The Dinka, Cattle-Keepers of the Nile

Across the vast wetlands and savannas of the upper Nile in South Sudan live the Dinka, who call themselves Jieng, one of the largest peoples of the country and among the most celebrated cattle-keepers of Africa. Famed for their great height, their pride, and above all their devotion to their herds, they are a Nilotic people whose entire world — economy, society, religion, and art — turns upon their cattle.

Herders who follow the flood of the Nile between the dry-season cattle camps and the wet-season villages, singers of ox-songs, worshippers of the sky-god Nhialic through the sacrifice of sacred cattle, and now the leading people of the world’s youngest nation, the Dinka carry a proud pastoral heritage through an age of war and change. This article traces their origins, language, homeland, society, religion, and traditions, and the story of the cattle-keepers of the Nile.

The Dinka on Film

Origins
The Name
The Language
The Homeland
The Old Way of Life
Society and Community
Religion and Belief
Traditions
Crafts
Food
Festivals
History
Today

Origins

An early photograph of the Nilotic peoples of the upper Nile

The Dinka, who call themselves Jieng, are one of the largest peoples of South Sudan and among the most celebrated of the cattle-keeping peoples of Africa. A Nilotic people of the vast wetlands and savannas of the upper Nile, they number several millions and are famed for their devotion to their cattle, for their great height, and for a proud pastoral culture that has made them, together with their neighbours the Nuer, an emblem of the herding peoples of the Nile.

The Dinka are a Nilotic people, part of the great family of tall, dark-skinned cattle-keepers of the upper Nile that includes the Nuer, Shilluk, and others, and are believed to have inhabited the Nile wetlands for many centuries, moving with their herds between the high ground of the dry season and the riverside pastures. Divided into many subgroups spread across a wide area, and united by a common language and a shared devotion to cattle, the Dinka developed a distinctive culture centred wholly on their herds, which are the measure of wealth, the currency of marriage, and the focus of religion and art.

The Name

South Sudan, homeland of the Dinka people

The people call themselves Jieng (or Jaang, Muonyjang), their own name for the community, while Dinka is the name by which they are widely known to outsiders. The Dinka are not a single unified group but a cluster of many related subgroups, such as the Bor, Agar, Rek, Malual, Twic, and others, spread across the region and sharing a common language and culture.

As an identity, Dinka denotes this Nilotic, cattle-keeping people of the upper Nile, distinct from but closely related to the neighbouring Nuer, Shilluk, and other Nilotic peoples, and from the many other peoples of South Sudan. The Dinka are intensely conscious of their identity as Jieng, the people of the cattle, and of their pride, independence, and pastoral heritage, and this identity, rooted in the language, the cattle, and the land of the Nile, binds the many subgroups together as one of the great peoples of South Sudan.

The Language

Dinka shields; the Dinka speak a Nilotic language

The Dinka language, Thuɔŋjäŋ, belongs to the Nilotic branch of the Nilo-Saharan family, related to Nuer, Shilluk, and the other Nilotic languages of the upper Nile, and is spoken by several million people in a number of closely related dialects across the Dinka subgroups. It is a language rich in vocabulary for cattle, their colours, and their markings, reflecting the central place of the herds in Dinka life and thought.

Traditionally an unwritten language carried in a rich oral tradition of song, above all the cattle-songs and praise-poetry through which the Dinka celebrate their oxen and their heroes, the language has in modern times been given a written form using the Latin script, and is used in education, church, and literature alongside English and Arabic. The oral literature of the Dinka, with its ox-songs, its hymns, and its histories, is a treasury of the culture. The Dinka language, above all its poetry of cattle, is a central marker of the community’s identity and its pastoral world.

The Homeland

The vast wetlands of the Nile in South Sudan, the Dinka homeland

The homeland of the Dinka is the vast floodplain of the upper Nile in South Sudan, a land of savanna, grassland, and the great wetlands of the Sudd, one of the largest freshwater swamps in the world, through which the White Nile spreads in a maze of channels, lagoons, and seasonally flooded plains. It is a flat, hot country governed by the rhythm of the rains and the flood, alternating between the dry season and the wet.

