Rumanika Was The Most
Resolute In This Belief, As The Kings Of Uganda, Ever Since That
Country Was Detached From Unyoro, Had Been Making Constant Raids,
Seizing Cattle And Slaves From The Surrounding Communities.
Chapter IX
History of the Wahuma
The Abyssinians and Gallas - Theory of Conquest of Inferior by
Superior Races - The Wahuma and the Kingdom of Kittara - Legendary
History of the Kingdom of Uganda - Its Constitution, and the
Ceremonials of the Court.
The reader has now had my experience of several of the minor
states, and has presently to be introduced to Uganda, the most
powerful state in the ancient but now divided great kingdom of
Kittara. I shall have to record a residence of considerable
duration at the court there; and, before entering on it, I
propose to state my theory of the ethnology of that part of
Africa inhabited by the people collectively styled Wahuma -
otherwise Gallas or Abyssinians. My theory is founded on the
traditions of the several nations, as checked by my own
observations of what I saw when passing through them. It appears
impossible to believe, judging from the physical appearance of
the Wahuma, that they can be of any other race than the semi-
Shem-Hamitic of Ethiopia. The traditions of the imperial
government of Abyssinia go as far back as the scriptural age of
King David, from whom the late reigning king of Abyssinia, Sahela
Selassie, traced his descent.
Most people appear to regard the Abyssinians as a different race
from the Gallas, but, I believe, without foundation. Both alike
are Christians of the greatest antiquity. It is true that,
whilst the aboriginal Abyssinians in Abyssinia proper are more
commonly agriculturists, the Gallas are chiefly a pastoral
people; but I conceive that the two may have had the same
relations with each other which I found the Wahuma kings and
Wahuma herdsmen holding with the agricultural Wazinza in Uzinza,
the Wanyambo in Karague, the Waganda in Uganda, and the Wanyoro
in Unyoro.
In these countries the government is in the hands of foreigners,
who had invaded and taken possession of them, leaving the
agricultural aborigines to till the ground, whilst the junior
members of the usurping clans herded cattle - just as in
Abyssinia, or wherever the Abyssinians or Gallas have shown
themselves. There a pastoral clan from the Asiatic side took the
government of Abyssinia from its people and have ruled over them
ever since, changing, by intermarriage with the Africans, the
texture of their hair and colour to a certain extent, but still
maintaining a high stamp of Asiatic feature, of which a market
characteristic is a bridged instead of bridgeless nose.
It may be presumed that there once existed a foreign but compact
government in Abyssinia, which, becoming great and powerful, sent
out armies on all sides of it, especially to the south, south-
east, and west, slave-hunting and devastating wherever they went,
and in process of time becoming too great for one ruler to
control. Junior members of the royal family then, pushing their
fortunes, dismembered themselves from the parent stock, created
separate governments, and, for reasons which cannot be traced,
changed their names.
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