From the Banan Tree of Kouroussa: Mapping the Landscape in Mande Traditional History

AbstractThe West African Mande worldview links spiritual elements of myth, legend, and magic to conspicuous landscape features, the functional dimension of which is illuminated by a body of work on “native mapping” by anthropologists looking at Native American peoples. Efforts to interpret the Mande people’s perspective on their own history have focused on the actors and their deeds at the expense of attention to the physical environment in which events occur. While acknowledging the risks of relying on elements with no known date of introduction into the discourse, this article argues that in some cases iconic landscape references can be used to test the accuracy of Mande epic texts. Comparison of Mande topographical references to examples from Native American folklore demonstrates a universal concern for relating the past and present spatially in oral tradition.