They speak a Nilotic dialect and belong, together with the Karimojong tribe, to the Atkerin group (Hamites). Today they live in the Pallisa and Tororo district in the eastern part of Uganda, some of them in the Soroti and Kumi district. They believe that their ancestors came in the first half of the 18th century BC from Ethiopia (Abessinia) and had passed through Karamoja land in the east. Historians modified that they belong to the Nilo-Hamitic group (Lwo) and have the same origin as their neighbouring tribes, the Langi, the Karimojong, the Jie and the Kumam, who also came from the north and are now settling in this area. The clan forms the basis of the social and political unit (commune). It controls administrative and judicial matters. Originally, there were nine clans, with each clan having a leader called Aplon ka Ateker. These were usually elected by other elders at a merry cermony know as airukorin. The leaders had to present magnificent leader characteristics in order to being able to assume the function of a leader of the people. The leader acted as an arbitrator in the event of disputes and was greatly respected. These titles, however, were not hereditary. The leader of the clan was assissted by a council of elders known as Airabis or Aurianet. They sat court for cases like murder and debts. After setting a dispute, a ceremony known as epucit or aijuk was performed, whereby a bull was offered and killed, roasted and eaten. This was intended to act as a gesture of renewed co-operation between the two parties. The appropriate compensation in form of a cow or a girl would then be handed over.

The social system was centred around the clan, and they shared similar cultural elements with neighbouring tribes like the Langi and the Karimojong. They were also influenced by their neighbours, the Bantu, particularly the Basoga people.

Previously, parents could arrange marriages for their children even without their knowledge and consent. However, the boy could directly consult the girl. Arrangements for the payment of bridewealth would be made. Then a traditional wedding ceremony would follow. There were three types of birth among the tribe: the single child, twins and the spiritual birth. The spiritual birth was said to be in the form of air or water. It was believed that such a child would often manifest itself in a home in the form of a cat or some other animal. There was no particular formal practice for the naming of children. A child could be named according to the circumstances in which it was born. The newborn baby would be initiated into the clan by conducting a ritual ceremony called etale. Another ceremony acquired a spiritual aspect because it was believed that failure to accomplish it would malign and weaken the child, thereby rendering it vulnerable to the wiles of evil deers. Among the Iteso a child belonged to the whole clan and not to a particular family. The main food consisted of millet, not mixed with cassava, and unsalted peas with groundnut paste and oil. Besides, people would also eat akobokob (cucumber) and simsim paste (sesame oil). The use of pots was prohibited, so also the use of tubes for drinking ajon (millet beer). They have had a variety of other foods such as, for example, pumpkins, wild berries, beans, meat of both domestic and wild animals, milk, butter and fish. The men did not eat together with women.
Married women used to wear barkcloth (bark from the tree – mutuba). They were responsible for the daily objects of utility in the household such as baskets, gourds, calabashes, winnowing trays, grinding stones, pots, brooms, pestles and mortars, ekigo (ladle for stirring millet) and eitereria (the fishing basket). The men were in charge of weapons and tools like spears, shields, arrows, bows, axes for cultivating the fields and the music instruments.

	Dances
	- Toto idwe (mother of many). Whenever a mother gave birth to twins, a special type of drum was beaten and the people would gather and dance, accompanied by a lot of eating and drinking.
	Akembe - Organised by boys who would invite girls to join their future spouses.
	- Special dances to invoke the ancestors. In the process, some people would become possessed and start to communicate in the voice of the ancestors. This dance involved the shaking of rattles.
	- Many other dances were, in general, performed at marriage ceremonies (airukorin), beer parties, meetings and other merry occasions. In this dance more instruments are used, including emudiri, entongoli (endongo - bowl lyre), adigirgi (endingidi - tube fiddle), akogo (thumb piano), amagarit and akaduumi (small drums).

