As a
counterpoint to the first write-up, it should be noted that many of the
so-called '
tribes' of
Africa were in fact
artificial creations of the
colonies.
Colonial governments were faced with the '
native problem': in the lands they claimed as their own they were faced with large populations of people content with their own
small-scale cultures. Attempting to wield
direct control over the natives was unsuccessful, as the natives had no great
motivation to listen to the colonizers.
Anthropologists suggested that the
colonial governments try using
indirect rule instead. The colonists granted
political power and the title of
chief to the individuals they saw as leaders of native groups. Many of the people that the colonists saw as political leaders had in fact been '
leopard-skin chiefs', people who acted as community
mediators but held no real
power.
The newly-appointed
chiefs were gateways into the native cultures for the
colonial governments. The
governments were able to use them to control the natives. Also, important to this context, creating a
political hierarchy changed the previously unmanagable mass of small-scale societies into a group of sharply
divided '
tribes'.
Tribes competed with each other for the dwindling
territory they had been left with, which further assisted the
colonists in ripping apart the pre-existing
small-scale cultures and creating
dependence on the
colonial government.