by Sherry Horton Blake

Created on: March 15, 2009   Last Updated: September 17, 2009

There is a beautiful country of steep mountains and deep valleys that sits in east-central Africa by the name of Rwanda. The highest lake in Africa sits in the northwest corner of the country, and the beautiful Virunga Mountains extend to the north. However, hidden in this beautiful country is one of the most tragic tales ever told of the inhumanity of mankind, a tale of genocide.

In order to understand this tale and, more importantly, the causes that brought about this tale, it is necessary to know a little about the history of Rwanda. As long as 35,000 years ago, there were people in Rwanda. They were pygmy people known as the Twa, people who now make up less than one percent of the population. It is unclear as to when the Bantu-speaking Hutu (Bahatu), who were agriculturalists, arrived in Rwanda, but probably sometime between the 7th and 10th centuries. When the Hutu arrived, the Twa moved deeper into the forests as the Hutu began to clear the land to make permanent settlements. In the late 13th century, the Tutsi (Batutsi), a pastoral people who were also Bantu-speaking, arrived from the south.

By the 16th century, the Hutu and Tutsi had organized themselves into small states. A political and economic imbalance began to emerge between the Hutu and Tutsi as the Tutsis formed a hierarchy ruled by a king or "Mwami" who was considered semi-divine and who controlled large estates of banana trees and large herds of cattle. Everyone in Rwanda was expected to pay taxes to the king, and a Tutsi administrator collected these taxes. It is important to note, however, that Hutu who were able to obtain cattle would sometimes be considered Tutsi, and Tutsi who lost their cattle would sometimes be considered Hutu, and thus social mobility did occur. Also, the military was composed of both Hutu and Tutsi, and this helped to keep the population unified.

In the 1600's, the Tutsi kingdom was presided over by King Ruganza Ndori who extended the kingdom to include most of modern day Rwanda. King Kigeri Rwabuguri established a unified state in 1860, but in 1890 Rwanda was annexed as a province of German East Africa. The country was occupied by Belgian forces in 1916, and the country became Ruanda-Urundi. From 1925, Ruanda-Urundi was linked with the Belgian Congo. However, administration of the Congo was headquartered in Brussels while administration of Ruanda-Urundi was left in the hands of the Tutsi aristocracy.

Among Europeans, race had become an important consideration, and

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