Lugbara of Uganda

THE LUGBARA OF UGANDA 1
The Cultural Differences in the Social Order and System of Political and Ritual Authority
of the Lugbara
Mary-Jo Waterbury

The Lugbara are a group of people who seem to have lived off the radar of
anthropological studies until John Middleton set his interests on this ‘tribe’. There is little
information on their culture and way of life; however, their culture is still just as much defined as
our western culture. This can be seen in their social order. The Lugbara live along the Nile-
Congo divide, which is also the political boundary between Uganda and Congo. Their
distribution can be described as “clusters of people who recognize themselves as being culturally
distinct from their neighbors” (Middleton, 1965, 2). In other words, all the Lugbara live in large
clusters that border one another to create the Lugbara Highlands, but each cluster lives separately
behind ancestral boundaries as subtribes.
A subtribe, or large cluster of Lugbara, consists of a subclan—the main part of a clan (or
group of patrilineal descendants) that stays together and inhabits their ‘home’ land, acting as the
core for their clan—with whom other clan members can live alongside. In simpler terms, a
subtribe consists of a subclan that inhabits their clan’s ancestral land and other clan members
who have migrated and settled down on the clan’s land. The existing subclan is then divided into
major lineages, which are divided into minor lineages, which are further more divided into
minimal lineages. This can be better understood when comparing these subdivisions of Lugbara
lineages to our western culture’s idea of a family tree. The subclan would be the great-
grandparents, the major lineages would be the grandparents, the minor lineages would be the
parents, and the minimal lineages would be the children of the parents. In this way, the family
lineage is being spread thinner and thinner as it is continually being mixed with another family
lineages.
The subtribe is also split up into section levels. Middleton says,” Most subtribes include
from four to eight major sections, each compromising about twenty-five family clusters grouped
into two to four minor sections.” (Middleton, 1965, 37) This social organization allows the
subtribe to distribute work to each section so that each section can function in the large cluster
and help maintain order. For example, the subtribe is responsible for settling disputes by
agreement, the major section is responsible for settling disputes “by discussion or the operation
of religious sanctions”, and the minor section consists of several family clusters which serve as
the basic residential and political group. Marriage also adds another layer of complexity to the
Lugbara’s social order.

A family cluster is the equivalent to an entire family (grandparents, aunts/uncles, parents,
cousins, children, etc.) in the United States; however, the Lugbara group their family together in
a set of grass huts with granaries. Their survival depends on the farmland they own that
surrounds their home, and when the land becomes infertile, they sometimes have to migrate and
cultivate new farm lands on other clan’s lands. Their family clusters consists of the minimal
lineage, the wives of lineage members, and may include one or two men of different lineages.
The minimal lineage includes all the men, women, sons, and daughters born within the family
cluster and is where the family cluster gets its name and elder from. It’s “usually of three to five
generations in depth, with up to three generations of living members, who are descendants of the
lineage founder who is thought to have lived a generation of two earlier than the oldest living
man” (Middleton, 1965, 27). The next part of the family cluster are the wives of the lineage
members. Lugbara wives are much different than married women in the United States. When a
Lugbara woman gets married, she remains part of her family lineage, even though she lives in
the family cluster of her husband, and her last name doesn’t change. In fact, when a man wishes
to marry a women, there is a couple month period in which the man must make visits and bring
gifts to exchange to the woman’s family in return for her sexual rights. After all the gifts have
been accepted, the man and woman can marry, but the Lugbara celebrate marriage through wails,
mock fighting, mourning over the loss of the bride to her groom’s lineage. The married woman
remains under the care of her lineage’s ancestors; however, in daily affairs, she is under the
authority of the senior men in her husband’s family cluster. It is only when she is said to have
been mistreated that her family cluster will intrude on her husband’s authority of her daily
affairs. Then the last part of a family cluster are a few men that may decide to live with their
mother’s or wife’s kin. Their position in the family cluster is much like a wife’s position; they
are ambivalent and have close ties with their natal lineage. The Lugbara’s way of living differs
greatly from our Western culture in many more ways.
Until 1925, the Lugbara had no currency and only exchanged, bartered, and traded their
goods (beer, hand-woven baskets, maize, tobacco, kerosene, pots, grinding stones, papyrus mats,
soap) at markets and local exchanges. Now, the Lugbara have expanded their horizons and
become part of the money economy of Uganda. The Lugbara often travel outside of their lands to
find work or settle down in the south to grow their own cash crops as an extension of their
homeland. Lugbaraland is very densely populated by the Lugbara’s farms and compounds. A

