Gee

Gee is the legendary first ancestor of the Nuer people, from whom the aristocratic Nuer clans reckon their descent and after whom the founding stock of the Nuer is remembered (the Gaat-Gee, 'children of Gee'). His story was first written down from oral tradition by C. H. Stigand, sometime Governor of the Upper Nile Province, in 1919, was recorded again by E. E. Evans-Pritchard during his fieldwork in the 1930s, and was analysed by the Nuer historian Gabriel Giet Jal in his 1987 history of the Jikany. In the best-known episode Gee split open a calabash gourd out of which came the child Kir, whom he reared and whose descendants became the Gaatgankir, the dominant clan of the Jikany tribes.

Children

• Kir

Domains

• ancestry

Relations

• father of: KirAn adoptive tie: in the Jikany origin story the child Kir was broken out of a calabash gourd by Gee and reared among Gee's people, so that Kir's descendants, the Gaatgankir, were incorporated into the Nuer genealogy.C. H. Stigand, 'The Story of Kir and the White Spear', Sudan Notes and Records 2(3), 1919, pp. 224-226. (secondary); Gabriel Giet Jal, The History of the Jikany Nuer before 1920, Ph.D. thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1987. (secondary)

Sources

• Gee is the legendary first ancestor of the Nuer, standing at the head of their clan genealogies, who in the Jikany origin myth broke open the calabash gourd from which the child Kir emerged.: C. H. Stigand, 'The Story of Kir and the White Spear', Sudan Notes and Records 2(3), 1919, pp. 224-226. (secondary); Gabriel Giet Jal, The History of the Jikany Nuer before 1920, Ph.D. thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1987. (secondary)