The pre-1940s history, indigenous culture, and heritage of the Ìgbò and their neighbours.
Objects of the shrine of Yọ́k Òbòlò of the Andoni, Agwut Obolo, present-day Rivers State. By A. A. Whitehouse who led a raid on the shrine, 1904. British Museum.
Andoni was difficult for missionaries to penetrate. Yọ́k Òbòlò was condemned by figures like Ajayi Crowther, who led the destruction of its offshoots in Bonny, for its role in the resistance to Christianity in the area, especially in the case of Jaja of Opobo who was in dispute with Crowther and Christian missions.
“A stop & gossip on the road from Owerrinta to Owerri.” c. 1919-1932. MAA Cambridge.
The story of a white man dragged off a bicycle and killed while riding in the Igbo country has been told in different ways, even in Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart". The man, a doctor named Stewart, was actually killed due to mistaken identity during resistance to the British.
The incident happened in November 1905, in Mbaise, while Dr. Stewart was attempting to catch up with a convoy of colonial troops from Owere to Calabar by bicycle. He was captured and paraded through several areas and finally killed in the Afo market of Onicha Amairi, his body never found.
Official British record of people, primarily women, killed or injured during the Women's War of the Calabar and Owerri colonial provinces, 1929-30.
A map from an official 1930 British colonial government report on the Women's War of the Calabar and Owerri Provinces (1929-1930). The pink dots (enhanced) pinpoint places where "firing took place," the blue dots are Native Courts that were either damaged, burnt, or destroyed.
Home of a member of the British colonial establishment, Enugu. Staged photo, 1930s(?). The people standing are named, from left: Adebayo, Kanu(?), unnamed person(?), Thomas, two "gardeners," an unnamed person, and a "cook" on the right.
In all contact with the natives, let your first thought be the preservation of your own dignity. The natives are accustomed to dealing with very few white people and those they meet hold positions of authority. The British are looked up to, put on a very high level. Don't bring that level down by undue familiarity.
– WWII instructions given to white troops stationed in West Africa. From the West African Review, January 1943.
Ikenga and other Igbo religious items, French Catholic Mission, perhaps from converts, many artefacts ended up in European museums and private collections this way, not directly looted or bought, but given up and sold and collected in Europe. Friederich, R.P (1916). RAAI Yale University.
The missionary is a revolutionary and he has to be so, for to preach and plant Christianity means to make a frontal attack on the beliefs, the customs, the apprehensions of life and the world, and by implication (because tribal religions are primarily social realities) on the social structures and bases of primitive society. The missionary enterprise need not be ashamed of this, because colonial administrations, planters, merchants, Western penetration, etc., perform a much more severe and destructive attack. Missions, however, imply the well-considered appeal to all peoples to transplant and transfer their life-foundations into a totally different spiritual soil, and so they must be revolutionary.
– International Missionary Council spokesman, c. 1938. "The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World," p. 342.
Pole Vaulting, Abiriba School, today's Abia State, ca. 1930-1940. "Missionaries first entered Abiriba, an Igbo iron-working area, in the early twentieth century. Agwu Otisi, a priest of the witch-doctors’ society, was keen to set up a school in the village and to learn about the new faith of Christianity, eventually becoming a Church Elder. The school was under the charge of Rev. R Collins." USC Digital Library.
Ụ̀banị̀ Ìgbò, the Igbo spoken on Bonny Island in today's Rivers State, recorded by the slave trader Captain Hugh Crow from the late 18th century, from "Memoirs of the late Captain Hugh Crow of Liverpool."
Bèkê seems to have been recorded here which brings the theory that it originated from the Scottish explorer William Baikie into doubt. Westermann, Smith, Forde (1932). Oxford University Press.
Bonny Island was one of the largest slave ports of the Atlantic slave trade era, especially in the late 18th century. Hugh Crow describes the predominance of Igbo captives on the island, most going to British colonies. "Memoirs..." p. 198.
This led to a large amount of Igbo people in the British Caribbean in particular, in places like Jamaica where this early 19th century description was made. John Stewart (1808). "An Account of Jamaica, and Its Inhabitants." p. 235–236.
Could some of these words have been recorded from some of the ancestors of people now in North America?
Consider this made up example of a scenario:
The Igbo people were invaded by the British and the British met a people who tapped and drank wine from palm trees. The British found this strange and abominable and so they condemned what they came to call 'palm-winists' who practice 'palm-winetry.' The Igbo people where confused by the idea of palm wine being bad or them being defined as 'palm-winists' and wondered what was wrong with palm wine, but the British officers and leaders of the church and mission schools kept reiterating the idea of 'palm-winetry' and that they were better because they didn't drink palm wine but rather they drank tea. Over time this was built into the psyche of Igbo children and they decided to abandon the abominable practice of 'palm-winetry' and insisted on only the finest British tea.
