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CHAPTER 5

The Moment of Capture

Scholars of the Oromo slave trade, informed by the accounts of travelers and other observers, have recorded that slave raiders generally either kidnapped, purchased, or seized their Oromo captives as spoils of war.¹ Timothy Fernyhough goes further, mentioning a broad spectrum of ways in which the trade in slaves was augmented. These included state-sponsored expeditions, the thefts of those already enslaved (confirmed by Henry Darley, a traveler), the seizure of children as they tended livestock, housebreaking at night, ambushes, natural disasters such as famine and drought, debt redemption, and retributive procedures for real or fabricated crimes.² Mordechai Abir and Timothy Fernyhough both refer to instances whereby Oromo parents even used trickery and deception to sell their children or other kin into slavery.³ These are broad allusions drawn from travelers such as Antonio Cecchi, Henry Darley, William Cornwallis Harris, Charles William Isenberg, and Johann Ludwig Krapf, as well as from other sources. The Oromo captives’ firsthand accounts informing this study provide a rare opportunity to go further and to explore in detail the moment of capture in the life of a slave child.

Fred Morton, in his study of thirty-nine East African child slave narratives, posits that for the children, “life’s memory was anchored in that place and moment.”⁴ This chapter will focus on that moment, examining the identity of those who captured the children, as well as their ethnicity, gender (both men and women were involved in the slave trade), occupation, and slaving group. The children also indicated whether or not they recognized their captors, whether they had any existing kinship bond or other relationship with the captors, and whether the captors acted alone or in a group. In addition, they told of how they were captured, whether their captors used violence during the captures, whether their captors were mounted or on foot, and whether they were sold for money or bartered for food or goods.

Who Captured the Children?

The external Red Sea and Horn of Africa slave trade is regarded in the older, secondary sources as having been instigated and driven largely by “Arabs.”⁵ At point of capture, however, the agencies were different. All but two gangs of slave raiders were drawn from local groups. Even at trading level on the way to the coast, Arab intervention emerged only at, or close to, the termination points of the journeys. Though the Red Sea maritime slave trade was ultimately Arab-controlled, it was not, in this study, Arab-initiated in the interior, or at point of capture.

The majority of the children (70.9 percent) did not recognize their captors, while 9.3 percent recognized kin, 3.5 percent recognized neighbors, and a further 16.3 percent recognized persons known to them. There were two noticeable gender differences: more girls did not know their captors, and no girls recognized any of their captors as neighbors. That the children recognized almost one-third of those who initially enslaved them is not altogether surprising, given that the majority of their captors were local. However, that more girls than boys did not recognize their captors and were not enslaved by their neighbors would support the notion that the majority of slave raiders targeting the girls came from farther afield, possibly as direct agents of the external trade. (This subject is developed further in chapter 6, “On the Road.”)

The following graph (5.1) illustrates the range of ethnicities and places of origin of the captors. Just under a quarter of the children (23.3 percent) identified the Sidama as the raiders who enslaved them. There is a degree of ambiguity surrounding the term “Sidama.” The word means “Abyssinian” in Afaan Oromoo (see the discussion on page 36).⁶ There is also a small ethnic group situated farther south named the Sidama, who, like the Oromo, were victims of Menelik’s expansionism from the late 1880s.

Today, the Sidama occupy their own administrative zone within Ethiopia’s Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region (SNNPR). With their own language and traditions, and a long administrative history dating back to the ninth century, they currently make up 4.1 percent of the Ethiopian population. The pressures on the Sidama people at the time the children were captured were similar to those experienced by the Oromo themselves.⁷

Almost one-tenth of the captors (9.3 percent) were from Sayo, an Oromo kingdom; a further 8.1 percent of the captors came from Kaffa (a territory with whom the Oromo shared strong historical links and a border); 4.7 percent were from Leka (now a part of modern Oromia); and 3.5 percent of the captors originated in Jimma, also now a part of modern Oromia. The rest of the captors came—mostly singly—from some thirteen other local territories, almost all within the borders of modern Oromia.

Three of the boys referred to their captors’ identity not by geographical allusion but by ethnicity, religion, or hue. For example, Aguchello Chabani referred to “black Arabs” (see appendix B; narrative 1); Bayan Liliso referred to “Mahommedan raiders” (narrative 9); and Amanu Bulcha referred to his captors as “three black men” who came out of the forest, pounced on him, gagged him with a piece of cloth, and carried him off (narrative 2). With nineteenth-century Christian missionaries recording the children’s narratives, the researcher needs to be alert to possible missionary bias against Islam in their accounts. However, there is no firm evidence of this.

GRAPH 5.1. Places of origin of the children’s captors (source: Sandra Rowoldt Shell).

The diversity in location of the children’s homes is echoed in the range of territories from which their captors were drawn. Almost half (48.8 percent) of the captors hailed from five principal regions, and nearly a third (31.3 percent) came from thirteen additional territories. The evidence in this study is of a widespread practice of slave raiding within the southern and southwestern regions below Abyssinia. This evidence indicates that slave raiding in the south and southwestern regions, while feeding into the Red Sea slave trade, was also part of a widespread domestic slaving system. The raiders came from a wide range of local groupings, including raiders from within Oromo subgroups.

