African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African folklore 1046
WORDS AND THE DOGON
With a population currently estimated at 450,000, the Dogon inhabit the mountainous
region of the cliffs of Bandiagara, in the Great Bend of the Niger River in Mali. They
also occupy an important place in the anthropological literature of African peoples,
especially because of the work of Marcel Griaule and his colleagues. In this spectacular
but difficult terrain, these ingenious and hardworking agricultural people have developed
a remarkable civilization as witnessed by the beauty of their architectural constructions,
the wealth of their artistic productions, and the vitality of their rites and ceremonies.
The traditional religion is still vibrant despite the advance of Islam. Dogon religion is
characterized by the belief in a single creator god (the other mythical beings are his
creation) and ancestor cults. Their society is organized as a gerontocracy; the oldest man
of a region is the religious leader and the council of elders runs the affairs of the village.
Filiation is patrilineal and residence is patrilocal.
One of the most original conceptions of Dogon thought is that of the “word” and
speaking, the importance of which in myth and cosmogony was revealed to Marcel
Griaule in 1946 by the old wise man Ogotemmêli. On the basis of his ideas, subsequent
studies have analyzed in greater depth the function of “speaking” as it relates to society
and the person. We now know that we are not dealing with an isolated system of thought
and that similar ideas are also found in many other African societies.
The Origin of the Word
According to the myth, the creator god, Amma, shaped and fertilized by his word a
placenta or “egg of the world” in which he placed the seeds of the first creatures, two
androgynous twins. This placenta would become the Earth. The twins are key characters
of Dogon mythology. One is a figure of a rebel, the Pale Fox (Vulpes pallida), whose
criminal acts (theft of the word and the primordial seeds from Amma; incest with his
mother the Earth) introduce disorder and impurity into the world. The other twin is
Nommo, a perfect being whose sacrifice and resurrection purified the universe. Nommo
descended onto earth in an ark carrying humanity’s first ancestors as well as the fauna
and flora destined to populate the world. He revealed language and civilizing techniques
to man. Nommo represents order, fertility, life; his element is water. His action is
opposed to that of the Fox, who is associated with sterility, aridness, and death.
The first human beings could only express themselves through screams and grunts,
like infants or deaf-mutes. Nommo, in the primordial pond, expectorated threads of
cotton and wove them together using his forked tongue like a shuttle. His word,
incorporated into the interstices of the cloth, was heard by one of the ancestors (the first
totemic priest) whose drum echoed it back and communicated it to the others. The first
word, therefore, was also the first woven strip and the first musical rhythm. Society was