compound houses a family cluster. It usually consists of separate houses, granaries, and fields for
each wife of a polygynous husband (about 40% of Lugbara men are polygynous). Each man of
the family cluster has his own hut and granaries as well. Their huts are usually surrounded by
plants of all kinds. In a compound, there is usually also an unwalled cooking hut or shelter and a
girls’ hut where unmarried females in the family can sleep with their lovers or guests can stay.
There are three fields to each homestead; there is “the amvu akua (fields at home), the amvu
amue (fields outside), and the yimile (riverine or irrigated fields)” (Middleton, 1965, 11). The
Lugbara are very skilled in their farming and grow a variety of crops such as sweet potatoes,
maize, sugar cane, bananas, pumpkins, and climbing beans. Men’s main responsibilities for the
farm land is clearing and preparing it, while the women’s responsibilities are weeding and
harvesting it. There are times when the family cluster’s land becomes infertile or the land in their
subtribe becomes scarce, which is why migration between different subclans is quite common.
There are two main forms of Lugbara society. There are the high people and the low
people. The factors that separates the High Lugbara from the Low Lugbara is the dialect in
which the Lugbara speaks. The Lugbara speak two main dialects. The High Lugbara speak
Uruleti (high-speech) and the Low Lugbara speak Andraleti (low-speech). The High Lugbara
usually live near Kakwa, which is farther west of the Nile-Congo divide, and the Low Lugbara
usually live near Madi, which is more east and nearly right on the Nile-Congo divide, but the
High and Low Lugbara can’t be distinguished by this division alone. There are deeper roots
buried in the hearts of the Lugbara’s beliefs of two Hero-ancestors: Jaki and Dribidu.
These two ancestors are associated with the two mountains in the Lugbara highlands:
Liru and Eti. Every Lugbara group can trace their genealogy back to one of these two heroes. For
the High people, Jaki is said to be their hero. According to the Lugbara, “Jaki was the son of
Yeke, who lived somewhere to the north and was the third or fourth generation from
Gborogboro, the first man on Earth” (Middleton, 1965, 17). Jaki is more associated with the
Kakwa, a group that lives near the Lugbara to the west, and this is why the dialect that the High
Lugbara speak is closely related to the dialect the Kakwa speak. Mount Liru is closely associate
with Jaki as it is said to be the location in which Jaki wandered and died on. As for the Low
Lugbara, Dribidu is their hero-ancestor. Dribidu also came from the north and is said to be Jaki’s
brother; however, he came to Lugbaraland from wandering the Nile valley and wandered through
Eastern Lugbaraland. He is associated with Mount Eli which is three miles south of Mount Liru.

