23. Residence, Baga Sitemu, Tolkotsh Village. The Sitemu ("the elders") are considered the most culturally conservative of the five gaga dialect groups. Photo: Frederick Lamp, 1992.
24 (opposite). Female dance headdress (D'mba/Yamban). Probably Bulufiits, Monchon Village, c. 1938? Photographs taken by Beatrice Appia seem to document this headdress newly carved and worn in dance for the first time. Wood, metal. H. 125 cm. The Baltimore Museum of Art, Gift of Alan Wurtzburger(BMA 1957.97).
relationships and some are linguistically separate, even unique. All, however, from the Nalu at the Guinea-Bissau border to the Mmani at the Sierra Leone border, partake to one degree or another of an extensively shared culture. Together with the Landuma of inland Basse Guinee and the Temne of Sierra Leone, the Baga peoples form the "Temne language cluster"(Wilson 1962a and -b). This cluster combines with the Mmani of southern Basse Guinee, the Bullom of Sierra Leone, the Kissi of Guinee Forestiere, and the Gola of Liberia to form the larger linguistic unit (to which is sometimes appended the Limba of Guinea and Sierra Leone) designated as "Mel"(Dalby 1965). This unit's dominant distinguishing feature is a noun-class system using prefixes to designate singular and plural: "kola nut," for example (to use a word derived from the Baga-Temne and now international as "Coca-Cola"), is kola in the singular, tshola in the plural. Though the Terrine are now separated from the Baga by a hundred kilometers, some cultural affinities remain, such as the distinctive cheek scarification of two vertical lines, and an aesthetic of the human body that each people demonstrates in wood-carvings (fig. 113). Cultural groupings overlap somewhat with the linguistic ones but are distinct from them. Geographically contiguous to the Baga dialect groups, and separating them, are the Nalu, the Pukur(commonly called the Baga Mboteni or Baga Binari), and the Bulufiits (commonly known as Baga Fore); these peoples' languages are separate linguistic units, vaguely related to each other but not to those of the Baga and Landuma,with which they nevertheless share a common culture. What we know as the art of the Baga derives from all these groups, and is itself divided into many different linked cultural traditions. The meaning of the terms "Temne" and "Baga" may provide a clue to the historical relationship between the two groups. The missionary Christian Schlenker was told in the mid-nineteenth century that "Temne"(singular 6-Themne, plural afi-Themne) derived from 6-them, "The old gentleman," with the reflexive suffix ne, meaning "the old gentleman himself," "because they believe that the Temne nation will ever exist" (Schlenker 1861:iii). In the early seventeenth century, subchiefs of the Temne were called "Thaim"(Barbot 1746:94); today a male name, it was then a title, roughly equivalent to the British "Sir' To understand the term "Baga," one must be aware that both the Baga and the Temne pronounce the word as "Baka," with a k sound somewhat softer than in English (see Wilson 1961:1). The Baga people are a-baka, singular w'-baka (in Baga Sitemu; other dialects are similar); Bagaland (often referred to in Guinea by the Susu term "Bagatai") is da-Baka; the Baga language is tsii-baka. The term "Baga" or "Baka" has been used as a place name in many areas of Temneland; there are at least six Temne towns by the name today. Robaga/robaka in Temne means "a place (ro)[that has been] seized (baka)"(am baka ra mi means "they seize my [property]"); some towns of this name are said to have been taken by their present occupants as payment of a debt by the previous owners. Towns "seized" from the wilderness—created in the wilderness, that is, rather than in settled regions—are also called (Ro-)Baga/Baka. And lands seized by the Temne in their invasion of the coast would have been called Robaga (or simply Baga). By extension, the name comes to mean "At the place of the Baga," and those who live in a town named Robaga would be called "the people of Baga"(am-Baka in Temne; a-Baka in Baga), as the Baga today term themselves, and as the Temne explain. The Temne also use the term "Baga" to denigrate Temne areas, such as the Kunike chiefdoms in the east, that they consider beyond metropolitan civility. The Temne of Kambia,far to the north, call themselves "Baga-Temne," presumably because of their position as a Temne outpost, but perhaps for another reason. In the mid-nineteenth century, Robert Clarke spoke of a "Baga people, a bastard kind of Temne," often brought to Temneland as slaves (1843:168). Wuni baka ("seized person") is the Temne term for "slave." If Schlenker was right, as he appears to be, about the etymology of the word "Temne," the term may have referred to the equivalent of a landed gentry or older ethnic foundation, the "elder brother" of Landuma tradition (Biyi 1913:192,
40 CHAPTER II • THE COASTAL MATRIX
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