The Oromo People
The Oromo People, who used to be called Galla, are one of Ethiopia’s largest and most important groups of people. Scholars have been debating the question of where and how their ethnicity came from for a long time, and there is still no general agreement on the issue.
Parts of the areas where the Oromo People live are now occupied by Somali groups. This seems to be a fact. It is believed that the Oromo are responsible for archaeological discoveries in the north of Somalia, such as graves and burial grounds.
But most of the evidence points to a highland origin in what is now the province of Ba’li. The Oromo People are Ethiopian, despite what many people thought in the past. In the same way, it is now well known that the large migrations of the Oromo were not caused by pressure from other groups.
Another false idea about Oromo history and culture is that they are primitive cattle herders who don’t know how to farm. This wrong idea needs to be changed because it is now clear that they did different kinds of farming wherever they lived.
The Oromo People were made up of groups that were related through their ancestry. Parts of these groups probably broke off and formed new independent subgroups as the population kept growing.
At first, there were two major groups. They were called Borana and Barentu, after their two mythical ancestors, who were thought to be their founders. As early as the 1600s, these groups were powerful alliances made up of people from many different cultures.
So, it’s important to say that there probably was never such a thing as a “pure” Oromo group. The gada system, which was the center of the Oromo’s social and political organization and controlled every part of their lives, may have been a big reason for their rapid growth.
The Gada system divided people into groups based on their ages. Each group took over military, economic, political, and ritual duties every eight years. Every man in Oromo society was put into a generation set and given a gada grade.
The full gada cycle, which had ten grades, was split into two parts of forty years each. No matter how old he was, every Oromo boy had to start school forty years after his father did. This meant that every father and son were always five grades apart.
During his life, an Oromo man should have passed ten classes that were each eight years long. Everyone in a class together formed a group called a gada, and they stayed together for the rest of their lives. With being a member of a certain class came certain duties and rights.
The leadership and warrior classes were made up of the fifth and sixth classes, respectively. The Gada class was really in charge of politics, and the officials who were chosen were just their representatives. During the eight years that the Gada class ruled, it was expected that at least once they would go on a killing spree against big game or enemies that none of their ancestors had attacked.
The Qallu institution was something else that was very important in some Oromo societies. In traditional Oromo religion, the Qallu was the spiritual leader, and the first leader was thought to have come from God. Traditions of the Oromo People say that the Qallu was “the prophet of the nation” and kept the laws of the Waaqa, who was both the sky god and the sky itself.
Grown men made pilgrimages to the Qallu to receive its holy blessing. The Oromo People had a mixed economy that was based on a lot of farming. Cattle had high status, and people had strong emotional and ritual connections with them that had nothing to do with money.
In older anthropology books, the Oromo People were seen as typical examples of what was called the “cattle-complex.” Cattle were the main source of income for the Oromo, and their creation myth says that the first cow and the first person were made at the same time.
In another story, God told the Oromo people, “Come out, you cattle owners!” when he made them. This story shows how important cattle are. In reality, the natural environment of the different Oromo groups determined what role cattle played in the mixed economy.
Only in places with a dry climate that made farming less than ideal did cattle breeding take over. Another institution helped give Oromo societies their dynamic nature and may have made it easier for people to move.
This institution was made up of adopting an Oromo or non-Oromo person or group into an Oromo subgroup or “clan,” which is how the word is usually translated. Adopted people or groups became the “sons” of the gossa as a whole. Promises were made about taking care of each other, and those who adopted the gossa grew in number as a result.
On both sides, political, economic, and military concerns led to the idea of adopting children. In this way, it seems like the Oromo People have changed more than other groups have. It shows that the Oromo ethnic groups were not set in stone.
Through a constant cycle of migration, conquest, interaction, and assimilation, old members were lost and new ones were added to the group.