with the Hehe. These missionaries had stations at Ilonga and near Morogoro, and were themselves concerned that there should be peace in the area in which they worked. One of their members, Father Toussaint, travelled into Uhehe many times in order to negotiate with the chiefs, but only managed to return with a depleted Hehe embassy to Ilonga. While these French missionaries were making contact with the Hehe and assuring them that the Germans only wanted to make peace, the Germans themselves were establishing garrisons at Kilosa and Kisaki, presumably intending to protect the inhabitants of these regions and to show the Hehe that, although once defeated, their opponents were not negotiating from a weak position. The Hehe did not make peace, and on 6 October I892 they attacked and virtually annihilated a large commercial caravan at Mukondoa. The French priests had anticipated the attack and taken the precaution of evacuating the inhabitants of Ilonga mission. The Germans then, because these Hehe attacks on Usagara continued, reinforced their garrison at Kilosa.

When the Germans failed to make peace with the Hehe, they were unable to use force and send a larger expedition against them immediately, partly because of the demoralizing effect of their defeat in 1891 and partly because they had also to deal with other chiefs who resisted their authority. The most famous of these was Isike at Itetemia in Unyamwezi, who, presumably thinking defeat and capture inevitable, attempted to blow himself up and was then killed by the Germans.40 There were also the Arab, Mwinyi Mtwana, and the Sangu, Mugongolwa, at Mdabulo,41 Zunda in Unyiha,42 and the Sangu, Kimalaunga, whose followers were

38 These numbers are taken from Tettenborn's report, D.K.B. (I89I), 437, which Reichard quoted with slight inaccuracy, Deutsch-Ostafrika, 498. Marawatu must be a Swahili rendering of Malavanu, who had been the subordinate ruler of Image. He died a few years before the battle of Lugalo. Nigmann stated correctly that Ngosingosi, who had been an important subordinate ruler in the Kalenga fort, was killed, Wahehe, I6-I7.

39 Nigmann, Wahehe, I7. I have a Kihehe text written by Bonifas, son of Mkwawa, in I933 for Gordon Brown. It describes how Mkwawa forbade mourning until two years later and then he ordered people to brew beer and slaughter cattle for a feast. Most Hehe who know anything about the battle of Lugalo comment that Mkwawa forbade mourning afterwards.

40 A first-hand account of this expedition is given by Tom von Prince in Gegen Araber, 194-213.

41 Ibid. 218-23. For more information about Mwinyi Mtwana see Norman R. Bennett, Studies in East African History (Boston, I963), ch. 4, 'Mwinyi Mtwana and the Sultan of Zanzibar', 76-80. 42 Merensky, Deutsche Arbeit, 250-I.

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MKWAWA AND THE HEHE WARS

mainly Fipa living to the north-west of Lake Rukwa.43 At the same time the Hehe were threatening the people who had submitted to the Germans, and, in 893, with the encouragement of the relations of his late father-in-law,

North

KEY

Palisade - Fortifications (wall) e Military buildings 77 Dwelling houses y------ A Military stockade of Mkwawa =' \ B Stockade of Mkwawa's women ' ' Ditch filled with thorn-tree branches "' \

Fortifications under construction ; " . Points of attack of the German troops ' \

? Dwelling houses within the stockade ' , A Watchtower 10050 0 100 200 300 400 500ni m'Cam Watchpost (mound of earth) I' t

' Entrances 1:7,500 Scale in metres lb .

--- Hehe Reserve :~, Maxim gun

Lssault troops 28-30.x. 1894

Fig. 3. A plan of the second fort at Kalenga which the Germans destroyed on 30 October 1894. Reproduced from the plan in von Schele's article on Uhehe in M.D.S. 1896.

Isike, Mkwawa undertook an expedition to Kiwele against the chieftainess Mugalula, who was ruling the territory of her late father Nyungu-ya-nawe, who had been an enemy of Mkwawa.44

The inhabitants of Usagara were still fearing Hehe raids in the dry season of I894 when the new governor, Freiherr von Schele, set out from the

43 Tom von Prince, Gegen Araber, 248-58. 44 Nigmann incorrectly stated that it was the country of Sultaness Mtsavira, Wahehe,

i8. She had died before 1893. See also Fritz Spellig, 'Die Wanjamwezi, ein Beitrag zur Volkerkunde Ostafrikas', Z. f. E. (x927), Heft 3/6, vol. LIX, 204. Spellig thought that Mugalula was a man, but Aylward Shorter's Kimbu informants and my Hehe ones all stated that Mugalula was a woman.

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ALISON REDMAYNE

coast with a large expedition. There are many summaries of this campaign, of which the best is that of Tom von Prince, who led the storming of the Hehe fort.45 In order to avoid following the route taken by the Zelewski

expedition, the Germans approached from Kisaki and the Ulanga valley and then climbed the Usungwa escarpment. They descended from the

Usungwa mountains to the plain where the Kalenga fort lay, and, only 400 metres from it, they built a thorn stockade within which they erected their tents. Before dawn on 30 October, von Prince led the attack and, when German troops had broken into the fort, there followed hours of hand-to-hand fighting, from the roofs of the huts and in the doorways. Some Hehe fought long and hard, killing one German, Maas, and inflicting heavy losses on their native troops. However, Hehe women and children and also many men fled in disorder, while Mkwawa himself escaped un-

recognized. By the evening the Germans had taken possession of the fort.

They examined it, destroyed the weapon store, and removed some ivory and guns. Then, as they were returning to the coast, the Hehe tried to ambush them at Image, but their attack failed. The Germans hoped that the destruction of the fort would be enough to make Mkwawa come to terms. Once more they attempted to negotiate with him through inter- mediaries in Usagara, but the Hehe continued to attack the neighbouring peoples.46 In 1896, because there appeared to be no other method of forcing the Hehe to acknowledge German authority and live in peace, the Germans returned with substantial forces and built a garrison town at Iringa about seven miles away from the fort.47 Tom von Prince commanded this expedi- tion and his wife Magdalene accompanied him. The published extracts of her diary are an entertaining and valuable source for the events in Uhehe from October 1896 to December 1899.48

Only a few weeks after von Prince's arrival in Iringa, Mkwawa gave his consent to, or possibly even ordered, the surrender of four of his close

agnates, Sadangamenda, Mugungihaka, Kapande and, most important of all, his youngest full brother, Mpangile.49 This gave the Germans hope of

45 Tom von Prince, Gegen Araber, 298-303. See also 'Einnahme der Hauptstadt Uhehe', D.K.B. (1894), 621, and 'Uber den bisherigen Verlauf des Feldzuges gegen die Wahehe', D.K.B. (1895), 39-44.

