Two Origins of Sonko - 28 kings named Sonko at Niumi

 Two Origins of Sonko - 28 kings named Sonko at Niumi  MaaNgala Oni Shankalla December 10, 2013 at 12:39

 I confess I am now more confused than ever with the accounts of Sonko people prior to the fifteenth century. There were 28 kings named Sonko. According to one professor, the griots of the Sonko people sang two tunes composed of two different lyrics. There are both editions.

 Of these three lineages -- the Jammeh, Manneh, and Sonko -- the first two have traditions of origin typical of most others in the region. Members of the Jammeh lineage look to a figure named Sora Musa -- supposedly a ruler of the Mandinka people and a famous Muslim pilgrim, who yielded political leadership to Mali's founder, Sundiata, and became one of his leading military officers -- as their ancestor who brought Mandinka west to become the first settlers in Niumi. Similarly, the Manneh consider Tiramakan Traore, said to be another of Sundiata's military leaders, as their ancestor and leader of people out of Mali toward the west. Members of the Manneh lineage say their ancestors came to Niumi to help the Jammeh withstand outside aggression. In both traditions historical truth lies in the general connection of the line-ages in the far western area with their spiritual, and in some cases truly ancestral, homelands. For the Jammeh, primacy, and for the Manneh, military strength in defense of the state, justify the lineages' traditional positions as part of Niumi's ruling elite.

 Members of the third major lineage living in Niumi, the Sonko, recite a tradition of origin that does not fit the typical, mythical figure-Mandinka homeland model of the other western Mandinka lineages. This tradition smacks of illogic, in fact, for although the Sonko of Niumi speak Mandinka, live what is essentially the traditional Mandinka way of life, and for some centuries shared the Mandinka political institution of rulership (mansaya) with the two other Mandinka lineages in a Mandinka-style state (called a banko along the Gambia), they claim to be "pure Fulbe" and they trace their ancestry to Koli Tengela of the Fulbe state of Denya on the upper Senegal River and to a number of Koli's "brothers" whose names are the same as leading figures in Denya's early history. By itself, the tradition is as fascinating as it is potentially confusing.

 All of the Sonko in Niumi, their lineage griot, and tradi-tionalists and griots throughout the lower Gambia who have heard of Sonko origins from these people recite the story in similar fashion." The original Sonko, they say, was Koli Tengela, though some call him "Koli Sonko" or "Koli Bankere." According to this tradition, Koli left his homelands in Denya wearing a nine-colored, nine-cornered cotton hat and a distinctive pair of trousers. His brothers, Bubu, Pate, Yoro, and Labba Tengela, accompanied him to a nine-branched baobab tree in a region known in legend as "Bankere," (which in Mandinka means "by means of force") located in the northernmost reaches of Niumi. In the baobab lived a bat, who answered Koli's statement of "I have found my country" with the often heard, "I do not deny that, but you have found it with its owner." Beneath the tree were two pots, one with cooked food and one with water. Each contained just enough to satisfy the needs of every person in Koli's group. Koli and his brothers built a shelter under the "Bankere baobab." Beneath each branch they constructed a room; in each room they placed nine beds; and on each bed slept nine adults. It was thus that Koli and his followers settled in Bankere.

 One day a bird with an ear of millet in its mouth flew into the Bankere baobab where Koli was resting. Admiring the millet, Koli ordered his slaves to follow the bird to discover its origin. The bird took them to the farms of the Jammeh, at the time the sole provider of Niumi's rulers, in central Niumi. The Niumi ruler sent some of his own men to accompany Koli's slaves back to Bankere to greet Koli. When they returned they brought news of Koli's large number of followers. Feeling that such a body of people would be of great benefit to Niumi, the ruler invited Koli to bring his group to settle there. Koli agreed to do so. When the group arrived the Jammeh ruler asked them their patronymic and Koli replied, "Our name is Bah." "No," said the ruler, "you are always quarreling among your-selves; your name is Sonkalakore -- a group of quarrelsome people." This, traditions usually note incidentally, is how their surname happened to change from the Fulbe Bah to Sonko.

