The Mumuye before 1900 A.D.

THE MUMUYE BEFORE 1900 A.D.

By Haruna Yakubu Tolenyashong

Considering the historical and ethnographical facts available, the Yorro people being natives of this region may have lived in the hills and plains of the Benue valley since very early or even pre-historic times and together with others like the “Mbum, Kpotopo, Nyam Nyam” and apparently all other numerous mountain groups, they might have roamed these lands. There are also others across the Benue both of the Bantoid and Non-Bantoid stocks.
By these early times, the Mumuye would have been mainly of the Horticultural or sedentary primitive farming culture. The early history of this region is not clear at the moment due to inadequate coverage by archeologists, anthropologists and African historians of repute.
Promising archeological sites however are available in this area. For instance, laborers working on road construction some years back, dug up some interesting and ancient looking items near a hill-side at Pupule in Yorro Local Government Area of Taraba State. They had been digging deep for laterite, when they stumbled on a large stash of pots, metallic objects and other items from deep underground. There are other sites around which appear to have been settled by several groups, one after the other and on one of these, people stick pick items from them when cultivating on the empty sites. There may be need to take a closer scientific look at such places.
The Yorro group of people had been practicing their agricultural lives and going out to hunt for game from time immemorial. They would have been freely practicing their form of shifting cultivation around the plains of these lands. The elders, leading their various groups of families and clans by the guidance of the tradition of VA. Educating their young by initiations and oral folklores which were passed on by generations of their venerated great ancestors.
The wars they fought were mere skirmishes involving fellow clans that might cross each other on social problems which are usually quickly settled by the elders or Va priests.
They would also have had engagements with hostile forces of neighboring tribes like those that may, as conceded by the Bwatiye, launch raids into Yorro lands for war booties in times of hardship or famine.
RELATIONSHIP WITH THE JUKUNS:
The immediate form of activity with a resultant noticeable change probably recorded in historical terms for this region, would have been brought by the Jukuns or the Kwarafa people. Elements of this group began making their presence felt it is believed by the beginning of the 16th century. In relative terms the Benue valley to the west of Mumuye land was where the initial contacts with Mumuye groups were established and remains up to the present day.
The Junkuns are believed to have spread along the Benue river apparently from the south to the central Benue region; for they “had their first capital at Bepi, on the western fringe of the [later] Gassol district of Muri division about 15 miles (24kms) north of Bantaji”1
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1K-Greene (1958) p. 15-16

