PRESENTING THE COLLECTION
W. Östberg
HE WHO CARRIES THE SPEAR
GERHARD LINDBLOM'S
FIELDWORK IN EASTERN KENYA. 1911 1912
A man who had captured a spear in combat was given
the name Mutietumo, He Who Carries the Spear. The
pioneering Swedish ethnographer Gerhard Lindblom
(1887 1969) received that name from the Kamba people of eastern Kenya. He had contracted blood poisoning
in one foot after failing to tend a tick bite properly. During a couple of weeks' convalescence he limped around
with the support of a spear. Some quick-thinking person
associated the white man using a spear as a crutch with
the honourable old name of the spear-bearer, and so he
was called Mutietumo.
Gerhard Lindblom worked in Ukambani, as the
Kamba region is colloquially known in Kenya, in
1911 1912. This was before the pioneer of modern
anthropology, Bronislaw Malinowski, had conceived the
idea of long-term fieldwork when he happened to be
stranded on the Trobriand Islands off the coast of New
Guinea during the First World War. By then Lindblom
was already back home in Sweden, busy completing the
monograph The Akamba in British East Africa (1916),
which would win him international esteem and which
still serves as a good starting point for studies of the development of Kamba society. Lindblom also brought an
extensive and well documented collection of Kamba
material culture to the Museum of Ethnography in
Stockholm. He later became director of the museum and
also professor of general and comparative ethnography
at Stockholm University.
The Truth of the Objects
Lindblom's Kamba collection is one of the museum's
most important African collections. His camp in Ukambani was quickly transformed into a stockpile of calabashes and bracelets, hoes and bows, stools and musical
instruments, knives and necklaces
all the material
manifestations of Kamba society. He collected everything that could be preserved and transported to the museum in Stockholm.
What do we learn about the Kamba from all the objects that Gerhard Lindblom brought home? The stools
testify to age distribution in the society and to craft skill,
the pots are evidence of craft and trade, the neck rings
represent marital exchanges and value conversions, the
bows are testimony to defence and hunting. But the artefacts that were particularly important for creating and
maintaining a surplus, for building relations to other
people, and for reproducing society were the livestock.
In a museum collection, however, there is no room for
cows, sheep, and goats, and so this important motor
driving the economy was left outside the account.
But, one can of course object, Lindblom did collect
cow bells and milk pails. Yes, he did. But are a few bells
and pails able to capture the power of the herds roving
© W. Östberg, 2010
the plains of Kitui, the negotiations about bride wealth,
the relations between livestock partners, the violence of
the livestock raids? The museum collections emphasize
what is immobile and fixed in form. But life is not like
that. What represented survival, dynamics, and drama in
the life of the Kamba has no place in a museum. To learn
about such processes we have to go to Gerhard Lindblom's monograph The Akamba in British East Africa.
The large Kamba collection teaches us that it takes
documentation as meticulous as Lindblom's to make the
artefacts speak.
Lindblom thus set out to do large-scale fieldwork
a few years before Malinowski. Yet it can hardly be said
that Lindblom did anthropological fieldwork according
to the method that characterizes anthropology more than
any other: participant observation. Malinowski's policy
was that
The anthropologist must relinquish his comfortable position in the long chair on the veranda of the missionary
compound, Government station, or planter's bungalow,
where, armed with pencil and notebook and at times with
a whisky and soda, he has been accustomed to collect state-
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ments from informants, write down stories, and fill out
sheets of paper with savage texts. He must go out into the
villages [ ]. Information must come him to him
full-flavoured from his own observations of native life, and
not be squeezed out of reluctant informants as a trickle of
talk [1].
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Malinowski spoke of the pleasure of what he called
open-air anthropology. The diaries were published long
after Malinowski's death, when it became clear what
a profound personal experience his years on the Trobriand Islands had been for him.
Did fieldwork have an equally revolutionary significance for Lindblom?
Colonial Society
Gerhard Lindblom came to Kenya in the heyday of
colonialism. At that time it was taken as a matter of
course that the white man belonged to a higher race than
the Africans he had come to study. It was the task of
Europeans to ensure the welfare of the blacks with paternal care, and gradually try to raise them to better
prosperity , Lindblom writes [2]. He praises the British
for having brought peace and order where there had previously been hostility and insecurity. He never had any
personal doubts about his right to carry on his studies in
the ways he found best, and he took possession of the
ethnographic objects he felt he needed. When he was
unable to buy or barter, he stole. In his travel books he
records how he set out at night to collect skulls from
a burial grove or to pick up ritual objects that he could
not acquire in any other way. On his very first excursion
from Nairobi the young scholar managed to obtain
a dozen fine skulls in my bag. Also laid my hands on
some jewellery, especially bracelets, still in place around
the bone stumps [3].
