The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People

Evans-Pritchard depicts Nuer culture as being shaped by environmental and ecological concerns, chiefly with regard to their pastoral livelihood of raising cattle. While they cultivate crops on a small scale and engage in other food-gathering activities like fishing, cattle-raising is their central concern: “at their heart they are herdsmen, and the only labour in which they delight is care of cattle. […] Cattle are their dearest possession […]. Most their social activities concern cattle” (16). The necessity of cooperation in the process of raising herds of cattle influences the structure of Nuer society, dictating that families must band together into villages in order to build a common kraal and to protect their pasturage. Even kinship relations are usually expressed in terms of cattle, since herds are owned by families rather than being regarded as personal property. Further, the transfer of cattle between families is an essential element of marriage rituals, and both men and women are customarily addressed with names derived from the identities of their favorite cows and oxes: “Since cattle are a Nuer’s most cherished possession, being an essential food-supply and the most important social asset, it is easy to understand why they play a foremost part in ritual” (18). The cultural value of cattle also exerts an egalitarian influence on Nuer culture, since they are a form of property which falls under certain limitations: “Cattle are everywhere evenly distributed. Hardly any one is entirely without them, and no one is very rich” (20). One person cannot possess more livestock than will fit in a single local kraal, and large herds are regularly redistributed by marriages and other social rituals.

Cattle represent the main food source for the Nuer, chiefly in the form of milk. Milk, together with occasional millet crops, represent the staples of their diet. The constraints of this diet require them to cooperate in social groups larger than that of individual families, since a family herd is often not enough to guarantee self-sufficiency. Their mixed diet also affects their mode of locality, which is roving but not entirely nomadic, with periods of fixed settlement during the year. Nuer supplement their diet with meat, either from fish or—more rarely—from their cattle. Cattle are not raised for slaughter, but they are killed for meat on a small scale, usually in conjunction with a ritual event. The Nuer diet is further supplemented by cow blood, which is occasionally drained in small portions from one’s herd in a procedure which causes no long-term harm to the cattle.

Although Evans-Pritchard at times refers to the relation between the Nuer and their cattle as parasitic, he regards it more as being a symbiotic relationship: “Cattle and men sustain life by their reciprocal services to one another” (36). Most of the activities of Nuer daily life revolve around their cattle, with whom they live in close physical intimacy, with their homes constructed directly around the cattle kraals and byres. The intimacy of this relationship is evidenced by the common terminology of Nuer vocabulary, much of which relates to cattle—their appearance, colors, patterns, sizes, and features. Even personal names are often replaced with cow-names and ox-names in popular usage and social functions. Interest in cattle also forms the center of their relations with other people groups, usually serving as the main context for wars of both offense and defense, either to replenish herds by raiding (most often, aimed at the Dinka people) or to protect their own herds.

This chapter, more than any other, examines the theme of The Centrality of Cattle to Nuer Culture. Nuer society is ordered around cattle husbandry to such a degree that Evans-Pritchard sees cattle as an inextricable part of Nuer culture. They are not only a source of food and material goods, but are in a sense members of the society in their own right, existing in a symbiotic relationship with the people. Evans-Pritchard’s reference to balance and reciprocity is an early hint of another of the book’s major themes, that of Relativity and Equilibrium in Social Groupings. While that theme receives its fullest treatment in the context of human sub-groups within Nuer tribes and clans, the balanced reciprocity of cattle and humans in Nuer villages also fits that pattern.

As in the introductory section, this chapter benefits from having Evans-Pritchard’s prose supplemented by sketches and charts of various kinds, as well as photographs interspersed throughout the book which show the close association of cattle with the Nuer. One of the most striking illustrations is a set of sketches illustrating the many features of cattle which Nuer are inclined to remark on, thus adding evidence to Evans-Pritchard’s contention that the greater part of Nuer conversation and relational idioms center on cattle and the broad variety of their features.