Mary Dougsls Clientship

Blood-Debts and Clientship Among the Lele
Author(s): Mary Douglas

Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol.
90, No. 1 (Jan. - Jun., 1960), pp. 1-28
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2844216 .
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Blood-debts and Clientship among the Lele
MARY DOUGLAS
THE LELE ARE A SMALL TRIBE
inh4biting
the Kasai district of the Belgian Congo. They
hunt wild game, cultivate maize, manioc, and the raffia palm, and live in small com-
pact villages ranging in size from io to I30 adult men. My fieldwork among them was
sponsored by the International African Institute, and by the Institut de Recherche
Scientifique en Afrique Centrale.
Two things are notable in their political arrangements. One is that each little
village is autonomous, acting on its own account, in alliance with some, and at war with
other villages, and this in spite of a nominal suzerainty of a chiefly clan, whose eldest
male has ritual status, great prestige, and traditional rights to arbitrate between
villages. The second is that they have a system of clientship used to settle blood-debts,
which is, I think, altogether peculiar to themselves.
The Lele hold that for every death someone can be made responsible. The only
case in which they admit that a death may be due to natural causes is when a very old
person, after surviving his contemporaries, and passing through various stages of
senility, finally dies in his bed. At his burial they rejoice as much as they mourn,
because he has accomplished the full natural span of man's life. Therefore, because of
his triumph, they dance to drums instead of banning all dancing for a three months'
period of mourning. In practice very few of the deaths which Europeans would reckon
to have followed upon advanced senility are actually celebrated with drums and
dancing, because there are powerful interests pressing for each death to be classed as
one for which responsibility can be allotted and compensation claimed.
Their system of blood-compensation is very far-reaching in Lele social life. Every
family is concerned in it, from several angles. It is so highly developed that it has a kind
of social autonomy of its own; many subsidiary institutions have grown up around it;
everyone has an interest in making it work; and something of the zest and satisfaction
of a competitive game is felt in observing its rules, paying its forfeits, and taking its
rewards.
Compensation is based on the principle of equivalence, a life for a life, a person for a
person. The principle is interpreted in an institution called bukolomo, which I translate
as clientship. A client, kolomo, is a woman who has been paid over in settlement of a
blood-debt, or one of her matrilineal descendants. Only limited rights over her are
transferred; she is not a slave; her own clan shares responsibility for her with her lords.
The rights are transferred in perpetuity. When, about 250 years ago, the Lele came
into their present territory, a band of them without canoes wanted to cross a river. A
man of the Lumbunji clan bridged it with a tree-trunk, and so allowed them all to pass
across. From each clan which used his bridge he tried to exact payment of a woman.
Descendants of these early clients are still in the control of the Lumbunji clan to this day.
History does not say why the clans were prepared to acknowledge the equivalent
of
a blood-debt to the bridge-builder, but the story illustrates another important feature
I
2 MARY DOUGLAS
of the institution: the extension of the blood-compensation principle to other situations.
Any man whose life is saved by another considers that he owes a blood-debt to his
rescuer. I mention below cases of ransoming in war, and of restoring health, which
were treated as blood-debts by those who were saved. Also there is the convention that
certain animals are rated symbolically as equivalent to humans for reckoning indebted-
ness. For instance, a leopard equals a man, since a leopard kills a man; therefore if a
client kills a leopard and presents his lord with the entire skin, the lord is in honour
bound to release the mother or sister of the slayer from clientship. There are times
when it is a matter of honour to be generous in admitting liability, and to pay up
spontaneously. On other occasions it is as honourable to contest claims.
STATUS OF CLIENT
Clientship is a semi-servile status, in which the client depends for protection on his lord
and owes him certain services. I might have followed Rattray's usage and translated
kolomo as pawn, and kumu as owner, but these terms are narrower in their traditional
scope than client and lord, and are more suited to a system of pledging and of money
debts than to the Lele institutions.
Lele vigorously distinguish client from slave. Slaves (ninga, plural badinga) were
usually persons bought from afar, or captured in war. Sometimes they were Lele by
origin, more usually they were foreign tribesmen. Lele had no way of permanently
exploiting a class of male slaves. I think that their political institutions, particularly the
hostility existing between small villages, made it difficult to use male slaves as a source
of forced labour, since they could easily escape to a rival village. Male slaves were
apparently kept for a short period to be killed at the burial of their masters, in a manner
reminiscent of the Tumba system of slavery, described in 'The Nkumu of the Tumba'
by H. D. Brown (Africa I944). They were given special slave-names which concealed
their clan of origin, so that it was impossible for them to be identified by fellow clans-
men. Female slaves became wives, and were treated in much the same way as other
Lele women. The whole institution of slavery was effectively abolished before my
fieldwork, and so my knowledge of it is based on information, not observation. Client-
ship, on the other hand, though it was in process of liquidation in the European-
supervised tribunals, was still very much a live concern of Lele of the day, and I was
able to observe for myself and check on reports.
A slave was a man without a clan, and therefore without protection. No compensa-
tion could be claimed from the owner who killed his own slave. A client was a full
member of his or her own clan, and doubly protected. For the death of a client, double
compensation was demanded, one woman for the clan, and one for the lord. This
essential distinction between clientship and slavery is the source of a well-articulated
body of rules governing the relations between clients and lords.
Kumu, lord, is a word of elastic range. It can refer to members of the hereditary clan
of Lele chiefs, to the appointed head of a village, to the owner of a dog, to the person
in whom rights of clientship are vested. The lord is always male, never female. He never
acts as an individual, but always representing a group, either a section of a matrilineal
clan or a village.
Two main rights are transferred when a woman is paid in settlement of a blood-
BLOOD-DEBTS AND CLIENTSHIP AMONG THE LELE 3
debt. The first is the right to dispose in marriage of her and of all her female matrilineal
descendants. The second is to use her, or any of her female matrilineal descendants, to
settle a further blood-debt. This latter right has to be exercised with the consent of the
client's clan, which should be given a 'mutation fee', called nghei mwa tet a ponj, 'wealth
of the arrow shaft', twenty raffia cloths and an arrow, to signify their consent to the
change of authority.
The first right severely limits the initiative and control of the mother's brother of the
first female client, and similarly restricts the rights of all her male matrilineal descen-
dants. Since competition for wives is one of the key motives inspiring Lele behaviour,
the advantages of clientship to the receiver of compensation and the disadvantages to
the payer seem to be very obvious. In effect, a whole future section of the payer's clan
is marked off, and transferred, for these important purposes, to another clan, for ever.
At first glance it seems as if, to the question 'What does the lord gain out of his
control of clients?' the answer should be that he gains wives for himself and for his
junior clansmen, and all the prestige and authority which follow from being in a
position to allocate wives. This reply is never given, and the Lele do not even seem to
think of the system as one which gives extrinsic advantages to the winners, or dis-
advantages to the losers. They always speak as if sufficient explanation of the moves
they make is contained within the rules of the system
itself,
as if it were a game played
for its own sake.
Ask 'Why do you want to have more clients?' and they invariably say, 'The
advantage of owning clients is that if you incur a blood-debt, you can settle it by
paying one of your clients, and your own sisters remain free.' Ask 'Why do you wish
your own sisters to remain free?' and they reply, 'Ah! then if I incur a blood-debt, I
can settle it by giving one of them as a client.' Ask them what is the advantage of marry-
ing a woman who is your own client, and they say that if she commits adultery, instead
of the usual damages of fifty raffia cloths, you can ask for a client to be paid, and so then
you will have two clients where before you had only one. They never seemed to be able
to stand outside the system, and explain it in terms of social or economic advantages
accruing to the lords, or disadvantages falling on the clients.
The truth is that the ramifications of the system have became so complex, that it is
difficult to isolate its effects. There is no class of hereditary lords distinct from a class of
clients. A man who is lord of a group of clan X, is likely himself to be a client of a man
of clan Y, and he may well feel that the practical responsibilities of being a lord are as
onerous as the liabilities of being a client.
Lele are far more conscious of the pressure (surely increased by the system itself)
to pay blood-debts, than they are of other specific patterns of profit and loss arising out
of clientship. Every man is always aware that at any time he may be liable for a blood-
debt. If any woman he has seduced confesses his name in the throes of child-birth, and
subsequently dies, or if her child dies, or if anyone he has quarrelled with dies of illness
or accident, he may be held responsible, and have to pay compensation. Ideas of liability
are highly developed; even if a woman runs away from her husband, and fighting
breaks out on her account, the deaths will be laid to her door, and her brother or
mother's brother will have to pay up. Since only women are accepted as blood-com-
pensation, and since compensation is demanded for all deaths, of men as well as of
4 MA-RY DOUGLAS
women, it is obvious that there can never be enough women to go round. Men fall into
arrears in their clientship obligations, and girls used to be pledged before their birth,
even before their mothers were of marriageable age. It can be supposed that clientship
has far-reaching effects on the marriage-institutions of the Lele, making for a strong
disapproval of divorce and even of adultery.