The original inhabitants of the central Muri area are said to be “Wurbo and Jen along the river rain areas and the Wurkun groups of people on the hills”2
For Elaigwu and Erim, a “pacific pricture is true of the Jukun of Wukari and many other successor states of Kwararafa. To many a historian, what presumably attracted the Jukuns to this area was the presence of salt resources here which they had the ability to manufacture and trade to the surrounding tribes. They are said to have maintained a monopoly on this industry largely giving rise to their influence around.
J. Sterkin in an article entitled “Some reflections on Kwararafa” points that the Jukuns occupied with a few exceptions all known brine springs in northern Nigeria used in domestic salt making. He attributes the spread of the Jukuns therefore to commercial rather than military conquest; and that they tended not to settle far from navigable rivers such as the Donga, Taraba, Katsina-Ala, Gongola and of course the Benue.
Fremattle wrote that “the Jukun during their period of power seem to have confined their settlements here to the salt areas where they are at present” According to Kirk-Greene “salt was worked in two large areas of the old Muri province. Akwana now belongs to the Wukari district of the Benue province, but there is still a center around Bumanda whose ‘red salt’ was celebrated when Barth visited Adamawa a century ago” Bumanda lies west of Kona and just south of old Muri town across the Benue river, near-Jiru.
The Jukun dominance of the salt trade is confirmed in the local folklores and traditions of most tribes in this region, including the Mumuye, to the effect that salt is known as “salt of Kona or Jukun”.
The relationship between the Jukun and Mumuye therefore was through the supply and barter of salt with the latter’s animals or crop produce. The Mumuye also bartered salt with their standard iron currency, the “Taje”; being that they are renown to have ectensively smelted iron themselves at the time.
According to Y.B. Usman, “while in the upper Benue valley for example, the Sukur, Higgi, Kilba, Lala and Verre were famous iron working people, in the middle Benue region the Mumuye were the better known. All groups gathered the ores in the form of a fine black sand by panning after heavy rains. These were then smelted and made into iron bars”6.
Kirk-Greene also wrote of these early Mumuye iron-works, that “the Mumuye wash and smelt their magnetite sands”7 Y.B. Usman afurther says, that “in the middle Benue region too, iron currencies were very common. The Mumuye, had their ‘Taji’, while the Jukan ‘Akika’. By the 1850’s a new form of iron currency, the ‘Kantai’ superceded the ‘Akika’ among the Jukun.
As a result of the neighborly interactions and trade, there as well were other collateral effects. Being as Elaigwu & Erin cite, that “Meek described the Jukun as a collection of an ‘unwarlike ommunity people, more interested in the innumerable religious cults under the presidency of spiritual potentates;”9 they inevitably imparted into some Mumuye groups element of their traditions.
The nearest Jukun group was Kona who lived close to such Mumuye clans as the Golong, Shonzah, Menda, Jessi, Pansi, Pugong Jegam, Yusa and Kwajji. Some among these werstern clans adopted Jukun cults like “Mang” and “Aku” which they used crudely as a source of magic and talisman to extort gifts from relatives or offenders.
Subsequently, at time intervals they took offerings and gifts to their Jukun inspirators to sustain the power of the cults. In this way, the Jukuns might have exerted some influence on those concerned. But then as meek confirms “the Mumuye have no rites corresponding to the ‘Aku Ahwa’ [the main] cult of the Jukun; and the cult had no profound influence and ideological implications on the people beyond “that at harvest, libations of beer are poured on the horns and that in one or two villages the horns are placed on the farms as talisman against thieves”
The extent of its acceptability would have been limited because, “a village chief stated”, early in the century in the words of Meek “that one of his sons wished to introduce the cult into his village, but his father forbade it on the ground that it was not a Mumuye cult and that if it were introduced it would probably bring disaster in its train”.
In the case of the Mumuye and Jukun, the economic, social and religious interaction resulted in mutual respect for each other and they became friends and allies. For instance, in the late 19th century; a Kona chief Aganwa was aided by Mumuye warriors against the Fulani raids.

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w Meek (1931) Pp468
11 Meek (1931) p.468
This influence was a two way give and take affair; for not only did the Mumuye pick up elements of Jukun traditions, but the later as well adopted many cultural aspects of their Mumuye neighbors. They freely attended each other traditionally festivals and exchanged idea when problems arose. According to meek for instance “when a serious drought occurs all the senior priest of the tribe proceed with gifts to the ‘Rain-Maker’ at Yorro. To this cult even the chief of Kona appeals as a last resort, by sending numerous gifts”12.
Throwing more light on the relationships, Kirk-Greene provided that “there remains a Jukun bloc on the kona hills of Muri division with settlements in western of Muri division with settlements in western Gassol and around Lau; this town according to Mizon appear at one time to have been a larger Jukun center. They are superficially assimilated to their Mumuye neighbors with whom marriage occurs.”13
The complexity of the origin, spread, composition or identities of the Jukun or Kwararafa kingdom, may not much complicate the historical facts in relation to the Mumuyes, for their contacts with the Yorro people appears almost entirely limited to the Kona Sub-group. And as meek summed the situation up that, “it would be misleading to suggest that the Mumuye as a whole were ever subject to the Kona or anyone else.”14
Jukun power according to Hickey as far as it reached had its hey days between the period of about A.D 1,500-1,700. 15

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12Meek (1931) p.468
13K-G (1958) p.16
14Meek (1931) p.449
15Hickey (1990) p.8

RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE CHAMBAS;
By the turn of the eighteenth century, when the prominence of the Jukuns was presumed to be taking a downward turn, Chamba influence was apparently rising from the east. The Chamba power had flourished in the days between about 1700-1740 A.D it is said, and during that period they were reputed to have swept far and wide from their center around the upper reaches of the Benue in present Cameron to Donga deep in Jukun country to the south.
Once more as in the case of the Jukun, Chamba relationships with their Mumuye neighbors was predominantly stable and cordial. Traditions of the Mumuye do however acknowledge skirmishes with Chamba forces, specifically the Dakka people; and the result was a no victor no vanquished situation which then developed into peaceful coexistence.
Folklores speak of Dakka people initially attacking and marauding many parts of Mumuye land, but were effectively repulsed and had no toe-hold on any of the areas. They in turn settled the neighboring lands and appear to have also adopted many Mumuye ways.
For instance the encyclopedia Britanica explains under its topic on African Arts’ that the Chamba make masks in the form of bush cows with a very wide mouth, but it is not yet certain whether they make their own figures or obtain them from the Mumuye”.7 More to that, Meek said “the cults of Vabo and Vadosu … are also found among the Chamba, (under the names of Vara and Voma).”8

