Chilimbulu was the wife of the hunter Mwase. With her attractive scarifications, she seduced Chiti. But Mwase caught them while they were having sex. They fought over Chilimbulu, and Mwase killed Chiti with a poisoned arrow. Nkole then avenged the death of his brother Chiti. He killed Mwase and Chilimbulu and cut up their bodies, but carefully preserved Chilimbulu’s attractive scarified skin. In future, the skin would be kept as a royal relic, a babenye. A “virgin” (or guardian of the relic) would wear the skin of Chilimbulu when it was time to plant the first seeds.109
The celestial ancestry of the Crocodile Clan could not overcome the local magic of the earth; the dangerous desires that a woman inspires. Such desires had to be appropriated and made productive: the skin of Chilimbulu became the chibyalilo object of power used to bless the seeds when it was time to plant.110 While the paramount Chitimukulu kept Chilimbulu’s skin, subordinate Crocodile Clan rulers received a staff of rule with designs that traced out Chilimbulu’s scarified skin and represented her body as a means to communicate with the spirit world.111
Chiti’s brother Nkole then found a place to bury Chiti. The graveyard also had to be cleansed by an act of passion:
Nkole then searched for a graveyard to bury his brother Chiti. He found an unmarried Luba woman of the Sorghum Clan, Chimbala. She offered a beautiful forested grove for Chiti’s grave. Nkole requested that she cleanse the burial party. But cleansing could only be performed by a woman after she had had sex with her husband. So her slave Kabotwe had sex with her. Kabotwe (or Chimbala) would then become the caretaker of the graveyard, Mwalule, the father of “Mwalule,” “Shimwalule.”112
Chiti was buried, bringing the spiritual power of the celestial Crocodile Clan down to earth. Nkole arranged the burial and then joined his brother:
Nkole carefully preserved the corpse of Chiti by soaking it, drying it in the sun, and wrapping it in a cow’s hide. He burned the remains of Mwase and Chilimbulu, so that they could be buried with Chiti. But the smoke from the fire also killed Nkole. They then prepared the body of Nkole in the same way. As the elder brother he was buried above Chiti. They were both buried beneath a termite mound, with their heads facing east.
The graveyard, termed “Mwalule,” became the spiritual center of human and agricultural fertility. The burial of Chiti and Nkole is the end of the charter tradition of genesis, although the oral tradition of the Crocodile Clan continues to narrate significant episodes of their rule, mostly during the nineteenth century.
emotional powers
There are various ways to interpret this first portion of the oral tradition. In typical Luba stories of the founding of the sacred kings (mulopwe), the migrating royal marries the local earth priest.113 This marriage has been interpreted to indicate the unification of local ancestors with Luba sacred royalty, creating a new form of leadership, the mfumu (usually translated as “chief”).114 Such a secular political interpretation has been developed by Andrew Roberts, who wrote the still-unrivaled account of the precolonial history of the Bemba, and discusses the oral tradition as a founding political charter that establishes a relationship of dominance of the migrating Crocodile Clan over the autochthons. The story has no greater historical relevance for Roberts. However, that it remained a political charter through the nineteenth century, was so popular, and took on such a generic form, so similar to the many narratives of the south-central African interior, indicates the centrality of the story to Bemba consciousness during this time period.
The Bemba oral tradition is distinctive from the generic Luba oral tradition in one important way. The Luba genesis narrative features Nkongolo as the uncivilized king who is overcome by the foreigners (the hunter Mbidi Kiluwe and his sons) who bring sacred kingship. The Bemba oral tradition, by contrast, places emphasis on autochthonous spiritual powers by claiming that sacred governance was present in the form of the sacred mulopwe kings before the arrival of Chitimukulu.115 The claims of divine kingship were thus not sufficient to legitimize Chitimukulu’s rule; he had to join the sacred principles of kingship with the powers of the local owners of the land. He did this by first having sex with a local woman, then being killed by her husband, and finally being buried in the earth. In his burial, the king became part of the land and a local ancestral spirit. Even while they killed the autochthons, the Crocodile Clan royals died at their hands. For they could then claim to have conquered and succumbed, both of which were necessary to become the ancestors, the mipashi (sing. mupashi) of the land.
Throughout the Bemba oral tradition, there is reference to powers of the sky and the earth, along with attempts to bring about a new dawn by joining the sky with the earth. Perhaps, like a millenarian Christian movement, these represented efforts to create heaven on earth. For Luc de Heusch, this aspect of the oral tradition explores structural oppositions between sun and earth, civilization and savagery, which informed Bemba cosmology. The dangerous but necessary attempts to join the spirits above and below, the sky and the earth, as in the liminal moments of dawn, are indeed evident throughout the oral tradition: from the Crocodile Clan’s failed adolescent attempts to reach their celestial mother’s homeland to their migration led by the solar hero Luchele Ng’anga toward the rising sun in the east, and finally their death and burial, in which the Crocodile Clan established their celestial connections through being dried by the sun’s rays and thus bringing the sun down to earth.116 Documentary evidence from the nineteenth century provides some support for this ambitious symbolic interpretation. In 1868, Livingstone was told that the Bemba believe in “Reza above [Lesa, or “God”], who kills people, and Reza below, who carries them away after death.”117 Bemba cosmology associated ancestral spirits, mipashi, with the earth below, panshi, where the ancestors are buried (even while the etymology of –pashi and panshi may be distinct). Nature spirits, ngulu, by contrast, refer to the sky above (–ulu).118The opposition of spiritual forces from above and below may have ancient roots in Bantu-speaking societies: objects of power, such as minkisi from the western Bantu-speaking Kongo, were also known to come from above or below.119
The symbolism needs to be supplemented with the more mundane and emotional aspects that made the story all the more gripping and significant for listeners. Sex, jealousy, and death are all age-old sources of fascination for storytellers and their listeners. The narrative is an emotional tragedy that describes a family feud, the fleeing of sons, exile, an illicit desire, and an adulterous relationship that leads to death and revenge and—more death. What is interesting—and constrasts with secular emotional tragedies that unfold due to the mysterious and fatalistic qualities of “love”—is how linked emotions are to spiritual forces: love and seduction to the spiritual and ritual forces that promote fertility; jealousy and anger to the witchcraft that kills Chiti and Nkole. Chilimbulu seduces (and perhaps bewitches) Chiti with her scarified skin. This same magical and beguiling skin was then used to bless the land. The skin relic brings about fertility, a mysterious power that referred to the water monitor (mbulu), a secretive and strange creature.120Mwase, the jealous husband, fights with Chiti over Chilimbulu, and kills him with his magic. Even in death, his witchcraft kills Nkole. Such is the power of love and of jealousy—it inspires fertility and it inspires death. Only through rituals were such passions contained and made productive for health and wealth. Like Jesus Christ, Chiti died for his people. However, his passion, unlike Christ’s, was anything but ascetic. It was ignited by the body of Chilimbulu and had to be controlled by the Crocodile Clan ancestors.
In this oral tradition, then, we have some early evidence of the governance of spiritual emotions, which lead to reproduction and fertility or to death. Rulers needed to channel and deal with such dangerous emotions, and if death resulted, they had to know proper mortuary rites, so as to prevent the unruly behavior by dissatisfied ancestors (hence the detailed focus on the way Chiti and Nkole were buried).121 The political charter legitimized the Crocodile Clan patriarchs’ claims to harness the spiritual emotions: if emotions were calmed and directed, they could lead to fertility and reproduction; jealousy, on the other hand, led to death, the consequences of which could be dealt with only through prescribed rituals.
royal
