The Waziri are a fictional central African tribe created by Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Tarzan novels. Burroughs characterizes the Waziri as the greatest warriors in Africa, though small in numbers. They are feared by Arab ivory and slave traders as well as cannibal tribes, and known from western to eastern Africa. The Waziri also appear in other media based on the novels.
Origin of the name According to David Arthur Adams, Burroughs may have coined the name "Waziri" on the basis of two historical Indigenous African groups: "The infamous slaver, Tippu-Tib, who accompanied Henry Morton Stanley upon part of his journey, employed the Wangwana (the name of the inhabitants of Uganda) and Wanyamwizi (from Tanzania) to help round up slaves. The name Waziri could very likely be one of ERB's name juxtapositions, and, again, the reversal of alliances would be a normal practice in his writing." Burroughs frequently used Stanley's writings as a source for his early Tarzan novels.
The Waziri as portrayed by Burroughs
In West Africa In The Return of Tarzan, Tarzan returns from civilization to his beloved jungle. But he has changed. Previously his relationship with natives was violent and antagonistic, colored by the death of his ape foster mother Kala at the hands of a native hunter, but he has experienced humanity in all its varieties since then. So now, when he meets a black warrior, instead of killing him he saves him from Numa, the lion. The warrior, Busuli, is a member of the Waziri tribe. Tarzan discovers they are cultured and despise cannibals like the tribe he had intermittently warred against in his youth. Tarzan is accepted as a member of the tribe after teaching them a new practical way of hunting elephants. These two hunts are the only recorded instances of his killing "Tantor", the elephant. When Arab ivory traders and their cannibal slaves attack the Waziri village, causing the death of the old chief (also named Waziri) and many others, Tarzan takes the lead, preventing the burning of the village and defeating the Arabs with effective guerrilla-tactics by killing them one at a time. Tarzan then becomes the new chief of the tribe and from then on these noble black warriors share his fate. The Waziri take him to their secret treasure-trove, the lost city of Opar, which they first discovered in the days of the deceased former chief Chowambi, Waziri's father. Tarzan leaves Africa and the Waziri for England at the end of The Return of Tarzan, seemingly forever. But by the time of the next book in which he appears, the non-Tarzan novel The Eternal Lover, he has established a plantation in Uziri, the land of the Waziri, on which he and his wife Jane reside part-time, and where they entertain guests. According to the map that shows Africa as Burroughs imagined it, the Waziri village was somewhere in Angola. The Waziri are mentioned but do not appear in the next Tarzan book, The Beasts of Tarzan. However, during the adventure Tarzan meets a native warrior, Mugambi, chief of the Wagambi of Ugambi, whom he invites to join the Waziri at the conclusion. He is subsequently shown to have done so. In The Son of Tarzan the Waziri appear as mostly anonymous native followers of Tarzan, and are not named as a tribe. One of their number, Muviri, is presumably the same character as the Muviro of later books.
In transition While Burroughs does not recount the event, it is evident that at some point between The Beasts of Tarzan (in which the Waziri country of Uziri is last mentioned), and Tarzan the Untamed the tribe moves with Tarzan to a new plantation located east of Lake Victoria in British East Africa (now known as Kenya). The relocation likely takes place between the intervening books, The Son of Tarzan and Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar. As the protagonist of Son enters Africa near the west coast, "a little below the equator," the plantation shown therein is presumably the original one. In Jewels, the plantation's proximity to the Belgian Congo is compatible with either location, but the intervention of Abyssinian soldiers from the north appears to indicate an east African setting. The prominent presence in both books of Arab raiders from the east African coast does not fix the setting, as historically these ranged widely through south central Africa, and indeed attack the Waziri in their original country as early as The Return of Tarzan.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