7 Encyclopedia Britanica (Afrcan Arts) pp. 163
8 Meek (1931) pp. 449 

It has been widely acknowledged that Chambas are conquerors of a peculiar nature. They appeared not to have been colonizers on the march to establish their influences as such. Rather they were more or less a wandering tribe that had this character of getting absorbed into the places they overran and in effect getting assimilated instead of vise versa as can be expected of conquerors.
It is not to go without saying however that such Mumuye areas adjacent to Chamba land were to some extent influenced, e.g the adoption of “VA-Dirim” and “Va-Dakka” cults by some Mumuye elements, in the same process as that from the Jukuns.
It is worth mention here also that in referring to the Chamba people in Mumuye tradition, the name Dakka is that which is mostly known. It is not clear here whether a difference should be drawn or the Dakka should be classed as chambas.
Crozier and Blench classified the Dakka language as a Bantu type unlike the Chamba being of the non-Bantu Adamawa-eastern type.9 Some historians also appear to portray the Chamba as later migrants that fused with an indigenous Dakka, people. Kirk-Grene says, “they [Chambas] were again expelled by the Bata, who had canoes while the Chamba had none. One section spread along the hills (Atlantica) to Mapeo, another to the south of the Mumuye massif to coalesce with the Dakka…” He further depicted the Dakka as a distinct group saying “The Dakka derive from Chamba stock, though features of Jukun culture are discernible; they are ruled in their hill-top villages by their tribal chief the Gangzamanu.”10

Meek p.328-334
9Blench & Crozier (1992)pp.122-123
10 K-Greene (1958) pp.21

Meek also said that “The Chamba driven into the hills appear to have spilt into two groups, coalescing with the Lekon to form Chamba-Leko, and the other with Dakka to form the Chamba Dakka.” As a matter of clarity he wrote that “The Chamba was originally at a town now known as Lamurde Jongum in French territory (Cameroon), that they were driven thence by the Bata across the Faro to the town called “Chamba” at the base of the Alantika hills, whence they were driven out by the Bata”.11
Seanley A.D.O Muri Division in official ethnographic notes (1933) wrote that “in the Dakka District, the Dakka are the original inhabitants. They were conquered early in the last century by the Chamba (who in this part of the country are said to have been in alliance with the Adamawa Fulani) and, already possessing a similar culture have become closely assimilated to them”.

RELATIONSHIP WITH THE BEATIYE:
The next power to rise in the region was Bwatiye (Bata Kingdom as formerly known) who swept down from the Mandara mountains after the trail of the Chamba conquests, neutralizing their influences along the way down the upper Benue region.
The Bwatiye occupied albeit to this day the plains on the banks of the Benue river from its upper reaches down to the neighborhoods of Jen. The force of their drive this way however petered out in the vicinity of the outermost areas and people to the north of Mayo-Belwa. From there sporadically they attacked peripheries of Yorro land for war spoils and slaves. These attacks were under such circumstances mentioned, for the acquisition of material in times of hardship.
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11 Meek (1931) pp. 329

According to Elaigwa and Erim “Makwada (a Bwatiye war hero) died during a campaign with the Waka (Mumuye) who preserved his skull”.
They too not being successful, became allies apparently in the long run. Hence as wrote Fremantle, in the 1890’s, “while he (Nya) was at Sonko, Aganwa Sarkin Kona collected a force which included Bachamas and Mumuyes to fight the Fulanin Muri Emir”.12
It is believed that the Bwatiye Kingdom dominated the upper Benue valley between 1740 to 1810 A.D.13

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Elaigwu & Erim (1996) pp 187
12 Fremantle (1920) pp. 24
13 Hickey (1990) pp. 8

