Essay,” Gutama also wrote about the houses and properties occupied by the Oromo in his region:
The houses are not the same as those here. The Galla huts are [always] four or five times bigger than these Kaffir huts. I may say the Galla house has got two storeys. In the upper storey they keep corn and other things; but in the lower one the people sleep. There are two rooms in the lower storey, one is where the mother of the house does her work and the other one is for sleeping and eating. There are many kinds of grain, as wheat, barley, maize, and bishinga, that is Kaffir-corn, also pumpkins, potatoes, and other things like potatoes, beans, coffee, peas, bananas, also cabbages and tobacco and many other things which I can’t name in English. . . . The Galla people are rich in cattle and corn. Some of them have farms for cattle, and some for corn. (appendix D)
Gutama wrote about his home and homeland as he remembered them prior to his capture in September 1886. His premature departure from home predated the onset of the great drought and famine that was to blight the land after the rains failed in the summer of 1887. In Gutama’s description, the crops of the Oromo were still abundant and the cattle plentiful.
Livestock
Although as many as 61.6 percent of the children did not give any information regarding whether their families owned livestock, the remaining 38.4 percent not only reported that their families owned livestock, but followed up by identifying which types of animals they held and even, in some cases, how many head of each species. More than three times as many boys’ families owned livestock (69.7 percent) against only 30.3 percent of the girls. The double pie diagram below (graph 3.3) shows the combination of livestock species mentioned by the children tabulated by gender of child.
As the diagram indicates, cattle clearly predominate, featuring alone and in every combination of livestock mentioned by the children. As might be expected, there is a high correlation between freehold tenure and livestock ownership, so on those grounds alone there would have been an expectation of higher livestock holdings for the boys’ families than for the girls’. The boys’ families held the full range of livestock species except for the combination of cattle and donkeys: cattle only (30.3 percent); cattle and sheep (12.1 percent); cattle, goats, and sheep (9.1 percent); oxen, sheep, goats, and horses (9.1 percent); cattle and goats (6.1 percent); and cattle, horses, and sheep (3 percent). The girls’ families held either only cattle on their own (12.1 percent); cattle and sheep (6.1 percent); cattle, goats, and sheep (6.1 percent); or cattle and donkeys (also 6.1 percent).
Tolassa Wayessa’s father, for example, had “about twenty oxen, fifteen sheep, also a horse” (appendix B; narrative 38). What Tolassa does not mention is that along with the landed property and livestock, his father also owned several slaves. Many years later, Liban Bultum wrote to Lovedale from Addis Ababa to say that
Tolassa Wayessa, who returned some years ago, has a good position in the German Legation. Wayessa’s father and mother were dead before he reached Abyssinia; but he found an old woman who used to live with his parents when he was child. Through her help he has been able to recover all his father’s property with the exception of four slaves belonging to his father, which another man claims.6
GRAPH 3.3. Family livestock ownership by gender of child (source: Sandra Rowoldt Shell).
Slave ownership was obviously a further mark of relative wealth. Only the families of Tolassa and Bisho Jarsa (appendix B; narrative 48) are recorded as owning slaves. This was a sensitive area, however; and the fact that Tolassa did not mention his family owning slaves in his narrative may suggest that there might have been further—unspoken of—instances among the wealthier Oromo families.
Gutama continued his essay by giving details of the livestock commonly kept by the Oromo, beginning with cattle, and he also included information on the use of the plow on Oromo farms (see fig. 3.1). The Oromo were long-term users of the plow, so cattle held a special value for them both as plow oxen and as beef or dairy stock:
The bullocks in Gallaland are very big, much bigger than those in South Africa, as high as a horse. The yokes are nearly like those used in this country. It is a custom to train one of the oxen to guard the Kraal and they sharpen its horns to fight. It does no work but just keeps the kraal. The kraals in Gallaland are bigger than those here, but are made of bushes too. Many people’s cattle go into one kraal. Nearly every cow or ox has a name, and they like very much to eat salt. There are blacksmiths who make the ploughs, long narrow ploughs, and only two oxen draw them. (appendix D)
While Gutama’s nostalgia and innate pride in his country might be considered to be at work in enhancing his memory of the bullocks’ size, Oromo cattle are indeed larger than average.
James McCann, a historian, emphasizes the pivotal role played by oxen in the highland areas, describing them as the preeminent mode of capital and often the economic resource that was hardest to come by.7 The highland ox, larger and heavier than the norm, continues as the draft animal of choice in the highland areas because of its superior pulling power.8
More girls than boys responded with information about their families’ cattle—39.5 percent of girls as opposed to 23.3 percent of boys. Most families (26.7 percent) held what the children described as “a few” or “some” cattle. The rest of the girls were able to give the number of cattle their families held, ranging between one and nineteen head.
FIGURE 3.1. Oromo oxen (source: Tourist 1, no. 35 [8 April 1833]: 281).
A small number (3.5 percent) of boys reported that their families held between twenty and fifty-nine head of cattle. Among these were Fayissa Murki, who said his father owned a small piece of land and “about twenty head of cattle” (appendix B; narrative 14); Tolassa Wayessa, whose father “possessed a large piece of land and about twenty oxen” (narrative 38); and Tola Lual, whose father had a large piece of land and “about twenty ploughing oxen” (narrative 36). Tola Urgessa, who said his father “had a large piece of land of his own, with about sixty oxen” (narrative 37), was one of the 2.3 percent of the families who held between 60 and 99 head of cattle. In the same proportion, the families of 2.3 percent of the girls and 1.2 percent of the boys had more than one hundred head of cattle. Balcha Billo reported that his father held “a great many cattle” (narrative 8); and among the girls, Dinkitu Boensa said that her father, the chief Boensa, had “some hundred of cattle” (narrative 51). Both of these children fell into the final class, coded “100 plus.”
Gutama Tarafo bragged in his memoir that “the Galla horses are just the same as the Arab horses; they all look like race horses” (appendix D). The Oromo, who bred one of the world’s oldest recorded breed of horses,9 were a cavalry people, using horses to traverse their inhospitable territory. This lent them a natural defense against foreign, noncavalry marauders but afforded little protection against slave raiders who were fellow Oromo on horseback (see fig. 3.2). Economists Nathan Nunn and Diego Puga have argued that raids and kidnapping were the principal