They did not regard death as a normal consequence. Death was attributed to ancestral spirits and witchcraft. As soon as a person had died, a witch doctor would be consulted to diagnose the cause of the death. The corpse was washed in the courtyard and wrapped in abangut (barkcloth), and then it was buried. It was customary to bury corpses with certain objects such as needles or razor blades to protect them against cannibals who might use their black magic to extract the corpes from the graves. If the corpse had been furnished with a needle, for example, it would reply that it was still busy mending its clothes and thus refuse to come out of the grave when invoked by a cannibal.

They believed in a supreme being called Edeke. They were much more involved with ancestral spirits which were believed to cause illness or bad luck if not well attended to. Every family possessed an ancestral shrine where libations were often poured or placed to placate the ancestors. They were a superstitious society, and they believed in witchcraft and wizardry. It was taboo for women to eat chicken. Some clans had specific taboos. The Iteso were not allowed to eat some animals; for example the bush-buck (ederet) was taboo to a number of clans.


- The Kumam people

The Kakwa live in the northwestern part of Uganda and have borders with southern Sudan and the northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. They have Hamite origin. Their language is also called Kakwa, a Bari dialect, belonging to the Eastern Nilotic language family. The Bari ethnic groups in the Sudan live in the Savannah and the lands of the Nile Valley. They speak a language which is also called Bari. The name “Bari, the people of the Nile Valley” is rather fitting as the river Nile runs through the heart of the Bari land. This definition also distinguishes them from any other ethnic group that may be using the name Bari; there are apparently such groups in Ethiopia and Somalia, although no exact information exists as to whether ethnic group they are related. The Kakwa themselves provide information about their traditions and origins: One theory asserts that their ancestor was Yeki who was said to have migrated from the Karobe Hill into the southern Sudan. He then settled on Mt. Liru in Kobuko land and had seven sons; one of them, his third born, would always bite his other brothers. For this reason, Yeki gave him the nickname Kakwan ji, meaning "biting". The immigrants are said to have adapted the plural and call themselves now Kakwa.

• The other theory states that the Kawka were originally known as Kui, and the Kui were said to have been fierce fighters who inflicted heavy losses on their enemies. For this reason, the Kui are said to have nicknamed themselves Kakwa because their fierce attacks were like the bite of a tooth.
  
• All the Kakwa clans in the region of Kobuko, a part of Maracha and Aringa, state that their origin is Loloyi, but none of them can tell what exactly Loloyi means or where it io be found.
  

Through the linguistic connection, the Kakwa can be traced back to the Bari dialect of the southern Sudan. The Kobuko tradition claims that the first Kakwa ancestors came from the direction of Ethiopia. The general conjecture is that they had split before they came into the Bari region, an eastern Nile group; furthermore, that the Ugandan people gave them the name the Plain Nilotes, similar to the groups of the Iteso and the Karimojong. They might have separated from the Bari in Kapoeta.

Kakwa Mythology of Creation
Their great-great-grandfather was Mungura, and his wife was called Muri. Together, they created the first living beings: wild animals and domestic animals, etc. Mungura and Muri became parents of twins: this was, however, considered a bad omen at that time, and hence the children were handed over to a certain Jongbo, who ws tas told to throw the children away into the bush. Jongbo, however, realised that these were the twins who would one day be our fathers. So, he hid the children at his home and nurtured them there until they had grown up.

Their institutions were segmentary, they had no centralised system. The clan was the basic unit of social and political life. Each clan was independent from the others, and it enjoyed sufficient traditional loyalty. The head of each clan was the chief, known as the Matter or Buratyo. The chief was both a political figure and the rainmaker. The society was matrilineal, and the position of the chief was hereditary. The heads of some subclans were brothers or uncles.The Kakwa did not have a real class system, but merely distinguished between upper and lower people. The lower comprised the house servants, cattle herders and young children. The economy was based on the cultivation of corn, millet (sorghum), maize, cassava, beans (burusu), sweet potatoes and potatoes (they called them „pawpaws“, Irish potatoes). Some families also practised mixed farming. They kept cattle, goats and sheep and established agriculture. Livestock was mostly seen as a socio-economic and financial investment. Notably, livestock was exchanged as gifts in marriages and other social functions, or it was sacrificed in celebrations, and at the occasion of funerals; and whenever it was necessary, they sold it for cash. The men work in the field, cattle the herds and repair the houses. Women have to remove the rubbish from the cultivated fields, furthermore they weed, harvest the crops and make salt. Salt was made from plants known as morobu and bukuli. They were more engaged in handicraft like basket weaving and pottery. The Nyangilia clan was specialised in iron smelting, making spears, knives, hoes and a variety of other iron implements.