A few pages later in the same book, Lindblom argues that one of the civilizing tasks that Europeans have
in Africa is to prevent the natives from stealing from
each other [4]. His own actions as a thief and a grave
robber, on the other hand, are examples of enterprise and
dedication to the scholarly mission.
At the start of the last century, the very genre of
travel book seems to have tempted many writers to tell
stories that reflect their manliness. The native bearers are
photographed beside a shot elephant, Lindblom undertakes night marches prepared at any moment to meet
a lion or a rhinoceros on the path [5], he spends the
night in a tall tree where I tied myself in place with the
cord of the revolver [6], he brings down three guinea
fowl with one shot, and so on. The Lindblom of the
travel books stands out for today's reader as far more
antiquated than the scholar. When he wrote for his colleagues he remained more objective, neutrally documenting what he was describing
and also showed his
appreciation for his local collaborators and main informants. He describes the Kamba as intelligent, humorous,
capable. He finds the people he is working among generous, thoughtful, fond of children. It is important, Lindblom wrote in his doctoral dissertation, in any study of
primitive conceptions, to abandon one's own standpoint
and try to assume that of the natives, endeavoring to see
things through their eyes [7]. The contrast between the
empathetic tone of the scholarly studies of Kamba society and the sweeping discussion of Africans in the travel
books could not be greater.
It is also in the travel books that he talks of the white
traveller's responsibility for constantly marking his superiority. An intoxicated elderly man began to verge on
insolence, so I quickly sent him flying headlong into
a pile of rubbish, telling him to go and sleep it off [8].
When a knife came whirling by in front of his face during a trance dance in Ukambani he did not lean back:
Only the thought that I, as representative of a higher
race, should not show any fear of these people, prevents
me from pulling back the little stool on which I am sitting [9]. When the same situation is described in the
monograph, Lindblom merely mentions the fact that
several times the knife came dangerously close to my
face [10]. Now he is the alert observer who registers
what is happening, not a representative of the white race
anxious to preserve his dignity.
Lindblom was set in the values of his day, just like
anyone almost a century after his fieldwork who reads
the travel books from the standpoint of a different era.
Lindblom's travel books teach us just as much about
Europe as about Africa. When he discusses Kamba customs and beliefs in one of his more anecdotal books, it is
no longer a matter of seeing things through the eyes of
his informants. Now he chooses instead the reader's perspective, and local customs can suddenly become repulsive and horrifying. Only on one occasion does he drop
his guard. He has spent a long time in southern Ukambani. There was no missionary compound in the vicinity,
and no colonial officials. The visitor slowly begins to see
with the eyes of his hosts: I finally thought that my own
skin colour looked ugly and nondescript alongside that
of the negroes [11].
Since the black man all too often tends to perceive
goodness and indulgence as weakness [12], Lindblom
felt obliged to deal with what he perceived as lack of
respect. He urged lazy people on with a hippo-skin whip
( that scene has occurred more than once during my
years in Africa; a native at my feet begging for some
kind of mercy ) [13]. A bearer who was sent out to look
for water in a river bed but would not dare go because he
was afraid of meeting elephants at the water hole was
given forty lashes as punishment to himself and
a warning to others [14]. An Indian foreman who did
not have wagons and donkeys ready in time for departure got a taste of my trusty assistant in many a moment
of crisis, the hippo-skin whip [15].
Two very different pictures of Africa were thus conveyed to the audience at home in Sweden by the future
director of the Museum of Ethnography. Those who attended the university seminars when his dissertation was
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Fig. 1
Fig. 5
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Fig. 2
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Fig. 3
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Fig. 4
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ventilated received an empathetic and all-round description of Kamba society, while the readers of Lindblom's
travel books learned that Africans were uncivilized and
needed to be raised to a higher level by their white masters. It is as if description of reality was dictated by the
expectations of the listeners.
The Pedagogy of Repression
How are we to understand why Gerhard Lindblom
can seem like two such different persons, in his scholarly
works and in those he wrote for a general audience? In
intellectual terms, Lindblom assimilated the attitude to
other cultures displayed by the emerging anthropology.