46 Nigmann, Wahehe, I8-19. Arning claimed that he raided Lupembe and chief Mbeyela, 'Die Wahehe' (I897), 56. Alfons Adams stated that it was chief Kivanga's com- plaints about Mkwawa's raids which brought the Germans back in 1896, Im Dienste des Kreuzes (Augsburg, I899), 48.

47 In the early sources the site of the Hehe fort is usually called Alt Iringa, or Ilinga, i.e. Old Iringa, and the German garrison and the present town Neu Iringa, i.e. New Iringa. Now Iringa is always used to refer to the town and Kalenga to the place of the Hehe fort. When Hehe use Ilinga to refer to Kalenga they are usually speaking about the fort before it had been destroyed.

48 Magdalene von Prince, Eine Deutsche Frau im Innern Deutsch-Ostafrikas (Berlin, 1908, 3rd ed.). This account of the years I896-8 is mainly drawn from her book.

49 Mpangile's brief reign is well documented. As well as the official reports there are accounts by two of his admirers: M. von Prince, Eine Deutsche Frau, ch. II, 'Mpangires Sultanat', 63-77, and Alfons Adams, Im Dienste, ch. v, 'Sultan Mpangire', 53- 62.

422

MKWAWA AND THE HEHE WARS

an early settlement, and they attempted to rule the Hehe through Mpangile. On Christmas Eve I896, at his installation as Sultan of Uhehe, the Ger- mans organized ceremonies which included a shooting match, a procession through the garrison town and donkey racing. To the great grief of Magda- lene von Prince and the Benedictine priest Alfons Adams, Tom von Prince believed that Mpangile was responsible for the continued attacks on the German patrols, tried him, and on 21 February I897 had him executed with the other three relations who had surrendered with him earlier. The Germans did not appoint another Sultan of Uhehe, but intensified their campaign against Mkwawa, who was probably responsible for the attacks which had been blamed on Mpangile.50

Over the next eighteen months the resistance of the Hehe gradually weakened. Worn out by hunger, disease and continual warfare, individuals and small groups surrendered and others who did not do so were killed. By the dry season of i898, war and famine were obviously pressing very hard upon the Hehe, who still held out against the Germans. In July the Germans received news that Mkwawa was in the Pawaga area on the Ruaha plains. A patrol was sent in pursuit and, after tracking him for four days, on I9 July they came upon his corpse and those of two of his companions only a few hours after his death. He had been spitting blood and had shot himself in order to avoid capture.51 This marked the end of all Hehe resistance to the Germans. Even the toughest German officers had suffered from nightmares during the campaign,52 and the hungry, war-weary Hehe were also relieved, even though some of them mourned.53

It is clear that any people who achieved so many victories must have had comparatively good leadership and organization. In his monograph Die Wahehe, the German commander, Ernst Nigmann, who was for the most part dealing with men who had fought under Mkwawa, devoted a chapter of thirty pages to military organization, but no section of his book was specifically concerned with political organization.54 The reason may be that the political organization was serving mainly military ends. Throughout

50 M. von Prince, Eine Deutsche Frau, 75. Adams stated that just before his execution Mpangile complained that he was a victim of his enemies' tricks, Im Dienste, 59. Many Hehe tell stories which explain how Mkwawa tricked the Germans into believing that Mpangile was disloyal to them.

51 I have discovered two published German versions of Merkl's account of tracking Mkwawa and finding his corpse; 'Bericht fiber den Tod des Sultans Qwawa', D.K.B. (I898), 645-6, a report written by Feldwebel Merkl at Iringa dated 22.vii.I898, of which an abbreviated English paraphrase is given in Gerald F. Sayers, The Handbook of Tanga- nyika (London, I930), 70-I; another version of Merkl's report is given in Magdalene's diary for 2I.vii.98, Eine Deutsche Frau, I80-I, an English translation of which is given in Culwick, Ubena, 420-I.

52 M. von Prince, Eine Deutsche Frau, 93. 53 Ibid. 182-3. In I965-6 I recorded mourning songs for Mkwawa which probably

closely resemble those sung in the period immediately after his death. 54 Nigmann, Wahehe, ch. Iv, 'Kriegsgebrauche', 74-I07. See also Dempwolff, 'Bei-

trage', 110-I3.

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Mkwawa's reign the Hehe were always at war. Under him the political institutions of the Hehe had much in common with those during the reign of his father, but there was continual change in personnel and possibly also in organization, for the chiefdom was expanding fast and the Hehe had to respond and adapt to new situations.

Briefly, the political organization during Mkwawa's reign was as follows: The chief himself (mutwa) owed his position partly to his ancestry, partly to his ability and intelligence and partly to supernatural sanctions. He was a member of the Muyinga dynasty, a direct descendant of the chiefs of Ng'uluhe, and a son of seNgimba, a woman descended from the chiefs of Ilole, a chiefdom which had been taken over by Munyigumba. Mkwawa was also a grandchild of seKindole, a daughter of a former chief of Lun- gemba, another area which had been absorbed into Munyigumba's chief- dom. In addition Mkwawa had taken as his first wife seMusilamugunda, a relative of Myovela, exiled chief of Udongwe, who in turn was agnatically related to chief Kindole of Lungemba. He had the loyal support of a num- ber of capable men, many of whom were his relations or affines. Because of his genealogical position, he was believed to have a special relationship with the spirits (masoka) of these dead chiefs, and therefore made offerings on their graves, asking for their assistance both in personal matters and in matters which concerned the whole chiefdom, such as rain or success in war.55 His father's war medicine (amahomelo) is said to have been lost in the Ruaha by his mother, who drowned herself when fleeing from Mwa- mbambe,56 but Malavanu mwaMbalinga had obtained new war medicine for him, which had proved its potency in the defeat of Mwambambe and in many other battles.57 His success in warfare and his increasing wealth through trade were proof of his ability and intelligence. The Hehe believe that these are necessary chiefly qualities found in those whom nguluvi (god) intends to rule. His success in war also enabled him to retain the allegiance of those formerly independent groups which had been conquered by his father.