• The Bari of the Nile are sedentary agro-pastoralists. They exploit the Savannah lands along the river Nile. The economy is based on subsistence mixed farming; their domestic livestock (small and large) is mainly raised for the provision of food.
  Traditionally, the Bari believe in one almighty god and the existence of powerful spirits (good and evil). In the past, it was custom among the Bari to undergo initiation ceremonies. Both boys and girls subjected themselves to the removal of their lower front teeth. The girls, in addition, got tattoos: around the belly area, the flank, the back, and the face. On the temple, they have used the form of arrow shapes or simple flowers.
  

If a member of the upper class assumed chieftainship, he had to perform some form of a traditional ritual. During the installation of the chief, all the clan members would gather at the new chief's house known as Kadina Mata. They would bring food and beer. The elders would sit alone and invoke the ancestral blessings to enable the new chief to lead his people in peace and prosperity. Afterwards followed the party with dancing and rejoicing. The chief had to protect the hunting grounds and to give advice. When he was spiritual, this is in the power of the spirits, he arranged the ceremony for rainmaking and performed fertility rites. Normally he acted as adviser to the council of elders. Disputes were settled by the clan elders. The most serious of the cases would be referred to the chief. Women and children would not participate in passing judgement. They had to sit down and be quiet. There was no time for judging a thief, as they would be killed „in a manner foxes are killed“, something similar to a „mob justice“. Such a case would often bring about warfare between clans. Normally the thief had to pay a cow, a goat, etc. as compensation. A chief had no standing army. Each chieftainship, however, had a military leader known as the Jokwe. Before mobilising for war, the chief and the Jokwe would consult the elders, and a ritual ceremony would be performed in order to seek communication from the clan‘s ancestors about the military strengh of the enemy clan. Among the Leiko, the women would accompany their husbands to war. If a man killed a woman during war, the ancestors would be certain to disapprove, and this man would fall victim much earlier.

War (intertribal or in the case of resisting foreigners) is not alien to Bari history. In general, the Bari have co-existed well with the neighbouring ethnic groups, but they have also had to pick up arms to defend their land against slave traders and plundering warriors. There is documentation of Bari resistance against the invasion by the Dinka* and Azande** (Zande), as well as of numerous encounters with Turkish slave traders.

*The Dinka are a Black African people in the Sudan settling in the wet savannahs of the federal states of Gharb Bahr al Ghazal in the west and Western Equatoria in the south, parts of southern Kurdufan and the expansive fenlands of the Sudd of the Jonglei province and the province Upper Nile in the east up to the Ethiopian frontier.

**The Azande (also Zande). They settle mainly in the northern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (province Upper Zaire), in the southwestern area of the Sudan and the southeastern part of the Central African Republic (districts of Rafaï, Zémio und Obo). The Azande, up to the colonial period, had established a compact tribal union, with the individual chieftainships not subjecting themselves to a central leadership according to the example given by the neighbouring tribes of the Dinka or Nuer.

The Bari have been consistently under pressure: nowadays, from modern urbanization annexing their green lands and infusing different cultures into their lifestyles; and historically, the Baris were devastated by slave traders and forced by Belgians (especially from the Lado enclave) into labor camps and used as porters to carry ivory tusks to the Atlantic coast. The two Sudanese Civil Wars also affected the Bari in regard to its social, economic and financial dynamics. The former Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin was born into the Kakwa ethnic group. After Amin was disposed of in 1979, many Kakwa people were killed in revenge killings, causing many to leave the area.