Rutara people

Rutara people

Total population
14,606,000 [1]
Regions with significant populations
Uganda, Tanzania, the DRC and Rwanda
Languages
Rutara languages
Religion
Predominantly: Christianity Traditionally: Belief in Ruhanga
Related ethnic groups
other Great Lakes Bantu people

The Rutara peoples (endonym: Banyakitara, Abanyakitara) are a group of closely related Bantu ethnic groups native to the African Great Lakes region. They speak mutually intelligible dialects and include groups such as the Banyoro, Banyankore, and Bahaya.

History

Proto-Rutara people originated in the Kagera Region of Tanzania near Bukoba in the year 500AD. They adopted pastoralism in the grasslands of Kagera with influence from the now extinct Tale southern Cushites and Sog Eastern Sudanic peoples who were their neighbors. They adopted the word for cow (ente) between 100-500AD from the Sog Eastern Sahelians, and the practice of cattle breeding from the Tale southern Cushites. ^{[2] [3]}

After 1200AD they split into two groups, with one group (the Proto-North Rutara) expanding north-westwards, spreading the Rutara language and culture (and assimilating many of the previous Central Sudanic peoples like the Madi in the process) ^[4] into the Grasslands of western Uganda and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, regions that would one day become Bunyoro, Nkore, and Mpororo among others. This movement of ideas and practices is likely to have marked the inception of the eras of the Batembuzi and Bacwezi, a period only dimly and fabulously remembered in the later oral traditions, but one in which the key political ideas and economic structures of the later kingdoms first began to be put into effect. ^{[5] [6] [7] [8]}

Notes

1. "People Groups Official Web Site". www.peoplegroups.org. Retrieved 2025-02-08.
2. Origins of Kingship Traditions and Symbolism in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. p. 116.
3. A Green Place, a Good Place: Agrarian Change, Gender, and Social Identity in the Great Lakes Region to the 15th Century. Boydell & Brewer, Limited. 1998. p. 46. ISBN   978-0-85255-681-8.
4. Ehret, Christopher (1998). An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History, 1000 B.C. to A.D. 400. University Press of Virginia. p. 61 and 76-77. ISBN   978-0-8139-2057-3.
5. Stephens, Rhiannon (2 September 2013). A History of African Motherhood: The Case of Uganda, 700-1900. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   9781107030800.
6. Elfasi, M.; Hrbek, Ivan (January 1988). Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century. University of California Press. p. 628 and 630. ISBN   9789231017094.
7. Wrigley, Christopher (16 May 2002). Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   9780521894357.
8. Schoenbrun, David L. (1993). "Cattle herds and banana gardens: The historical geography of the western Great Lakes region, ca AD 800?1500" . The African Archaeological Review. 11–11: 39–72. doi:10.1007/BF01118142. S2CID   161913402.