ABSTRACT
Europeans believed the Twa to be the first and legitimate rulers of the forest which, prior to clearing, had covered Rwanda and Burundi. The deepest social division in Rwanda and Burundi was between the Twa and the rest of the population. Origin myths found in north Burundi gave the Twa some of the credit for the emergence of the monarchy in the seventeenth century. The association of the Twa with Rwandan monarchical power tended to discredit both groups in European eyes. Race has suggested itself to many historians as the key factor that governed interactions between colonialists, missionaries and Africans. Missionaries, in fact, had always worried more about mobility than about race. Missionaries in Africa by and large showed no sign of awareness of shifting European theories about race. An early task of the new Rwandan priests was a mission to the Bakiga-inhabited north of Rwanda, undertaken at Easter 1919.
