Geography let some groups oppose Tutsi rule. For people living on the western side of the Congo-Nile split, the rocky Mountains of the Congo-Nile hindered interaction with the central kingdom and provided some degree of local autonomy. In the Northwest, the same mountain range emerged to meet the Virunga volcanoes, therefore creating a double barrier to Tutsi access.

Thick woods provide protection, food, and safety throughout difficult times. Known as the Bagogwe, a break off band of Tutsi developed a distinctive kind of pastoralist in the Gishwati forest. Still, the great majority of people living in this mountain haven were the forebears of the northern Hutu of today. And they firmly guarded their freedom from Tutsi control until the abazungu showed up.

THE GERMANS arrived in Rwanda in 1894.They discovered a scene where its people had already drastically changed the terrain. One of the earliest visitors to central Rwanda reported “a wide expanse with no tree nor bush” but banana trees….it is very populated…and well developed.”Hutu farmers have removed almost 57% of the montane rain forest in less than two thousand years.

In most places, traditional shifting farming has long since given place to more permanent and intense kinds of agriculture. There was only a record of where the forest had previously grown from the custom of naming sites after nearby tree species.

Thus, the village of Miyove survives to this day in quiet remembrance of the umuyove, a big hardwood of the entandophragma species – which formerly flourished in a rain forst over forty kilometers South East of the Virunga forest. Likewise, the peak known as Kiyumba, just west of Kigali, remembers the posture of prunus Africana, or umwumba, that once covered its crest but from which limitless farms now sprawl in all directions.

Though the distance is great from Rwanda to the American suburbs, the cultural practice of naming sites after that which we destroy is not that different in Cherry Hill, pinesdale, Buffalo springs or Redwood City.

Not only were Hutu farmers converts agents, but others as well.Tutsi livestock and fires have also turned much of Rwanda’s original forested savanna into low variety grasslands in its drier areas. But the Germans discovered a governmental system in the Tutsi kingdom that would let them to run their new colony.

Early emissaries from the Tutsi characterized them as “graceful” people with “noble traits” who matched European nobility very well. As the white foreigners were called in the indigenous Kinyarwanda tongue, the current Tutsi monarchy would provide the means for indirect domination by a tiny but powerful clique of resident Europeans, or abazungu.

Strongly bringing the Northern Hutu mountain kingdoms under the control of their new overlords was one of the earliest applications of German might. Western weapons achieved in a few years what the Tutsi monarchy had neglected in ages.

When Hutu rebels commanded by Ndungutse and Bassebya assassinated the first Catholic priests assigned to establish a mission in the Virunga area, a joint force of German and Tutsi soldiers was despatched to the North and pockets of resistance were swiftly eliminated. At the location of Ruhengeri’s present outdoor market, Ndungutse was murdered and Bassebya was summally hung with numerous allies.

More basic change ensued when the increasingly hated Tutsi system that valued the cattle over the farmer’s traditional Hutu leaders was replaced with Tutsi chiefs certified by the Germans, but with little local standing, therefore displacing old Hutu land tenure and land usage patterns.

Very little of Rwanda was directly under German rule. Unlike in Kenya, where most of the fertile highlands were passed to British ownership via the process known as alienation, the great majority of land in Rwanda remained in local hands. The Germans did intervene, nevertheless, to classify almost all of the surviving montane woods as knonland, under crown management.

Soon after von Bernie’s “discovery” of the mountain gorilla, the first territory bought under this program was the Virunga forest. Most of the remaining natural regions along the Congo-Nile boundary were designated forest reserves by 1911.

These were administered rather than parks to guarantee that colonial corporate interest would gain from commercial forestry. German foresters who were ahead of their time in this sense were worried about keeping tree cover in the highland reserves because it preserved downstream water sheds.

The amazing Dr. Richard Kandt was Rwanda’s main administrator. Originally trained as a medical practitioner, Kandt also avoided naturalists and was a poet. Traveling extensively around the nation, he saw and gathered numerous new species, some of which like the golden monkey, or cercopithecus mitis kandti – now retain his name.

Kandt also understood that the little German presence could not halt Hutu farmers who were steadily clearing the forest despite official proclamations. He contacted Musinga, the current wmami, to offer the issue as one fit for royal intervention.

After listening to his objections, Musinga counseled Kandt that “the forest was there already and it will still be there when we both die.” Based on reasonable viewpoints, it was a realistic forecast. But Kandt was an enthusiastic supporter of forest preservation throughout his lifetime, looking forward beyond his lifetime.

In his studies and recommendations for Rwandan farming, Richard Kandt was also quite sharp. To help to offset colonial expenses, he urged the creation of export crops and accurately pointed out the ideal location for Arabica coffee cultivation on highlands.

He demanded more of the freshly introduced white potato to satisfy the subsistence demands of a growing population. Following World War One, the Germans would withdraw from Rwanda and hand their united colony, Ruanda-Urundi, to the Belgians. But many of Kandt’s ideas and projects would be carried out under Belgian authority.

The nascent and ill-fated League of Nations made a divisive judgment over Ruanda-Urundi’s grant to the Belgians. Under personal freedom in which the most fundamental human rights were violated and distorted in the name of unchecked economic exploitation, Belgium’s monarch Leopold had governed the nearby Congo.

Popular disgust at Leopold’s atrocities was sparked by critical news reporting and the release of Conrad’s thinly fictionalized heart of darkness.The Belgian parliament decided under popular pressure to expropriate Congo control before World War One.Many of the league of countries still questioned Belgium’s record of extreme exploitation.

Though England and France feasted on the wealthier sections of the German colonial corpse in Tanzania and Cameroon, the league granted its jurisdiction over Ruanda Urindi, cognizant of the need to toss a bone to the Belgians for their involvement in the war.