Who Captured Whom?

Linking the places of origin of the raiders with those of their captives produced some consistent patterns. The following graph (5.2) shows the relative proportions of both raider and child origins in a cross-tabulation.

The graph includes a map of modern Ethiopia with the administrative region of Oromia shaded. The places of domicile of the five dominant raider identities or ethnicities are indicated by arrows. All of them lived either within what is now Oromia or in adjacent territories. Only the three outsider groups—the “black Arabs,” the “black men,” and the “Mahommedans”—constituted foreign agencies. Note that the Sidama (Abyssinians), the dominant raiders, targeted mostly the children identified as Oromo plus a far smaller proportion of Kafficho. The raiders from Sayo and Leka, both places in what is now Oromia, were interested in seizing only Oromo children, while raiders from Kaffa, like those from Sayo and Leka, also targeted their own. Slightly more than half of the children they captured were Kafficho, with the remainder being Oromo. A Gurage raider captured the single Gurage child in the group, “Black men” captured the one Shangalla child, and a raider from Obojote seized the only Yambo child.

GRAPH 5.2. Places of origin of raiders and of children (source: Sandra Rowoldt Shell).

Gender of the Captors

Slave raiding in the Horn of Africa was decisively a male preserve: 93 percent of the Oromo children’s captors were men. The women enslavers, who made up the remaining 7 percent, lured the children away from their homes rather than seizing them by force, possible examples of the “trickery” to which Fernyhough and Abir allude.⁸

Modes of Capture

The following polar pie diagram (graph 5.3) illustrates the gender differences in the capture experience. The inner, middle, and outer rings show the experiences of the girls, boys, and all the children, respectively.

The aggregated majority of the children (55.8 percent) were subjected to some form of violence at the moment of capture. They were seized either with a show of force (29.1 percent) or through other forms of violence (26.7 percent). A total of 17.4 percent of the children were taken by nonviolent means, namely, kidnapping; while 15.1 percent were bartered. A small percentage (7 percent) were born into slavery. However, there were clear differences between the experiences of the girls and the boys.

GRAPH 5.3. Modes of capture by gender of child (source: Sandra Rowoldt Shell).

Many more boys than girls were captured after a show of force: 35.7 percent of the boys were captured through “seizure,” compared with 22.7 percent of the girls. A further 35.7 percent of the boys were captured through a form of violence other than “seizure” (i.e., “other violence”), as were 18.2 percent of the girls. Adding the two variables of “seizure” and “other violence” for each group allows for a more comprehensive view of the difference between the genders. The aggregated totals show that 71.4 percent of the boys were enslaved using some sort of violence, as opposed to 40.9 percent of the girls. On the other hand, adding all the nonviolent modes (barter, theft, and enslavement from birth) shows that 23.8 percent of the boys were enslaved without violence, compared to 54.5 percent of the girls—more than double.

Not all the enslavers were armed and not all of them used violence to acquire their slaves. Here the major gender differences emerge. For example, as graph 5.3 illustrates, many more girls than boys were captured following the nonviolent process of barter and negotiation. Traders and raiders entered into negotiations to acquire 15.1 percent of the children. Of these, 11.64 percent were girls and 3.5 percent were boys. Nonviolent theft accounted for another 17.4 percent of the children, 11.6 percent being girls and 5.8 percent being boys. A gender breakdown of the aggregation of these two nonviolent modes of capture (38.9 percent) shows that just under a quarter of these were girls (23.2 percent); while less than a tenth, or 9.3 percent, of those children taken nonviolently were boys. Twice as many girls (4.7 percent) were born into slavery (i.e., their families were already enslaved when these children were taken from their homes) as boys (2.3 percent).⁹ Far more boys than girls experienced violent capture of one form or another. In treating the girls more gently, the raiders were likely to have been influenced by their higher export demand and buyers’ insistence on intact girls.

A majority (57 percent) of those who enslaved the children acted alone, particularly in the process of enslaving the girls compared with the boys. Only a handful of the enslavers acted in groups of two (4.7 percent, split evenly between girls and boys); groups of three (4.7 percent, all boys); and groups of four (2.3 percent, all boys). The rest of the children (31.4 percent) did not comment on the number of their captors. Two boys reported that gangs of four men had abducted them. One of them, Nuro Chabse (see appendix B; narrative 31), was seized by four men while looking after his father’s oxen and sheep. The other boy, Gamaches Garba (narrative 18), told of a group of four men who seized him and carried him off while he was herding his father’s cattle. Three men abducted Tolassa Wayessa (narrative 38) while he was playing not far from his house. One may conclude that kidnapping teams were involved in the capture of boys, but did not dominate the slave capture.