He had the ambition to study foreign cultures on their
own terms rather than assessing them from a western
perspective. But the fieldwork also required him to employ bearers, language teachers, and helpers. He became
the expedition leader and in doing so he automatically
moved the colonial society into his fieldwork. The aims
of anthropology and its everyday practice were in opposition to each other, and that is reflected in the difference
in attitude in the scholarly writings and the popular
works. In his travel books he was aiming at readers who
believed that firmness towards subordinates reveals the
concern of the superior, who takes responsibility for
educating subordinates to become better people, helping
them towards a better life. The rhetoric of colonial society was all about education.
Lindblom's parents' generation were convinced that
children who learn to forsake things early in life later
develop into moral individuals. Outbreaks of childish
anger had to be checked in order to create a mature and
responsible adult. Those who learn to obey as children
become strong adults. In the same way as children automatically had to accept that their parents were gods in
matters of right and wrong, colonized people also had to
learn that the religion and culture of the Europeans were
expressions of a higher truth. Lindblom was a part of this
world of ideas. When he used the whip on negligent native bearers he showed that he cared about the long-term
welfare of the subordinates. Just as children in Europe
were beaten for educational purposes, the Africans were
whipped so that they would have a better future. In colonial society, authoritarian rule was based on high ideals.
Traveller, Scholar
The travel books thus often concern difficulties with
bearers and other staff, and the hierarchical relations between different ethnic groups in the colony. What was it
that appealed to Lindblom in East Africa? There are some
inspiring descriptions of landscape, and we see that he appreciated hilarious situations. He is enthusiastic about the
long treks on the way to the sites of study. One scarcely
counts the number of miles in Africa [16]. The careful
documentation of customs and folktales must have satisfied
his professional pride. But the books do not really show that
the people he met and the experiences he had were to exert
a profound personal influence on him. Lindblom moves
with his caravan through an African landscape, he sits by
the fire in the evening listening to folktales, and he interviews people about wedding customs and farming techniques, but he never really leaves Europe. On the contrary,
he writes: if my stay in Africa did not teach me anything
else, it taught me to value my own country more highly
than I ever did before [17].
Lindblom returned to East Africa in 1920. He undertook an expedition to Mount Elgon and he visited the
area around Lake Victoria. But after his early fieldwork
in 1911 1912, it was at the Museum of Ethnography in
Stockholm that the rest of his life's work would be done.
He wrote no less than 18 titles in the series of minor
communications ( Smärre Meddelanden ), where he
presented the museum's collections of different African
weapon types, traps, tobacco pipes, stilts, nose ornaments, and so on. Ornamentation on initiation staffs was
the subject of some studies; another was how oxen were
used as pack animals. As a scholar Gerhard Lindblom
was inclined more to distribution studies and comparative ethnography than to the emerging functionalist and
structuralist anthropology.
The Alien
When Gerhard Lindblom first visited Kenya, it was just
a couple of years before the famous author Karen Blixen
would arrive there. Her accounts of life on the farm at the
foot of the Ngong Hills would have a very different tone
from Lindblom's travel books, arising in dialogue with the
people she met. Baroness Blixen found equals among
the people on the farm and around Ngong. One can also
compare Lindblom with his compatriot Erland Nordenskiöld, who travelled in Gran Chaco in South America ten
years before Lindblom arrived in Kenya. Both Lindblom
and Nordenskiöld would later become museum directors
and professors of ethnography. In Nordenskiöld's travel
books we meet individuals, friends. Lindblom never let the
culture he studied penetrate him, as it did Malinowski,
a Vilhjalmur Stefanson, or several other early field anthropologists. Lindblom remained inscribed in the ideas of his
time about the European leadership role in Africa. In his
travel books he talks at the people he studies rather than
with them, and he is very much concerned with getting
people to obey. Although it is true that Lindblom like all
of us was a child of his time, it is also undeniable that he
puts across an authoritarian outlook in his books.
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Fig. 6
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Fig. 7
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Fig. 8
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Fig. 9
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In Ukambani, Gerhard Lindblom was given the name
Spearman as a mark of honour. It is common in East Africa
to be given a name after a special event that one happens to
be associated with, or some personal property that other people wish to highlight. Sometimes the name is ironic. That
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was no doubt true in this case, and perhaps this ambiguity
captures Lindblom's role among the Kamba fairly well. He
could speak to the Kamba in their own language, he became
an expert on their customs and folktales, but it would have
been inconceivable for him to share their everyday life.