Like many other chiefs in late-nineteenth-century Tanganyika, Mkwawa built for his capital a large wooden stockade, and the site he chose on the Little Ruaha river enabled him to construct it so that the river bisected the fort and guaranteed a plentiful and permanent water supply. The fort was known as Kalenga (little water), Ilinga (stockade) and Lipuli (strong

55 There is evidence that Mkwawa often made offerings on the grave of his father, which lay near the grave of his mother's father, Kindole, at Lungemba. Stierling, 'Die Konigs- graber der Wahehe', M.S.O.S. III, pt. 3 (1899), 26I. (In English translation T.N.R. XLVI, January 1957, 28.) Adams, Im Dienste, 25, 45-6. Liebert, Neunzig Tage, 36.

56 Information recently collected from the Hehe agrees with Adams, that seNgimba drowned herself in the Ruaha at Kikongoma, but not that her body was then fished out, Adams, Im Dienste, 25-6.

57 In a text written on 25 Feb. 1933 for Gordon Brown, Bonifas, son of Mkwawa, wrote that Mkwawa removed his protective medicine before he shot himself: 'iwopola pibiki, ino kwicha saa sidatu ihute ihagika pangwapa kwipundula.. .'. Even if this is not true, it at least shows that the Hehe believed that he was protected by medicines.

424

MKWAWA AND THE HEHE WARS

elephant).58 From here he governed his expanding chiefdom through a number of subordinate rulers (vanzagila) whom he appointed and dis- missed. Many of these were those who had formerly been independent chiefs, or their descendants; others were the chief's relatives and affines or men who had particularly distinguished themselves by their intelligence and bravery. These men were responsible for ruling the area allotted to them by the chief, for keeping order, judging disputes, for informing the chief of important news, and for assembling men for public works and war. The areas over which they ruled were not of even size, nor were the men all of equal ability and importance. Some of the greatest, on whose loyalty and competence the chief was most dependent, ruled frontier areas, Wota, Mukondoa, Image, Uhenga in Ubena, and Isoliwaya on the Usangu border. At the capital lived war captives (vanyawingi), who performed many servile tasks; young men in training for war (vigendo), who were also used as servants and messengers; various senior wise men (vatambule) who advised the chief and assisted him in judging disputes; and some other subordinate rulers who were in charge of sections of the forces kept per- manently at Kalenga. Other subordinate rulers also had war captives serv- ing them, and they assembled at their own residences companies which they themselves often led. There was also a small number of bondsmen whose status was hereditary (vafugwa). In some ways they were privileged and were treated as the chief's relations, but they had to perform tasks which others despised, such as herding the chief's donkeys, and some of them were taken to be buried alive with dead chiefs or their close relations.59

The usual practice in going to war was to begin by sending out spies (vatandisi) several days in advance.60 Indeed, at all Mkwawa's frontier posts it seems that there were always people engaged in finding out about the neighbouring peoples and the movements on the caravan route. An advance guard (vandagandaga) went out to search for booty and plunder and to capture stragglers if the enemy had already run away. Then, if there had to be a pitched battle, the main fighting force, made up of a number of companies (fipuka), followed. If the chief and his close relations were taking part in the campaign, they came towards the rear, a precaution intended to prevent them being wounded, because it was thought that to see chiefly

58 I am indebted to Aylward Shorter for the following information; in Kinyamwezi ipuli means 'ein wegen seiner riesigen Kraft und Gr6f3e alleingehender Elephant', Edmund Dahl, Nyamwesi-Worterbuch (Hamburg, 1915), 77. In Kikimbu it means the outer row of huts of the chief's village, Btittner, Beantwortung des Fragebogens iiber die Rechte der Eingeborenen in den deutschen Kolonien, Wakimbu (n.d., ?i9Io), 2. It is not sur- prising that the Hehe should have copied the name for their fort from the Nyamwezi. In Kihehe the word for the chief's residence within the fort is ikulu, which is the same as that of Isike's, and Isike was known to Mkwawa, Tom von Prince, Gegen Araber, 207.

59 Nigmann, Wahehe, 4I-2, and Nigmann, Beantwortung des Fragebogens iiber die Rechte der Eingeborenen in den deutschen Kolonien, Wahehe (Iringa, 1910), 5, io. Here he states that slaves were buried with chiefs and chiefs' children, but not that these particular slaves were the vafugwa.

60 This outline is taken from Nigmann, Wahehe, 85-8. Another description which has much in common with this is given in Dempwolff, 'Beitraige', 11-I3.

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27 AH IX

ALISON REDMAYNE

blood spilt would have a demoralizing effect on other soldiers. Also at the rear were older experienced troops called vatengelamutwa (those who stand firm by the chief), and the porters, prisoners and others needed for maintaining the forces in battle.

The unification of the Hehe under Munyigumba has sometimes been attributed to a need to defend themselves against pressure from the Ngoni in the south and the Masai in the north, but there appears to be no firm evidence for this. However, it is virtually certain that they learnt some of their military techniques from other peoples; the Hehe had probably copied their shields and stabbing spears from the Sangu, who had copied them from the Ngoni.61 Some of the names of the Hehe and Sangu regiments were the same,62 and the Hehe claim to have learnt from the Sangu a particular type of speech used to rouse the warriors before battle.