As graph 5.4 indicates, almost four times as many boys (38.4 percent) were captured to service the domestic slave system as were sold directly into the external slave trade network (10.5 percent). This is in clear contrast to the girls, of whom half (50 percent) were sold into the export network; the other half entered domestic servitude.

Oromo girls and eunuchs were the highest valued of all slaves in the Horn of Africa external trade.¹⁰ This might account for the higher percentage of girls than boys being captured specifically for the export network.

The enslavement of the children was not, at least at point of capture, a mass or overtly syndicated operation, though it is possible that single captors acted alone in the field but were part of a larger slave trade network controlled from elsewhere. However, the high proportion of children who were seized in the first instance to service the internal slave system (64 percent) rather than the external slave trade chain indicates that domestic slavery was endemic and was initiated for the most part on an individual basis.

GRAPH 5.4. Domestic and external slave trade networks (source: Sandra Rowoldt Shell).

Prices

While the children had more vivid memories of what happened at the moment they moved from freedom to slavery than of subsequent transactions, none of the children gave a monetary price for this first exchange. As shown in the earlier discussion on the mode of capture, there was a variety of transactions at the moment of capture. Most children were simply the spoils of raids; only a few captures involved any form of exchange, in monetary or commodity terms. For example, one boy (Liban Bultum; see appendix B; narrative 27) and two girls (Hawe Sukute [narrative 56] and Turungo Gudda [narrative 61]) were taken in lieu of debts.

Hawe Sukute was about sixteen years old when interviewed but was considerably younger when she first encountered slavery. Her father, Sukute, died when she was very young. Her mother, Ibse, was left vulnerable and was taken as a slave (with Sukute and two brothers and a sister) by the Sayo people, who were feuding with those in her own country, Garjeja. When her mother died, she and her brothers were taken by their uncle into his home. But her father’s brother intervened, claiming the children as his own property. This uncle put the children to work, but, as he was also indebted to the Garjeja king, he sold Hawe to a Leka merchant to pay off his debt.

There were two Oromo girls called Turungo in the group: Turungo Tinno (meaning “little Turungo”; narrative 62) and Turungo Gudda (meaning “big Turungo”; narrative 61). Both girls were paternal orphans and did not carry their fathers’ names, hence the descriptors to distinguish them from each other. Turungo Gudda was about fourteen when interviewed. Her mother, Dabeche, worked for one of their uncles sowing and reaping in the fields. However, before her father died, he had borrowed various items from his brother, and the family was not able to reimburse the loan. To compensate for the unpaid debt, the uncle sold Turungo to Jimma merchants in a market nearby.

Berille Nehor (narrative 47), who was approximately thirteen years old at the time of her interview, was the daughter of Nehor and Bushaseche and had several brothers and sisters. Her father, Nehor, was a slave in a place called Ishete in the Kaffa country. He held a piece of land that he cultivated for his master, while the mistress of the household employed Berille as a nursemaid to her child. Berille’s master lost his goga, or kaross, in an altercation with a neighboring ethnic group and saw Berille as an asset he could sell to pay for a new one. He told Berille to go to a neighboring hut to fetch his sword, but when she reached the hut, a stranger was waiting for her. The stranger gagged her and carried her off to Jimma, where he sold her on the slave owner’s behalf.

Other girls were bartered, like the orphaned Bisho Jarsa (see page 30 and narrative 48), who was sold for a little corn. Jifari Roba (narrative 57), the daughter of Roba and Dongoshe, was around age thirteen when she was interviewed. The family, comprising Jifari and three brothers and four sisters, lived in a village called Galani in the Sayo country. When her father died (about a year before she was enslaved), her mother went out to work, sowing and reaping in the fields. A woman in a neighboring village offered to look after Jifari but betrayed the trust placed in her by selling Jifari almost immediately to a group of Nagadi people for ten pieces of salt (called amole).

Fayissi Gemo (narrative 52) was also approximately thirteen years old when the missionaries interviewed her at Shaikh Othman. She lived with her father, Gemo, and her mother, Yarachi, in a village called Upa in the Kaffa country. After her father died, her mother had to support the family, employing laborers to plow the land. However, when her mother returned to her home village for a short period, Upa, the chief, seized the opportunity to abduct Fayissi and exchanged her for a horse in a deal with passing merchants.

Aguchello Chabani (narrative 1), son of Chabani and Gurdenfi, was a young boy of about twelve at the time of his interview. He was born in a village called Enge in the district of Barsinge in the Shangalla country, where his father co-owned six acres of land. Aguchello, at that time only ten or eleven years old, was playing near his family home one afternoon when a group of people he described as “black Arabs” came to the house and entered into a heated discussion with his father. Angry and frustrated, the strangers seized Aguchello and, using considerable force, began to carry him off. Both Chabani and Gurdenfi pleaded with the strangers not to take their child. The “black Arabs” said they would return Aguchello if his parents would bring all their cattle in his place. However, when the cattle were handed over to them, the “black Arabs” double-crossed the parents and took not only the cattle but Aguchello as well.