Notes
1. The quote is from Malinowski's essay Myth in Primitive Religion (London, 1926), reprinted in Magic, Science and Religion
and Other Essays (Boston, 1948) p. 123.
2. Gerhard Lindblom published two travelogues from Ukambani. They are only available in Swedish.
3. G. Lindblom, Afrikanska strövtåg. Två års folklivsstudier i engelska och tyska Ost-Afrika (African Wanderings. Two Years
of Ethnological Studies in British and German East Africa) (Stockholm, 1926), pp. 28 9.
4. Ibid., p. 66.
5. Ibid., p. 188.
6. Ibid., cf. also p. 171.
7. Lindblom, The Akamba in British East Africa. An Ethnological Monograph (Uppsala, 1920), p. 2.
8. Idem, Afrikanska strövtåg, p. 46.
9. Ibid., p. 71.
10. Idem, The Akamba, p. 237.
11. Idem, Afrikanska strövtåg, pp. 126 7.
12. Ibid., p. 143.
13. Lindblom archive, Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm. Cf. also: idem, Afrikanska strövtåg, p. 204.
14. Ibid., p. 176.
15. Ibid., p. 203.
16. Ibid., p. 89.
17. Ibid., p. 211.
18. Idem, The Akamba, p. 144.
19. Idem, I Vildmark och Negerbyar. Å Mount Elgon och Annorstädes i Ostafrika (In Wilderness and Negroe Villages.
At Mount Elgon and Elsewhere in East Africa) (Uppsala, 1921), p. 30.
20. Interview by W. Östberg, 1984. Archive of the Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm.
21. Ibid.
22. Lindblom, The Akamba, p. 171.
23. Idem, Afrikanska strövtåg, p. 140.
24. Ibid., p. 141.
25. Ibid., p. 142.
26. Idem, The Akamba, p. 159.
27. Ibid., p. 380.
Illustrations
Fig. 1. Kaluki. Machakos, 1911. Photo by G. Lindblom. Photo archive of the Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm. Courtesy of the Museum.
Fig. 2. In the sugarcane field. Ukambani, 1911 1912. Photo by G. Lindblom. Photo archive of the
Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm. Courtesy of the Museum.
Fig. 3. A mother shaves her child's hair. Ukambani. Photo by G. Lindblom. Photo archive of the Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm. Courtesy of the Museum.
Fig. 4. Elderly man with his forked staff, maka. It is a symbol of the elderly men who are responsible
for the country's welfare and administration, and for ensuring that customs are observed. If
someone who has not achieved this status should appear with a maka, he would suffer ridicule,
Lindblom writes [18]. Ukambani. Photo by G. Lindblom. Photo archive of the Museum of
Ethnography, Stockholm. Courtesy of the Museum.
Fig. 5. Ingeborg Lindblom visiting Kavuva in Machakos in 1920. Nine years after his original fieldwork among the Kamba in eastern Kenya, Gerhard Lindblom returned with his wife on a short
visit. When he reached Machakos, Kavuva came to welcome him back. She had brought
a hen, dangling with its legs tied together and its head down, held by a bast cord, the most
common way of transporting hens [19]. Ukambani. Photo by G. Lindblom. Photo archive of
the Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm. Courtesy of the Museum.
W. ÖSTBERG. He Who Carries the Spear
Fig. 6. P. Nzuki. Gourd. Kenya, 1970s. Lagenaria siceraria, 58 × 35 cm. Museum of Ethnography,
Stockholm, call. No.: 1979.7.1. Courtesy of the Museum.
Gourd in the Lindblom collection. 24 × 13 × 24 cm. Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm,
call. No.: 1912.7.52. Courtesy of the Museum. Photo by B. Gabrielsson.
A gourd (right) collected by Gerhard Lindblom and illustrated in his monograph about the Kamba
served as a model for a decorated gourd composed by artist Peter Nzuki. In the middle is the
mighty Mount Kilimanjaro and around it a zebra, a crocodile, a frog, snakes, two rhinoceroses,
a human being, and also some artifacts: a stool, a coin, an arrowhead. Peter Nzuki used the
rhinoceros, the frog, and the mountain for his composition, adding other figures and ornaments. Before Peter Nzuki became an artist full-time he was engaged by the National Museum
of Kenya as collector for the ethnographic department. In the museum he caught sight of
Lindblom's book about the Kamba, and since he himself comes from the Machakos area, his
interest was aroused. He took up the ancient technique of carving gourds. Mostly he made free
compositions, but sometimes he also made a Lindblom gourd like this.