The rights to dispose of female clients in marriage, and to transfer these rights to
settle blood-debts, are primary rights of the lord. They are, of course, exercised as a
limitation of the rights of the woman's male clansmen. They can hardly be said to be
rights exercised over the women themselves. The latter have never had any freedom
(which could be said to be restricted by their status as clients) to marry as they chose.
Whether they are free or clients their personal marital status is exactly the same. For
her husband, her co-wives, her children, there is no difference between a free woman
and a client. Clientship essentially is an arrangement which holds between men, though
it concerns the distribution of their rights over women. In recognition of this fact, the
relation of the lord to the male descendants of his client women is precisely formulated.
Unless there is goodwill between them, the whole system breaks down.
There is no external machinery of justice which can coerce clients into honouring
their contracts. The interests of the lord cannot be enforced against the wishes of his
clients. Consequently, lords are engaged in elaborate manoeuvres to keep their clients
sweet, in order that the rights which, dejure, according to the conventions of the system,
they are entitled to hand down to their heirs in perpetuity, shall in fact be respected by
the clients. If goodwill is lost, a whole heritage may be lost, for an angry client can
summon the armed strength of a rival village to support him against an unjust lord.
This aspect needs detailed exposition. In brief, any individual can take his claim to a
village rival to that in which his enemy resides. If the village accepts the case, they
pay him full material compensation for a woman, and they proceed to capture one or
two women from the defendant. One of the women captured' is installed as 'village-
wife', that is, she fills the role of wife to all the men of one of the age-sets in the village.
There are local variations in the number of men entitled to sexual access, but always
the full legal responsibility as her husband and as social father of all her children is
accepted by the whole village as a
single corporate unit.
Any male client who thinks that his lord is not acting fairly by
him can arrange for
one of his own sisters to be captured and installed as village wife. This explains the
responsibilities which the lord undertakes on behalf of his male clients. He has full
liability for any blood-debts which they may incur. He should also help them sub-
stantially with raffia cloths and camwood from his stores, when they need help in
paying their entrance fees and fines. He should
help
them to obtain wives. He usually
tries to allot one of his female clients in marriage to one of his male
clients, hoping that
they will continue to live near him. For the death of a client, the lord claims compensa-
tion, and this is regarded as an added security. Someone threatened, or bullied, will
cry out, 'Wayibu! Ndi mot akana, Take care! I am someone else's man.' In short, the lord
is expected to play a role, both protective and authoritarian, which is very like that of
father or mother's brother. The latter do not
give up
their
responsibilities
towards a
client, who looks on his lord as an additional, not an alternative source of help.
In recognition of his
obligations,
and his
right
to
protection
from his
lord,
the male
client should give one hind, leg and- the back- of any large antelope or any pig that he
kills; one foreleg, one hindleg, the back and-skin of any leopard, and the whole of any
eagle, payments. explicitly ahalagous to tribute-to a-chief. But a man does not often kill
one of these beasts on his own; most big kills are made in the communal hunt, when such
private obligation' are waived in favour of the hunting team. When he is on good terms
with his lord, a man looks forward to killing one of the tribute animals, organizing his
younger brothers to help him to carry the meat, and then laying it ceremoniously at
his lord's feet. He will go away happily conscious that if he were later to need help in
any form, the lord would be under strong moral obligation to give it. Men make these
calculations quite explicitly, working it out that if they want initiation to a cult group,
they will need help with the entrance fees, and that, therefore, the first step is to kill a
big beast, so as to lay its back and hind leg at the feet of their lord.
A further sanction upholds the lord's rights. If a female client marries against his
express wishes, he can curse her fertility, and she is expected never to bear children
again, unless he lifts the curse. This would be a blow against the girl's clansmen, as
much as against
herself,
and they are thus likely to bring pressure on her to conform
to their lord's wishes.
I give here an example of a lord paying blood-compensation for one of his clients,
and another case in which the lord was punished for his refusal to do so, by unilateral
action on the part of the claimants.
Case L. Mabonje, the head of the village of South Homb, and leader of the local
section of the Bwenga clan, was the son of Piciamaha, herself the client of the Lum-
bunji clan, living in Middle Homb, where Ikum was head of that local clan section.
Ikum had betrothed Mabonje's sister's daughter, also Piciamaha, to his own sister's
son, Lukotera. Mabonje was accused of killing a man who was a client of the village of
Bushongo. He refused to pay the blood-debt, saying that he was a client of the Lum-
bunji clan, and had no free sisters. Bushongo village promptly captured his wife, and
held her hostage until Mabonje prevailed on his lord, Ikum, to release the child
Piciamaha and pay her over to Bushongo village. Then his wife was returned to him.
VILLAGE OF VILLAGE OF VILLAGE OF BUSHONGO
MIDDLE HOMB SOUTH HOMB
IKUM
PICIAMAHA
CAPTURED
RETURNED
LUKOTERA MAWE MABONJE BAHEK
U
III
(2)
MARRIED & CLIENT OF S.
HOMS
VILLAGE
I
~~~~~~PICIAMAHA
(_
BETROTHED (I) MARRIED & CLIENT
OF
BUSHONGO VILLAGE
FIGURE, I
6 MARY DOUGLAS
Piciamaha was now client of the village of Bushongo anc the Lumbunji clan had given
up all rights over her. Later the village of Bushongo incurred a blood-debt with the
village of South Homb, which they at first refused to admit. South Homb simply
captured Piciamaha when she was visiting her brother Mabonje, and kept her as their
client and village-wife. Bushongo village is near South Homb and has a long history of
alliance with them. Consequently they had reasons for acquiescing in the transfer of
rights.
Case II. The village of North Homb accused a man of the Lumanya clan of killing
their client village-wife, by having illicit sexual intercourse with her when she was
pregnant. The defendant was himself a client of the Lumbunji clan in Middle Homb.
In this case the latter refused to accept liability for their client's debt. The village of
North Homb retaliated by capturing a Lubelo woman, Mbembe, who was herself a
client of the Lumbunji clan. She had been married to a Bwenga man (who was client of
the Lumbunji) for three years without conceiving, and was ready to try being a village-
wife. Nothing was done to compensate her husband for his loss. In eight years as village-
wife in North Homb, she bore four sons who died in infancy. A great deal of ill-will
developed between her and her village-husbands, whom she accused of killing her
children because they were male, and therefore useless for continuing the clientship
relation. When the fourth child died she left North Homb, and returned to her original
owners, the Lumbunji clan in Middle Homb, who agreed with her that North Homb
had had no clear right to capture her in the first place. This happened in the nineteen-
forties, when Belgian Administration was well established, but even in the old days
fighting would not have been likely to have broken out when she ran away, since
North Homb and Middle Homb acknowledged a common origin and were allies.
These two cases show how the lord is expected to pay the blood-debts of his clients,
and the kind of reprisals to which he is exposed if he denies the responsibility.
If the arrangements do not work to the profit of both parties, lord and client, then
goodwill is lost, and there follows a trial of strength, in which client is likely to emerge
as a free man. The usual way in which a client becomes free is by demanding the release
of his mother or sister, when his lord is responsible for a death among his clients. In the
case above, of Mbembe running away from North Homb, if they had tried to follow her,
her protectors would certainly have riposted with an accusation that the village had
killed one, or all of her children, in which case the village of North Homb would have
owed a blood-debt to her clan. In such cases, when there is already a basis of goodwill
between the parties, it is always honourable to accept the liability and let the woman
go free, another reason why North Homb let the matter drop. The following shows what
happens when the essential goodwill is lacking.
Case III. Case of Ket clan. A Ket woman, Mbwengol, died. She was the client and wife
of a man of Bienge clan, in Mbombe village. Her brother, Pung, in Bushongo, con-
sulting oracles, found her husband guilty of killing her by sorcery. His demand for
compensation was refused. If it had been admitted, one of his dead sister's daughters
should have been released from clientship. He declared that he would take one of them
away, so that none of her former lords of the Bienge clan should choose her husband.
He carried off the little girl, Ngalakamba, his sister's daughter, to the village of Bush-
ongo, to be married there. The Bienge clan arranged with the village of Middle Homb
BLOOD-DEABTS AND CLIENTSHIP AMONG THE LELE
7
that she should be} captuted and made village-wife there, they receiving compensation
from Middle Holibb Then h'er-mother's brother-complained to the chief of the Western
Lele, Ngwamakadi, one of the few cases I recorded of appeal to chiefly arbitration. He
declared both sides to have been in the wrong, the Bienge clan for not compensating
for the death they had caused, and the Ket clan for taking the girl away from her
fathers by force. He proposed that she should now be allowed to remain the wife of
Middle Homb, and that the Bienge should pay over a client to her mother's brother,
Pung. The Bienge, stronger and more numerous than the Ket clan, and backed by their
own village, agreed with the first part of the settlement, but omitted to carry out the
second part. When Pung himself finally died, no compensation had been paid, and
his younger clansmen, the sons of the girl in question, felt that they were too isolated
and too few to reopen the case.
