first inhabitants of Lango country. Middle Stone Aflge artifacts have been found at the Nile-Chobi confluence in the extreme west of the Lango settlement area, but no comprehensive archae-ological survey has yet been made of Acholi and Lango. 4 Until this has been done, any reconstruction of the ariea's history before the Lwo migrations at the end of the 15th century must be speculative in the extreme, and only one scholar has
1. J . P •Crazzolara, ’Notes on the Lango—Omiru and on the
Labwoor and the Nyakwai', Anthropos 55(i9 6 0) ,pp.174-214; R.Oliver in R.Oliver and G.Mathew, History of East Afr i c a , vol I (Oxford, 1963)*pp.173-79? 0got,op.cit.,pp.4d-62.
2. Ogot, op.cit. p . 53*
3. Clan lists are found in: IBriberg, The L a n g o pp . 192-204;
T . T . S . H a y l e y , field-notes (1936-37); A.Tarantino, 'Lango Clans', Uganda J l . 13 (1949) iPP • 109^-11; Crazzolara, 'Notes on the Lango- Omiru'. In addition, the present writer collected a number of clan names which had not previously been recorded#
4. B.M.Ragan and L.Lofgren, 'Archaeological Sites on the Nile- Chobi C o n f l u e n c e " , Uganda J l . 3 0 ( 1 9 6 6 ) ,pp.201-6.
54
seriously attempted it* In Lango, as in Acholi, Crazzolara
sees the preLwo population as having consisted of* two elements -Madi, and ’western Lango’, by which he means Para-Nilotes akin
to the Didinga of the southern Sudan. 1 So far as Lango is con
cerned, Crazzolara's evidence consists almost entirely of clan names and place names, without reference to the traditions
sur-2
-rounding them. The attribution of these names to the Madi or
’western L a n g o ’ rests on guess-work, and in the absence of other evidence it cannot command much confidence. Furthermore, if some Lango place names are indeed Madi in origin, then it must be pointed out that these names could just as probably have been given at a later date by Lwo groups who had absorbed Madi during their southward migration. For southern Lango, Cohen cites Banyara traditions from south of Lake Kyoga to show that, besides Madi, there were probably Bantu-speakers north of the Lake who retreated southwards when the Lwo appeared. Both
these suggestions are plausible, hut at present they are hardly more than guide-lines for future research.
There is much more evidence on the next phase. Tffie remar
kable consistency of traditions among all Southern Lwo groups - from the Alur to the Kenycv Luo - has allowed historians to
reconstruct with some confidence the migrations which brought Zj,
the Southern Lwo from their cradleland in the Sudan. During
1. Crazzolara, The L w o o, p p .81-82,^40-41,551•
2. Crazzolara, ’Notes on the L a n g o - O m i r u ’ , p p . 179-90; The Lwoo, p . 548.
5* D,W.Cohen, The Historical Tradition of Busoga (Oxford,1972), p .158.
4. The techniques of glottochronology have also recently been brought to bear on the pi'oblem. B. Blount and R.T. Curley, ’The Southern Luo Languages: a Glottochronological R e c o n s t r u c t i o n ’,
Jl.
African Languages 9 (1 9 7 0) ,pp.1-1 8.55
the 1 5th century, they began to advance southwards from a halting-place in the Nile valley, near l>J±»ule (on the Uganda- Sudan border). M o s t groups followed the valley of the Nile until they reached Pubungu at the north end of Lake Albert.
Here a dispersion occurred. Some entered B u n y o r o , where they established the Bito royal dynasty, and where - a s 'Jopalwo' - they soon became the dominant population in eastern Bunyoro, s in the area known as Chope, or Pawir. Some remained on the
right bank of the Victoria Nile and slowly expanded into Acholi.
