Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0070/00707.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 26KB | 448 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00707}
$Pretitle{366}
$Title{Cameroon
Chapter 4A.   Ethnic Groups and Languages}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Harold D. Nelson}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{fulani
live
groups
peoples
north
cameroon
language
south
chad
different}
$Date{1974}
$Log{Figure 8.*0070701.scf
Table 2.*0070701.tab
}
Country:     Cameroon
Book:        Area Handbook for the United Republic of Cameroon
Author:      Harold D. Nelson
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1974

Chapter 4A.   Ethnic Groups and Languages

     The area of Cameroon has been the scene of countless human migrations.
Very little is known about these movements, but the general concensus-based
on linguistic studies-is that they started in the region of the border between
Chad and Cameroon and from there spread in various directions in the course
of the last several hundred years. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
further migratory movements resulted from Islamic holy wars waged by the
Fulani. People were driven out of their homelands, causing others who were in
their path to move, willingly or unwillingly. The resultant intermingling,
assimilation, and absorption of groups make classification of the country's
approximately 200 ethnic groups extremely difficult. Moreover, some peoples
are known by several different names, and even for numerically large groups
information is often unavailable.

     Many of the twenty-four major languages and numerous dialects-the
distinction between language and dialect is rather tenuous-have never been
studied. Those that have been studied, and presumably those that have not,
belong either to the Chadic group of the Afro-Asian stock or to one of the
several branches of the Congo-Kordofanian stock-a further indication of the
extensive mixing of groups within the area.

     Neither historical, racial, linguistic, nor other cultural
characteristics provide reliable criteria for the grouping of the Cameroonian
people. Census takers who compiled partial population statistics during the
1960s simply grouped people by geographic region (see table 2). Adaptation to
ecological conditions has led to emergence of common cultural characteristics
among peoples of otherwise diverse origins. Thus, there is a certain unity
among the people of the vast forest that covers a great part of the south,
just as there is among the people of the western highlands (see fig. 8).
The situation is somewhat different in the north. The Fulani have put their
stamp on that region, although they constitute only one-third of the
population. The other two-thirds comprise a great number of diverse peoples.
But to a large degree their location and manner of living have developed in
reaction to the Fulani, and they tend to regard themselves as northerners
with respect to the rest of the Cameroonians. Thus, in addition to the many
tensions characterizing interethnic relations within the three regions, a
further cleavage exists between northerners and southerners, the latter
including in this context both the peoples of the western highlands and of
the southern forests.

[See Table 2.: Estimated Size of Major Ethnic Groups, Cameroon, 1960-66]

     Factors that have led to increased interaction between peoples were:
peace imposed by colonial powers; improved communications; the introduction
of cash crops; the establishment of plantations, industries, and large
cities; and the attainment of independent rule. Ethnic loyalties, however,
remained strong in the early 1970s, effectively impeding the development of a
national consciousness. People almost always married within their ethnic
group.

[See Figure 8.: Selected Ethnic Distribution in Cameroon, 1973]

     Cameroon the only country in Africa where both the French and English
languages have been given official status. French, however, is the dominant
language of government, education, and commerce. This is largely because 80
percent of the people and most of the administrative and economic centers are
in former East Cameroon, which was for many years under French trusteeship.
English is more widely spoken in the smaller area of former West Cameroon
because of earlier British colonial influence. A number of local languages,
such as Fulfulde in the north and Pahouin languages in the south, serve as
effective lingua francas between peoples of different ethnic affiliations.

     Most important of these local languages is Wes Cos, a pidgin English that
probably developed as a means of communication between captives of different
regions during the slave trade (see ch. 2). Wes Cos spread in the nineteenth
century with the arrival of missionaries and colonial officers. It is spoken
by many people in both the south and the north, which permits some measure of
communication between inhabitants of the two regions.

Peoples of the North

The Fulani

     Although numerically a minority group in the north, the Fulani represent
the ruling class in that area. Of West African origin, their ancestors spread
slowly eastward from the Senegal River Valley in search of grazing land for
their herds. Small groups reached the Chadian basin at the end of the
thirteenth century, and by the early eighteenth century several Fulani
settlements existed on the plateau south of the Benoue River. In the
nineteenth century, under the impetus of the holy war waged by Othman dan
Fodio, creator of a Fulani-Hausa empire in what is present-day northern
Nigeria, they came as conquering warriors on horseback spreading Islam by the
sword. They subdued the region of Maroua, the valley of the Benoue, and the
central plateau where they took over large tracts of grazing land. The
plateau was named Adamaoua after Mobido Adama who had helped to make the land
of his birth subservient to Othman's rule. Maroua, Garoua, and Ngaoundere
became-and still are-important as capitals of Fulani chiefdoms (see ch. 5).

     The local people either fled into less accessible areas such as the
Mandara Hills or they accepted defeat and continued to live among the Fulani
on the plains. Eventually a precarious equilibrium developed between the
relatively unified Fulani, who had solid hierarchies and large administrative
towns, and the diverse groups of conquered people who lived in tiny dispersed
hamlets.

     During the hungry months before the harvest, the hill people have often
been forced to get food from the more prudent and cautious Fulani. On
occasion, as during the great famine of 1931, they have given their children
to the Fulani in return for millet. Many hire themselves out voluntarily to
their former enemies during the difficult months. The villages and cities
attract them, and some remain permanently and in time adopt Islam and Fulani
ways of living. Those who have adopted Fulani ways and the descendants of
slaves together constitute about 15 percent of the people who are counted as
Fulani and who consider themselves as such.

     Although many Fulani elsewhere have remained nomads or seminomads, most
of those in Cameroon have become sedentary. About 80 percent get their
livelihood from stockraising and farming, but they usually do not actually
cultivate their fields unless forced to do so by circumstances (see ch. 5).
Small numbers of Fulani are either wage earners or artisans who make their
living as butchers, tailors, shoemakers, weavers and chauffeurs or by similar
occupations. A roughly equal number are either traders or marabout (religious
teachers). About 1 percent hold government jobs. Only 6 percent of the Fulani
are completely nomadic herders. They are called M'Bororo and live in a
symbiotic relationship with cultivators, exchanging goods and services. This 6
percent lack political organization beyond the herding unit and its headman,
and they tend to be indifferent Muslims. There are also some 16,000 Fulani
herders in the Bamenda Highlands.

     The name Fulani, used by the Hausa of Nigeria, is most widely accepted by
English-speaking people. The Fulani, however, call themselves Fulbe (sing.