The Hehe acquired fire-arms much later than the Sangu, the Nya- mwezi, or other important fighting groups, but this did not prevent them defeating those with superior arms. They had few guns in 1877 when Elton and Cotterill witnessed their battle with the Sangu,63 and the stories which the Hehe tell of the defeat of Mwambambe emphasize that his Nyamwezi forces had big guns while the Hehe only had spears. Some of their earlier victories were achieved with no guns, or with very few, but they under- stood the value of fire-arms, and, when they were able to obtain muzzle- loaders from the Arabs, guns were kept by the chief and distributed to the most important warriors. Among the Hehe seen by Tettenborn at Image, a few had guns, but most had only spears and shields, and Zelewski was killed by a spear.64 At the battle of Lugalo the Hehe probably captured more guns than they had had at any other time. Many of these were recaptured at the destruction of the fort,65 but others only when the Germans returned in I896,66 and Mkwawa possessed a gun until his death. The military success of the Hehe cannot be attributed to their possession of superior arms.

Both German and Hehe descriptions of the Kalenga fort emphasize Mkwawa's great wealth, his store of ivory, gun-powder and cloth, and his great herds and many wives. Tom von Prince destroyed 30,000 lbs. of gun-powder at Kalenga, and was very impressed by Mkwawa's ivory stores, which contained only a part of the ivory he possessed.67 Nearly all booty and trade were controlled by the chief, to whom the tusks had to be taken, and who distributed the proceeds of war and trade. Successful

61 The spears and the few remaining shields are remarkably alike. There are drawings of Hehe spears and shields in Nigmann, Wahehe, 82-3.

62 Vanamwani, Valambo and Vatengelamutwa were names both of Sangu and of Hehe regiments.

63 In his lengthy description of the Hehe attack on the Sangu, Elton only mentions one Machinga with a gun, Lakes and Mountains, 378. Elton was apparently unaware of the name Hehe and always called them Machinga.

64 D.K.B. (I891), 435. 65 Tom von Prince, Gegen Araber, 300, 302. 66 M. von Prince, Eine Deutsche Frau, 51. 67 Tom von Prince, Gegen Araber, 30I-2.

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MKWAWA AND THE HEHE WARS

hunters and brave warriors were well rewarded, and appreciated receiving long pieces of cloth which they wound around themselves like togas, so that in the eyes of some Europeans they resembled Roman senators.68 Important warriors also received war captives, and their desire for captives and cloth gave them an incentive to maintain their performance in battle. A wealthy chief was able to reward his followers, thus helping to maintain their allegiance.

Freedom from famine or food shortage was obviously extremely im- portant for a people engaged in frequent wars. Uhehe is not particularly well favoured for agriculture, but it is less affected by drought than Ugogo, Usangu or Usagara. Although war captives and women performed most of the agricultural tasks, Mkwawa laid great stress on the importance of cultivation. In famine he organized the redistribution of food supplies and, in an area as large and varied as that which he ruled, it is virtually certain that famine never affected all parts of his chiefdom at the same time. Men going to battle or to live at Kalenga were expected to take their own food supplies, but the chief needed to have at his disposal large supplies of food, and the inhabitants of the fertile Lyandembela flood plain around Madibira, and possibly people from other areas, were compelled to send maize to Kalenga every year.69 The foods which the Hehe value most highly are beer and meat. They were unlikely to have been short of beer with which to celebrate their victories, and they obtained meat from captured cattle or from hunting, which was useful in that it provided a test of endurance and courage, and practice in shooting and spear throwing.

Census figures are often misleading, and the German ones can have been little more than guesses based on tax collection, but it seems clear that the Hehe, together with the peoples conquered by them, were the largest group united under one leader in the southern half of German East Africa.70

68 Adams, Im Dienste, 35. Nigmann wrote that these togas could be about I0 m. long, Wahehe, 4. Togas are still worn by those who can afford them. In Kihehe they are called mugolole, pl. migolole. This is derived from the verb kugolola, to stretch out. They are now generally made with amerikani, a coarse unbleached cotton, and decorated with black and red wool. The method of doing drawn thread work and making tassels at each end may have been learnt from Arabs or Baluchi. Now the usual size of a toga is 2 x 3 yd. Some Europeans have mistakenly stated that Islam is strong in Uhehe because they have assumed that Hehe who wear these togas and turbans are Muslims. See Kathleen M. Stahl, Tanga- nyika, Sail in the Wilderness (The Hague, I96 ), 6o.

69 Adams, Im Dienste, 86. In answer to a questionnaire composed by the District Com- missioner and inserted in the Iringa District Book in I958, Chief Adam stated that the Hehe paid to the chief a regular tribute from the harvest called mbemenge. However, no old people who have otherwise been reliable informants think that this tribute was paid regularly or by all parts of the chiefdom. The Ndamba sent rice to Mkwawa every year, but this may have been intended to feed Mkwawa's Ndamba wife who would not eat maize, Blasius Undole, History of the Ndamba.

0o Official German sources estimated that there were approximately 50,000 Wahehe (including Wasungwa and Wakosisamba) in Iringa and the surrounding districts, Meyer, Das Deutsche Kolonialreich, I (Leipzig und Wien, I909), I85. Admiralty Handbook of German East Africa (H.M.S.O., I916) gives the estimated numbers of each tribe in each district. The grand total of Hehe was 48,336. Mkwawa ruled many people who were not included in these numbers of Hehe.

27-2

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ALISON REDMAYNE

During the period of rapid expansion under Munyigumba and Mkwawa they absorbed many people from other places, both as captives and as free- men. Nigmann explained clearly that there was no such thing as 'a pure Hehe',71 and genealogical inquiries confirm his statements about the diverse origins of the people who were involved in Mkwawa's campaigns. As late as the 1930s some Hehe still identified themselves primarily as members of the formerly independent groups from which they were descended,72 and, from the point of view of the Hehe themselves, it is almost an anachronism to use the word 'Hehe' as a tribal name in the pre- colonial period. It is clear that Mkwawa's subjects were rapidly increasing in numbers, and those who pleased him greatly benefited from their achievements in war and hunting. However, there was more to sustain their military success than a large and relatively wealthy people under one chief and a desire for booty which fulfilled itself.

