ABSTRACT
The Pre-British period for the Ngok is a period of abomination in which, according to their idiom, “the world was spoiled.” Historians estimate that the Ngok first came into contact with the Baggara Arabs, their neighbors to the north, in about 1745. It is, however, plausible to assume that the Dinka entered their present area much earlier and that they occupied lands farther north. Indeed, their contact with the various peoples in the North extends deep into the history of the country. The people involved, of course, could have been Europeans, Turks, Egyptians, Arabs, or any other light skinned race who took part in the raiding expeditions for slaves that afflicted the area from the earliest recorded times and began to assimilate some groups and push others farther south. But, like southern history, records and memory seem to begin with the nineteenth-century upheavals. Since the Ngok and the Baggara were both border people and in close contact, conflicts between them were paradoxically intense and yet subject to political settlements, either through diplomatic understanding between their respective leaderships or through a superimposition from the colonial powers in the center, which were within easier reach of the Ngok leadership than they were to the leaders of the southern tribes, Dinka and non-Dinka alike. Indeed, according to the Ngok version, their land used to extend as far north as Denga, otherwise known as Muglad, which is now the administrative center of the Humr Baggar Arabs. So involved were some Arab tribes with the Ngok that they sometimes formed military alliances against other tribes. Chol Adija comments on both the northern limit of Ngok territory and the
military alliances between them and the northern tribes:
Alei [a Ngok subtribe] remained at Muglad. There is the pool I hear now called the pool of Man-Babo Mother of Babo; it is the pool of Thorjok (Alei). It is called Denga because a nobleman of Alei called Denga died there. When Alei remained behind, another Arab tribe clashed with the Missiriya. These Arabs attacked the Missiriya with their swords. They would come and cut off a person’s head with the sword. Alei then said to the Missiriya, “I shall try to help you!” They then made kueer [wooden shields used in club fights] and met the Arabs. When the Arab tried to
strike the person with his sword, the Dinka met the sword with the kueer, and hit the man’s head with a club. They defeated the Arabs and pushed them further back. The family of Nimir, the family of Babo Nimir, which has now come so
close, used to be at Dar Kareb. They later came into the land of Alei. The people with whom we shared the land were the Chad. The Chad were the people we chased from the land we now occupy. And the [Black] Missiriya [the Nuba] were also the people with whom we had borders. As for the people called Ajayra Baggara, they were not near us.
