The People of the Grey Bull: the Origin and Expansion of the Turkana

Abstract

While archaeology and linguistics provide an important basis for the reconstruction of the early history of those parts of eastern Africa inhabited by pastoral societies, oral traditions also can make a valuable contribution. In this paper an examination of the traditions of the Turkana of north-western Kenya reveals an often remarkably sophisticated rendering of complex processes of origin and migration. Moreover, those traditions also embody insights into basic factors concerning the development and spread of pastoralism in East Africa that the methodologies of other disciplines have only recently begun to identify.Turkana traditions suggest that their society had not just one, monolithic ‘origin’, but rather what might be seen as a whole series of them. Highly dramatic and memorable tales of genesis provide vivid idioms of socio-political identity and also contain fundamental cosmological messages. But they also correspond to important stages of change in the development of the Turkana community, and, as such, they (together with less ‘formal’ traditions associated with them) provide vital historical information.The factors which combined to enable the Turkana to carry out their vast and rapid territorial expansion are identified. For instance, one early tradition suggests a fundamental change in their pastoral system – the acquisition of Zebu cattle-while others emphasize important commercial contacts which provided a steady flow of iron-ware and grain. Still others trace the development of the office of Great Diviner, revealing how it became a primary focus of economic and cultural redefinition and corporate identity as alterations to the earlier generation-set system occurred. Another tradition provides a glimpse of Turkana expansion from the point of view of peoples absorbed by it.