He is said to have died below the main peak where his grave, hut-post poles, and cooking pots
still remain. In this way, these hero-ancestors better define and categorize High Lugbara and
Low Lugbara. This categorization even spreads into the groups surrounding Lugbaraland.
Western bordering groups are considered High people (Kakwa, Keliko, and Logo) and eastern
bordering groups are considered Low people (Madi).
Although the Lugbara are split into these two main groups, they consider themselves “of
one blood”, created by the first creature put on Earth, Spirit (the creator of man). The myth says
Spirit created a man and a woman, Gborogboro and Meme. Then, Meme’s womb was filled with
livestock. When the gazelles broke out of womb, the other animals followed. Spirit then put
children in her womb. She gave birth to a boy and a girl and her children gave birth to another
boy and girl and the cycle continued. After several generations of siblings, Jaki and Dribidu were
born, except they weren’t completely human as men are now. Dribidu ate the children of his first
wife’s and was kicked out of his earlier home. That is when he migrated down to what is current
day Lugbaraland and slept with several leper woman, curing them and creating kin of his own.
These kin of his are now the founders of the present clans among the Low Lugbara. Jaki’s life
story is said to be very similar, which also explains how his kin are the founders of the present
clans among the High Lugbara. Over time, these clans grew very large in size forming the
densely pack Lugbara Highlands that exist today.
From Jaki and Dribidu’s death forward, the Lugbara measure time “by generations of
men, the seasons, the stars, the moon, and the sun” (Middleton, 1965, 21). In this way, the
Lugbara use a form of scale measurements to determine time and space. This scale also
influences their social interactions and concept of the world beyond them. They call their
neighbours kin ‘social beings’. This includes those people in their clans, the ancestors in their
genealogies, the sons of the Heroes, and recent European appearances. These ‘social beings’ lie
directly in their field of social relations. A little more beyond their social relations are the ‘beings
with social and inverted attributes’ or sorcerers. These people include their ancestral Heroes, Jaki
and Dribidu, and their Heroes families and mates. The people beyond their social relations are
called ‘inverted beings’ or people ‘beyond the horizon’. These people include the Spirit’s first
creations, Gborogboro and Meme, and the first European appearances. They believe these
‘inverted beings’ to be cannibals, hardly human in appearance, offenders of incest, and residing
in thick forests in which the Lugbara can’t understand. The Lugbara consider these people

among their myths, while they consider the ‘social beings’ among their genealogies. Another
interesting part of Lugbara society is the different positions within their political and ritualistic
authoritative systems.
“The Lugbara have no king, nor do they possess traditional chiefs”, but they do have a
chain of command (Middleton, 1965, 39). The elders of a family cluster and heads of minimal
lineages have domestic authority over their own family clusters. The elders, however, can
represent their minor and major lineages on ritual occasions. In this way, elders can have a very
strongly influenced say on the ritualistic decisions of his minor and major lineages (leads death
dances and burials and settles lineage disputes), but has no influence on any lineages outside his
own. Along with elders, Spirit and Oracles also hold ritualistic positions of power. Spirit is said
to be an omnipotent, all-pervasive power out of the Lugbara’s control. They say Spirit isn’t a
person as the Lugbara believe no man could create other men. Spirit is said to be good and bad as
Spirit has the ability to “create and destroy men and send them various sicknesses, disasters, and
punishments as well as good and prosperity” (Middleton, 1965, 63). Spirit has also placed an
element called tali that enables any man to influence those around him. It is said that tali
increases in power as the man lives, and when he dies, Spirit can use the man’s tali to manifest
his power in the dead and use them to influence the living and punish them for “bad deeds”.
Oracles come into play when someone has gotten very sick. Most Lugbara are said to experience
sickness due to a sin they have committed in which a ghost (dead ancestor) is punishing them
for. Oracles can translate the words of the dead; therefore, having the ability to tell a person
which ghost has sent them their sickness, the ghost’s reason for doing so, and the nature of the
sacrifice the ghost wants made to them. In this way, the sick person can make the sacrifice
necessary (pay the consequences) for his sin, and heal from his sickness.
In Lugbara, there are also county chiefs known as Opi. Opi take care of the more political
issues and fighting within the entire subclan. They are usually government-appointed and mainly
resolve disputes among fighting family clusters. Below county chiefs are parish chiefs and
headmen. Parish chiefs “are responsible for major sections of the smaller subtribes, and headmen
are responsible for minor and sometimes major sections” (Middleton, 1965, 52). There are many
other different political positions called Opi though. Some are called rainmaker chiefs who are
said to have the power to control the rain (very important as they are an agricultural society).
This power is said to run through the senior descent line in a subclan and is exercised through the