KET CLAN
~~4
MBWENGOL PUNG
NGALAKAMBA NGONDU CLAN
[CLIENTS
OF
4
LUBELO
ILUNGU MBOYU MWENDELA CLEMENT LELE
FIGURE 2
This part of the case illustrates the disadvantages of belonging to a small local clan
section (see below). The second part of the case illustrates the ways in which lords use
their rights over client women.
While Ngalakamba's 'children were young, Middle Homb village incurred a blood-
debt to the clan of Hanja in their own village, which they settled by transferring rights
over her daughter, Mwendela. Hanja settled an outstanding debt they owed to the
Bulong clan, and the latter transferred rights over the girl to a man of the Lubelo clan
in South Homb, who had long ago accused one of them of having killed his mother.
The girl
herself,
in the meanwhile, had been baptized at the mission, and therefore
the Lubelo, on acquiring rights over her, had to find her a Christian husband. Their
own young Lubelo men were mostly married or betrothed. They therefore gave her to
Clement, younger brother of Lele of the Ngondu clan, both clients of the Lubelo. Her
two brothers left Middle Homb, and came to settle near their sister in South Homb.
They acknowledged their status of clients to the village of Middle Homb, but they
nourished a sense of grievance, saying that but for the weakness of their local clan
section, they would have been free men, and their sister and her children free to be
disposed of in marriage according to their own interests.
8 MARY DOUGLAS
When the client and lord live in rival villages it is even more neces -ry for the lord
to be punctilious in his dealings, as the following
casq
demolistrates.
Case IV. Lubelo and Lung clans. A man of the Lubelo clan in South Homb was accused,
and convicted by poison ordeal, of killing by sorcery a man of the Hanja clan in Middle
Homb village. Lubelo gave their own sister, Idiamaha, in compensation. The Hanja,
instead of marrying her themselves, transferred their rights as lords to the Lung clan
in Hanga village, the hereditary rival of South Homb village. There she was married to
the official diviner of the village, and bore three children, clients of the Lung clan.
When her husband died, Idiamaha was inherited by another man, but proper purifica-
tory ritual which protects the widows of official diviners from death, was omitted.
Idiamaha died, and her brother, Ngomambulu, demanded compensation from the
Lung clan. The Lung refused, and the Lubelo forthwith declared their clientship to be
at an end. Idiamaha's daughters and her only son became, to all intents and purposes
as free as if Lung had formally released them. Koku and Ngomadiku went to live in
South Homb, and Kinda was married as village-wife in Bushongo.
Later, Ngomambulu fell ill, and nearly died. Many diviners tried to cure him, with-
out success. The man who restored him to health was Mihaha, a diviner of the Lung
clan, from Hanga, who went to endless trouble to get powerful remedies for him.
LUBELO CLAN
NGOMAMBULU IDIAMAHA
~~~4
KINDA
KOKU NGOMADIKU
(CLIENT
OF BUSHONGO)
MAHAMIMBENDI
FIGURE
3
When he felt his health return, Ngomambulu sent for Mihaha and declared that as
he owed him his life, he would give to him Mahamimbendi, the girl whom Mihaha
would have married originally if the Lubelo had not ceased to be clients of the Lung
clan. As it happened, Mahamimbendi had already been married to another man,
and borne him a son. He refused to give her up, and in the old days the Lubelo would
have resorted to force. However, this happened quite recently, in the last ten years,
when the Belgian Administration effectively prevented fighting. Ngomambulu and
Mihaha went together to the tribunal and obtained an order for Mahamimbendi to
leave her husband and go to be married to Mihaha, as they solemnly declared that he
was her first betrothed, and that she had been taken from him by force. She now has
three small children by Mihaha.
In this case the lord, represented by Mihaha, finally recovered his clients, by showing
extreme solicitude when their leader was ill. Ngomambulu's act of restoring the girl to
clientship as a ge ture of gratitude illustrates the grand style in which these transactions
were made. The fact that the girl was unhesitatingly taken away from her first husband
shows that the husband who is not his wife's lord is at some disadvantage in his dealings
with his in-laws. In this sense it is true that it is an advantage to be married to a client-
wife.
THE CLAN AS LORD
When a village owns a group of clients, there is no difficulty in recognizing who is their
lord, for the village has a corporate enduring personality, regardless of the fluctuations
in its population. This I must describe separately. The clan, on the other hand, has
little br no corporate personality. It is an amorphous collection of individuals, claiming
common matrilineal descent, practising exogamy, and observing a few religious pro-
hibitions, but too dispersed to be capable of any common action. The clan never
assembles, has no single leader or set of leaders, never attempts to take united action.
Clansmen are scattered, not only through the four Lele chiefdoms, but also through
the neighbouring tribes. Fellow clansmen from different parts of Lele country do not
know each other, even know of each other, or of how many they number. They have no
corporate unity. For the Lele man, clanship is scarcely more than a completely general
claim for assistance based on matrilineal descent. The content of the claim, the persons
against whom it may be made, the kind and amount of assistance that may be hoped
for in any particular case depends entirely on the circumstances.
In spite of this vagueness and lack of organization in the clan, claims for blood-
compensation are made in the name of the clan of the victim, against the clan of the
slayer. This is largely a manner of speaking. When a claim is refused, the claimants
never capture a distant clanswoman of the slayer, as a means of enforcing collective
clan responsibility; they usually capture a client of the man who refuses to pay up.
There are two limited senses in which it is true that the whole clan appears as a
collectivity. First, no claim for blood-compensation can be made between sections of a
single clan. If a man kills a fellow clansman, this is a shameful act, which will create
enmity, but which cannot be compensated by the transfer of a client from one section
to another. Second, the fiction of clan unity is validated in so far as its effective sub-
units are constituted so that any clansman, born or reared anywhere, related or not
related, may become a fully participating member. The single qualification of matri-
lineal descent gives a man an option, which he can take out with whichever local group
of his clan he likes best, an option to acquire the status of a fully active member.
EFFECTIVE SUB-UNITS OF THE CLAN
The various sub-units, which act, each, in the name of the whole clan, are not clearly
definable, either by the observer, or by Lele themselves. They are constituted on the
two principles of residence and descent. A man's close matrilineal descendants, whether
or not they are actually living in his village, can claim to inherit his widows, and to
have some say on the disposal of his clients. In some contexts I find it convenient to
refer to these scattered matrilineal relatives as the inheritance group. Further, any man
who is actually resident in the same village as a fellow clansman, may be regarded as a
member of his local clan section, and this too gives a claim to inherit.
IO M-ARY DOUGLAS
Each principle limits the application of the other. Residence limits the descent
principle. Close lineal relatives, if they have moved fiaar away, and especially if their
move seems definitive, will not normally count as memrbers?of the inheritance group.
Correspondingly, the man who has recer-fly moved into a village, and hopes to be
accepted as a full member of his local clan section there, may have to live there for
some time, before he can compete successfully with close lineal relatives for the benefits
of co-residence.
Since each local clan section believes it has advantages in numerical strength, each
tries to attract recruits from others, so acceptance is not so difficult for a youngish man
as might be assumed. It is more difficult for an old man, because his seniority would
put him high in the scale of authority. Since the local section is regarded as a single unit,
recognizing no internal distinctions except of age or sex, its oldest male leads it on formal
occasions, and expects some deference to his opinions. The arrival of a young man does
little to disturb the existing pattern of power and authority; the arrival of an old man
is likely to threaten some established interests. The young are also welcome because of
their physical strength. In short, there is a practical age-limit for easy transfer from one
village to another, and there comes a time in a man's life when he has to decide to
settle down finally. Other factors beside his age tend to make a man's welcome more or
less uncertain: his cult status, his relations as a client and as a lord, his reputation for
quarrelsomeness and adultery, or for easy social relations with other men.
The distinction between a long visit, and a permanent change of residence is not
always easy to clarify. Some men are accepted at once,; others never. One man may
make a visit for six months, be lent a house, then be given a wife, and then finally
settle down and build his own house. Another man may arrive, immediately start
building a house, in the hopes of being given a wife in due course, but his hopes may be
disappointed, and after some years he may go away to try his luck elsewhere. The only
sure test of membership is whether or not the new arrival eventually receives a portion
of the inheritance which the local clan section controls, i.e. a wife.
In every village, round the settled core of each local clan section, there is a fringe
of men, working to make good their membership, men who have come in from else-
where. At the same time there are the young men, born in the village, still regarding
it as their home, and yet who are preparing to leave for the sake of joining some other
group of their clansmen.
There are situations when the Lele prefer an ambiguous status to a well-defined one,
since definition involves separation and a cutting-off of claims. Membership of the local
clan section is one case. A man knows that if he does not reside and co-operate with one
group of his fellow clansmen, he cannot make claims on them for wives or help. But he
foresees a time when he may quarrel or be driven out, and he would like to keep
similar claims warm in other villages. (Mwana mala mapende, kaha wu bo, the child of two
villages won't die.)
