Yao people (East Africa)
The Yao or Wayao are an ethno- linguistic group in the region of Lake Malawi, with about a million members in Malawi and each slightly less than half a million in northern Mozambique and southern Tanzania. Their language is the Bantu language Yao, also called Chiyao.
History
The Wayao arrived around 1830-1860 in today's Malawi and were active in the trade between the peoples of the inland and the Arabs and Swahili on the East African coast. They traded with bees wax and ivory, and especially the slave trade in cooperation with the Swahili, which they brought with the encroaching European colonial powers in conflict. The people of them sold as slaves were partly proved even of their own people, such as the U.S. ethnologist Horatio Hale based on Yao - speakers from the South American city of Rio de Janeiro. Yao - slaves arrived in present-day Somalia, where they the ancestors of the Somali Bantu were combined with slaves from other ethnic groups.
The Wayao never formed a political unit, but were in independent chiefdoms ( chiefdoms ) organized under economic and military leaders. By 1900, Portuguese, British and German colonizers had brought their territory under their control.
Life and culture
The predominant religion of the Wayao is Islam, besides also animism and Christianity are widespread.
The Wayao live in villages with about 75 to 100 people, are subject to the traditional village leaders. The office of the head is matrilineally inherited, so that usually follows the first-born of the eldest sister. After marriage, the man pulls into the village of the woman. Initiation rituals are performed every year, which include the circumcision of boys. Originally, the spirits of the ancestors were worshiped in these ceremonies, today they are joined with Islamic elements.
Livelihoods of Wayao is agriculture, which yields the staple food maize and sorghum, and in Malawi tobacco as a cash crop. In areas of lakes and larger rivers fish supplemented the diet.
Swell
- Ethnologue.com about the Yao and their language
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: Yao
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: History of Malawi
- Ethnicity in Africa
- Ethnicity in Malawi
- Ethnicity in Mozambique
- Ethnic group in Tanzania