custody of sacred objects such as rainstones, obsidian necklaces, and iron hoes of a particular
type. These objects are handed down from rainmaker to rainmaker and were given to the earliest
ancestors from the creator Spirit. Rainmakers are also extremely respected, especially for their
abilities to protect and heal other Lugbara from quarrels and fighting. The rainmakers and county
chiefs have always seemed to dislike one another as the rainmakers think the county chiefs are
like “Europeans” and treat themselves higher than other Lugbara. There are also Opi called ‘ba
rukuza (“men whose names are known”), who have secular powers and known for their ability to
provide strength and support to everyone who needs it. These Opi are also used as war leaders
depending on their individual prowess and ability. More north with the ‘ba rukuza are also the
adro’ ba (“spirit-men”). They can utter curses against evildoers. But even these political
authoritative figures in Lugbaraland don’t control the Lugbara’s entire social order from
deteriorating into anarchy.
In his book, Middleton explains, “All legitimate authority is controlled by the ancestors,
who originated orderly social life. They control relations within the local community, and use
mainly religious sanctions to that end” (Middleton, 1965, 43). Formalized lineage ties (such as
those between people of the same family ancestry) are said to be distinctive because the
ancestors of that lineage and ghosts are involved in those ties. Fights break out between both
formalized and unformalized (not tied by ancestry but more often through marriage) lineage ties
due to conflicts of interest or when a person feels as if their lineage and kinship ties have been
breached. Disputes in Lugbara are usually about the distribution and enjoyment of rights over the
resources of land, livestock, and women. There are several ways that Lugbara can try and settle
conflicts like these on their own (blood compensation is one), but when they can’t, many have to
call various religious, legal, and other sanctions into operations. Fighting is forbidden by the
Lugbara government and is usually stopped quickly by the chiefs; however, if fighting does
break out, it continues for weeks and even months with the use of arrows, clubs and spears.
Elders and rainmakers can also stop fighting by cursing any of the participants who continue to
fight or quarrel over common rights among all Lugbara people. If homicide occurred from the
fighting, the fighting stops, the killer is cleansed by his lineage’s elder, and the killer’s family
must pay the victim’s family with two bulls and two cows if both are within the same major
lineage.

In class, we discussed the differences between the independent and interdependent views
of self. These views of self differ in an individual’s values, ingroup and outgroup relationships,
perspectives, and identities. The Lugbara tend to have an interdependent view of themselves. In
this view, individuals do not see themselves as a separate entity but as participants in a larger
social unit (Heine, 2008, 202). People do not easily become the ingroup members of
interdependent people as their ingroup members are the major basis of their identity (less
influence from internal characteristics) (Heine, 2008, 202). Similarly, Lugbara live in large
family clusters (Middleton, 1965, 25). They also stick closely to their family cluster (ingroup
members), and the ‘name’ or identity they carry throughout their daily activities is based on their
family lineage relationships and ancestral and genealogical. In fact, a person’s ancestral and
genealogical history in Lugbara also defines their function in their subclan (rainmaker, oracle,
elder, chief, headsmen, parish chief, citizen etc.). In this way, if researchers were to replicate
Zhu, Zhang, Han, and Fan’s 2007 brain imaging experiment, take a fMRI, and study the brain
activation patterns of someone from Lugbara, they would likely see that only one brain area
would show activation when the person both characterized their mother and characterized
themselves. This would support that their self-concept reflects and is directly related to both
themselves and those people in their ingroup, which in turn reflects an interdependent view of
self (Heine, 2008, 204, 205).
Another interesting division of people is in reasoning styles. We discussed, in class, the
two reasoning styles among people: analytic and holistic. People who reason analytically believe
the world operates by a set of universal abstract rules and laws by which they use to make sense
of a situation (Heine, 2008, 304). Holistic thinkers, one the other hand, make sense of a situation
by considering the relationships among events and objects (Heine 2008, 305). In this way,
holistic thinkers can see the countless ways in which things interact with each other and
understand that sometimes distal and unexpected consequences can come from these interactions
(Heine, 2008, 307). I see the Lugbara as being holistic thinkers. Although the Lugbara do have a
political authority system and spiritual leaders, they don’t look to and base their thinking and
reasoning off of a set of universal laws and rules. They instead look at the relationships and
interactions of things to guide their reasoning (view everything as interconnected). This can be
seen in their belief system. The Lugbara think Spirit created the first human beings, who
eventually had children of their own. These children gave birth to their Hero ancestors Jaki and