 At that time residents of Niumi were paying tribute to Salum. Nothing the Jammeh rulers could do would win their independence. The Niumi ruler explained to Koli the tributary conditions under which he would be living and Koli replied, "When you go to a country and find the people all hopping on one leg, you, too, must raise a leg. Whatever befalls you will befall us."

 For three years Niumi's residents continued to pay tribute to Salum. Then Koli convinced the Jammeh to refuse to pay, instructing them to tell "the Wolof" (as most informants refer to the people they were paying) that "only donkeys carry heavy loads; we are humans, not donkeys, and humans do not carry heavy loads."

 Koli agreed to support the Jammeh refusal to pay if the Sonko could "wear the hat that the Jammeh take off," or, in other words, share political authority (mansaya) in Niumi with the Jammeh. When Salum's messenger came to Niumi to collect the annual tribute payment, the Jammeh gave him the pre-arranged message. His empty-handed return to Salum brought a second and then a third messenger with the same request. The second messenger returned with the same message as the first, but the third was lucky to return at all, Koli having greeted him with his sword. Next time the Salum cavalry came.

 The subsequent Salum-Niumi war, as Sonko traditions continue, was fought in two stages. In the first, Koli told mem-bers of other lineages in Niumi's fighting force, particularly the Jammeh and Manneh, to leave the field to the Sonko. This they did, and the Sonko warriors drove the invaders across the swamp at the northern edge of Niumi. The Sonko returned home, but Salum's cavalry returned, too. This time the Jammeh and Manneh joined the Sonko to repel them for good.

 Three separate extended families of Sonko then settled permanently in the villages of Berending, Essau, and Jiffet in Niumi. The family in the last village, however, abandoned it and split in two soon after settling down, one branch moving to Essau to become a second "'royal family" from that village and the other moving to the village of Sika in the remote southeast corner of Niumi. The Sonko in Berending and Essau then awaited their turns at mansaya.

 But when the first Sonko, Demba Koto ("Old Demba") became ruler, there were repercussions, for he ruled for 115 years and thereby prevented several generations of Jammeh and Manneh from ruling. Led by a Manneh, the frustrated members of these two lineages conspired and poisoned Demba Koto. Informed by a Fulbe slave of the circumstances surrounding his father's death, Dijang Sonko vowed vengeance against the Manneh and fought them until the valley running through western Niumi ran red with their blood. Sonko warriors drove the Jammeh and Manneh clear across Niumi to the state's southeastern corner and were poised to drive them from the region when an old woman came to Dijang and counseled restraint, advising them to "have peace now," for "if you kill everyone you will have to work yourself. The head that rests in the shade is supported by those that are under the sun. If you kill them all off, no head will sit in the shade."

 Reluctantly, Dijang agreed, but he still insisted on exiling most of the dangerous Manneh lineage members, allowing only the Manneh extended families in two villages to remain in Niumi and share the rule. Thereafter, the traditions conclude, the three lineages co-existed peacefully, sharing rulership in a fixed, rotational pattern that all honored religiously until the British usurped the authority of the last mansa and made him a government-backed seyfu (chief) instead.

 In 1969 S.M. Cissoko spent several weeks traveling through a large part of the lower Senegambia, recording oral traditions from various Mandinka lineages. He then collaborated with Sambou Kaoussa to translate, edit, annotate, and publish these traditions in Recueils des tra-ditions orales des Mandingues de Gambie et de Casamance. To obtain traditions of the Sonko lineage of Niumi, Cissoko inter-viewed "des princes du clan Sonko," Boubakar Sonko and his brother, Sekou Sonko, both of Essau. They provided him with "la version officielle," which he published, and which was in fact the basic Koli Tengela legend. In the published version Cissoko's own annotations lend credence to the tradition. Following a passage stating that "Koli Sonko," a Fulbe, came from Denya and settled in Sadialo and then Bankere.

