Peoples of the North
Adaptation to ecological conditions has led to emergence of common cultural characteristics among peoples of otherwise diverse origins. Thus, there is a certain unity among the people of the vast forest that covers a great part of the south, just as there is among the people of the western highlands. The situation is somewhat different in the north. The Fulani have put their stamp on that region, although they constitute only one-third of the population. The other two-thirds comprise a great number of diverse peoples. But to a large degree their location and manner of living have developed in reaction to the Fulani, and they tend to regard themselves as northerners with respect to the rest of the Cameroonians. Thus, in addition to the many tensions characterizing interethnic relations within the three regions, a further cleavage exists between northerners and southerners, the latter including in this context both the peoples of the western highlands and of the southern forests.
Fulani
Although numerically a minority group in the north, the Fulani represent the ruling class in that area. Of West African origin, their ancestors spread slowly eastward from the Senegal River Valley in search of grazing land for their herds. Small groups reached the Chadian basin at the end of the thirteenth century, and by the early eighteenth century several Fulani settlements existed on the plateau south of the Benoue River. In the nineteenth century, under the impetus of the holy war waged by Othman dan Fodio, creator of a Fulani-Hausa empire in what is present-day northern Nigeria, they came as conquering warriors on horseback spreading Islam by the sword. They subdued the region of Maroua, the valley of the Benoue, and the central plateau where they took over large tracts of grazing land. The plateau was named Adamaoua after Mobido Adama who had helped to make the land of his birth subservient to Othman's rule. Maroua, Garoua, and Ngaoundere became—and still are—important as capitals of Fulani chiefdoms.
The local people either fled into less accessible areas such as the Mandara Hills or they accepted defeat and continued to live among the Fulani on the plains. Eventually a precarious equilibrium developed between the relatively unified Fulani, who had solid hierarchies and large administrative towns, and the diverse groups of conquered people who lived in tiny dispersed hamlets.
During the hungry months before the harvest, the hill people have often been forced to get food from the more prudent and cautious Fulani. On occasion, as during the great famine of 1931, they have given their children to the Fulani in return for millet. Many hire themselves out voluntarily to their former enemies during the difficult months. The villages and cities attract them, and some remain permanently and in time adopt Islam and Fulani ways of living. Those who have adopted Fulani ways and the descendants of slaves together constitute about 15 percent of the people who are counted as Fulani and who consider themselves as such.
Although many Fulani elsewhere have remained nomads or semi-nomads, most of those in Cameroon have become sedentary. About 80 percent get their livelihood from stockraising and farming, but they usually do not actually cultivate their fields unless forced to do so by circumstances. Small numbers of Fulani are either wage earners or artisans who make their living as butchers, tailors, shoemakers, weavers, and chauffeurs or by similar occupations. A roughly equal number are either traders or marabout (religious teachers). About 1 percent hold government jobs.
Only 6 percent of the Fulani are completely nomadic herders. They are called M'Bororo and live in a symbiotic relationship with cultivators, exchanging goods and services. This 6 percent lack political organization beyond the herding unit and its headman, and they tend to be indifferent Muslims. There are also some 16,000 Fulani herders in the Bamenda Highlands.
The name Fulani, used by the Hausa of Nigeria, is most widely accepted by English-speaking people. The Fulani, however, call themselves Fulbe (sing., Pullo). The French call them Peul or Peulh. In Chad they are known as Felaata, and in Mali as Fulla. Ful or Fulfulde is the language of the Fulani. It is spoken in varying forms by more than 4 million people between Senegal and Chad and has no script. It belongs to the West Atlantic branch of the Congo-Kordofanian family of languages. Ful is the lingua franca of the north, except in the departments of Chari and Logone where a pidgin form of Arabic is most often used.
In Cameroon various Ful dialects are spoken, such as Fulfulde Funaangere in the north, principally in Diamare Department; Fulfulde Hiiernaangere, spoken mainly around Ngaoundere; and Kambariier, a sort of pidgin Fulfulde, spoken by non-Fulani. The language is spreading, and it is rare to find a household in the north where at least one member does not have some knowledge of the Ful language.
Arabs
Most of the Arabs live in the far north between Fort-Foureau and Mora, but some are as far south as the region around Maroua, and are called Choa Arabs — choa meaning lamb in Arabic. Persumably this name was given to distinguish them from sedentary Arabs. They have mixed considerably with indigenous peoples. The ancestors of the Cameroonian Arabs were part of the vast, slow migration that started in Arabia in the seventh century AD after the widespread conversion to Islam. Some Arabs eventually arrived in small groups in the rich pastures of Central Africa, either by way of Egypt or Ethiopia. They reached Lake Chad around the seventeenth or eighteenth century, settling in Baguirmi (now part of Chad) and did not cross the Chari and Logone rivers until at most two centuries ago and then only in very small numbers. Many others followed, however, after the Germans established control over Cameroon in the late nineteenth century.
The Choa Arabs are cattle raisers who combine herding with cultivation. From February to June each year they move north but never more than a distance of about thirty miles. During those moves they often meet Nigerian Choa Arabs either within or beyond the Cameroonian border. In the east the prevalence of tsetse flies prevents them from crossing into Chad.
Like the nomadic Fulani, the Choa Arabs are attached to their cattle, which constitute their means of livelihood and there capital. They are strict Muslims, most of their villages having small Koranic schools. A minority belongs to the Islamic brotherhood of the Tidjania. They do not own land but pay tribute for its use to local peoples, such as the Kotoko chiefs near the Logone River or the heads of administra- tive districts. Only in the canton of Bounderi have they their own autonomous rule. Their social system is based on lineages and sections of lineages claiming descent from male founders. Rights and obligations among the descendants diminish with the increasing number of generations separating them from a common ancestor.
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