The main tribes in the area that had managed to escape total conquer took up defensive war footing. According to Hickey the area had been “also home to nomadic Fulani communities who grazed their herds in its fertile parkland and kept apart from the indigenous non-Moslem population.”14 They took inspiration from the Sultan of Sokoto Usman Dan Fodio, who called upon them to rise in a jihad against their “infidel” host neighbors.
In the first waves, the Chamba lands to the east and the Bwatiye kingdom disintegrated while Modibbo Adama;s kingdom of Fombina rose. The powers of the Fulanis however stopped at the former borderlines of the Chamba with the Yorro people. For wrote Kirk-Greene “thence the expansion pushed on into the Benue valley proper, where its immediate range was limited by the Verre hills to the south and the west by the intractable hostility of the tribes occupying the Gongola valley and the Mumuye plateau.”13
At the peak of the Fulani raids later, the MayoFaran and Mayo Belwa areas lay exposed, and suffered frequent attacks. It is said that “where ever a Fulani army had been, it left a depopulated desert …….. for the passion of the Fulani for slave raiding had denuded the country of its population.”16
The effect of this no matter did not reach on far enough to threaten Zing, Lamma, and Yakoko people that were further west, for these Yorro groups fought off initial attacks that later ceased. It is said therefore in local Mumuye folklore that there were several

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14 Hickey (1990) pp.4
15 Kirk Greene (1958)pp. 127-128
16 K-Greene (1958) pp.24

skirmishes with horsemen in those days whom they drove off.
A map of the Adamawa area in 1815 shows the Mumuye area as a fingerlike projection poking up under the vast Fulani territory to the north and creating a bottleneck or isthmus with Bornu’s southern flank.
The stretch of land between the Mumuye hills and Bornu was in effect the narrowest part of the Sokoto caliphate that at that time spread from Borgu (Benin Republic) in the west to the Cameroons in the east.
The Adamawa Fulani kept on raiding intermittently, while the Mumuye defended their enclave; and as Temple states “The Mumuye in Yola province have the following offsets, who though they speak different dialects, have a common origin: Batisu, Waka, Yakoko, Yandam and Zinna. They joined together in fighting the Fulani, by whom they were never conquered.”17

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17 Temple & Temple (1965) pp.290-291

RELATIONSHIP WITH THE HAMRUWA FULANI OF MURI:
About the start of the second decade of the nineteenth century, a splinter group of Fulani warriors broke away from fombina after having fought and contributed to the success of the rising and Adama’s campaigns.
With crisis apparently brewing between them and the Lamido, according to Low this remarkable group headed west at the behest of the sultan, under the leadership of Buba Yero and his acknowledged brothers Baushi Bula and Hamaruwa.
While Buba Yero went on to found the Gombe Emirate, “Hammaruwa and the Fulanin Kiri had remained behind in the middle Benue region when Buba was recalled north by Sheik Usman and went on to conquer much of what later was incorporated as the Emirate of Muri, founding a headquarters of that name ca, 1817,”16
The Fulani Kitaku of which the Kiri are a clan, are said to have taken up a semi-sedentary life-style by the 1700’s; having as Low states “begun taking up elements of the non-Moslem (Habe) faiths and cultures of their more settled neighbors in the lower Gongola Valley.”18 Much later Kirk-Greene (1958) observed that there were “The old settlement of the kitien Fulani (in Kiri) who have remained unconverted to Islam.”19
Hammanruwa died but by the middle of the 19th century, however the remnants of Jukun or Kwararafa power in this area was destroyed by the Muri Fulanis as they systematically

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18 V.N Low (1972) pp. 99-100
18 Low (1974) pp.86
19 K-G (1958) pp. 174