The Hehe today know themselves as a people with a military reputation and this cannot be merely a retrospective interpretation of their success at

Lugalo. The fact that cowards were made to do women's work and act as

porters must have discouraged many from showing their cowardice.73 The

intelligent and warlike were rewarded in the way they were spoken about and treated.74 They received or gave themselves praise names as encourage- ment to ever greater exploits. They called themselves names such as

Magoha-ga-senga (Battles for cattle), Munyasala-lyangiko (The owner of a spear as long as a roof beam), Migoha-minifu-giwuya-manyehe-ng'ani (Pregnant spears all return home thin; that is, he goes to war and returns home with captives), Mugopisala-amandusi-sinagope (He fears the spear, but not the big guns), Mudenye-wa-ndembo (The breaker of elephants), Malangalila-ga-moto-mwilamba (He who shines like fire in the pond), Muhavanga-danda-ya-tangu (He who drinks enemies' blood from his cupped hands), and many more on the same themes.75

There was also, at least for some time during Mkwawa's reign, a Sangu, Mahanzala mwaKiyombwe, whose task it was to rouse warriors before battle by making speeches in what appears to be a mixture of archaic Kihehe and Kisangu.76 This language is difficult to explain in modern Kihehe and more so to translate into English, but the constantly repeated themes are clear: 'War came into being because of the chiefs-it is not a new thing-it is the game of chiefs-girls make sleeping mats, but men make shields-war is a man's affair-the pounding today is not the pound-

71 Nigmann, Wahehe, 2. 72 This is shown by the tribal classification given in the Native Court registers for this

period (National Archives of Tanzania, Dar es Salaam). 73 Nigmann wrote one subsection on cowardice, Wahehe, 0I3. 74 Nigmann explained the derivation of some praise names, ibid. 105. 75 These are taken from the praise songs and speeches I recorded in I965-6. 16 Dempwolff was aware that the Hehe war-cries contained Kisangu phrases, 'Beitriige',

I 3.

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MKWAWA AND THE HEHE WARS

ing of millet, this pounding is war-these are the men who scoop up and devour from their hands the blood of enemies... 77

Although many names and meanings are now lost, it is generally acknow-

ledged that between campaigns successful warriors spent many days in the beer halls inventing praises, making their exploits known, and singing to the ligombo, a type of six-stringed gourd zither. This created a war culture the remnants of which are still discernible. The Hehe admit that they were sometimes defeated, they have forgotten many of their lesser victories, and in general do not present their pre-colonial past in the wholly glorious light that might be expected; yet through it all comes a picture of great confidence in themselves under Mkwawa. This confidence appears to have been centred in two things: the war medicine, and the fort, especially when it had been rebuilt in stone. According to many Hehe the rebuilding took four years and then the stone walls stood for three years. If this is true, the rebuilding started about I887, at a time when Mkwawa knew about German activities near the coast, the increased traffic on the caravan route and the stone fort of the Sangu in Usafwa. Other suggestions are that the rebuilding was started after the Hehe had ambushed the Germans in I891,78 and that they got the idea from seeing other stone forts in Unyamwezi or the buildings of Arabs and Europeans near the coast.79 Although this evidence for the rebuilding of the fort is confused it, is clear that the Hehe, like the subjects of Mangi Sina in Uchagga,80 believed that a stone fort was unconquerable. One of them recently wrote thus:

When the Hehe had finished building the fort they trusted in it greatly. When they were with Mkwavinyika they said-there is nothing able to knock down this wall which is higher than any other-and the women were singing, saying-there is nothing which can come in here, unless perhaps there is something which drops from the heavens. And the old people were also in the fort and they were not afraid of anything.81

77 Translation from a recording of Pancras, son of Mkwawa, made on 4 April I966. 78 Arning, 'Die Wahehe' (I897), 54; Adams, Im Dienste, 47. Because of the enormous

amount of labour involved, I consider it more likely that the rebuilding was started before I89I.

79 In a story recorded on 7 August I963, Bonifas, son of Mkwawa, stated that Mkwa- wa sent Mtaki to the coast to learn about the buildings there. He could have meant either the buildings of the Germans on the coast, or those of the Arabs at Mukondoa, or even the German forts at Mpwapwa and Kilosa. Adams stated that the Arab, Ru- maliza, fled to Uhehe, made blood-brotherhood with Mkwawa and persuaded him to erect the stone wall (ibid. 47). It is possible that Mkwawa and Rumaliza, having a com- mon enemy, the Germans, made blood-brotherhood even though Mkwawa generally despised Arabs, but Adams is often unreliable in his accounts of events which took place before he reached Uhehe. Andrew Roberts considers that other accounts of Rumaliza's movements make it unlikely that he went to Kalenga until I894. It is also uncertain whether he was in the fort at the time when the Germans stormed it. Rumaliza's other name was Muhammed bin Khalfan. He traded from the coast through central Tanga- nyika to the Congo and was mentioned in various German and Belgian reports and also a number of times by Tippu Tip in Maisha ya Hamed.

80 Rochus Schmidt, Geschichte des Araber Aufstandes, 254. 81 Translation of a Kihehe text by Daima mwaLugenge, I962.

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ALISON REDMAYNE

All these factors-the organization, size, wealth, geographical situation, their war culture and confidence in themselves-help to explain why, under Mkwawa, the Hehe were victorious over many other African peoples and in their ambush of the German forces at Lugalo. However, there are two

things which demand further explanation; the unpreparedness of the Hehe to meet the German attack at Kalenga, and the way in which they continued to resist the Germans for nearly four years after the fort had been destroyed. In spite of their heavy losses at the battle of Lugalo in I891, the Hehe derived great prestige from their victory, and they continued to raid the caravan route and the people who had submitted to the Germans. They knew that they themselves had been unable to break into the Sangu stone fort, but they had knowledge of more recent events which should have moderated their self-confidence, for in I892 and i893 the Germans had stormed the forts of Isike, Mwinyi Mtwana, Kimalaunga and Zunda. Furthermore, they had ample warning of the approach of von Schele's

expedition and, presumably, also detailed information about its size and armaments. Hehe say that Mkwawa had had medicines placed in the path to harm the enemy forces, yet, as he had never before relied on medicines alone, this is hardly a good enough reason for arguing that he did not think he would have to fight. It might have been possible for the Hehe to attack the expedition on the way up the Usungwa escarpment, but they did not, probably because they thought it would be better to defend themselves in the fort at Kalenga. If this were so, it still remains extraordinary that, after

watching the Germans pitch camp outside the fort, they were unprepared for the attack.

