MAP 1.1. Northern Littoral of Lake Victoria. Map by Brian Edward Balsley, GISP.

      Ssese villages and their social geography were tailored to the islands’ environment. Villages fit into the mixed forest-grassland ecosystems of the islands’ interiors and homes appear often to have been located advantageously where forest and grassland met. In the mid- to late nineteenth century, Ssese homes were loosely grouped into non-nucleated villages connected by well-worn, meandering paths.³ Typical homes of non-elites were circular, domed constructions with exterior walls of reeds covered in grass thatch, divided internally by barkcloth curtains or reed walls, and with a hearth for cooking inside. Chief’s homes, by contrast, were larger, with multiple poles supporting a broader roof, exterior walls supporting the roof, and a larger interior space divided into separate rooms.⁴ The typical home, regardless of status, was situated on flattened, cleared ground and set among numerous banana trees, with groves also kept clear of undergrowth to allow growing other crops.⁵ Crops that later observers considered typical for the Sseses—plantain bananas, yams, and coffee—optimized the heavier rainfall regimes on the lake’s shores and were cultivated alongside vegetable crops.⁶ Rainfall on the islands was bimodal, with rainy seasons lasting for two months, typically beginning in March–April and September–October, and among the heaviest on the Buganda littoral.⁷ Within the rainy and dry seasons, cultivation of annual crops and management of perennial tree crops shaped labor demands and dictated bursts of activity. Missionary diaries from the late 1890s indicate that November and December were busy months for planting, as well as a season of relative dearth as final stores were used up and new plants had not yet matured.⁸ Alongside farming, islanders also kept sheep, goats, and cattle.⁹ Fishing and fishing-related work such as the construction of nets and traps were also a central component of Ssese livelihood in the late nineteenth century, as islanders actively exploited the lake’s fisheries, both for their own consumption and to market dried fish elsewhere around the lake. Fishing was “critical to regional diet and the local economy” along the lakeshore.¹⁰ Ssese fishing at the turn of the century was sophisticated and complex, involving spearfishing, setting woven traps, and hook-and-line fishing, with gendered and generational specialization.¹¹

      Canoe-building and producing the tools of fishing knitted together forest, household, and lake among Ssese communities, as trees became planks for canoes and rowers’ oars, raffia and other fibers caulked the canoes’ gaps and was fashioned into nets and basket traps, and fish provided sustenance and income. These activities involved men and women, young and old, and tied islanders intimately to the lake and lakeshore environments. Large, sewn canoes made from planks of specially selected wood defined long-distance travel on Lake Victoria in the nineteenth century and Ssese expertise was key to their widespread use.¹² Contemporary Ganda and European narratives provide a sense of the impressive vessels afloat: they were regularly upwards of forty feet long and four feet wide and manned by dozens of rowers; the prow of some canoes extended with a battering ram or had animal horns fixed to it.¹³ By the late 1880s, Ssese expertise in boatcraft and rowing was well known to outsiders, as islanders created and manned many of the vessels circulating on the lake—their expertise was, by all accounts, unmatched. Canoes connected the Ssese with their Ganda and Soga neighbors, but also with populations further afield. Sophisticated, impressive Ssese vessels were also imbued with ritual and spiritual significance that connected rowers to the wider powers of the great lake and its deity, Mukasa.¹⁴

      Ssese islanders had close political, economic, ritual, and military ties with the powerful kingdom of Buganda on the mainland some twenty miles immediately to the north.¹⁵ The islands’ intimate links with the Ganda state grew out of political and economic changes in the nineteenth century and made a deep impression on political and economic life on the islands. Over the course of the early and mid-nineteenth century during the reigns of kabaka Suna II (reign c. 1830–57) and kabaka Mutesa (reign c. 1857–84), the Ganda kingdom emerged as a local power and regional empire, incorporating the Sseses and other areas into its sphere of influence.¹⁶ Essential to the state’s emergence as a regional power was the development of a navy that could engage local rivals, raid for valuable captives, and incorporate smaller kingdoms around Lake Victoria as tributaries, as well as fleets that captured trade with coastal caravans they met on the lake’s southern shore.¹⁷ Plying the lake required diverse and complex knowledge that Ssese islanders, as well as other lakeshore populations, had developed and retained over generations, but Ssese expertise in rowing, navigation, and boatcraft now became instrumental in the growth of the Ganda fleet of war canoes in the mid- to late nineteenth century.¹⁸ Canoes and Ssese boatcraft had long linked the islands to communities around the lake, but now served to connect nodes within a wider, regional Ganda sphere of political and commercial influence. Ssese oarsmen played a crucial role in long-distance lake trade and Ganda warfare at the expense of economic stability for island communities.¹⁹ Dense populations in Buganda were sustained by production in outlying estates, with the Sseses among them. Thus, by the late nineteenth century, the Ssese Islands were a “province” of Buganda, with Bugala Island (the archipelago’s largest) serving as the anchor of Ganda governance.

      Politics oriented around the largest and most populous island, Bugala, as well as the large, easternmost island of Bukasa, while ritual power centered on the powerful lubaale Mukasa’s principal shrine on nearby Bubembe Island.