Myth / Jukun Mythology

Mam-cult spirit sculpture.

The Jukun are an ethnic group in the Middle Belt of Nigeria and part of Northwestern Cameroon who live along the upper Benue river. They were the dominant ethnic group in the former West Sudanic kingdom of Kororofa. Led by their holy priest-king called the Aku Uku, the Jukun were a powerful nation skilled in heavy cavalry tactics. The pagan Jukun frequently invaded the formidable Islamic Hausa city-states and Bornu empire. The medieval heyday of Kororofa was followed by a steady period of decline culminating in the jihadist Fulani of the Sokoto Caliphate extinguishing the last remnants of the state in the early 19th century. The Jukun would experience a resurgence of influence in the mid-19th century as the leading ethnic group of the Wukari Federation in response to the invasion of the migrating Chamba people from the Adamawa region of what is now Cameroon.

The Jukun are primarily Muslim today with a minority of Christians and exclusive traditionalists. Even so, the pagan substrate in Jukun culture is widespread. Though largely no longer worshipped, the ceremonial importance of the Aku Uku remains a unifying force among the Jukun tribes. The beliefs and customs of the Jukun have influenced neighboring peoples such as the Wurbo and Jen.

Tropes from Jukun Mythology include:

• Amazing Technicolor Population: Gion is black and red.
• Back from the Dead: Adi-bu-ma revived all the people and animals devoured by his mother using magic water. Except for his senior wife, who was the one that led his mother to his city.
• Batman Gambit: Adi-bu-ma's mother pretended to be a humble merchant and tried to trade with his queen. She pretended not to understand their measurement system and asked to be led to the kingdom. The unwitting queen brought her to the city and was eaten by the old witch alongside the little girl Adi-bu-ma sent to watch over her.
• Benevolent Mage Ruler: When Adi-bu-ma escaped from his mother, he took a magic egg from his hunting bag and cast it on the ground. Immediately a great walled city sprang up full of people, crops, and animals. The people of the town made him their king.
• Blow You Away:
  • Awo is the god of wind.
  • Nimbwi is the god of the whirlwind according to the Jen.
• Body Horror: When the world was young, women had vaginas in their armpits rather than between their legs.
• Classical Hunter: Kenjo is the god of the hunt.
• Crossover Cosmology:
  • The demon known as "Dodo" from Hausa Mythology made his way into Jukun beliefs.
  • Kenjo has been speculated to be the Yoruba Mythology Aganju.
• Divine Parentage: The nature of Adi-bu-ma's heritage is ambiguous. But his name translates as "Child of Ama", strongly implying his mother is actually the goddess Ama.
• Earth Mother: Ama is the goddess of the earth and fertiliy. She is the mother of all living things and most of the gods.
• The End of the World as We Know It: It's important that Myino is distracted from capturing Sun during the lunar eclipse. If Myino is successful in conquering Sun then the heavens will collapse and the world will be destroyed.
• Enfant Terrible: Adi-bu-ma spoke before he was born, telling his cannibal mother to cut open the lump on her leg so he may be born. He burst forth into the world armed with bow and arrows.
• Everything's Better with Rainbows: Surprisingly enough for Sub-Saharan Africa, played straight. The rainbow serpent is called Akuwo. It lives underground and pushes the waters up to the sky for great rainfall.
• The Fair Folk:
  • The Jo Pi or sometimes called Anhebi are spirits of agriculture and hunting. The females are associated with the farm while the males are associated with the bush. People once made offerings to them for good harvests and protection from wild beasts. Lions and Leopards were considered to be the hounds of the Jo Pi.
  • Like the Hausa and the Songhai, the Jukun distinguished between "white" spirits usually considered benevolent or at the very least benign vs "black" spirits associated with malice and mischief-making. A bit like the Seelie and Unseelie courts of the Scottish fairies. Such wicked spirits were called Daga Da Ku (strikers with hoe-shafts) for the magic staffs they walked around with. Having one pointed at you would result in sickness and death. A dead person who gets no offerings from their living relatives may become one of the Daga Da Ku.
  • Evil spirits were known as Wo Ba Baba. They prefer to haunt big trees and are known to enter human bodies to make them sick. Wo Ba Baba are blamed for heatstroke and are most active at high noon, thus people take care to avoid the bush at that time.
  • Wo-Kapi were evil spirits who took the form of whirlwinds. Stabbing them in the center with a spear was one way to injure them.
  • Gwaigwai are the ghosts of chiefs who wander the bush surrounded by herds of wild animals. They are quite friendly and will give magic to anyone who tells them of their greatest desire. A farmer may get a fertility charm, a hunter may get a hunting charm, a medicine man may be taught new remedies. Hunters who are too greedy and kill too many animals must forfeit their lives and become the ghostly slaves of the Gwaigwai.
  • Bampuru are bush spirits who live in caves and can only be seen by small children. They lure children in with delicious snacks and then demand the souls of their relatives. The only way to cure the victim of a Bampuru is to bring the leftover food to it's cave.
• Fattening the Victim: Adi-bu-ma invoked this trope to delay his mother from eating him. He said he was much too small to be a good meal, and offered to feed her bush animals until he was big enough. When he grew up into a man he gave her an enormous Roan Antelope to eat for several days, fled as far as he could flee, and never came back.
• God Couple: Chido and Ama are husband and wife. Their union gives rise to all life.
• Fire Keeps It Dead: Subverted twice. Adi-bu-ma had his wife's body burned and the ashes sent downriver after the battle with his mother ended. The ashes eventually made contact with the earth and many calabashes grew up. One calabash grew far larger than the others and turned into a man-eating Botanical Abomination. The calabash devoured people and animals as ravenously as Adi-bu-ma's mother once did, so he sent a goat against it. Adi-bu-ma fed the goat magic charms and the goat succeeded in destroying the giant calabash. The monster calabash was burned, and the ashes scattered to the winds, touching some people and turning them into witches. And that is where witchcraft comes from.