It seems reasonable to argue that, once the Germans reached Kalenga, they were bound to take the fort in the end because of their experience and

superior weapons. The Hehe had had little practice in fighting defensive battles and none in defending the fort. Some Hehe say that Mkwawa went mad and instructed them to put gun-powder without bullets into their guns. This might be dismissed as an attempt by the Hehe to excuse their defeat, if it were not that the Germans, who had no reason to minimize Hehe resistance and their own victory, noted that, of the 300 rifles in Mkwawa's

possession, he had only issued Ioo.82 Tom von Prince admitted that the Germans were extremely lucky that the Hehe were in the fort expecting to defend it because, if they had attempted guerrilla warfare outside, rather than a major confrontation, this second German expedition would have been a failure. He entitled this section of his narrative 'Quem deus perdere vult, prius dementat'.83 Mkwawa is known to have depended on his advisors, who, on some other occasions, had affected the course of history -when they recalled him from Ugogo, and also when they dissuaded him from running away from the Ngoni. Now nobody can tell whether at

Kalenga he had considered his position and the best tactics to adopt; 82 Nigmann, Wahehe, i8. 83 Tom von Prince, Gegen Araber, 293.

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MKWAWA AND THE HEHE WARS 431

whether he had been advised to take any particular course of action; or whether he had rejected any good advice. However, it is extremely likely that he tried to blow himself up when he saw what a bad mistake he had made. In 1907 Dempwolff collected a Kihehe text which contained the following pass- age: 'Mahinya wanted to go inside so that he would die in the house. The warriors came and took hold of him saying, "Do you want to die in the house as if you were a woman?" They took hold of him and escorted him outside and they ran away into the bush.'84 Suicide appears to have been common among the Hehe at this time. A number of important people are known to have taken their own lives, among them Mkwawa's mother and Mulimbila, his full brother.85 If it is true that Mkwawa wanted to attempt suicide at this point, he was probably also influenced by his knowledge that his father-in-law, Isike, had attempted it in generally similar circumstances the year before. Mkwawa is now a local and national hero mainly because he continued to resist the Germans for a further four years after this, but most older Hehe who have a generally good knowledge of this period, some of whom were children or youths at Kalenga in i894, are concerned to point out that Mkwawa had to be forcibly dragged out of the fort by Munyananda mwaKisinda.86 There is no obvious motive for inventing this story, which was known within thirteen years of the event. Furthermore, Mkwawa is said to have sat down and cried when he had fled far enough away from Kalenga.87 When he reached Usungwa he threw away his fly switch, possibly an item of royal regalia, and the place became known as Itagautwa, meaning 'where he throws away the chiefship'.88

Many of the Hehe raids, particularly those in Usagara and eastern Ugogo, may not have been carried out at Mkwawa's direct command. Some say that groups of Hehe raided the caravan route whenever there was an opportunity. The less valuable goods became the property of those who had captured them, or of their subordinate ruler who was their immediate superior, and only the most valuable booty was sent to Mkwawa. It is also significant that the Holy Ghost missionaries, who were involved in the negotiations between the Hehe and the Germans, were never certain about the relationship between Mfaluhenga, the subordinate ruler at Ulaya, other important Hehe in Usagara, and Mkwawa. Between the years 1891 and I894, Mfaluhenga may have played as important a role as Mkwawa in the dealings between Hehe and Germans. However, the events from the fall of Kalenga until Mkwawa's death in 1898 were dominated by his actions. The Germans' generous treatment of Sina of Kibosho when he sur-

84 My English translation of this passage, from an essay by Norbert Chelula, a Bena who had been brought up in Uhehe. Dempwolff, 'Beitrige', I21.

85 Nigmann, Wahehe, 20. This is well corroborated by oral evidence. 86 Possibly mwaKasinda. 87 From Kayala mwaMbuta on 27 Nov. 1965. He was a generally reliable informant who

was a herd boy at Kalenga and saw the destruction of the fort. 88 From Absalom mwaDuma on 30 April I966. He was the eldest surviving son of Miho-

makale who, as a boy, had been with Mkwawa until about two days before his death.

ALISON REDMAYNE

rendered;89 the terms which von Prince offered Mkwawa;90 their attempt to rule through Mpangile; and the offer which they made through his sister, that if Mkwawa gave himself up he would merely be exiled, not killed91-all these facts indicate that the Germans wished to come to terms rather than fight Mkwawa to the death.

Magdalene von Prince heard from Isike's relations that Mkwawa had said that he would have given himself up if he had known that the Germans would stay so long and not return to the coast as they had done in I894.92 However, there is only this one suggestion that Mkwawa had considered

giving himself up: it might not be true, and it is out of keeping with what is known about the rest of the campaign, particularly as it is recorded in other parts of Magdalene's diary and by Alfons Adams. Mkwawa's sister was too frightened to go to ask him to give himself up,93 and in June I897 Mkwawa himself told his loyal friends that he would not give in, but would kill himself with his last bullet.94 The events of the years I896-8 are con- sistent with this. Time after time Mkwawa's men attacked German patrols and anyone who surrendered to the Germans. Mkwawa's men came re-

markably near the garrison, and the German patrols often believed that

they were very near Mkwawa, but he always managed to get away. Some- how, by hunting, cattle theft, and by gifts from his loyal supporters, he and his companions were always supplied with food. Even when the govern- ment offered a reward of elephant tusks to the value of 5,000 rupees to

anyone who gave information which would lead to his capture dead or alive,95 nothing happened, and later, when they found his corpse, nobody claimed the reward for having informed them that he was in the Pawaga area. This determination to evade the Germans until his death is expressed in one of his many praise names, Yilimwiganga, meaning 'he is in a stone', that is, he cannot be got out.96

Mkwawa's personal importance in the whole campaign, and most par- ticularly in the last four years, is again demonstrated by the way in which all opposition to German rule in Uhehe ceased immediately at his death.

