Vazimba

The Vazimba are remembered in Malagasy tradition as the first inhabitants of Madagascar, the people who held the island, and especially its central highlands, before the rise of later kingdoms. They occupy a space between history and legend: some scholars see them as early settlers of the island, others as a cultural category or way of life, and in popular belief they have become spirits of the land.

The first settlers of Madagascar came by sea from the region of modern Indonesia, but exactly when and how they arrived is still debated. One theory proposes several waves of migration from the same region. On this view, later arrivals found the island thinly peopled by descendants of earlier settlers whose way of life had changed over centuries of isolation, and those first inhabitants became the Vazimba of later stories. In tradition the Vazimba are often described as small in stature, which led some scientists to suggest they were a distinct pygmy people; that idea has not been proven.

Archaeology and oral history give a partial picture of the early highland communities. People cleared forest by slash-and-burn farming, known as tavy, to grow bananas, tubers and ginger, and they gathered honey, fruit and seeds and hunted small game. As the population grew, villages came under chiefs and later kings. Rulers are said to have reddened their hair with a local mushroom, and red remains linked with royalty in much of Madagascar. Tradition holds that the Vazimba did not work metal or grow rice, and that after Bantu-speaking settlers brought zebu cattle from East Africa, the Vazimba herded them without eating their meat.

Oral history sorts the Vazimba by landscape: the Vazimba of the water along rivers and lakes, the Vazimba of the soil, said to be the most numerous, around the Betsiriry valley, and the Vazimba of the tsingy in the limestone caves of Bemaraha in the west. In the General History of Africa, the historian Manasse Esoavelomandroso describes the Vazimba as having absorbed or displaced still earlier groups by the 8th century and calling themselves tompontany, "masters of the land". For the historian Solofo Randrianja, the Vazimba were less an ethnic group than a way of life.

Highland oral history opens with a Vazimba period, when Vazimba kingdoms, often ruled by queens, held the central plateau; some accounts name Andriandravindravina as the first sovereign. A second period begins with the conquest of these kingdoms by the Merina rulers who founded Imerina. Andriamanelo, who reigned from 1540 to 1575 and was himself half-Vazimba through Queen Rangita and Queen Rafohy, is credited with his successors Ralambo and Andrianjaka with driving the Vazimba west. Traditions say the aim was land for rice; archaeology places the start of this expansion in the 14th century.

A common belief holds that the last Vazimba were wiped out under Andrianjaka, who reigned from 1610 to 1630. Jean-Pierre Domenichini has argued instead that "Vazimba" marked a cultural rather than ethnic difference, and that many people so called simply joined the Merina. Many Merina and Betsileo families recall Vazimba ancestors through intermarriage, and some Malagasy think the Mikea hunter-gatherers and Vezo fishers of the west and south may descend from them.

The Vazimba remain important in the identity of the Malagasy peoples. Many people in Madagascar regard them as spirits that haunt rivers, boulders and gorges. Places where the Vazimba are said to have laid their dead in water are held sacred and visited for pilgrimage and offerings, and it is said that the Vazimba cannot bear to touch anything that has touched salt, while taboos forbid bringing garlic or pork near a Vazimba tomb.

Our 600 and 700 maps label the whole island "Vazimba", a simplified way of marking its earliest settlers; real settlement was patchy and is still being studied. From 800 our maps label it "Malagasy", and later maps show the Merina Kingdom in the highlands.