This environment of flood and savanna shaped the whole way of life of the Dinka, whose pastoral cycle follows the water: in the dry season the people and their herds move down to the riverside pastures and the receding floodplain, the toc, where grass and water remain, and in the wet season they retreat to the higher ground, where they cultivate their crops and live in their permanent villages. The Nile, its flood, and the pastures it waters are the sustaining features of the Dinka world. This land of river, swamp, and savanna, governed by the flood, is the homeland of the Dinka people.

The Old Way of Life

The Dinka cattle camp, centre of a pastoral way of life

The traditional life of the Dinka is that of the transhumant pastoralist, wholly centred on cattle, combined with the cultivation of crops in the wet season. The Dinka are, above all, cattle-keepers, and their herds are the centre of their economy, their society, and their imagination: cattle are the measure of a man’s wealth and standing, the bridewealth given in marriage, the focus of song and art, and the link between the people and their gods.

The pastoral year follows the flood: in the dry season the men and youths take the herds to the cattle camps on the receding floodplain, living with their beasts in a life idealised in Dinka culture, while in the wet season the people gather in their villages on the higher ground to cultivate sorghum, millet, and other crops. Every young man has his favourite ox, its colour and horns celebrated in song, and the tending, protecting, and celebration of the herds fill Dinka life. This life of cattle-keeping, transhumance, and seasonal cultivation, wholly bound to the herds and the flood, is the heart of traditional Dinka society.

Society and Community

Dinka society is organised around the extended family, the clan, and the subgroup, without, traditionally, any centralised state, and is bound together by ties of kinship, cattle, and the shared pastoral life rather than by kings or chiefs in the manner of some African peoples. Descent and clan structure identity and marriage, and cattle, given as bridewealth, are the currency that binds families and lineages together.

Authority in traditional Dinka society rested less on political rulers than on the elders, the leaders of the clans, and above all the “masters of the fishing-spear,” the hereditary priestly leaders who mediated between the people and the divine and played a central role in the life of the community. Age-sets, into which the young men were initiated, structured the society of the youth and the cattle camps. Women held an important place in the domestic and agricultural economy. Bound by kinship, cattle, the age-sets, and the spiritual leadership of the spear-masters, Dinka society preserved the cohesive, egalitarian, and cattle-centred character of a great pastoral people.

Religion and Belief

Long-horned cattle, revered by the Dinka and central to their religion

The traditional religion of the Dinka is a monotheistic faith of great depth, centred on the worship of a single supreme God, Nhialic, the sky-god and creator, who governs the world and the destinies of human beings, and who is approached through prayer, sacrifice, and the mediation of lesser divinities and the ancestors. Cattle, above all, are central to this religion, for the sacrifice of an ox is the supreme religious act, the means of communion with Nhialic and of atonement, healing, and blessing.

The “masters of the fishing-spear,” the hereditary priests, are central to Dinka religion, believed to hold a special relationship with the divine and to have power over life, death, and the fertility of the herds and the fields. Alongside Nhialic and the spear-masters, the Dinka venerate clan divinities and the ancestors, and their religion is expressed in a rich body of hymn and prayer. Many Dinka are now Christian, above all through the long presence of the churches, yet the traditional faith, with its one God, its sacrificial cattle, and its spear-masters, remains profound. This religion, centred on Nhialic and the sacred ox, lies at the heart of Dinka culture.

Traditions

The traditions of the Dinka are expressed above all in their poetry and song of cattle, in dance, and in the customs of the cattle camp and the age-set. The Dinka are famous for their ox-songs, the praise-poetry in which each man celebrates his favourite ox, its colour, its horns, and its beauty, composing and singing songs that are among the treasures of African oral literature, and for the songs of war, love, and the ancestors.

Dance, performed by the tall Dinka at ceremonies and celebrations, the customs of the initiation of the young men into the age-sets, marked traditionally by the cutting of patterns of scars on the forehead, and the whole culture of the cattle camp, with its idealisation of the herds, are central to Dinka tradition. The decoration of the body and of the favourite oxen, whose horns are sometimes trained into shapes, expresses the people’s aesthetic. Through these traditions of ox-song, dance, and the culture of cattle, the Dinka express their pastoral world and their identity.

Crafts

The beadwork of a Dinka man's ornament — The beadwork of a Dinka man’s ornament

The material culture and crafts of the Dinka are those of a pastoral people, simple, portable, and closely tied to the cattle and the life of the camp and village. The Dinka are known for their personal adornment, above all the beaded corsets and ornaments worn by the young men and women, whose colours and forms mark age, status, and beauty, and which are among the most striking expressions of the culture.

