Some Social Aspects of Lugbara Myth

Opening ParagraphThe Lugbara are a Sudanic-speaking people of the Nile-Congo divide and number 242,000, of whom two-thirds live in north-western Uganda and the remainder in the adjoining area of the Belgian Congo. Their political system is a segmentary one, with no form of centralized political authority. There is a system of polysegmentary patrilineages, the largest series of which are the exogamous units. Within the territorial section associated with the agnatic core provided by such a lineage there is, or was, the obligation to settle disputes by discussion between the parties concerned so that feud was avoided, and it was only between these sections that a permanent state of hostility could exist. Each of these territorial sections consists on an average of some 4,000 people living in an area of some twenty-five square miles. They, the largest of the groups called suru by Lugbara, and which I refer to as maximal sections based on maximal lineages, are the largest political units of the system. Like the three levels of segmentation within them, they bear specific names, most of which are found in all parts of Lugbara. I call these names clan-names.