 Later still a lineage called Sonko, which now claims to have Fula as well as Mandingo origins, migrated from the east and settled near the border of Salum in a town called Bankiri. In Mandinka, bankiri means "by force," and the Sonko were known as great fighters. They were employed at first as agents for the Bur Salum, whose residence was at Kahone, and collected tribute, a tax on all agri-cultural products, from the Serer and Wolof communities around them. Eventually they fell out with the Wolof rulers and moved south to the banks of the Gambia, where the Mane and the Jame still sought a means to throw off Wolof rule. The Sonkos were promised a share in the land and the kingship in Niumi if they could end the tribute payments. When they succeeded in doing so, however, the earlier settlers are said to have tried to go back on their bargain, and a battle followed at which the Jame and Mane were defeated. The Sonko lineage settled at Berending, later at Essau and Jiffet as well. The peace made between the three families at that time is said to have lasted ever since.

 Thus, over much of the last century, the tradition of origin of one Gambian Mandinka lineage went through a discern-ible process of change. Though for want of evidence the exact timing and specific details of the change remain vague, the general process, which took place over quite a few decades, is much more clear. Once persons in the Sonko lineage began accepting the new tradition of origin as their own, which they did most probably to justify historically the lineage's new monopoly of political authority in Niumi, the process was left for others to complete. An outside source, in this case, a British administrator intent upon finding and making known the "official" tradition of origin of the Sonko, lent authority to the legend and, simultaneously, griots and other traditionalists in the region added the legend to their repertoires. Finally, students of the Mandinka in the Gambia helped entrench the tradition in Senegambian oral literature by including it in their published works. Indeed, once adopted by the lineage, the tradition's ultimate acceptance was perhaps inevitable, with but the time required for each step in the process remaining a matter of variance. But inevitable or not, the result of this process has been the exclusion of the old, perhaps original legend, and the inclusion of the new legend, in the living and changing body of western Mandinka oral traditions.

 The story of Sonko origins that follows is a composite account from the following oral narratives: Unus Jata, Berending, Lower Niumi District, The Gambia; Alhaji Omar Sonko, Kanuma, Lower Niumi District, The Gambia; Ibrahima Njie, Berending, Lower Niumi District, The Gambia; Landing Nima Sonko, Berending, Lower Niumi District, The Gambia; and Alhaji Maranta Sonko, Essau, Lower Niumi District, The Gambia. These informants were interviewed by the author between September 1974 and April 1975. Also adding to the story was information provided by Boubakar Sonko and Seku Sonko of Essau, and by Bakary Sonko of Berending, each interviewed in February 1969 by S.M. Cissoko, and by the late Bamba Suso, probably the most noted Gambian griot of his day, in an interview taped by Radio Gambia in 1973. A copy of this last recording is available in the Gambia Cultural Archives, Banjul.

 Bah, or Ba, is the patronymic of one of the most prominent Fulbe lineages living near the Gambia River. Members of this lineage trace their ancestry to Denya and Koli Tengela, whom they often call Koli Tengela Bah. The Bah claim no relationship to the Sonko. See Ba Tamsir Ousmane, "Essai historique sur le Rip (Senegal)," Bulletin de l'Institut Fran-ais d'Afrique Noire, Series B, 19(1957), pp. 565-66.

 A legend of Amari Sonko is also recited in the more central Mandinka regions. One such is recorded in Maurice Delafosse, Haut-Snengal-Niger, (reprint of 1912 edition, 3 vols.: Paris, 1972), 2:p. 183.

 Source: Wright, Donald R., (1978) Koli Tengela in Sonko Traditions of Origin: An Example of the Process of Change in Mandinka Oral Tradition. History in Africa, Vol. 5 (1978), African Studies Association: pp. 257-271.

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