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Children
of
The Odyssey of the Oromo
Slaves from Ethiopia
to South Africa
28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 54321
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xv
Introductory Ruminations 1
Part I
Roots: Memories of Home 13
Chapter 1 Ethiopia: The Lie of the Land 15
Chapter 2 The Family Structure of the Oromo Captives 29
Chapter 3 Wealth and Status of the Oromo Captives’ Families 42
Chapter 4
Topography, Domicile, and Ethnicity of
the Oromo Captives 52
Part II
Routes: From Capture to the Coast 61
Chapter 5 The Moment of Capture 63
Chapter 6 On the Road 73
Part III
Revival: From Osprey to Lovedale 95
Chapter 7 Interception to Aden 97
Chapter 8 Sojourn in the Desert and the Onward Voyage 111
Chapter 9 By Sea and Land to Lovedale 122
Chapter 10 Education at Lovedale 131
vii
viii CONTENTS
Part IV
Return: Forging a Future 155
Chapter 11 Going Home 157
Part V
Reflections 185
Appendices 201
Appendix A The Variables and Authentication of the Data 203
Appendix B The Oromo Narratives 213
Appendix C Gazetteer of Place-Names in the Narratives 257
Appendix D “My Essay Is upon Gallaland,” by Gutama Tarafo 261
Appendix E Repatriation Questionnaire, 1903 263
Notes 265
Index 323
Illustrations
Figures
1.1. Mountainous terrain between Axum and Lalibela in Ethiopia 17
1.2. Holy tree festooned with cloth and votive offerings for
Oromo worship 20
1.3. Ancient walled city of Harar 25
2.1. Oromo children shortly after their arrival at the Keith-Falconer
Mission 34
3.1. Oromo oxen 48
3.2. Cavalry on the Wadela plateau in Ethiopia 50
6.1. Billy King’s descent from highlands to coast 75
7.1. Cross section of a two-masted slave dhow 98
7.2. Gardner gun 100
7.3. Tadjoura in the mid-nineteenth century 102
7.4. Modern Rahayta/Raheita/Araito 104
7.5. Slave ship captured by HMS Osprey, ca. 1885 106
8.1. Aden in 1882 112
8.2. Oromo children on arrival at Sheikh Othman, September 1888 114
8.3. Reverend William Gardner at Sheikh Othman 115
8.4. Keith-Falconer School: boys on ground floor;
girls on upper floor, 1889 117
8.5. Keith-Falconer Mission: Oromo children and missionaries 118
8.6. Berille Boko at Lovedale, ca. 1899 119
8.7. Oromo children at Sheikh Othman, 1890 120
9.1. Conway Castle, 1880 123
9.2. Fillis Circus poster for World’s Fair, Chicago, 1893 124
10.1. Oromo boys at Lovedale shortly after their arrival, ca. 1890 136
10.2. Oromo boys at Lovedale shortly after their arrival, ca. 1890
(same photo as 10.1, with Lochhead replaced by Alexander Geddes) 138
10.3. Oromo girls in their Sunday best at Lovedale, ca. 1892 143
10.4. Samuel Edward Krune Mqhayi 144
ix
x ILLUSTRATIONS
Graphs
2.1. Ages of boys and girls when interviewed 33
2.2. Years of capture showing onset of drought, famine, and rinderpest 35
2.3. Family sizes of boys and girls 37
2.4. Orphanhood of the Oromo children vs. children in
South Africa, Ethiopia, and Oromia 39
3.1. Parental occupation by gender of child 43
3.2. Relative sizes of land occupied by Oromo families 45
3.3. Family livestock ownership by gender of child 47
4.1. Altitude at which each child was captured 54
4.2. Altitudes of places of origin by gender of child 56
4.3. Home countries of the Oromo children 57
4.4. Ethnicities of the children 58
5.1. Places of origin of the children’s captors 65
5.2. Places of origin of raiders and of children 66
5.3. Modes of capture by gender of child 67
5.4. Domestic and external slave trade networks 69
5.5. Occupations of captors 71
6.1. Final legs to entrepôts 77
6.2. Distances (km) from capture to coast: boys and girls 80
6.3. Distances (km) from capture to coast: boys 82
6.4. Distances (km) from capture to coast: girls 83
6.5. Travel times on the road: boys and girls 84
6.6. Years in domestic enslavement by gender of child 86
6.7. Total first-passage time in years from home to dhow 88
6.8. Ethnic identities of slave traders and owners 89
Illustrations xi
Maps
1.1. Modern Ethiopian administrative regions 16
1.2. Reclus’s population figures overlaid on a modern outline
map of Ethiopia 19
4.1. Places of domicile of the Oromo captives 55
6.1. Two entrepôts and penultimate points of call 78
6.2. Crisscrossed journeys of the sixty-four Oromo children 79
7.1. Perim Island in the Strait of Mandeb 103
9.1. Sea voyage from Aden, Yemen, to East London, South Africa 122
9.2. Route from East London to Lovedale 127
11.1. Arena of Buller’s forces in Natal, January–July 1900 161
11.2. Bismarck’s dream of a German Mittelafrika 170
11.3. Domiciles of the Oromo in South Africa by 1909 181
Females
B.43. Agude Bulcha 242
B.44. Asho Sayo 243
B.45. Ayantu Said 243
B.46. Berille Boko 244
B.47. Berille Nehor 245
B.48. Bisho Jarsa 245
B.49. Damuli Diso 246
B.50. Damuli Dunge 247
B.51. Dinkitu Boensa 247
B.52. Fayissi Gemo 248
B.53. Galani Warabu 249
B.54. Galgalli Shangalla 249
B.55. Halko Danko 250
B.56. Hawe Sukute 251
B.57. Jifari Roba 251
B.58. Kanatu Danke 252
B.59. Meshinge Salban 253
B.60. Soye Sanyacha 253
B.61. Turungo Gudda 254
B.62. Turungo Tinno 255
B.63. Wakinni Ugga 255
B.64. Warkitu Galatu 256
Tables
7.1. Details of three dhows intercepted by HMS Osprey 99
10.1. Comparative crude death rates, 1891–1901 150