The Dinka also make the implements of the pastoral and fishing life: spears and fishing-spears, the tethering-pegs and gear of the cattle camp, the headrests on which the men sleep to protect their elaborate hairstyles, carved of wood, and the containers, gourds, and utensils of the household. Ironworking, where practised, provided the spears and tools, and the working of hides, horn, and beads adorned the person. This material culture, above all the beaded ornament and the carved headrests, simple yet expressive and wholly suited to the pastoral life, reflects the world of the Dinka people.

Food

Sorghum, the grain staple of the Dinka alongside cattle milk

Dinka cuisine reflects the pastoral life and is centred above all on the produce of the cattle, milk and its products, together with the grain grown in the wet season and the fish of the rivers and swamps. Milk, fresh and soured, is a mainstay of the diet, above all in the cattle camps, and the Dinka, like other Nilotic peoples, also traditionally took blood drawn from the living cattle, mixed with milk, as a food, though the beasts themselves were killed for meat only on special or sacrificial occasions.

Sorghum and millet, grown in the wet-season fields, are the grain staples, prepared as porridges and flatbreads and eaten with milk and with the produce of the land, and fish, abundant in the rivers and swamps, is an important food. The cattle, too precious to be killed lightly, gave their milk and blood in life and their meat at sacrifices and feasts. This cuisine, centred on milk, grain, and fish, and reflecting the sanctity and value of the cattle, expresses the pastoral world of the Dinka people.

Festivals

A gathering of the peoples of South Sudan

The ceremonial and festive life of the Dinka is tied to the cattle, the age-sets, and the religion, and centres on the great occasions of sacrifice, initiation, marriage, and the gatherings of the cattle camps. The sacrifice of oxen to Nhialic, conducted by the spear-masters, is the supreme religious ceremony, an occasion of prayer, song, and the sharing of meat, held for healing, atonement, or blessing.

The initiation of the young men into the age-sets, marking their passage to manhood, and the ceremonies of marriage, with their exchange of cattle as bridewealth, are great social occasions marked by dancing, song, and feasting. The gatherings of the cattle camps in the dry season, where the youth of the community come together with their herds, are times of courtship, song, and the celebration of cattle. Through these ceremonies and gatherings, tied to the herds, the age-sets, and the worship of Nhialic, the Dinka express their pastoral culture and their communal identity.

History

An early view of the peoples of the upper Nile

The history of the Dinka is that of a great pastoral people long dwelling in the upper Nile, largely beyond the reach of the states and empires of the region. For centuries the Dinka herded their cattle in the wetlands and savannas, organised in their clans and subgroups under their elders and spear-masters, resisting incorporation into the kingdoms and slave-raiding states that surrounded them, and preserving their independence and their pastoral way of life in the difficult terrain of the Nile swamps.

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries brought great upheaval: the slave raids of the age of the Turco-Egyptian and Mahdist states, the imposition of Anglo-Egyptian colonial rule over the Sudan, and, after Sudanese independence, the long and terrible civil wars between the south and the north, in which the Dinka, as the largest people of the south, played a central part and suffered enormously. The struggle culminated in the independence of South Sudan in 2011, in which the Dinka were the leading people, though the new nation was soon convulsed by its own conflicts. This history, of pastoral independence, slavery, war, and the winning of a state, is central to the Dinka experience.

Today

Today the Dinka are the largest people of South Sudan, the nation that became independent in 2011 and in which they are the dominant community, prominent in its politics, its army, and its public life. The cattle-keeping way of life endures across the wetlands and savannas, and the devotion to cattle, the ox-songs, and the pastoral culture remain central to Dinka identity, even as many Dinka have moved to the towns, taken up new occupations, and spread, through the upheavals of war, into a wide diaspora across Africa and the world.

The community faces grave challenges: the terrible toll of the civil wars, both against the north and, tragically, within South Sudan, above all between Dinka and Nuer; the pressures of displacement, poverty, and the difficulties of building a new and troubled nation; and the tension between the pastoral tradition and the modern world. Yet the Dinka retain a powerful sense of their identity, rooted in their cattle, their language and its poetry, their religion, and their pride as the people of the Nile. Heirs to a great pastoral heritage and now the leading people of the world’s youngest nation, the Dinka carry their distinctive culture into an uncertain future.