Since the Lele themselves avoid it, let us put aside the attempt to define closely
the local clan section, and turn to the problem of how this group acts as lord in relation
to clients. The role of lord needs decision, generosity, and other qualities which are
best displayed in one man, not in a leaderless group. Lele themselves say that the senior
member of a local clan section acts for the section as a whole. This would imply a
BLOOD-DEBTS AND CLIENTSHIP AMONG THE LELE II
degree of authority, which,
apagt
from being generally uncharacteristic of Lele social
organization, is not warranted by,the facts observed.
The local clan section
appears
as a single group at village meetings. It acts as a
single unit, under the formal leadership of its elder, in support of any of its members'
claims for compensation. It also appears as a single unit when it has allocated any of
its widows or client women in marriage, or when it decides that the claims of a close
matrilineal kinsman who has gone to live elsewhere should be considered or not. There
are meetings and discussions which make a real thing of the nominal unity. A young
boy will say artlessly 'We gave so-and-so his wife'. But the fine simplicity of the first
person plural applies only after there has been considerable shuffling, bargaining and
pushing from various points of vantage. It is important to try and discover what these
points of initiative are.
Observation shows that for all practical purposes each elementary family of clients
may recognize a different member of the lord's clan as their own particular and im-
mediate representative, whom they refer to as their kumu, lord. If a case of clientship
originates with the action of one man, then he is the lord, nominally acting in the name
of his clan, who has most control over the woman who is transferred, and over her
children. Nyama, below (Case V), is an instance. He had provided, single-handed,
the wealth in camwood which his village required for two of its wives. In recompense
he was given, as his clients, the daughters of these village-wives. He married them
himself, and controlled the marriages of his own daughters himself as if, in this case,
he alone represented the clan, though he was by no means the eldest man of his local
clan-section.
Again, the man in the lord's clan who marries a clan client and begets daughters who
are in turn clients, acts as a nearly independent agent in their affairs, for their client-
ship has begun with his begetting. Every time a lord-husband dies, his successor as
husband, if he is a fellow-clansman, takes over his role in regard to the children. It
follows that, in practice, a descent line of clients is attached to the local section of its
lord's clan through a number of particular allegiances to each of the clansmen who
intermarried with the client females. No wonder men are keen to be allotted client
wives in the gift of their local clan section. Whatever the other purposes of the act of
bestowing a client wife on a junior clansman, the effect on his status is like promotion
from an ordinary shareholder to the board of directors, for he can now hope to become
one of the founts of authority through which the clan section controls its heritage of
clients. In short, any originator of clientship rights for his clan, whether by begetting
or by buying, becomes one of the points of focus in client-lord relations.
Case V. Nyama's debt. A Lubelo man was captured in a raid, and would have been
killed if a Bwenga man from Mbombe had not intervened and ransomed his life by
giving a client to his captor. The Lubelo therefore owed a blood-debt to the Bwenga
man, and they paid over Njangom. Her children were born in clientship, but they
went in due course to live with their clansmen in South Homb. Subsequently Njangom
died in the poison ordeal, convicted of having killed a Bwenga woman by sorcery. The
Lubelo owed therefore another blood-debt to the Bwenga.
The debt was never regarded as one concerning the whole of the Lubelo clan, nor
even the whole of the section of it living in South Homb, but merely Nyama himself, the
12 MARY DOUGLAS
LUBELC CLAN
IDIAMAHA NJANGOM
4 4~ 6b
PFRO NYAMA MAPICI MAHAMALUBELO
HIMBU
MAWE MIMBWANGA
MAHAMALUBELO
FIGURE 4
eldest male descended from the dead woman who had incurred the debt. Nyama's
own sister, Mahamalubelo, had been paid over by the Bwenga, his lords, to the Bulo-
mani clan in South Homb, so that he could not give his sister's daughter or daughter's
daughters. He proposed to settle the debt by giving one of his own daughters. Both
wives, Mapici and Ihowa, were his clients, and he was evidently considered to have the
sole right to dispose of their children in marriage, since he had not only begotten them,
but himself had been the agent by which his clan could claim them as clients. But both
girls, Mawe and Himbu, he had betrothed from infancy to men in the village.
One of them, Himbu, had been betrothed to Ngwe Malop, a client of the Bulomani
clan, the lords of his sister's children. Nyama now proposed to break off the bethrothal,
and send her to Mbombe, as client of the Bwenga clan, to make good his mother's
debt. However, Himbu's mother did not want her daughter to go away, and her case
was put by her half-brother, Lele, of the Ngondu clan, who, we shall see, was a man of
influence. Himbu and her mother were of the Pata clan, hailing from Bushongo. Speaking
as a man of Bushongo, Lele warned Nyama that Pata girls never did well in Mbombe,
and rarely succeeded in rearing their children there. If he wanted to see his daughter's
daughters married in their turn, Nyama would have to find some other way of settling
his debt.
In the end the solution came from the Bulomani clan, the lords of Nyama's sisters,
and also of Himbu's original betrothed. Nyama made a deal with them, transferring
rights over Himbu to the Bulomani, in return for clientship rights over his own sister's
daughter's daughter, Mahamalubelo, whom he then gave to the Bwenga in Mbombe.
Himbu was thus able to stay in the village, and to marry her original betrothed, Ngwei.
The interest of Nyama's case here is the degree of autonomy with which he exercised
his rights as lord of clients of his own begetting, and the absence of co-operation from the
rest of his own clan section. When I knew him, his other daughter Mawe had died in
childbirth, and so he had no clients left under his own control, except
his two wives.
BLOOD-DEBTS AND CLIENTSHIP AMONG THE LELE
I3
By that time his own sister's sons, the thildren of -Mawe-Mimbwang, were all Christians,
so it was altogether too specuiiative to ty to d wscoxer who, in the event of his death,
would have taken
over.
his rights as lord, -inth eevent of any clients surviving him.
For Christians, since they could -only marry once, could hardly work the clientship
system and enjoy its benefits in the old waNr.
The proof of whether a man's rights as a lord are vested in him as an individual, or
whether the generally accepted theory is valid, that they are distributed evenly through
the corporate personality of the local clan section, is tested by what happens when he
dies or leaves the village. Does he carry his individual rights as lord away with him
when he goes?
The answer depends much on the strength of personal loyalties. The exercise of
rights over clients is always so much a matter of delicacy and compromise, that in
practice the lord is not likely to have effective authority if he goes very far from the
normal scene of his client's lives. Nothing is easier, in such a fluid system, for the clients
left behind to transfer their individual allegiance to one of his remaining fellow-
clansmen. He is sure to be withstood by the women, since they regularly try to resist
proposed changes of residence for themselves and their daughters.
The following is a case in which a new arrival brought with him the right to act as
lord in several clientship cases. One man, Lele, was welcomed because he came to where
his own clients, and his lords, were living. By contrast, the young man who joined him
later, Yembu, gave up any rights he may have hoped to claim in his old clan section
in the far north. The case is worth studying in detail, for it shows the kind of factors
which enable a man to be immediately accepted in another village, his own age, client-
ship rights and obligations, and also the structure and composition (age, sex, numbers)
of the clan section he is joining.
Case VI. Jgondu clan. When Lele was released from a long term of imprisonment in
Luebo, he felt he could no longer live in his own village, Bushongo, because his brother
had taken his wife from him. He joined his sisters in South Homb. At the time that Lele
arrived there, the local section of the Ngondu clan in South Homb comprised only two
men. One, Ibonje, was very old, nearly senile, and well past active direction of affairs.
He had been born and brought up in South Homb, and now depended on his wife, and
NGONDU CLAN
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ a
IBONJE
< ) 4
NJILU (LIVING IN NIAMAHA LELE CLEMENT
(VILLAGE-WIFE BUSHONGO)
GABRIEL YEMBU
IN S. HOMB)
FIGURE 5
I4 MARY DOUGLAS
his daughters and their husbands. The other was Gabriel, a young leper. There were
three women, Gabriel's mother, and Lele's two classificatory sisters. With Lele came
his brother Clement, a Christian.
Lele brought with him some clientship rights, which had been vested in the section
of the Ngondu clan residing formerly in a little village, Bushongo bwabwani, which had
grown too small to be able to exist independently, and which had now been merged
with its brother village, Bushongo bwankapa. Most of these clients were now living
in South Homb, and on his arrival there, they transferred their allegiance at once to
Lele, instead of to one of his maternal uncles in the other Bushongo village. Lele also
carried with him the right to control clients who had belonged to the vanished village,
and not to the Ngondu clan. He said that if the village were ever again restored to
separate existence he would hand over the heritage of clientship rights which he had
been administering in its name.
