Bangwa (Western Bamileke) Marriage Wards

Opening ParagraphIt is not uncommon in West Africa for lineage heads and chiefs in patrilineally organized societies to retain important bridewealth rights in their daughters or marriage wards and their descendants. My own field-work, on which this paper is based, was done among the Bangwa, a Bamileke group of the Cameroons. The Bamileke have been described as practising a special form of marriage, known as ngkap marriage. The principle is simple: a girl is given in marriage without transfer of bridewealth from her husband; as a result, the marriages of the daughters of this union are arranged by their maternal grandfather, who becomes known as their tangkap (ta ngkap = father [of bride] wealth). In ‘ngkap marriage’, unlike marriage with normal bridewealth transfers between a husband and his wife's kin, husbands only obtain rights in uxorem (in the woman as a wife) and not rights in genetricem (in the woman as a mother). If the tangkap continues to give his wards in marriage without receiving bridewealth from their suitors, he continually increases his capital stock of marriage wards. Chiefs among the Bamileke, heads of large polygynous compounds, give daughters and wards to their impecunious subjects, sons, and servants who cannot afford the marriage payments. Hurault estimated that in one chief-dom with a population of approximately 20,000, the chief had 1,500 female wards and was linked, through ngkap marriage, to the majority of his subjects. On a lower level lineage heads are able to increase the size of patrilineages through ngkap marriage, since wards and their children are incorporated into the group of their tangkap, not that of their father.