Except for a few people living near Umbunga, the Hehe did not join in the Maji Maji rebellion which broke out seven years later, but rather

supported the Germans for the joy of being able to fight against the

Pogoro, Mbunga and Sagara.97 Those Hehe who knew him say that Mkwawa was very clever, and this

89 Kathleen M. Stahl, History of the Chagga People of Kilimanjaro (The Hague, 1964) I85-92.

90 Arning, 'Die Wahehe' (1896), 56; Adams, Im Dienste, 48. 91 M. von Prince, Eine Deutsche Frau, I63. 92 Ibid. I63-4. 93 Ibid. I62. 94 Adams, Im Dienste, 51. 95 M. von Prince, Eine Deutsche Frau, i66. 96 Originally the name may have referred to his supposedly impregnable position within

the stone fort, but in retrospect the Hehe interpret it as a reference to the Germans' inability to get him out of his hiding place.

97 This attitude has been expressed by a number of Hehe who fought with the Germans against the Maji Maji rebels.

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MKWAWA AND THE HEHE WARS

reputation is consistent with what he achieved and with the fact that his

surviving children are obviously intelligent. He may also have been highly strung or unstable, and thus have given the Hehe cause to believe he was mad on the day the fort fell to the Germans, or when he had to be persuaded to make a stand against the Ngoni or Mwambambe. One of his praise names, Lukwale-lwa-mwaka, meaning 'The madness of the year', may refer to this aspect of his character as well as to his ruthlessness. He had the same beliefs as other Hehe of his time, but perhaps he held some with

greater intensity than they did. He saw it was necessary to have some deal-

ings with Arabs and later with Europeans, he even made blood-brother- hood with Rumaliza, but, although he is thought to have known a few Germans by sight quite well, he always avoided meeting them. Some

people explained his behaviour by saying that he believed if he caught sight of a European he would die on the spot.98

He was not particularly tall, nor was he as good looking as Mpangile, but he was strong and fairly striking with his protruding forehead, and he was a man to be feared.99 He was very ambitious. He surrounded himself with great ceremonial and was jealous of his authority and position.100 He him- self ordered the deaths, not only of many of his enemies, but also of some of his relations and advisers. When his agnatic first cousin, Mabohola, had given him advice which enabled him to defeat the Ngoni, he had him put to death because some people suggested that Mabohola's intelligence might be a threat to Mkwawa himself.101 He is said to have disposed of Mwengelumutwa mwaMukusa, the subordinate ruler at Wota appointed by Munyigumba, because he was jealous of Mwengelumutwa's power and influence. 'Mukasipele', which means 'Give him to the vultures', was a command frequently heard at Kalenga, where, not far outside the walls, many people were put to death. He also took revenge on those he would not kill. Some say that after a quarrel he had the skin scraped off the face of one of Mpangile's favourite wives.102 He deliberately sent one of his brothers-in-law, Mwambikila mwaMtono, to battle where he might be killed because he had taken other wives after his first wife, Mkwawa's sister, had failed to bear more than one child; in fact, Mwambikila was not killed in battle, but died of smallpox on the way home.103 Mkwawa's enemies paid heavily for resisting him and even his friends were not safe from his wrath. Some people admit that they and their ancestors were

98 Adams, Im Dienste, 47, 50, 5I-2. When Giraud visited Kalenga in 1883, Mkwawa refused to see him, Les Lacs de l'Afrique, 142.

99 The appearance of his head has been described in M. von Prince, Eine Deutsche Frau, 183. She states that Merkl estimated from his corpse that he was i 8 m. tall, which is above the average height of Hehe men. However, those Hehe who knew him insist that he was not particularly tall. 100 Adams, Im Dienste, 34.

101 Mabohola's other name was Kong'oke. He was mentioned in Brown and Hutt, Anthropology in Action, 45. This particular story about him was told by Gaudensio mwaMalangalila on 6 Mar. 1962. 102 From Gaudensio mwaMalangalila on 5 April I962.

103 From a Kihehe essay about his relations by Edward mwaMtono, which he gave to me in August I963.

433

relieved to be released from Mkwawa's rule. He was known as Mahinya, meaning 'The slaughterer', and Likoko, 'The wild beast'. It is easy to understand why many Germans regarded him as a despot and thought that they were doing his subjects, particularly those most recently con- quered, a service by freeing them from his rule and giving them the necessary peace in which to devote themselves to agriculture.

Mkwawa's greatest admirers do not deny that he was exceptionally ruthless, but in late-nineteenth-century Tanganyika greatness was generally dependent on ruthlessness, and this was one of the reasons why Mkwawa remained unchallenged for so long. Even after the fall of Kalenga many people feared to surrender to the Germans because they did not believe that the Germans were strong enough to protect them against Mkwawa, who punished those who surrendered without his permission; yet not all those who supported Mkwawa did so because they feared him. When in power, he had used his wealth and authority in such a way that many people were grateful to him, knowing that they were dependent on him for their material well-being and social status, and that the reputation of Mkwawa was also in part their own reputation. Although he is said to have recognized that his rule was broken when, after the fall of Kalenga, he threw away his fly switch, some of his subjects fought on in the belief that he might triumph and be restored. There were others, particularly those who remained with him during the last months of his life, who supported him even though it cost them their own lives, because they were his per- sonal friends and could not abandon their chief in adversity, however hopeless his cause seemed to be. Adams expressed this devotion to him by saying that the character of the country and of the people was Mkwawa's

protective wall.104 The Germans, as much as the Hehe themselves, recognized the impor-

tance of Mkwawa's personal contribution to the military success of the Hehe before I894 and to their long-drawn-out resistance afterwards. This is best illustrated from the writings of those authors who knew most about the situation, particularly Magdalene von Prince and Adams; Mkwawa's mighty hand was felt in everything, all their thoughts and cares were occupied with 'him'.105 He was everywhere and nowhere,'06 and Tom von Prince could scarcely find his equal as an opponent in the whole of German East Africa.107

There is a marked change in the German attitude towards the Hehe between the early reports after the ambush and the raids in Usagara, when they were presented as a vicious and delinquent people, and the later writings from the end of the campaign and the years of peace when some Germans came to know the Hehe well. The Germans then praised them for their intelligence, loyalty and discipline,108 their physical appearance

104 Adams, Im Dienste, 52-3. 105 M. von Prince, Eine Deutsche Frau, 83. 106 Adams, Im Dienste, 50. 107 M. von Prince, Eine Deutsche Frau, 80. 108 Nigmann, Wahehe, 4, 5, 102.