It is understandable that Lele was a man of some importance, and was doubly
acceptable as a newcomer to the village of South Homb; one of his sisters there was a
client of the village, he and his brother were clients of the main clan there, the Lubelo,
and several of his own clients and those of Bushongo bwabwani were also resident there.
To make him welcome, the village immediately allotted to him two of its clients as
wives. By marrying them he became son-in-law to the village, twice over. Later he was
inducted as junior official diviner of the village. The combination of honours accepted
implied that his life was now finally committed to being spent in South Homb.
In the meanwhile, another Ngondu man, Yembu, felt dissatisfied with his treatment
at the hands of his own clan section in the village of his birth, Njembe, in the north of
the territory. He had served as a policeman, and had met Lele when the latter did a
long-term prison sentence, and on hearing of his warm reception in South Homb,
decided to throw in his lot with him.
At the time that Yembu arrived in South Homb, Lele had three wives, two given
by the village. The third, Mawe, a client girl, had run away from her first husband, and
offered herself to Lele as her lord. The fact that Lele was now living in the same village
as her mother and her mother's mother no doubt influenced her decision.
Lele said that he felt ashamed to have three wives, when his younger brother,
Yembu had none. He took the new wife, Mawe, and said to Yembu, 'Here, put her in
your house. You can keep her as your wife.' Just as the gift of girls in marriage proved
that Lele was acceptable as a member of the village, so also Yembu knew that he was
accepted as a full member of the local section of the Ngondu clan. Later the Lubelo
clan, Lele's lords, allowed Yembu to marry one of their women as a second wife.
Yembu and Lele acted as brothers who had been cradled together. They treated old
Ibonje as their father, bringing him meat and wine. When Niamaha's son was to be
married, all three contributed to his marriage payments. When Gabriel went to the
mission clinic for long treatment, they sent him provisions. In the dry season, Lele and
Yembu cleared their fields, shoulder to shoulder, in turn. When Lele's wife was ill,
Yembu went regularly to find her herbal remedies. When Yembu had to pay a fine
at the tribunal, Lele helped to find him money. The solidarity of the local clan section
was beyond doubt, and whether Lele or Yembu died first, the other would have a
prime voice in the disposal of his widows, as much as Clement, Lele's full brother, who
BLOOD-DEBTS ANn CLIENTSHIP AMONG THE LELE
I5
had, in the meantime, gone- to Bushongo. Since this was a neighbouring and friendly
village, his departure was not looked, upon as enrding his rights as Lele's brother.
This example gives a clear illustration of how the local clan section, constituted
from disparate elements, comes to act as a single unit, and forms an inheritance group
which pools wives and property tt would be a mistake to think of a man deliberately
calculating that a move to village A will give him a better start on the social ladder than,
say, village B. When they move, it is generally under great personal stress, and at any
given time the choice of villages where they will be welcome may be very small,
Whether the move turns out to have been advantageous depends on the numbers, sex,
and age of fellow-clansmen and the number of the ties of clientship, but their personal
qualities as good friends will probably weigh more for a man deciding to join them
than a cool reckoning of his own chances of leadership.
The Ngondu case concerns only a very small local section of a clan, four men,
three women. Matters are different when the local clan section is larger. First, the
complete solidarity and pooling of interests is absent, although clan unity is still invoked
on occasion. A large clan section has been settled for some time and factions have
emerged. I do not call them descent groups, since they are not based strictly on prin-
ciples of descent. Newcomers to the village attach themselves to one or other of these
sub-groups, as personal tastes and interests dictate. They remain as vague as ever about
the genealogical relations involved.
There are two words for segments within a clan. Ikundu means womb, or line of
descent. Lele like to emphasize that the whole clan is derived from a single womb, and
they disapprove strongly any mention of different descent lines within the clan. Kongu
means co-operating group of clansmen, but it is a word also disapproved in so far as it is
used to make internal distinctions within the clan, and so is very rarely heard. However,
in spite of the etiquette which requires that distinctions of descent and of grouping with-
in the clan be overlooked, it remains true that in a large local clan section, there are
separate segments which deal independently with their own clients. Nyama's case
above is an example.
So much for the question of who, in the local clan section, takes the initiative in
dealing with clients. We now should ask how the lords exercise their rights.
HOW THE LORDS' RIGHTS ARE EXERCISED
Lele's case shows that clients like to have one of their lords living among them. The fact
is that the lord has no possibility of exercising any tyrannous control over his clients;
on the contrary, his role is benignly protective. For this there are at least four reasons.
The first, we have seen, is that, unless the male clients are satisfied that their lord
is good to them, they will seek an opportunity for ending the whole relationship, and
this is not difficult, since there is no machinery of coercion other than force of arms.
The second is that female clients who are unhappy can easily run away. Women like
to live near their mothers and grandmothers. This limits the geographical range within
which their marriages can be arranged to settle blood-debts. The normal course of
action for a woman who was unhappily married was for her to offer herself to be village-
wife in a village rivalling that of her husband. Immediately she had a whole village to
support her and to confront her husband's little clan section. No village would ever
B R.A.I.J.
i6 MARY DOUGLAS
refuse the opportunity to take a new
village-wife..
This aspect must be discussed in
detail separately.
Thirdly the rules of incest and exogamy complicate Xthe allocation of client women
to husbands. It is impossible for a whole line of clients to be married to the clan of their
lords. Fourthly, there are certain preferred marriages which the lord is expected to
allow his client women to make.
In other words, the degree to which the lords can derive any personal benefit from
their rights over clients is severely limited.
According to the rules of incest and exogamy, no one may marry into their own clan,
or into the clan of their own father. A man may not marry again into his wife's clan, if
she is alive. If he is the son of a village-wife, he should not marry a girl whose mother
was a village-wife of his village, nor should two women, whose mothers were village-
wives in the same village, and who therefore call each other sisters, be married to the
same man.
It follows from the first of these regulations that the daughters of client-wives, as
they may not marry into their father's clan, have to be married to men who are not of
the lord's clan. If a woman of clan B is client of her husband in clan A, then her
daughters, though they are clients of clan A, may not marry any man of that clan.
Clan A will try to arrange their marriages so that they will live near the village of
their lords; when their children are in turn of marriageable age, clan A will again be
able to allocate the girls amongst themselves, if they have not in the meanwhile trans-
ferred their rights over them. In short, a lord's clan can intermarry with a client in the
first generation, and subsequently with her daughters' daughters, and similarly with
their daughters' daughters. In each alternate generation the lords get the full benefit
of their rights to dispose of their female clients in marriage, and in every intervening
generation they get the secondary advantage of being able to give away wives to their
friends. On how wisely they use their rights in the intervening generation, when the
female clients are debarred from intermarriage with them, depends their prospect of
following up their full claims when these girls' daughters are again marriageable for
their clan.
Long-term planning is required, and some men do not have the energy or ability to
succeed. The baptizing of the younger generation as Christians has created a further
complication, since Christians are monogamous and intermarry only with one another.
It is interesting to see how many of the marriages between young Christians at the mis-
sions, which seem to be spontaneously arranged, are in fact a follow-up of old clientship
rights.
Case VII. In the following case, Ngomadiku had some difficulty in finding suitable
husbands for clients in his own clan section. When his sister Kinda died, her husbands,
the village of Bushongo, admitted their responsibility, and paid over to her clan one of
their clients. Whether the girl refused to leave home, or whether he found the incest
regulations debarred his own clan section, in any case, Ngomadiku allowed a fellow-
clansman living in Bushongo to marry her.
Earlier, before Kinda had died, he had paid her daughter, Idiamaha, as client to
the chiefly clan at Tundu, because a Lubelo man had seduced a chief's wife. Instead of
marrying her
himself,
the chief gave Idiamaha to the village of Malembi, and in return
BLOOD-DEBTS AND CLIENTSHIP AMONG THE LELE
17
Malembi gave him another woman. The girl's mother, Kinda, in Bushongo, protested
that Malembi was too far' andp she asked--that-Idiamaha be married in Bushongo.
So the Lumanya clan in Buishongo collected camwood, and bought the clientship rights
over her from Malembi village, and she married a Lumanya man in Bushongo.
Later she died in childbirth, nfaming a man of the Bulomani clan in her confession of
LUBELO CLAN NDONG CLAN
KOKU KINDA NGOMADIKU MWEN NDENG NGONDU
MAHAMIMBENDI ELIAS MAHOPU IDIAMAHA MANJUANJ MAYENGA
MEN
I
I
FIGURE 6
adultery. Both the Lubelo and the Lumanya clans claimed compensation from the
Bulomani for her death. The Bulomani paid over one of their clients of the Ndong clan
to the Lubelo, a girl called Mayenga. Ngomadiku could not marry her himself, as her
mother's sister was already his wife. The dead woman's full brothers were too young for
her. By going among other men of his own clan section, or by going beyond it, he could
presumably have found her a husband, but he let the matter slide, saying that she could
marry whom she pleased, so long as the Lubelo could claim her daughters. She went to
the far south to be married, and bore three daughters, who, by rights, should have all
been clients of the Lubelo. The distance was too far for easy contact to be maintained,
so Elias was lucky to get one of them: Mwen was betrothed to him from birth, and at the
time of my visit he was waiting for her to finish her instruction for baptism at the
mission.
