Eton (people)
The Eton are the largest ethnic group living in the Lekié department in Cameroon . Their language is the Eton .
They consist of several large families, including the Abam, the Essele, the Mbokani, the Mendum, the Megnag'ra, the Menjembaha, the Mbog Belua, the Mbog-Namenje, the Ipep, the Essogo, the Ingab, the Bekaha and the Imbembeng. The Menguiha or Menguissa and the Betcheŋe (Batschenga) should be added to these large families, the ramifications of which are difficult to identify. They generally have a tendency towards the desolidarisation of the Eton community. Every intimate relationship in the family is considered incestuous . It is a given that these families are in no way recognizable only by their names and their customs.
The Eton community was part of the population group that was called Yaounde by the German colonial rulers , with this name also being used for the Ewondos , the Bene and the Mvelle. Today anthropologists consider the Eton to be part of the Beti Pahuin group. The regions in which the Eton lived served as a source of slaves for various European slave hunters until they were officially banned during the German colonial era in German Cameroon . During the German colonial period , the most important occupation of the Eton was cocoa cultivation .
In contrast to a picture that has been attached to them for several decades, the travel reports of the Germans in the area north of Yaounde confirmed the breathtaking hospitality of the Eton, despite some reported attacks on travel caravans and researchers, and especially the night-time attack against the German Governor of Puttkamer in the Minkama region not far from Obala . This event is one of those who built the myth of the audacity of the Eton people, that they would withdraw from the Germans neither as opponents nor as a potential danger.
literature
- Ndzie Nomo, L '"Evu" dans la tradition Eton , Yaoundé, 1980er, p. 88
- Jean-Pierre Ombolo, Les Eton du Cameroun: essai sur leur histoire, leur structure sociale, leurs généalogies et autres traits de leur culture tribale: étude accompagnée d'une recherche sur la proto-histoire générale du groupe Pahouin (Ensemble Fang-Beti- Bulu) , Yaoundé, 1978, p. 170
- Adrien Ongolo, Fondement rationnel de l'idée d'evu Eton , Université de Grenoble 2, 1986
Individual evidence
- ^ Jesko von Puttkamer, Die Gouverneursjahre in Kamerun , Berlin 1912