According to oral tradition, the Dogon originally came from an area southwest of modern-day Bamako, in West Africa, called Mande.
In the thirteenth century during the military campaigns of Sundiata Kita, founder of the Mali empire, the Dogon people were forced eastward, until finally reaching their modern-day location about 60 miles south of the Niger river at Bandiagarathe Cliff, sometime during the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Century. Today they occupy an area south of the Sahara Desert near the city of Bandiagara in the Mopti region.
Bandiagarathe cliff, which is nearly 135 miles long and in some places rises 1000 feet above the Plain of Gondo, forms the boundary of a sandstone plateau dissected by canyons. Nestled in these canyon walls are countless shallow caves where the Dogon settled due to their inaccessibility, providing refuge from aggressive neighboring groups included the Mossi, Songhay, and Fulani.
Today numbering an estimated 250,000 (though some sources claim there are as many as 800,000) spread over about 700 villages, the Dogon live much as their ancestors, in rectangular houses with flat roofs built of sun-dried mud bricks plastered over with mud. The villages are located at the foot of Bandiagarathe cliff, not on flat land, but at the sloping foot. The houses are built in close proximity to one other and have small courtyards and square granaries.
In the not too distant past, the Dogon‘s primary means of subsistence was the cultivation of millet, supplemented by a few cattle and goats. They also hunted sable antelope, gazelle, and dwarf buffalo using bow and arrows–until game became increasingly scarce. Today, the Dogon are quite renown for their farming skills, now cultivating a variety of crops including pearl millet, sorghum, and rice, as well as onions, tobacco, peanuts, and other vegetables–largely due to the efforts of French anthropologist Marcel Griaule.
Working and living among the Dogon during the 1920s and 1930s, Griaule is credited with motivating the construction of a dam near Sangha, and with urging the Dogon to expand their agricultural practices to include onions. The economy of the Sangha region doubled since that time with its onions sold as far away as the Ivory Coast. Additionally, the Dogon raise sheep, goats and chickens, with fishing done once a year as a collective ritual.
While a significant minority of the Dogon practice Islam today, (and to a lesser degree, Christianity), the majority of Dogon practice an animist religion, which includes the worship of the ancestral spirit Nommo, involving numerous festivals, as well as a mythology–which remains still central to their lifestyle–in which the star Sirius plays an important part.
In Dogon villages, the “Hogon” is the spiritual leader. He is elected from among the eldest men of the extended families of the village. After election, he must follow a six-month initiation period during which he wears white clothes, is not allowed to shave or wash, and no one is permitted to touch him. A young virgin (who has not yet menstruated) is assigned to care for him, clean his house and prepare his meals. After his initiation, he wears a red fez and an armband with a sacred pearl to symbolize his societal and religious function.
Like several other cultures of Africa, the Dogon societal structure evolves around occupational “castes” or status groups delineating those who craft iron, wood, and leather, as well as the “griots,” whose function is that of lineage genealogists, musicians, and poets (and in many cases, believed to possess powers of sorcerery as well).
Dogon caste members live apart from the agriculturalists in special quarters reserved for them outside the village, or in villages of their own. Each caste is endogamous (required to marry within one’s group) and the members do not participate in the common religious cults. Village organization is kin-based within the overall framework of exogamous (outside the group) patrilineal lineages.
The men’s society among the Dogon controls the now world-famous “cult of the masks” known as Awa. Besides the cult of the masks, there are numerous, fully-integrated cults including the Lebe cult (associated with the agricultural cycle and its chief priest is the Hogon), and the cult of Binu (often referred to as totemic, with members of the clan having the same name and respecting the same animal or vegetable prohibition).
Among the many Dogon rituals are those related to coming of age. Boys are circumcised (performed by the village blacksmith) in age groups of three years, counting, for example, all boys between 9 and 12 years old. This marks the end of their youth, and they are now initiated. The Dogon are also one of several African ethnic groups which practice female genital cutting. While is some areas of Mala this involves girls around the age of 7 or 8 enduring extreme surgical measures, in the Sangha region a milder form is practiced (meaning only the clitoral hood is removed, which is similar to male circumcision). Circumcision for both males and females is seen as necessary for the individual to gain gender. Before circumcision they are seen as “neuter.” For Dogon youth, circumcision is a day most look forward to in anticipation–not dread.
Of their many annual rituals, the Yingim and Danyim rituals are among the most significant, each lasting a few days. They are held to honor the elders that have died since the last Dama, a yearly rite of passage focused around the village’s “keepers of the masks.
The Yingim ritual consists of the sacrifice of cows or other valuable animals, and large mock battles performed in order to help chase the spirit known as the Nyama from the deceaseds’ bodies and towards the path of the afterlife, while the Danyim involves masqueraders performing dances every morning and evening for up to six days–depending on how that particular village performs this ritual. (Highly individualized, there is no one ritual formula, but varies greatly village to village.) The masqueraders dance on the deceaseds’ rooftops throughout the village, and in the fields around the village. Until the masqueraders have completed their dances and every ritual has been performed, it is said that any misfortune can be blamed on the remaining spirits of the dead.
One of the most significant aspects of Dogon ritual and societal structure is its relationship to cosmology.
In 1976, American author Robert K. G. Temple wrote a book called The Sirius Mystery, arguing that the Dogon‘s belief system reveals precise knowledge of cosmological facts only known by the development of modern astronomy, since they appear to know that Sirius is part of a binary star system, whose second star, Sirius B, a white dwarf, is completely invisible to the human eye, and that it takes 50 years to complete its orbit.
The existence of Sirius B has only been inferred to exist through mathematical calculations undertaken by Friedrich Bessel in 1844. Temple has argued that the Dogon‘s information, if traced back to ancient Egyptian sources and myth, indicates an extraterrestrial transmission of knowledge of the stars. Some theories contend that the Dogon are ancestors of the first (pre-Dynastic) Egyptians, a people whose lives evolved around the heavens.
References:
M Griaule, G Dieterlen, The Dogon of the French Sudan
Walter E.A. van Beek, Dogon: Africa’s People of the Cliffs.