PREFERRED MARRIAGES
From the rules of exogamy one would expect that the client's line would be intermarried
with the lord's clan in every alternate generation. In practice this pattern holds good,
though it is apt to be disturbed by transfers of clientship rights. But it rarely seems to
apply to more than one woman in each generation of clients which is able to inter-
marry with their lord's clan. The lords, in fact, seek only to marry one girl in each
family of girls, as there are other kinship claims which they must be circumspect in
recognizing. These are the ikana (grandchild) obligations.
Every grandfather has the acknowledged right to claim a granddaughter for his
own clan, whether he is a mother's father, or father's father. This right is regarded as the
perfect act of filial piety, as the only possible way of meeting the debt incurred towards
the begetter of children. In different situations it is expressed in different ways, bringing
18 MARY DOUGLAS
out different aspects of the institution. Sometimes it is merely the duty of a girl to succeed
her mother's mother, with whom she is identified ir' other ways. Sometimes it is the
duty of a man to give his own sister's daughter, or his own daughter, to the clan of his
father. 'Your father is like God,' a man explained to me, 'where would you be if he had
not begotten you?'
The main effect of these marriages is to maintain continuity in relations between
clan sections, and they also tend to maintain continuity between clan sections and cer-
tain localities, since a man with a daughter or daughter's daughter to dispose of is
likely to choose someone for her who is living in the vicinity.
A good example of the way in which a lord uses his rights over his own clients to
fulfil his obligations as a son is the case of Nyama's two daughters, one Mawe, given to
a man of Nyama's own father's clan, the other, Himbu, destined to succeed her
paternal grandmother if her own mother had not intervened (as described above).
Case VIII. Nyama's daughter, Mawe. He had betrothed her to a boy of the Bwenga
clan, Richard, and thus conformed doubly to the conventions of preferred marriages.
Bwenga was the clan which had fathered Nyama himself and whose client he was, so
he was giving his daughter to his father's clan. Richard was further eligible as his son-
in-law, since Richard, like Mawe's mother, was the child of a village-wife. If Mawe
had not become a Christian her father might have been expected to give her as village-
wife to the village which had begotten her mother. He came as near as he could to
performing his obligations to his wife's fathers by allocating the girl to one of their sons.
It can be seen that if a lord is expected to admit the claims of his client's father's
fathers and mother's fathers' clans, his right to dispose freely in marriage of client girls
is severely limited. Take the case of a man who has married a client. His daughters
cannot be married into his own clan, and so he uses the rules of preferred ikana marriage
as a guide to disposing of them. In the generation of his daughter's daughters, his claim,
as their lord, to take one of them is supported by his own claim as mother's father;
but he also has to respect the claim of the father's father of the girls, and if a claim has
been left outstanding from the previous generation, or in a collateral line, one of the
girls may be claimed to succeed a mother's mother's sister or mother's mother's mother
as village-wife. He should try to respect all these claims. The result is that, for any
marriage, men of at least three clans are likely to say that it was arranged by themselves
to fulfil kinship obligations which they respected.
It now appears that the actual benefit which the lord derives from his control of
clients is very intangible. They do not make him, or his clan section, richer in wives.
They merely give him a little additional influence in saying how wives shall be distri-
buted among other men. It is therefore intelligible that, when asked to give a straight
answer to a straight question about the advantages of being a lord, the Lele are at a loss
to explain the system in terms external to the rules of the system itself.
I give here an example of how the complex interaction of all these kinship ideals and
personal interests reduces the initial superior status of the lord, or even inverts it, so that
he becomes a willing puppet in the hands of his clients.
Case IX. Ket clan (see p. 6). The Bulomani clan, who held several clientship rights
in South Homb were represented by two middle-aged men, Bahanga and Yoku, and a
distant classificatory sister's son, Ngila. Bahanga died, and Yoku decided to leave the
BLOOD-DEBTS AND CLIENTSHIP AMONG THE LELE I1
village, after a quarrel. Ngila, a young man, was left alone to represent the lord's
interests in the village. Amongst other clients, they counted two brothers of the Ket
clan, the elder of whom decided to follow Yoku when the latter went to North Homb.
The younger, who stayed on, was Ngwe Malop, who, we have already seen (Case
V),
owed his wife, Himbu, to his lord. In this case the lord married one of his clients to the
other. Two brothers of the Ket clan, Ilungu and Mboyu, came to South Homb to live
near their sister Mwendela, who (as we have seen in Case III) was made a client of the
Lubelo clan and given by the Lubelo as wife to one of their clients. The brothers were
wifeless, and in South Homb they had no other kin than Ngwe Malop. Their lords
lived in Middle Homb village. The elder brother, Ilungu, was allowed by Ngwe's lord,
Ngila, to take over one of his (Ngila's) clients, Mawe Mimbwanga of the Lubelo clan.
She was the widow of Ngila's maternal uncle, Bahanga, and there were few men in the
village whom she was not debarred from marrying because of exogamy rules, she being
of the dominant Lubelo clan. She would not consider leaving the village, where all her
kinsmen lived. It seemed suitable that Ngila should allot her to the brother of his client,
Ngwe. The younger brother, Mboyu, married the daughter of Ngondu, of the Ndong
clan, another client of Ngila's. This was a case of the girl's father giving his own
daughter-client to a dependant of his own lord. The effect of these givings in marriage
to the new arrivals was that when later on their sister went away to live in Bushongo
with her husband, they stayed on in the village and made it their home. I heard
Ngwe boasting of how the Ket clan was growing in the village of South Homb, how
two had joined him there, and how others were planning to come too. It is interesting
that he gave this as grounds for intervening in a village quarrel, warning the villagers
that if they lost their good reputation, men who might come would think twice.
In this case a man started to build up his local clan section, attract others, give them
wives to settle down with, entirely by using his own lord's influence in the village on his
own behalf. In helping his client thus, Ngila was felt to be acting as a wise and generous
lord. When Ngwe's wife Himbu lost three babies in succession, shortly after birth,
Ngila arranged for her to have special ritual assistance,
and himself offered to
pay the
cost of the expert's fees. It is obvious that by acting thus benignly Ngila
was
doing much
to maintain the influence of his clan in the village.
The difficulty of arranging wisely the marriages of all his client-women explains why
a lord tends to cast around widely for suitable husbands. In the cases I have just de-
scribed, the women were living in the lord's village, and therefore it was expedient to
marry them locally to men not of his own clan. In other cases it
happens
that a client-
girl is born away from her lord's village, and his plans to bring her nearer may meet
with resistance from her and her mother. Then a
complicated
series of transactions may
ensue in which clientship rights over her are
exchanged
for
rights
over a local girl.
Alternatively, he may allow her to marry a man of his own clan
living
in her village.
In this way he solves the problem by invoking the principle
of clan unity.
A
distantly
located fellow clansman thus fortuitously finds himself treated as a member of the
matrilineal inheritance group. This is one of the situations in which the Lele find it
convenient not to limit the right to inherit to members of the local clan section. Such
is the difficulty of reconciling the clientship system to the wilfulness of women, that if the
dispersed members of the clan were not treated as
potential
co-heirs of a clan section
20 MARY DOUGLAS
and allowed to marry client-girls who refuse to come to their- lord's village, then there
might be no alternative to losing rights oover the girl; allowing her to marry outside
both the lord's clan and village.
WEB OF CLIENTSHIP TIES
It can well be imagined that clientship was not a subject to be investigated by means
of rapid surveys. In many cases there were contradictory versions of what had happened.
One man would claim to be free, while two clans might claim him as their client.
My early enquiries were hailed as a means of saving lost causes, and people hastened to
have their preferred version of a case recorded. Inevitably, then, I found it most reveal-
ing to confine my work to intensive study, since information that I could not follow up
with cross-checking was not worth collecting. A detailed chart of the main links of client-
ship holding between members of one village, and those connecting them with lords
beyond the village confines, is the clearest way of illustrating the system, and this is
impossible to construct accurately on a quick survey.
TIES OF CLANSHIP IN THE VILLAGE OF SOUTH HOMB
/BUCA
NIEMBE
l~~~ I
_ _ _ __ HANGA
BULOANLBL
-- _- ----r~~
EL
8WENG`G\
IN
U.
BWOCLAND SECTION BM80EBKM.MHOM8
MAHENGE
LEGEND
TUNDU MBomB
-- FROM CLIENT TO LORD
VILG VLAE
MBWEKALA LUMBUNJI
IN IN
CLAN SECTION
MBomB
M.OM
[ ] VILLAGE
FIGuRE
7
On my chart of ties of clientship in South Homb (Fig. 7), I have marked local
clan sections with triangles, of a size roughly to indicate their numerical strength in the
village, and placed those resident in South Homb within a large square, representing
the village area. As several people are clients of the village itself, I have put arrows to
the borders of the village square to represent this. Clans and villages outside South
Homb are shown with triangles and squares. The relative position of the clan sections
in South Homb in the diagram has nothing to do with residence in the village, but is
based entirely on the convenience of presenting a pattern in which lines do not cross.
