palace of the fo and its designated spaces, and the periphery, consisting of the roads dividing the polity into sections, the remaining districts, the sacred sites, and the border zones or no-man’s-lands.27 Nobility not directly associated with the core presided over the peripheral areas—the roads, the districts, and the sacred sites, but still had an important influence on chieftaincy politics.
The wala (sing., mwala), or, as Bamileke French-speakers say, ministres, in a chieftaincy made up the fo’s cabinet. In local languages, a mwala was described as ta djie, or father of the road,28 and like the roads radiating outward from the palace, their role in governance cut across all districts in the chieftaincy. The fo counted on the wala to uphold the legitimacy of his right to rule even in the face of plots to overthrow him. In the 1950s the Baham chieftaincy had four wala, each specialized in a particular area of governance—justice, diplomacy, commerce, and the maintenance of fertility and fecundity.
Notables who governed the districts of a chieftaincy, often called quarter-heads in colonial nomenclature (and hence, in much of the scholarly literature), were divided into two groups: the wabo,29 who had been named by a past or current governing fo; and the mfonte, whose forefathers had in the past submitted to a conquering fo, relinquishing their lepue status and pledging loyalty upon the annexation of their territory.30 A mwabo’s personal history with the fo distinguished him from a fonte, a distinction made more pronounced by the latter’s placement in districts bordering the chieftaincy’s most hostile enemies. The positions of wabo and mfonte recalled the chieftaincy’s past as each district preserved the memory of pacts, alliances, or enmities between their governor and the fo. In the Ngougoua District of Baham, for example, elders still sing of a past fo’s violation of his promise to exempt Ngougoua from paying tribute to the chief’s palace in return for the wabo’s peaceful surrender.31 Stories and songs like this one indicate that lepue was as important to internal politics within a chieftaincy as to external relations with neighbors.
Almost any powerful notable within a Grassfields chieftaincy could, under certain circumstances, undermine the power of the fo: as a member of kamveu or kungang, he might omit the requisite rites at the fo’s inauguration; as a mwala, fail to uphold the fo’s claim to the throne; or as a fonte in a border region, lead a secessionist movement or pledge allegiance to another powerful fo. Transgressions of this nature were, broadly speaking, unthinkable and thus were not a part of “the moral matrix of legitimate governance,”32 but they did occasionally occur, especially when the chieftaincy passed through the liminal phase of its fo’s succession. Furthermore, while colonial administrators promoted the notion that they had pacified the Grassfields by imposing stability in a region once plagued by warfare and rivalries, the administration they implemented often exacerbated tensions among members of the nobility. Many notables viewed colonial rule as an opportunity to change their political standing in the chieftaincy, to break away from a fo’s rule, or to gain power by forming an alliance with foreign administrators.
MAGIC AND MYSTICISM: THE SPIRITUAL TECHNOLOGIES OF GOVERNANCE
The undeniable political influence of the notables on the chief is often underestimated in the literature, as it was by European colonizers, including the French, who sought to make “traditional chiefs” their administrative auxiliaries. But the leadership of a Grassfields chief was also tempered in crucial ways by the forces of an unseen world—spirits, ancestors, and a mystical energy called ké (a term often glossed as magic or power).33
The fo depended on kungang for knowledge of the invisible, metaphysical world of spirits, ancestors, and people who shape-shifted into animals—the world of things ordinary people could only imagine, but a world nonetheless crucial to governance. The duty of kungang was to regulate and domesticate this invisible sphere and to harness it within the chief’s field of power. It was a role that required constant vigilance and an intimate, sophisticated knowledge of both the chieftaincy and the mystical dangers beyond its boundaries. Members of kungang were responsible for protecting the chieftaincy from mystical attacks—whether from within or from without. Once they discovered the mystical causes of misfortunes affecting a chieftaincy or the communities within it, they took measures to repair the spiritual disequilibrium through purification rituals or sacrifices carried out at sacred sites.34
To perform these spiritual duties, members of kungang needed a knowledge of ké, the potent, vital force present in the transformation of one thing to another—ore into iron, seeds into plants, and people into animals.35 Iron smelting depended on the proper management of ké by ironworkers, who had to refrain from violence of any kind, both during the smelting process and during wars with enemies. Because of the danger associated with metal, feuds within a given Grassfields polity or with its allies could not be fought using iron weapons.36 Ké saturated the sacred sites and forests of the chieftaincy’s landscape and was essential to reproductive and agricultural fertility, childbirthing, rainmaking, and spider divination.37 Grassfielders believed this force or energy to be indigenous to the region, in other words, to have preceded the arrival of the founders and settlers of the chieftaincies. Chieftaincy founders had had to rely on spiritualists among their adversaries to make the land habitable and to protect the new settlers from the potentially harmful effects of ké. In many chieftaincies, this initial negotiation is memorialized in periodic masquerades to recognize ké, during which the descendants of the autochthonous populations dance before the fo and the notables.38
Grassfields political philosophy was and is bound up in a belief in ké. In 2002 the late fo Marcel Ngandjong Feze of Bandenkop explained the role of mysticism and magic in chieftaincy governance by saying, “It’s not that I must be the greatest magician in the region. It’s that people must think that I am the most powerful magician in the region.”39 In the instability and insecurity of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, early rulers had to remain vigilant against plotted rebellions from within or beyond chieftaincy bounds. The presence of an invisible, tenuously controlled energy in the land must have made the founders of Grassfields chieftaincies uneasy, and they took every possible measure to harness ké to their advantage. The management of ké was a primary purpose of Grassfields secret societies, and a significant part of Grassfields governance was devoted to its regulation for the health of the community. Notables and spiritualists did not have a monopoly on ké, however. Others both within and outside the chieftaincy could access ké and put it to malefic use. These unregulated uses of ké, beyond the control of the leaders and protectors of the chieftaincy, were the most threatening to collective and individual well-being.
GOD, LAND, AND SACRED SITES (CHUEP’SI): THE SPIRITUAL ALLIANCE
Given the continuous mobility and competition among Grassfielders and their often antagonistic relationship with the autochthonous dwellers as they settled the region, claiming the right to occupy lands and legitimizing the chieftaincy’s presence constituted another essential part of Grassfields political philosophy. That Grassfielders believed the landscape hosted God is evidenced in the term Si, which means both god and land in the language groups Medumba, Fe-Fe, and Ghomala (spoken in the Nde, Haut-Nkam, and Mifi Departments, respectively).40 The connection between land, religious practice, and Grassfields moral economy was physically embodied in sacred places (chuep’si) that served as sites of protection, justice, reconciliation, and familial or community identity. Grassfields sacred sites were the visible manifestations of a spiritual alliance between the living humans and the spirits, ancestors, and gods inhabiting the chieftaincy. The chuep’si also served as historical markers inscribed into the landscape of gung, designating the rightful occupants of a plot of land and legitimizing the presence of Grassfields settlers on the territory. As sites where justice was meted out by notables and chiefs, wills were read aloud before witnesses, and conflicts were resolved, chuep’si were places of mediation where people negotiated legal contracts and relationships with each other.
In each chieftaincy, these sacred sites marked the interstices between the material and the spiritual worlds. The Grassfields are situated in a volcanic, mountainous region that straddles the margin between forest and savannah, five degrees north of the equator. Massive rounded boulders are balanced on hilltops, resembling giant pebbles tossed about by a child