Others at a later date crossed into what is now Alur country in West Nile District. Meanwhile, a smaller section of the Southern Lwo had stayed behind in the Nimule area, and from there they gradually spread over north Acholi. This, in out
line, seems to have been the migration pattern for two centuries, during which increasing numbers of Lwo settled in northern
Uganda with their herds of cattle along the Nile and its tri
butaries, where they practised a mixed economy of seed-agriculture and pastoralism. ^he indigenous peoples were assimilated both linguistically and politically, and there emerged a number of small c h i e f d o m s , dominated in most cases by a royal clan of Lwo origin and ruled by a r w o t , or lord.1
This pattern h eld good in Lango as well. Crazzolara and Ogot, drawing mainly on Acholi and Padhola traditions, have
shown that, broadly speaking, the Lwo groups which entered Lango can be placed in three categories: firstly, those who migrated south from Nimule and the Agoro massif, at some distance from the Nile valley; secondly, those who stopped their southward
1. Crazzolara, The L w o o . parts 1 and 2; Oliver, op.cit. pp.
171-80; O g o t ,o p .c i t • p p .46— 47.
56
migration at P u b u n g u , without crossing the Victoria Nile;
and lastly, groups from Pawir or Chope, in eastern B u n y o r o . \ However, as is so often the case with pre-colonial African migrations, it is easier to enumerate the groups who entered
an area than to determine which ones remained there over a long period. There is no doubt that Lango country was part of the broad stage across which the Southern Lwo were migrating from the 1 5th century onwards, but it is more difficult to distinguish the Lwo groups still there at the end of the l8th century, when the first Para-Nilotes arrived from the east, especially since so many Lwo had migrated still further south to Padhola and Nyanza. In order to assess the extent of Lwo settlement, we must turn.to Lango traditions and the evidence of Lango clan names.
Three areas of Lango attracted permanent Lwo settlement:
the Nile valley on either side of Karuraa F a l l s , a portion of the Moroto valley, and the Lake ICwania region. The picture is clearest in the Nile valley. From the earliest days of Lwo settlement, it seems that the Lwo colony of P awir in easrte.rn Bunyoro in fact included both banks of the Nile. The distri
bution of clan names indicates that, on the right bank of the Nile, Lwo country stretched from the Ayago river almost as far upstream as the Aroca. 2 At its greatest extent, this Lwo Hphere stretched at least twenty miles up the Okole river, and perhaps as far up the Toci also. 3 In this region, the Langi have never
. Zt maintained that they were the first inhabitants.
1. Crazzolara, The L w o o , p p .78-80,5 6 3-6^; O g o t ,o p .c i t . p p •55-61.
2. The relevant clan names are: Acore, Atik (not to be confused with A t e k ) , and Alwaa. In most cases, these names survive today J
in conjunction with Para-Nilotic clan names,e.g. Okarowok me Acore (found in M inakulu and A b e r ) .
3. Interviews: Bartolomayo O k o r i , Matayo Abut.
k. Driberg, The L a n g o ,pp.25-27; A.Tarantino, 'Notes on the Lango', Uganda Jl" 1 3 ( 1 9 ^ 9 ) ,p.l48.
hap
The settlement of Lango country
57
FJ Is
extent of Lango settlement in about 1900
approximate extent of Lwo settlement, late 18th century
Cjf\
IC£r*Z ADw^\(?|
Key
/////
P<*w v V C U
58
Further east, C r a z z o l a r a 1s enquiries in Ogur and Alito have shown that, before the easterners arrived, there was a Lwo population which complemented the one north of the Moroto river, in Awere and Puranga, Probably the strong concentration of the Alira clan round modern Lira town should be included in this g r o u p .1
More problematic is the Lake Kwania-Kyoga area, since this was one of the principal migration 'corridors' of the PaUhola,
f
-whose traditions mention Kacung and Itaberamaido as early
■ 2
st o p ping-places* Conceivably, all Lwo from this area had moved further east by the time the Langi finally settled there
in the 1 8 7 0's, and some traditions lend support to this view.
But the abnormal density of population noted there by the first European visitors .4 suggests that the Langi h a d in fact absorbed
a previous population. Lango informants do not admit as much, but some of them say that when the Langi first reached A b y e c e , Awelo and D o k o l o , they had to chase away 'Kumam'.5