The chart shows up several points of interest about the relative importance of clans
in the village. Lubelo, one of the two largest clans (ten men and six women), is seen to
have a strong network of claims over clients in the village, and relatively few obligations
to lords outside the village, this contrasting with Bwenga (eight men and eight women).
Both were typical, in their internal structure, of old, long-established clan sections,
reft by factions. But Lubelo was much better able than Bwenga to sink its differences
and to act as a unit when situations so required, while Bwenga was openly quarrelling.
Bwenga failed to put up a candidate for the Pangolin cult, because the one qualified
man in the village was not confident of the support of his clansmen. I am inclined to
conclude that a large heritage of clients has a favourable effect on the solidarity of the
local clan section.
The importance of certain men leading very small clani sections is seen to stem from
their roles as lord of clients. The Bulomani (two men and two women), the Ngondu
(three men and three women), are far more important in village affairs than mere
numerical strength warrants.
It would be confusing to put on the chart more than the bare direction of client-
lord relations between clans. But it needs further explanation. We need to know who,
in each clan section, is client to whom; how many of them; male or female; first or
later generations. The simplest way is to take each of the larger clan sections in turn. In
the course of studying their client-lord relations, many other aspects of village organiza-
tion will be illustrated.
Lubelo in South Homb (Fig. 8). The striking point about this large clan section is
the ignorance of its members about their genealogical relations with one another.
Koku's sons were surprised to learn that no one could trace the links they had supposed
to connect them with the children of Mawe Mimbwang, whom they had regarded as
their sister. It was generally thought that Pung was a fairly close classificatory brother
of Ngomadiku and Koku, and I was begged not to reveal their failure to unravel the
connexion. Mbembe Iboci treated Nyama and Pung as if they were her own mother's
brothers, coming forward with voluntary contributions to levies they might be making
among their clansmen. The three men who did not fit into the fiction of common
matrilineal descent so well as the others were the brothers, Makaka and Bwato, and also
Pung. None of them had any close female relatives in the village, and I am sure that this
prevented them from being so easily assimilated into the unity of the clan section. How-
ever, when Ngomadiku, village head, died, he was succeeded by the next eldest man of
the Lubelo clan, Bwato, and Pung acted as liaison with the European officials. In other
words, internal distinctions of birth and friendship did not prevent the clan from be-
having as a unit when it came to naming a successor to the village head.
ko)
LEGEND
=CLIENTS OF A VILLAGE OR CLAN LUBELO CLAN IN SOUTH HOMB: TIES OF CLIENTSHIP
PERSONAL
NAME=RESIDENT
IN S.
HOM8
(PLACE NAME) =RESIDENT ELSEWHERE
^
6
=DEAD
KINDA PANEMA
MBEMBE
MAWE
HIKUM
MAWOHA 3
PICIAMAHA PICULU NGOMADIKU NGWAPICI KINDA MAHAMALUBELO
PONYI 3
KOKU %
KINDA MAKUM I
NJANGOMBI s
IDIAMAHA MAHOPU IDIAMAHA
t MAHAMIMBENDI
81ONG IHOWA NIABWANI MIHONDO YEMBABEE
NYAMA MAHAMEUEELO
* (N. HOMB) (BUSHONGO)
I
(BUSHONGO) I
(BUSHBNO <
_____ _______~~~~ MAHMIEEDE___
MEME KOKU IKINDA MEENG
MABU ILEMBADIKU
NGMAEULU MIMEWENG MMBEC~ ELIAS PROPRE MARCEL MAHOP IDAAH
MANJUANJ
ECI (.HOME) $(M. HOME) MS (MBHOE)G HANG)I(USHDGI )(MISSION)
IBOCI (SODIR HOMB)
1, 7 (
LWwIAHA3MNJUANJ I>S
_ - YEMBAHA (CHILDREN) J ,NVENURE MAHAMALUBELO THEOPHILE KINDA )
s m /BULOMAN\ / IN \ / HA~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~LNGA /LUMANYA\ LUMBUNJI
VILLAGE F UMANY
INOFIINN
N.HOME
S. HOME
S.
HOME
HANGA EUSHONGO
FbIlGU 8
LEGEND
BWENGA CLAN IN SOUTH HOM8
42t., & DEAD
PERSONAL NAME=RESIDENT IN S. HOMB
_
- - PICIAMAHA
0 (PLACE NAME) =RESIDENT IN OTHER VILLAGE
P
*AH
( %
=CLIENT OF A CLAN OR VILLAGE
;Jmrrz
MAWE MABONJE
1MAHAMIYAMBA B BUTUKU I
MAWE MABUKARA
_p ~
v
^(FORMER VILLAGE HEAD) I
v F
:' 4 (> ~~~~~j ~~) ', C,) ~~~~ ()~ X L 077 ) ! L0
s.a t1?- t?-st 4
an~~~~~~~~~~~~ t-4.4 > KOMBE PAN
IDIAMAHI-A
IPICULU
(
PICIAMAHA P ICIAMAH PICULU
VMANGAIN
KOMBE MABWAK
IDIAMAHA
% MWELU MBEMBE MAMBOK PORPERAK PERO MBEMBE HMBUJI BWENE (MBOMB)
;r(BUSHONGO)
(HANGA)
4
(BUN
I
I
( MAWE MABONJEI I BUTUKUL RICHARD ROMAIN DENIS 4;
BIONG KINDA VICTON | BWEN KINDA MAWE
NAMBAHEK (YOUNG I
(MIKOPE) (MBOMB) (MISSION) (MISSION) 1 (BUSHONGO) YE YE (M. HOMB)1(M. HOMB)
M BOY
r ~
~~ ~~
1-rrBOG. / I VILLAGE i L s HOMB | | S ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~~~
. HO co
/\~~~~~~~~~~~~
I
I.BIONG
1
BWEKAMS.
MBM
0H8
EKAMFVILLAG VIAGEUREELO E
VILLAGE
IN ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~S. HOM OF TUNDU IN S.
HOMB
CLAN IN MBOMB
FIGURE
9
24 MARY DOUGLAS
The Bwenga clan of South Homb (Fig. 9). All the Bwenga clan in South Homb were
clients of the Lumbunji clan in Middle Homb (dating back to the first arrival in the
territory, and the making of a bridge across the river by a Lumbunji man), that is to say,
all except those marked as belonging to other lords, and except Mwelu, who was free.
The grouping in this clan followed the lines of the descent groups shown, except that
it was led and represented in the village by Mabonje, the village-head, until his death,
and then by Mangain, until Kombe Pah Bwene came to the village in late middle age,
after being sent away from Mbombe and Middle Homb in turn, accused of sorcery.
Then Kombe Pah Bwene, as the eldest resident Bwenga man in Middle Homb, officially
represented the whole local clan-section.
The marriages of the Bwenga clients of Ngondu clan are instructive, especially since
women of three generations were living in South Homb. The eldest, Mawe Mabukara,
and her daughter's daughter, Mawe, were both married to men of their lord's clan.
The two women of the intervening generation, Mbembe and Hombunji, were given to
men of Bushongo village, where the Ngondu clan was strongest. Mbembe quarrelled
with her husband, and eventually came back to live with her mother and daughters
in South.Homb. Hombunji's husband was Ilungu of the Ket clan, only nominally a
man of Bushongo, since he had never lived there, but his own mother's brother came
from that village, and this made a suitable pretext for allowing him to marry Hombunji
as his second wife. The youngest girl, Nambahek, was given by her lord, Lele, to a
young man of his own lord's clan, the Lubelo, her mother's brother Pero being willing
since his own wife was a client daughter of the Lubelo clan.
The Bwenga clan had a large section in Mbombe village; therefore Piciamaha had
not forbidden her daughter Butuku to be given as client-village-wife in Mbombe when
South Homb incurred a debt against that village. She herself had in her youth been
taken as village-wife client from Bushongo village, chosen almost certainly because her
own clan, strongly represented in South Homb, wanted to have her living among them.
Ndong clan in South Homb. Ngondu was head of this section of the Ndong clan, a close-
knit descent group, since the other members were descended from his own sisters. The
genealogy is worth noticing for the wide dispersal of the descendants of Mihondo, his
mother. Ngondu was a man of great strength of character and energy,
and he kept in
touch with all his mother's descendants, visiting them when sickness was reported,
helping and advising them. On his death, all these scattered kinsmen would have a right
to count as part of his inheritance group.
