The Sira or Shira people, the ''Eshira'', are a Punu

ethnic group An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...

Gabon Gabon ( ; ), officially the Gabonese Republic (), is a country on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, on the equator, bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo to the east and south, and ...

primarily living in the forests and grasslands south of the

Ogooué River The Ogooué (or Ogowe), also known as the Nazareth River, some long, is the principal river of Gabon in west-central Africa and the fourth largest river in Africa by volume of discharge, trailing only the Congo, Kasai and Niger. Its watershed ...

and west of its tributary the N'Gounié.

Origin and Ethnogenesis

According to the oral tradition of the Sira or Punu 9 clans they migrated from the North via Egypt to Nubia where they settled in Merowé near the junctures of the Sira and Nile river between -500 BC and 100 AD. There by the Sira river was the place where they got that name from. From the 6th to the 18th century they migrated from Nubia via Uganda and DRC into their actual area, after wars with other groups. During the 19th century they traded Copper, and were highly regarded for their

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

and raphia cloth. Their numbers were greatly reduced by

smallpox Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by Variola virus (often called Smallpox virus), which belongs to the genus '' Orthopoxvirus''. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (W ...

epidemics in 1865 and 1898.

Paul du Chaillu Paul Belloni Du Chaillu (July 31, 1831 (disputed)April 29, 1903) was a French-American traveler, zoologist, and anthropologist. He became famous in the 1860s as the first modern European outsider to confirm the existence of gorillas, and later t ...

travelled through Eshira areas in 1858 and 1864, and recorded that each clan controlled its own affairs. Mulenda of the Kamba clan was the most important of the chiefs; he owned 300–400 slaves, and died of smallpox in 1885. The

Holy Ghost Fathers The Congregation of the Holy Spirit (officially the Congregation of the Holy Spirit under the protection of the Immaculate Heart of the Virgin Mary; ) is a religious congregation for men in the Catholic Church. Members are often known as Holy ...

established a mission in 1895. Subgroups of the Eshira include the Punu.

References

* David E. Gardinier, ''Historical Dictionary of Gabon'', 2nd ed. (The Scarecrow Press, 1994) p. 132 {{Authority control Ethnic groups in Gabon Punu