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Oral Tradition and Sierra Leone History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

C. Magbaily Fyle
C. Magbaily Fyle*
Affiliation:
Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone
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Extract

This paper attempts to examine specific problems encountered with the collection and interpretation of oral traditions in Sierra Leone and ways in which these were approached. I will suggest with examples that problems facing oral traditions are not always peculiar to them, as the researcher with written sources faces some similar problems.

Much has been said about methodology in collecting oral tradition for it to warrant much discussion here. One point that has been, brought out, however, is that methods which work well for one situation might prove disastrous or unproductive in another. It is thus necessary to bring out specific examples of situations encountered so as to improve our knowledge of the possible variety of approaches that could be used, while emphasizing that the researcher, as a detective, should have enough room for initiative.

For the past eight years, I have been collecting oral histories from among the Yalunka (Dialonke) and Koranko of Upper Guinea, both southern Mande peoples, and the Limba and Temne, grouped under the ‘West Atlantic.’ Extensive exploration into written sources has indicated that similar problems arise in both cases. In both situations, the human problem was evident. For the oral traditionist this problem is more alive as he is dealing first hand with human beings. A number of factors therefore, like his appearance, approach to his informants, his ability to ‘identify’ with the society in question, may affect the information he receives. These could provide reasons for distortion which are not necessarily present with written sources.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 12 , 1985 , pp. 65 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1985

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References

NOTES

1. David Henige recently discusses this kind of problem in “Truths Yet Unborn? Oral Tradition as a Casualty of Culture Contact,” JAH, 23 (1982), 395–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Uzoigwe, G.N., “Recording the Oral History of Africa,” African Studies Review, 16 (1973), 183–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Some of these are published in my Oral Traditions of Sierra Leone (Niamey, 1979).Google ScholarPubMed

4. Laing, A.G., Travels in Timannees Kooranko and Soolima Countries (London, 1825).Google Scholar

5. Fyle, C. Magbaily, Almamy Suluku of Sierra Leone (London, 1979), 48.Google Scholar

6. Sierra Leone Government Archives, Native Affairs Minute Paper 101/1898.

7. Cardew to Chamberlain, 30 September 1898. PRO, CO 267/440.

8. For discussions of the extent of the authority of District Commissioners, see Abraham, Arthur, Mende Government and Politics under Colonial Rule (London, 1978)Google Scholar; Fyle, C. Magbaily, The Solima Yalunka Kingdom (Freetown, 1979).Google Scholar Henige also discusses other possible dimensions of the colonial impact on oral data in “Truths Yet Unborn.”

9. For a treatment see Lipschutz, Marc, “Northeastern Sierra Leone After 1884: Responses to the Samorian Invasion and British Colonialism,” (Ph.D., UCLA, 1973).Google Scholar

10. Ibid., 140. For the size of these chiefdoms see Fyle, C. Magbaily, “Northeast Sierra Leone in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Reconstruction and Population Distribution in a Devastated Area” in Fyfe, C. and Macmaster, D., eds., African Historical Demography II (Edinburgh, 1981).Google Scholar

11. Ibid.; Abraham, Mende Government.

12. This is only one example to be found in files on the “Death and Crowning of Paramount Chiefs,” Sierra Leone Archives. This particular quote is from Commissioner Northern Province to Chief Commissioner, 15 March 1951; Paramount Chiefs, Nieni Chiefdom.

13. Fyle, , Solima Yalunka, 119.Google Scholar

14. Fyle, Almamy Suluku, chapter 2.

15. Ibid. This story was accepted by at least one researcher of Limba history, who based certain untenable conclusions on it.