His mother, Mihondo, had been paid as client to the Bulomani, and all those
living in South Homb were still in the hands of Bulomani. According to the Lubelo clan,
Ngondu's sister's daughter, Mayenga, had been paid to them, but according to Ngondu
she had been given to the Lumanya clan in Malonga, in the far south, and he main-
tained that her daughter, Mwen, had been given to Elias of the Lubelo clan for some
different cause than that recalled by the Lubelo. Only one woman was
free,
in this
descent line, his sister's daughter, Mihondo, who had been released by
the Bulomani
in recognition of some debt they had incurred towards the Ndong.
Of his three wives, one was his client (of the Kamba clan). She had six children.
The eldest daughter he allotted as wife to Mboyu, the younger of the two Ket brothers
who attached themselves to the Bulomani clan when they
arrived.
BLOOD-DEBTS AND CLIENT4SHIP AMONG THE LELE 25
His sister's daughter, Pembe Marie, was betrothed from birth to old Bahanga, their
lord of the Bulomani clan. When Bahanga died, the Bulomani should have named her
husband; most probably it would have been Ngila, or she might have been sent to
North Homb to Yoku. But she ran away to the mission to be baptized, and there
married a man who had no claims on her, and who was made to pay heavily to the
Bulomani clan for their clientship rights. The girl's eldest brother, Nyama, showed
proper feeling for the Lubelo clan which begot him. He gave his daughter to Prospere,
the sister's son of Ngomadiku, who had inherited his mother from another Lubelo
clansman.
NDONG CLAN IN SOUTH HOMB
_ ;IHONDO
-m ft
_. __-
t
-
_ _ _ ~~~~~~ @ ~~ (born S. HOMB:- m. BUSHONGO)___
MWEN LUBWANI MAPICI NDENG PICIAMAHA NGONDU *
I (BUSHONGO) (MBOMB} (BUSHONGO) (BUSHONGO)
NYAMA NGWEI PEMBE ANTOINE IHAKU MAKIN I I MAYENGA MIHONDO NJONDU FRANCOIS
(M. HOMB) MARIE I I (MALONGA) * (BUSHONGO) (BUSHONGO) MAKADI t
(') AD A I
Mt
I
~~~
r--~~~7 u:.duuub --- -
MWEN .
BULOMANI LUBELO ,
IN S. HOMB IN S. HOMB LUMANYA IN MALONGA
FIGURE IO
Ngondu clan in South Homb. I have described already how, in spite of their disparate
origin, the members of the Ngondu clan in South Homb behaved as a single unit in the
village. Lele's mother's mother, Njilu, had originally been paid as client to the Lubelo
clan, but subsequently the Lubelo incurred a blood-debt with the Ngondu, and released
to them Nyangondu, Lele's mother's sister. Lele and Clement were therefore always
clients of the Lubelo clan, but Njilu, Hombo, and Niamaha were free. In recognition
of their good relations, the Ngondu allowed the Lubelo to take one of their women,
Niamaha, in marriage, as a free woman. Hombo and Njilu were married in Bushongo,
where most of their clansmen lived. Later, in pursuance of a private revenge, South
Homb village captured Njilu, and made her their client and village-wife.
The Lubelo were good lords to Lele and Clement; the latter got one of their other
clients for wife (Mwendela of the Ket clan; see Case III); Lele took a Lubelo girl who
was daughter of the village-wife.
Bulomani clan. In the previous generation the Bulomani clan was represented by
three men and one woman: Malop, his sister's son Yoku, and his mother's sister's
26 MARY DOUGLAS
NGONDU CLAN IN SOUTH HOMB
NJILU
g
NYANGONDU ILEMBADIKU ^ BAHEK g IBONJE
NJILU HOMBO NIAMAHA LELE CLEMENT I
* GABRIEL YEMBU
_ _ __ _ (BUSHONGO)/
VILLAGE OF LUBELO BWENGA
S. HOMB CLAN CLAN
FIGURE InI
daughter's son, Bahanga. The one woman was Mbwekala, who had been a village-wife
in Hanga, and was captured and made village-wife in South Homb. She was barren.
Much later she was joined by her mother's sister, Bahek, who came with her son Ngila.
Another man of the Bulomani clan came latterly to live in the village, one who could
trace no connexion with those already there, Emil, who came in the wake of his
mother's sister's husband, Lele (Ngondu clan). At first I wondered how he had managed
to get the consent of the village to his marriage with Christine, a daughter of a village-
wife. In fact this 'semi-V.I.P.' treatment was quite consistent with the fact that he
arrived under such influential auspices as the Bulomani and Ngondu clans.
Ngila's continued presence in the village, after the death of one mother's brother
and departure of the other, needs no explaining. Clients in six clans counted him as lord.
This is a clear case of how clientship rights, which in the first generation are treated
as a matter primarily concerning the lord in whom they originated, in the next genera-
tion may enter the common stock of heritable rights of the local clan section. Ngila's
mother's mother's mother's sister's son, Malop, was the begetter of Ngwe Malop of the
Ket clan; Bahanga, his mother's mother's sister's son, begot the children of Mawe
Mimbwanga of the Lubelo clan. When Malop and Bahanga died, Yoku first adminis-
tered their rights, but when Yoku left the village, Ngila became to all intents and pur-
poses the sole lord. Later Emil came to the village, and if Ngila left or died, Emil would
probably control the Bulomani clients.
The Ket clan in South Homb. Ngwe Malop elected to remain in the village of his birth,
partly because his father was a member of the powerful Bulomani clan there. He kept
in close touch with his immediate clansmen in Kenge, and Mbombe, villages to the south,
went to their funerals, was called in to settle disputes. The genealogy shows the tendency
for fellow-clansmen to spread. Ngwe was the only one of the many descendants of his
BULOMANI CLAN
MIHONDO
BAHEK
W14~ 4 _ _ _
MBWEKALA MWAMBI JOK NIAKALA
NIAKALA MALOP HANJELA NGWAMA
MBWANI NGWENJALI BAHEK (BUSHONGO) BAHANGA (BUSHONGO) NJONDU YOKU MBAMBOYU
(BWENE) (moved to (N. HOMB)
I I>
N.
HOMB)
MBWEKALA LUBAMBOYU NGILA KALIHOWA
EMIL
(N. HOMB) (m. In BWENE)
FIGuRE I 2
mother's mother to stay on in the vicinity of Middle Homb. Probably the long list of
eight full siblings of his mother is in fact an ellipsis covering classificatory siblings of the
same mother's mother, and the genealogy in fact is likely to take us back four genera-
tions, not three. However, he still could not trace any relationship to Ilungu and Mboyu
nor to Manda, an elderly village-wife living there.
KET CLAN IN SOUTH HOMB
MBAKAMBA
f
& A
A
>A~ 4)4)
> -(> l)
MANDA / MAWOHA | PAHIMBA MIHONDO
KINDA BUNJEH INALAKAMBA
- - (S. HOMB) % (MBOMB) (MBOMB) (MBOMB) ,
(M. HOMB)
4L1 4'L 1 !n b 14 ,,X-^
MIHONDO LELE
NGWEP|ALOt
ILUNGU MBOYU "MWENDELA
IKINDA BAHIMBE IYEMB LUMBE /
|(KENGE) (BWAWA) (BUSHONGO)
BULOMAN
M. HOMB LBE
II3
PCLAN
VILLAGE CLANBEN
FiGURE
13
28 MARY DOUGLAS
CONCLUSION
Clientship is a contractual relation, competing with and supplementing descent prin-
ciples in the affiliation of persons to local groups. Such is its complexity that it cannot be
analysed without at the same time describing the composition of clans and clan sections,
and many of the rules of marriage. Its close connexion with sorcery beliefs will be
obvious, since clientship arises when responsibility for death has been allocated. Most
deaths are attributed to sorcery and therefore a full description of clientship requires
understanding of the practice of divination, appeals to oracles, and ultimately of the
poison ordeal. Some of the uncertainties about the causes of any particular death are
reflected in the clientship system, with its scope for fluidity in the relations of lord and
client.
The intricacies of the system have been recorded in somewhat tedious detail, because
it is unique in Africa to-day, and vanishing already. It is possible that the pawnship
system of the Ashanti may have been analogous. Among neighbours of the Lele, the
Bushong have two marriage forms, giving lower or higher clan-status to the children,
according to the value of the marriage payments. It may be no coincidence that the
Lele, Bushong, and Ashanti have matrilineal descent. Clientship of the Lele kind may
have been a response to the strained relation between husband and wife's brother, and
to the desire of men to control their own children as well as those of their sisters. The
Lele husband who is lord of his wife, has advantages over his wife's brother which an
'ordinary husband' has not. Unfortunately, the very notion of an 'ordinary husband' is
foreign to the Lele, since clientship affects every marriage, one way or another. How-
ever, in spite of this, it seems likely that other deviations from strict unilineal descent,
achieved through alternative marriage forms, provide the most suitable frame of com-
parison for Lele clientship.

Mary Dougsls Clientship

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Blood-Debts and Clientship Among the Lele

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