• Fire/Water Juxtaposition: The king of Bornu could call down fire against his enemies, the king of Kororofa could summon rain. This proved the power of the Jukun king is greater than the king of Kanem-Bornu.
• God Is Displeased: Achu was treated horribly by early humans, and strongly dislikes us even now.
• God of the Dead:
  • Ama rules over the underworld known as Kindo.
  • Among the Gwana subgroup, the ruler of the underworld is Jirkar: sire of the line of Gwana chiefs.
  • Aki is the god of death itself.
  • Gion is believed to have mastery over the souls of the dead, and people must petition him to communicate with them. During the harvest festival the chief priest or "Akondu" would convince Gion to allow the spirits of the dead to speak to the living.
  • Akwa is the god of the ancestors.
• God of Thunder:
  • The god Gion was believed to destroy criminals with his thunder and lightning.
  • Achu still holds a grudge against humans for the evils done to him long ago, so sometimes he'll go nuts shooting thunder and lightning at us. When a thunderstorm is gentle, he is being restrained by his wives who remind him that the humans on earth now are not the same ones who wronged him.
• Guardian Entity: The Aku-Ahwi or Ba-Hwa are the ancestral spirits appealed to for protection and blessings. However neglect or disrespect towards the ancestors could incur their supernatural retribution.
• Guile Hero: Adi-bu-ma hid one of his sixty spears behind his back after pretending to throw itduring his exchange of projectiles with his demonic mother. His mother wasted her last fang trying to hit him, and he then charged her with the spear.
• Heaven Above: Chido is the supreme deity and lord of the sky.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Adi-bu-ma's mother was a voracious cannibal. She ate all her children but him, and years later devoured an entire city.
• Jerkass Gods: The Jen say that Ama or Ma sculpts ugly people sometimes out of spite or carelessness.
• "Just So" Story: People long eaten by Adi-bu-ma's mother had their skin color bleached white like Arabs or Berbers, people who had been eaten an intermediate time ago turned red like the Fulani, and everyone else eaten recently were black skinned.
• Lunacy: "Sun" is name of the moon god. There are actually twelve moons. Sun is considered a boy who ages and de-ages with the waxing and waning of the moon. He lives in the east of the sky and travels west on his nightly journey. During the day, the sun-god Myino captures him. During eclipses people beat drums and demand Myino release Sun. The twelve moon boys live underwater. Sometimes the moon is perceived as a woman.
• The Maker: Ama creates humans from clay, like pottery. Then Chido breathes life into them.
• Making a Splash: A special priest called the Kuzafi was believed to have powers over water and animals who inhabit it.
• Offing the Offspring: There was an old woman who would eat her own children whole each time she gave birth, this went on until she bore the hero "Adi-bu-ma".
• Our Gods Are Different: Chido and Ama are sometimes considered to be two aspects of a single supreme being.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: Base-jape are the spirits of the waters. They look like supernaturally beautiful people and live underwater in towns and kingdoms like humans do. The Base-jape have a taboo against red cloth, bracelets, and decorated calabashes. Any mortal caught with them will be killed or rendered mute. The Base-jape control the aquatic life and will withhold fish from people who annoy them.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Gion owns a pet dog with the head of a lion. People used to keep figures of it in their homes for protection.
• The Power of the Sun:
  • The sun once fell to earth while women were winnowing corn. One of the women went to investigate and found only a ram where the sun fell. She brought the ram home for the night, and it filled her house with light. The next morning the sun failed to rise, so the chief ordered everyone to take anything unusual outside their homes. The woman told the chief about the ram and told her to release it at once. The ram ascended to heaven, and day was restored.
  • Fi is the sun and supreme god of the Jen people.
  • Myino is the god of the sun. He rests in the western sky. There are actually several Myinos.
• The Problem with Fighting Death: When the world was young, Aki wandered around the earth challenging humans to wrestling matches. If they won, he allowed them to continue living. One day Aki met an ant who told him he would have more success if he killed people when they least expected it, citing how ants work unnoticed until their tunnels cause buildings to collapse. Ever since then Aki enters human bodies and gradually whittles away at our lives until we die.
• The Sacred Darkness: Atsu is the god of the night.
• Self-Made Orphan: Adi-bu-ma killed his monstrous mother with a spear to the belly, releasing all the victims she devoured in a great flood.
• Spirit World: The spirits were believed by some to inhabit another world called Ndo-Jo.
• Star Power:
  • The stars are known as Alsui. They are said to be the spirits of the dead. Meteors are believed to be omens of a recent death (especially chiefs), or the Alsui delivering food to each other.
  • The evening star was considered to be the favorite wife of the moon.
• Talking Animal: The only survivor of Adi-bu-ma's city was a chicken who told him that his evil mother had returned.
• Top God:
  • Some consider Gion to be the supreme being and king of the gods.
  • Others consider Chido and Ama to be the leaders of the pantheon.
  • The Jen believe their god Fi to be the supreme being.
• Unusual Ammo: Adi-bu-ma's mother would remove her sharp teeth and throw them at her enemies like spears.
• War God:
  • Kenjo is the god of war.
  • Umwa, among the Jen.
• Weather Manipulation:
  • Chido is the god of rain.
  • Achu or Shu is the god of the upper skies and rain.

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