11.1. Confirmed independent and Kronprinz repatriates 179
A.1. Changing sex ratios 210
C.1. Place-names and alternatives mentioned by Oromo children 257
Acknowledgments
This book has been several years in the making, and along the way there have been
countless people who have offered valuable help and encouragement. The topic in-
trigued and enticed many, and I have appreciated their interest and enthusiasm. The
staff of the Cory Library at Rhodes University have always evinced a special interest
in the project, knowing that it was there it all began. After all, my first inkling of the
existence of these Oromo children came in the form of brief entries on cards in the
Cory Library’s manuscript catalog. I am grateful to Dr. Cornelius Thomas, Liz de
Wet, Zweli Vena, Sally Poole, Louisa Verwey, and all the Cory Library staff, past and
present, who went the extra mile with their professional assistance. Thank you for
your encouragement, kindness, friendship, and laughter over the years.
In Cape Town, I thank all the staff, past and present, in Special Collections at Uni-
versity of Cape Town (hereafter UCT) Libraries, particularly Bev Angus, Busi Khangala,
Allegra Louw, Sue Ogterop, and Belinda Southgate. Thank you for your professionalism,
encouragement, and humor in equal measures. Thank you to Dr. Colin Darch for his
personal insights into past and present Ethiopia and for the loan of precious items from
his personal library. I am grateful to the staff in Manuscripts and Archives for access to
the James Stewart Papers and the Monica and Godfrey Wilson Papers, particularly Les-
ley Hart, Clive Kirkwood, and Isaac Ntabankulu. That the James Stewart Papers were
deposited in Manuscripts and Archives at the University of Cape Town instead of in the
Lovedale Archives in the Cory Library has been, for the purposes of this study, a most use-
ful anomaly. I applaud the unfailing efficiency of all those in UCT Libraries’ Inter Library
Loans section who speedily located countless obscure sources for me over the years. My
warm thanks to them for their efficient, friendly, and enthusiastic support.
I am profoundly grateful to Nicholas Lindenberg and Thomas Slingsby of the GIS
lab at the UCT for their interest in and assistance with this project. I thank them for
their patience, the many afternoons spent in their lab, for the generation of countless
maps from my data, and for their unflagging enthusiasm. I am similarly grateful to
Professor Roddy Fox of the Department of Geography at Rhodes University in Gra-
hamstown, who skillfully created an additional map from a subset of data.
The National Library of South Africa has been a favorite haunt since the early
1970s, so spending much time in the Reading Room and Special Collections was, as
xv
xvi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
focus of the Scottish missionaries on the Eastern Cape frontier was education. They
imparted their belief in equality and Christian brotherhood along with some useful
secular teaching. However, working within the context of colonial influence and con-
trols meant that they could not always match their ideals with their actions. They
raised African hopes and expectations that could not be met in the context of the
Cape political environment. Nonetheless, they offered Africans at their institutions
the opportunity for a new, common identity that could transcend both clan rivalries
and national divides.44
Countering this interpretation is the postmodernist view of missionary discourse
and African response, which suggests, inter alia, that Victorian Christians (like James
Stewart at Lovedale) spearheaded “a narrative in which Africans are metaphorically
characterised as an ‘infant’ race in the more general march of ‘civilisation’ world-
wide.”45
Gender issues in the mission context have prompted considerable discussion on
subjects including missionary education that reinforced the stereotypes of women’s
roles in home, classroom, and workplace. Nineteenth-century missionaries and edu-
cators never quite lost sight of the gendered, domestic, and largely inferior role of
young African women.46 A feminist subset of critics suggest that the missionaries
wanted to turn young African girls into Victorian women, with their place firmly
rooted in the home. However, placing women in the home released them from agri-
cultural labor. In defense of the missionaries’ more complex motives, they wished to
emancipate women from the fields and to render the males into Christian yeomen.
This movement began with the Watson Institute at Farmerfield in the Eastern Cape
in 1838 and spread throughout South Africa.47
Support for this notion comes in an essay (included in this book; see appendix D)
written by one of the Oromo boys, Gutama Tarafo, while at Lovedale. Drawing a
direct comparison between the Oromo and the Xhosa people, Gutama insisted that
Oromo men would never allow their wives to work in the fields. Instead, the Oromo
women had dominion over the family home. As a male Oromo teenager, Gutama
tellingly championed the right of women to be relieved of heavy manual field labor
and to regard their position in their homes as one of domain rather than servitude.