Dribidu who discovered and settled in Lugbaraland. That is why Jaki’s and Dribidu’s kin serve
as the basis of every Lugbara’s lineage and clan name (Middleton, 1965, 17, 18). Who each
Lugbara is and their function as Lugbara depends mainly on their family lineage’s reputation and
ancestral history (a baby boy with a descent line of rainmakers will become a rainmaker
himself). In other words, these genealogical relationships among the Lugbara help them reason
their way around an appropriate social order for themselves. Another example of the Lugbara’s
holistic thinking abilities is their theory of sickness. As stated earlier in this paper, the Lugbara
see the sickness of people to be a result of a “bad deed” they have committed and their ancestral
ghosts are punishing them for it with sickness through a manifestation of power from Spirit (tali)
(Middleton, 1965, 63, 65). This represents holistic thinking as this theory of sickness is reasoned
to correctness through their spiritual beliefs and the relationships and interactions they believe
exists between them, their dead kin, and Spirit. Again, the Lugbara use their daily interactions
and relationships to understand their daily encounters and social order.
Control is another interesting topic we discussed in class. There are two ways in which
people attempt to gain control. Most Westerners typically see themselves as the center of their
own experiences and gain control using what is called ‘primary control’; however, many other
cultures see others as the center of their own experiences and gain control by using ‘secondary
control’ (Heine, 2008, 265). ‘Primary control’ is gained when a person works hard to shape the
world they exist in to fit their desires, perceptions, and goals (Heine, 2008, 264). An example of
this would be if a person wanted to go skydiving, they would initiate a chain of events that would
end with them skydiving. In this way, those using ‘primary control’ believe they can influence
the environment to get what they want (Heine, 2008, 264). ‘Secondary control’, on the other
hand, is a way a person can gain control by aligning themselves with existing realities, leaving
their existing realities unchanged but remaining in control over their potential psychological
impact (Heine,2008, 264). This kind of control focuses more on a person’s external locus of
control and can be attained by accepting and adjusting to one’s circumstances (Heine, 2008,
264). An example of this would be if the group a person was in wanted to go skydiving, the
person would feel that skydiving is something they too would like to do. In this way, those using
‘secondary control’ adjust their desires and goals to their environment. People from different
cultures tend to use a combination of both of these forms of control, but the Lugbara mainly use
one of them. The Lugbara mainly use ‘secondary control’. One of the ways they demonstrate this

is through their functions as individuals in their family clusters. As discussed earlier, the Lugbara
are an agricultural society who settle where there is fertile land to produce crops in family
clusters (those people born into families in which they share a common genealogy) (Middleton,
1965, 10). In this way, the Lugbara live where their environment enables them to. When the
family needs to move, they all move together. In other words, when part of the group decides
their farmland is no longer fertile and can’t sustain their group, every other group member of the
family finds the idea of moving somewhere else together to be something they want as well. In
this way, each family cluster’s member’s desires and needs are shaped by their family cluster’s
desires and needs. It is rare when a young or old Lugbara member aspires to be something
outside of their family cluster’s desires and needs, unlike us Westerners who aspire to be doctors,
engineers, or architects when our family owns and runs and local pizza shop (example of
‘primary control’.
All in all, the Lugbara are an anthropologically and cross-culturally understudied society
who live simplistic, yet highly demanding lives as pheasant cultivators. Their set of beliefs
surrounding their people’s ancestral history directly influences their way of life as a society and
as individuals. Because of this ancestral history, the Lugbara view themselves interdependently
as their identities are based on their relationships and family lineage. In this way, their identities
are holistically reason through their genealogies and culture’s ancestral ties, and because these
ancestral ties are so strong and embedded in their identities, they primarily use ‘secondary
control’ in their lifestyles. Instead of controlling their environment, the Lugbara control and
shape their desires and needs around their environment and the groups of people in which they
live.

References
Middleton, J. (1965). The Lugbara of Uganda. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Heine, S. (2008). Cultural psychology (2nd ed.). New York: W.W. Norton.

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