434 ALISON REDMAYNE

MKWAWA AND THE HEHE WARS 435

and strength,109 and their lively conversation,l0 and even described them as the Herrenvolk of East Africa."l These attitudes are well expressed in an inaccurate romantic article by Stierling on the chiefs' graves at Lungemba: With the death of Kwawa, the last chief of the Hehe, the seven-year long resistance of this intrepid and stubborn mountain people against German rule has come to an end, it is to be hoped for ever. This, unfortunately, at the same time dooms them as an independent tribe. The small remnant of men of pure Hehe blood who still survive will not be able to retain their individuality. They will become intermingled with other tribes, and, instead of remaining fearless warriors and hunters, will degenerate into mere porters like most of the other natives of our Colony... The death of Zelewski and his comrades has been terribly avenged, and bloodily has Kwawa's repeated treachery been punished. The Hehe king- dom, with its barbaric splendour, is no more.112

This romantic respect for the Hehe which the Germans acquired was important in shaping the future of the Hehe, which was brighter than Stierling expected. After Mpangile's execution, the Germans decided that 'divide and rule' was the best method of dealing with the Hehe,ll3 who were administered through akidas and jumbes.14 However, the Germans acknowledged the importance of the Hehe and of Mkwawa's family when they sent his son Sapi to be educated in a monastery in Germany, and on his return employed him as an akida in other districts of German East Africa. In 1912 the Chief Secretary visited Iringa, one of the two remaining military districts in the territory, to consider whether it could be ad- ministered as a civil district with Sapi as a paramount chief.ll5 He decided that it could, but the change had not been made by the outbreak of war in 1914.

When the British took over the government after the war, they learnt much about the country and its people from German sources. Some of the earliest entries in the Iringa District Book are translations of two chapters of Die Wahehe, written by Nigmann, one of the Germans who most ad- mired the Hehe. Sapi was relatively well educated and experienced in district administration, and therefore very suitable to be chief of the Hehe under British rule. The early British administrators expressed their hopes for the future of the Hehe chiefship, which seemed particularly suitable to be developed under the system of Native Administration. 'It therefore appears that the government policy being what it is, we have in the Wahehe a magnificent opportunity for guiding a tribe in modelling its institutions and for building up an ideal chiefship by tact and sympathy, since we have no antiquated or objectionable features to eliminate.'16

109 von Elpons, 'Uhehe', M.D.S. (I896), 77. 110 Tom von Prince, 'Bericht des Hauptmanns von Prince iiber Landeinteilung',

D.K.B. (1899), I3. 111 Nigmann, Wahehe, 2. 112 Stierling, 'K6nigsgr5ber', 257-62. (Translation T.N.R. XLVI, Jan. 1957, 25-8.) 113 Meyer, Kolonialreich, I, 187. 114 These are Swahili titles for different types of headmen. 115 W. Methner, Unter Drei Gouverneuren (Breslau, 1938), 303, and information from

John Iliffe. 16 Iringa District Book

ALISON REDMAYNE

Indeed, the respect which many Germans acquired for the Hehe and the way in which the British administration dealt with them has been one of the most important factors in creating a sense of unity among the Hehe, something which was only just beginning to emerge at the time of Mkwawa's death.

SUMMARY

The Hehe now live mainly in the Iringa and Mufundi districts of Tanzania. Little is known of their early history before the mid-nineteenth century, when chief Munyigumba of Ng'uluhe extended his rule over the other chiefdoms of the Usungwa highlands and central plateau of Uhehe. By his death in ca. I878 he had also won important victories against the chiefs of Utemikwila, Usangu and Ungoni.

After Munyigumba's death the Hehe suffered a temporary set-back when Mwambambe, who had been a subordinate ruler under Munyigumba, tried to usurp the chiefship, killed Munyigumba's younger brother and caused one of his sons, Mkwawa, to flee to Ugogo. However, eventually Mwambambe was killed in battle against Mkwawa, and his surviving followers, whom he had recruited from Kiwele, fled. By 1883, when Giraud visited Uhehe, Mkwawa was the unchallenged ruler of his father's lands, and under him the Hehe, who had only recently acquired political unity, had extraordinary military success. Their most important raids were on the caravan route which ran from Bagamoyo on the coast to Lake Tanganyika. By 890 these raids were a threat to German authority and a major obstacle in the way of colonization and the development of trade. In spite of the Germans' effort to make peace with them, the Hehe persisted in attacking caravans and the people who had submitted to the Germans so, in 1891, a German expedition was sent to Uhehe. This was ambushed and defeated by the Hehe, who then continued their raids, causing the Germans to return in 1894 with a larger expedition and destroy the Hehe fort. Chief Mkwawa may have attempted suicide in the fort, but he was persuaded to flee and then maintained his resistance to the Germans until I898 when he shot himself to avoid capture. The Hehe then submitted to the Germans. Mkwawa's own determination not to surrender was a very important factor in the long struggle. During this war the Germans acquired a respect for the Hehe which has affected the way that the Hehe have been regarded and treated ever since.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE FOOTNOTES

C.M.I. Church Missionary Intelligencer D.K.B. Deutsches Kolonialblatt D.K.Z. Deutsche Kolonialzeitung J.R.G.S. Journal of the Royal Geographical Society M.D.S. Mitteilungen von Forschungsreisenden aus den deutschen

Schutzgebieten M.S.O.S. Mitteilungen des Seminars fur Orientalische Sprachen P.R.G.S. Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society T.N.R. Tanganyika Notes and Records Z. f. E. Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie

436