Abstract
The general appearance was that of the most abundant fertility. It was a land of Goshen to us. Galton, 1858, p. 195
The term ‘landscape’ is used in this chapter to denote land that is marked by historical and cultural layers of meaning which have accumulated over time. It explores the precolonial histories of eastern Ovambo kingdoms in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the interrelationship between historical accounts of royal succession and power with the local floodplain ecologies. The region attracted geographical explorers from 1850, notably Galton and Andersson, who brought radically different methodologies of viewing the land. The chapter examines travel narrative and oral tradition, cartography and oral history, each as a separate medium, but whose selective juxtaposition helps to expose their codes and practices. Whereas Ovambo marked trees and graves as powerful sites of hypomnesia, Galton and Andersson sought to erase autochtonous readings of landscape through an ominous discourse of blankness, propped up by empirical techniques, remote from both the human senses and local memory.
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Notes
- 1.
Goshen suggests a place of light or plenty. See Genesis xlv, 10 etc.; Exodus viii, 22, ix, 26.
- 2.
The kingdom now falls within the present-day Omusati region, and its main town is Ondangwa. This was not Andersson’s first visit to the northern kingdoms of the Ovambo (see below).
- 3.
- 4.
The first such blood-peace was reached by the kings of Ondonga and Uukwambi in 1868, marked by the sacrifice of a cow at Omagonzati. This was one year after Andersson’s last visit through Ondonga. Even later, in the forest area between Oukwanyama and Ondonga at Ondugulugu in 1891, a black cow was sacrificed to mark the Ndonga–-Kwanyama ‘blood-peace’. According to Petrus Amutenya, ‘it symbolised peace and the sweeping away of blood’. Petrus Amutenya, ‘Okakulukadhi’ translated by Escher Luanda (unpublished manuscript, Okahau, ca. 1990). See also AVEM No 1.477, Sckär, Historisches, Ethnographisches, Animismus, ca. 1901-–1913. There is disagreement as to dates of this blood-peace, but Finnish sources quoted by Siiskonen give 1891 as the date. See Siiskonen (1990, p. 209).
- 5.
Ryan’s emphasis on cartography in his study of exploration overlooks many of the problematics of exploration. In view of Andersson’s difficulties in this terrain, which led to his decline into delirium and death (from blackwater fever), Johannes Fabian’s recent work entitled Out of Our Minds comes much closer to representing the contingent, vulnerable, at times inchoate, nature of such expeditions (see Fabian, 2000).
- 6.
The longest statement by Kaulinge was transcribed, translated, and published (see Kaulinge, 1997), with an introduction by this author.
- 7.
While Although Kaulinge’s account seems to be separate from oral traditions recorded by missionaries in Oukwanyama, the latter were solicited between 1890 and 1915, a period very close to Kaulinge’s boyhood and a time he emphasizes emphasises as one of learning about the royal histories. The most prominent missionary-ethnographer was Sckär of the Rhenish mission; his material was later extensively used by the American ethnologist Edwin Loeb who published In Feudal Africa (1962). These ethnographers and Kaulinge are frequently covering the same ground, but in very different ways.
- 8.
The name Mbandja refers to the breast, the highest status body part of the animal slain by the hunter.
- 9.
According to Vansina the root kundu in central Africa also suggests pregnancy, matrilineage, and familial domain (2001, p. 270).
- 10.
The book is a biography of Andersson, with a foreword by General Smuts in recognition of his exploratory work and status as Galton’s companion.
- 11.
University of London Archives, Galton Papers, Andersson – Galton, Otjimbingue, 21 September 1857.
- 12.
See University of London Special Collections, Galton Papers, correspondence.
- 13.
This included a facetious episode in which he used his sextant to measure the dimensions of a Khoe woman from a distance.
- 14.
National Archives of Namibia (NAN), A83, Charles John Andersson papers, ‘Notes for a Projected Book’.
- 15.
NAN A83, Charles John Andersson papers, ‘Notes for a Projected Book’.
- 16.
Waterholes do emerge in certain kinds of oral narrative, for instance, the Mbandja oral accounts of fighting the Portuguese in 1904 and 1907. See Hayes (1992, vol 2: 6).
- 17.
See also Archives Générales de la Congrégation du Saint-Esprit, 465-III, Duparquet, Notes sur les Omarambas, ca. 1880.
- 18.
See Clarence-Smith for a chronological treatment of regional droughts. P. D. Tyson (1986, p. 68) counters arguments that progressive dessication has occurred in the last two hundred 200 years.
- 19.
Duparquet in 1880 noted the construction of a reservoir in Ombandja, which Clarence-Smith and Moorsom (1977) have argued would have required centralizsed kingship.
- 20.
Interview with Aromas Ashipala, Jason Ambole, Petrus Eelu, Vilho Tshilongo, and Jason Amakutuwa, Elim, 26.9.1989.
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Hayes, P. (2009). A Land of Goshen. In: Bubenzer, O., Bollig, M. (eds) African Landscapes. Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation, vol 4. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-78682-7_8
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