Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/156

134 conquerors who were not mere bloodthirsty raiders but endowed with remarkable political capacity, and to the higher ideas, institutions, and arts of life they brought with them and spread throughout the area under their control, the cultural position of the Baganda nation must be attributed.

History properly so called they had none, for they were ignorant of the art of writing: even tally-sticks for messengers and tax-gatherers were unknown. Tradition therefore was the sole medium for preserving a knowledge of the past. The king's pedigree was traced in detail from Kintu, who is represented as the first king. But he is also regarded as the first man. He came into the country (or upon the earth) with only a single cow; and, as there was nothing there before, he lived on this cow's milk. He married Nambi, a daughter of Heaven. According to the legend Nambi, by disobedience to her father's command, was the cause of the entrance of her brother Death into the world. It is obvious that this is a tradition of the beginning of things; and though the Baganda may have themselves identified Kintu as their earliest king and assigned his wife to the Colobus Monkey clan, to accept such a rationalization of the story is hardly in the spirit of modern science. The fact is that we know nothing of the history of Uganda prior to its discovery early in the second half of the last century. That at some unknown distance of time the country was inhabited by a Bantu people who were conquered by a band of warriors, probably few in number and belonging to a different race of somewhat more advanced culture, who settled there as already mentioned, is an inference from the physical appearance of the royal family and from the national religion, arts, and institutions, for which it would be difficult to account except by such an hypothesis. Genealogies are sometimes preserved with comparative accuracy where other facts are forgotten or distorted by tradition. The royal pedigree, if Kintu were accepted as the first king, would assign the invasion to a period about twenty-four generations back. Sir Harry Johnston's calculation (reckoning not from Kintu but from his great-grandson, Kimera) would place it about five hundred years ago, or two-thirds only of twenty-four generations. It is clear that Kintu is a purely mythical figure. He appears, as we learn from Sir Harry Johnston, also in the