pushed on from Gombe and Muri, north of the Benue, down across to Gassol and Bakundi area. It is with mostly the Kiri or Muri Fulanis that the chequered future of the Mumuye people would be locked by the end of the century on arrival of the British.
By the time of the tenure of the third Emir Hamman, the Emirate according to Fremantle had expanded down to Jibu, Bantaji and Ibi areas of the Jukun people.
It was during Hamman’s reign that the first ‘white’ explorers’ steamed up the Benue up to Jen in the ship “PLEAD” captained by Dr. William B. Baikie, and on September the 24th, 1854, they visited the Emir’s court at Muri. They were warned of their way onwards to Yola overland being occupied by hostile tribes like the “Zena” (Zing) the later people to be renamed ‘Mumuye’. Other hostile people they were warned were the Bachama and Bata.
They were given two land routes to Yola from Muri as recorded by the Rev. Samuel Crowther thus:
The first which took a total of 14 days was the longest but the safest. It had to detour around the Mumuye hills far to its south, passing through Jiru, Yerima, Kam, Gangumi, KonginBaba, Kontcha, Laro and on to Yola.
The route Crowther said was being widely used by Hausa traders from Bauchi, Kano and Katsina who traded in slaves and Ivory.
The safeness of the route stemmed from the fact that the towns mentioned were either under Fulani influences or in uninhabited plains. Lugard observed half a century later “The truly awful desolation and destruction of life caused by this slave raiding is apparent today: enormous tracts of  land have gone out of cultivation, and one constantly sees the ruins of great towns now overgrown with jungle”20
The second rout and by far the shortest taking only 4 days of trekking passed through Wuro Belli and Gowoi which were said to be the last Muri towns on this frontier. From there one Passed through Zing whom were described as “Independent and hostile to the Fulani” and that “Travelers who ventured by this route must pass Zena in the night to avoid the attack of the Pagans by day.”21 Gowoi in the Fulani area remained the frontier until the arrival of a French adventurer called Lieutenant Mizon, when another front Jalingo took on prominence.
“THE FRENCH PROTECTORATE OF MURI:
Lt. Mizon who the British considered a mercenary, was a French Naval officer on exploration of prospective French territories in the central Africa region. He over did his assignment some how straying deep into British spheres.
He arrived the Muri area in 1892 and entered into an alliance with the seventh Emir of Muri Muhammadu Nya. Under this deal struck the Muri Emirate was to be hence forth known as the ‘French protectorate of Muri’, notwithstanding the fact that the area had been demarcated to the British at the ‘Berlin conference’.
Mizon it is said went on “and established factories at Mairanewa and Kunini” and then setting up trading posts along the Benue banks. Subsequently he blocked ships passing through to demand tarrif and in the process incidentally detained a British ship. This had ripple effect right up to

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20 K-Greene (1958) Pp. 25
21 Crowther (1970) Pp. 230-231

London and Paris, which resulted in the French Government renouncing his adventures and recalling him back home.
The British also managed to harass him through the forces of the Royal Niger Company and he left unceremoniously. Before his departure however, he was instrumental in a fateful turn of events in this area.
While Mizon was here, he had “distributed arms to the Emir’s officials and on Christmas day 1892 he landed his Senegalese sharpshooters and two field pieces to aid the Emir in an attack on the Pagan town of Kona which the Fulani had for six years vainly attempted to reduce.”23 The bombardment and subsequent sacking of Kona, further strategically entrenched to Fulani closer to Mumuye land.
Muhammadu Nya, Fremantle says “raided the Mumuye Pagans but made no permanent occupation of their country.” The raids are also confirmed in the local folklores of some Mumuye clans on the western parts of the land, like this one given by the Kwajji people. In their lore they speak of a Fulani chief called Amman” this may be a local distortion of Mohamma or Hamman. “The ‘siri’ (battle) as the story goes was with one Fulani chief “Ammang’ and his horsemen. It was a bloody battle which ended in a stalemate; and with night falling, Kpanti Ammang withdrew his forces back the way they had come from the west.”25
The western access to Mumuye lands were through narrow gorges and valleys that were effectively defended on both sides by large numbers of sniper bowmen with poisoned arrows. Temple observed that one poisoned arrow shot by the deadly accurate

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23 Kirk-Greene (1958) Pp. 38
25 H. Tolenyashong (1998) pp.10

Mumuyes is “strong enough to kill a buffalo in half an hour.”26
The people went everywhere armed with bows and quivers full of these barbed arrows. Traditions relate that upon being engaged in battle, the Mumuye take cover behind trees and boulders of rock, in pairs and in an extended formation. Then while one shot at the horse, the other partner by arrangement simultaneously shot the rider. Being that the hilly Terrain was highly disadvantageous to Calvary, and there were few settlements in the plains, Mumuye land was in effect an impregnable and unconquerable land at the time. A situation which at least in the Mumuye sense, the words of Sir C.R. Niven that “The future history of Muri and Gombe Emirates is only a narrative of raids against their pagan neighbors,”27 probably makes some sence.
Jalingo became the established capital of the Muri Emmirate immediately after the fall of Kona. In 1896 Muhammedu Nya, described by Fremantle as “the ablest and most energetic of all the Emirs” of Muri died.
In terms of the British presence in this region, these were in the days of the Royal Niger Company with W.P. Hewby in charge of the Benue region. He had signed a treaty with the Emir in 1895 in Jalingo opening trade links. But so far no ‘white man’ had any contacts with the Mumuye land.
The century on another note ended with a devastating locust outbreak in 1899 which affected it is said the entire upper Benue valley. People died in droves of starvation and some sold their children for grains.
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26 Temple pp.288
27 C.R. Niven (1920) pp.82