Fig. 7. Stool. Machakos, late 19th
early 20th c. Wood, brass. Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm, call. No.: 1912.7.74. Courtesy of the Museum.
M. Mung'ula. Stool. Kenya, 1980s. Wood, fibres, metal. 17× 24.5 cm. Museum of Ethnography, Stockholm, call. No.: 1984.8.120. Courtesy of the Museum. Photo by B. Gabrielsson.
Elderly Kamba men like to take their stool with them when they go visiting. A chain is attached to the
stool which makes it easy to carry over the shoulder. The stools are elegantly carved and often
inlaid with copper, brass, and pewter. If a stool should crack it is held together with wire,
which adds yet another decorative effect to the stool. The stool to the left has brass-mounted
feet and edges. The stool on the right was carved by Mwanzia Mung'ula, a wood carver in his
eighties who lived in the eastern part of the Kamba territory. He learned this model from his
father, who was also famous for his stools. It takes four days to make a stool. On the last day
I smooth it off and take care of the holes [20]. Mwanzia Mung'ula told how the stool was carried around to avoid giving people the trouble of having chairs for guests.
In the old days it was inconceivable for an elderly man to come visiting without a stool. Anyone who did so was
immediately asked: Why have you come without a stool? I always take my stool when I go anywhere,
for I'm an old man. I bring my staff too. You put that down when you sit down, to show that you are not
planning to start a fight. That you are coming in peace. And you have the snuffbox with you to treat
others. Everyone shares, that's what tobacco is for [21].
In an exhibition catalogue from an American museum one can read that the bow shape on the leg of
the stool is supposed to be a reminder of the hunters' skill with a bow and arrow. But this
could also be an idea that arose among museum staff.
Fig. 8. Kithitu. Kenya, late 19th
early 20th c. Mixed media, osier, twigs. Museum of Ethnography,
Stockholm, call. No.: 1912.7.311. Courtesy of the Museum. Photo by T. Sandin.
A kithitu is an object charged with power. It can take many shapes. It can be a wild-boar tusk or an
antelope horn filled with various things, or as here: a two-decimetre long object consisting of
a dark substance with withies coiled around it. When the judges in a case cannot arrive at
a sure verdict, they get the disputing parties to swear to the truth of their accounts. Anyone
who then retracts his or her story is found guilty. If both parties are prepared to swear the oath,
the one who is a perjurer will suffer misfortune. A power-charged object is placed on three
small stones so that it does not touch the ground. The person or persons who are to take the
oath strike the object with an acacia twig and say: If I am lying now, may I be eaten by
kithitu . One can also try to find a thief with the aid of the oath-swearing object. Lindblom
tells of a man who had one of his cows stolen and stroked the kithitu while saying, Thief,
when you drink the cow's milk, may you be eaten by kithitu [22]. Lindblom believed that this
artefact was the best, albeit perhaps the most modest looking object I managed to acquire [23]. A kithitu was kept in a hidden place away from the village. Lindblom bribed one
of his acquaintances in Ukambani, an old, shabby drunkard and in many ways a morally inferior individual [24], to show him where a kithitu was kept. The owner of the object had acquired it from the neighbouring Tharaka people in exchange for an ox. On his last evening in
the village Lindblom accompanied his guide out into the forest, found the object under a rock,
and stole it. He wondered how the owner would react on discovering the theft, but he eased his
conscience with the reflection that in this case the old Jesuit saying about the end and the
means could be applied [25]. Lindblom evidently thought that he had a greater responsibility
to his research mission than he had towards the people among whom he was working. In
Lindblom's monograph about the Kamba one can read that theft was regarded as a serious
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crime. At the time of his fieldwork it was customary for a thief to have to pay twice the value
of the stolen property as well as a fine to the judges
beer and goat meat. In cases of repeated theft the fine was increased [26].
Fig. 9. Necklaces. Kenya, late 19th
early 20th c. Grass roots, iron chain, conus shell. Museum of
Ethnography, Stockholm, call. Nos.: 1912.7.139, 125, 129. Courtesy of the Museum. Photo by
T. Sandin.
The top necklace is made of grass roots which still give off a faint smell. It is considered erotically
attractive, and Lindblom noted that such necklaces were worn by women when they sleep
with their husbands [27]. The large collar was worn by a young girl. The white shells stand
out against the black iron chains. The ornament partly covers the shoulders, with the chains
falling down towards the chest, while the shells adorn the part that is visible on the back. The
object at the bottom is a married woman's neck decoration.