settlement and used as far downhill as the shamba lands, acted as connecting arteries through the mountain ridges, encouraging cooperation throughout any given ridge. Thus, water influenced the development of these communities by being a divisive force, separating communities onto different ridges while also fostering partnership between those uphill and downhill on the same ridge.
Political centralization followed these lines as well. The institution of chieftaincy developed gradually as dominant families on each ridge asserted increased authority over others. In most cases, these families were located farthest uphill, in the areas of greatest water abundance. By the early nineteenth century, cooperating settlements on the same ridges had coalesced into around forty chieftaincies, each led by a chief (mangi). The largest of these from west to east were Siha, Machame, Kibosho, Uru, Moshi, Kirua, Kilema, Marangu, Mamba, Mwika, and Mkuu. Wamangi governed in partnership with councils of lineage heads, called njamaa, and their main claim to power was likely their control of the warrior age classes.29 Each chiefdom consisted of districts called mitaa (sing. mtaa), administered by district heads called wachili (sing. mchili), who were appointed by their mangi.30 Over the nineteenth century, the power of the wamangi grew alongside the rise in regional trade and an increase in warfare among groups on the mountain. It is important to note that their role did not include control of land, surface water, or irrigation.
The ability to control rain proved crucial to the wamangi and clan heads’ claim to authority. Rainmaking knowledge tended to be held by ranking members of clans and by professional spirit diviners (wamasya, sing. mmasya). In times of drought or flooding, these individuals made offerings to spirits deemed important to the water supply. These powers could be used for the benefit of the people, or to further one’s political interests. Wimmelbücker notes the example of Mashina, a chieftainess who ruled Mamba at the beginning of the nineteenth century.31 According to oral narratives, she turned against her own people and ordered her rainmaker, Kisolyi, to hold back the rains in order to bring famine and punish her people. She was later ousted from power. This story illustrates the power of a mangi to command control of rainfall, as well as the power of the people to depose leaders who mismanaged the resource. Another example Wimmelbücker provides is Makimende, a mmasya who became renowned for his rainmaking skills during the drought of 1897–99.32 He traveled throughout the southern chiefdoms, and he became a close confidant of Mangi Marealle. A few years later, his medicines proved ineffective, and Marealle sentenced him to a punishment of fifty lashes and having his cattle taken away. These two examples indicate how one group of specialists did not have a monopoly on rainmaking. Rather, rainmaking knowledge could be exercised by elders, wachili, wamangi, and wamasya, often in competition with one another.
In addition to their economic practices and social structures, the peoples of the mountain shared common rituals and forms of spiritual expression. Initiation, midwifery, burial rites, and worship practices developed very consistently. A collective notion of spirituality, based on the mountain’s geography, lay at the heart of these. It framed the mountain as having four regions of spiritual significance: the vihamba, the homeland of the living; the rainforest, the home of the spirits (waruma, sing. mruma); Kibo, the dwelling place of the creator Ruwa; and the lowlands, the surrounding plains devoid of life and full of dangers and evils. Most daily worship centered on reverence to the waruma.33 Though they dwelt primarily in the rainforest, they frequented forest groves, waterfalls, banana groves, and dracaena plots, and they possessed the power to intervene in everyday events. If people lived in harmony with the spirits, then the spirits would ensure abundance and peace. If people did not, then harmful outcomes would ensue. This was especially important for water, as many springs were thought to be controlled by waruma who would cut the water flow if they became agitated.34 To retain good relations with the spirits, the living made offerings and included them in rites and rituals. Professional diviners, the wamasya, could be called upon in dire situations, as could other ranking members of the clan deemed to have knowledge of the spirit realm. People also developed the notion of a supreme spirit known as Ruwa.35 They considered him to be the creator of the mountain, the one who shaped vitality out of the desolation of the plains. Linked to notions of life, fertility, protection, and goodness, he nurtured his peoples by providing the fertile soils of the vihamba and the waters that filled streams and rivers. According to Anza Lema, people regarded Ruwa as the giver of rain, and they “delighted in the sound and feel of the rain, sensing its promise for a good season in which they harvested plenty and prospered.”36 They also considered rain to be Ruwa’s spittle or saliva, a symbol of health, happiness, prosperity, well-being, and favor.37 Reverence to Ruwa took the form of veneration and spitting in the direction of Kibo as well as ritual offerings of animals and mbege made in watercourses.
Despite the presence of numerous shared cultural, economic, and religious practices, the peoples of the mountain held no sense of shared political identity. The most salient forms of identity were local, based on family, clan, and age-set. Chiefdom identities became more important throughout the nineteenth century, though these proved fluid as chiefdoms merged, separated, and asserted authority over one another. Though mountain people did have some sense of community with one another, a shared geography, and a common belief that people from outside the mountain were different and lesser, they did not see themselves as part of the same polity or ethnicity.
MANAGING WATER RESOURCES
The key factor that facilitated the development of these societies was the prevalence of water. Ample rainfall and an abundance of surface water sources—streams, rivers, springs, and waterfalls—shaped the landscape and gave the agroforest belt its vitality. These were essential to the intensive agriculture of the vihamba and the high-density settlements that formed on the mountain’s ridges. Over centuries, people developed intricate ways of managing their resources. They also came to understand the natural patterns of rainfall and stream flow, as well as the challenges of periodic drought. People did not utilize water passively; they actively managed it.
The mountain offered many natural sources of water, including rainfall (see table 1.1), springs, streams, rivers, and waterfalls, as well as man-made irrigation works. These sources each had different characteristics that mattered to users: proximity to the homestead, ease of access, seasonal availability, turbidity, taste, spiritual significance, and claims of ownership. Therefore, most people practiced a multiple-source water economy, in which they procured water from different sources, at different times of year, and for different tasks. Rain was the one source of water utilized by all, as it nourished the crops of the vihamba. Surface water sources could supplement rainfall during the dry months or prolonged periods of drought, but more often they were used for domestic purposes such as cooking, brewing, watering livestock, cleaning, and manufacturing mud blocks used for construction. Decisions about where to collect water were highly localized and dynamic. Patterns of water usage were as unique as the people themselves, varying from homestead to homestead and over time. Though individuals could make claims on naturally occurring water sources, this did not imply ownership, as it was forbidden to charge people or accept payment for water from these sources.38
Perhaps the most notable surface water feature was the extensive system of man-made irrigation canals known as mifongo (sing. mfongo).39 These were excavated ditches designed to divert water from rivers and channel it, using the power of gravity, directly into areas of settlement, where it could then be used for irrigating vihamba and shamba as well as for domestic uses. Mifongo came into use between two hundred and four hundred years ago. The technology was likely imported from neighboring areas with histories of irrigation development,40 and it developed into the most extensive system of mountainside irrigation in Africa. It is difficult to know the number of canals that existed in 1850, considering the lack of data and the challenge of counting a system that was by its nature dynamic; canals were built, abandoned, and resurrected in response to need. In the 1920s, Gutmann estimated that as many as one thousand canals lined the slopes of the mountain.41
Mifongo across Kilimanjaro