An Igbo man climbing a palm tree for palm nuts photographed by G. T. Basden, early 20th century.
Over the generations, however, a new generation rose up to counter what they considered misinformation by the British and they started what they felt to be a renaissance and a revitalisation of the culture that the previous generations had abandoned because of colonialism. One of the first things they wanted to attack was the idea of 'palm-winetry' and that Igbo people were 'palm-winists.' They insisted that the Igbo people, contrary to earlier colonial reports, were not drinkers of palm wine but that rather the Igbo people only took a sip of palm wine to check whether a palm tree was ripe enough for its palm oil to be harvested. The palm oil was the real target, according to them, not palm wine; Igbo people did not drink palm wine! In fact, Igbo people were the original drinkers of coffee and it was the British who drank other kinds of wines. Further more, the Igbo people were the original growers of tea leaves.
The story is a long winded analogy to challenge manipulative colonial-era language which introduced ideas such as 'idolatry,' 'paganism,' 'heathenism,' and the like, the suggestion is that instead of attacking a particular classification of indigenous practices, perhaps it would be wiser to take a wider look at what these classifications are and why they exist in the first place. If 'palm-winists' and 'palm-winetry' are replaced with 'idolators' and 'idolatry', what would justify the absurdity of the condemnation of palm wine as abominable that also wouldn't justify the same for 'idolatry', that is, outside of the worldview and frameworks designed by the inventors of such classification? In other words, what was the word for 'idolatry' in Igbo before colonial education?
Igbo worship is 'pagan,' 'pagan,' according to Western tradition, usually refers to religious practices outside of Abrahamic beliefs. The idea in this post isn't to challenge being labelled 'heathens' or 'pagans,' the idea is to ask what makes being 'pagan' bad for example and how can this manipulative language impact how people handle and evaluate their own worldview.
In other words, 'pagan', 'fetish', 'idolatry,' etc, are words and ideas from the European Judeo-Christian worldview and tradition, they are ideas that were solidified by them without the input of Igbo people for example, so these ideas cannot be used to judge or evaluate the Igbo worldview which is a totally different tradition and worldview.
An entry in Thomas Thistlewood’s diary, a British plantation overseer in Jamaica who eventually became a landowner and owner of enslaved people. Entry Aug. 12, 1776: A Jamaican (British) planters wife seeks “an Ebo girl, about 12 years of age” to be a “sempstress” “with small feet, not bow-legged, nor teeth filed, small hands & long, small taper fingers, &c.”
Image via Beinecke Digital Collections, Yale. Transcription via: Audra A. Diptee (2016). “A Great Many Boys and Girls.” In: Falola, T.; Njoku, R.C. eds. Igbo in the Atlantic World. p. 117.
Chinua Achebe:
What I think is the basic problem of a ... country like Nigeria is really what you might call a "crisis in the soul." We have been subjected — we have subjected ourselves too — to this period during which we have accepted everything alien as good and practically everything local or native as inferior. I could give you illustrations of when I was growing up, the attitude of our parents, the Christian parents, to Nigerian dances, to Nigerian handicrafts; and the whole society during this period began to look down on itself, you see, and this was a very bad thing; and we haven't actually, even now with the independence, we still haven't got over this period [...] You see, a writer has a responsibility to try and stop this.
– Pieterse, C.; Duerden, D. (1972). "African Writers Talking". pp. 7-8.
Photo: "Mud figures of Chief and Attendants and Commissioner of Police. North Ika" – G. I. Jones, 1930s.
On 9 June 1906 the Ekumeku Society was in the news again, in connection with the killing of O.S. Crewe-Read [Iredi or Rédì], District Commissioner. Crewe-Read, together with an escort of fifty-three men, was on a visit to Uteh — a town in the Agbor district — and had halted for the day in Owa. [T]wo men, who were sent by Crewe-Read to summon the rest of the men of the town … returned late in the evening to report that the people refused to see him, … two policemen … sent to Agbor with telegrams … requesting assistance … were stopped … and the telegrams snatched from them. They barely escaped with their lives. With such a small force and no hope of immediate relief, Crewe-Read started back for Agbor on 9 June, but was ambushed at a place not far away from the town of Owa-Aliosimi. There he received two fatal gunshot wounds[.]
On receiving the news headquarters sent an army under Captain Rudkin to Agbor to ‘punish’ the killers, but in an encounter with the natives of Agbor, two European officers sustained serious wound, two soldiers were killed and twnety-six wounded. … A section of the column managed to reach Owa and did not encounter opposition immediately, and was therefore able to search for the body of Crewe-Read, which was found buried in the bush between the spot where he was killed and the town. It was exhumed and removed to Benin for burial. The battle that followed ended with the capture of the chiefs of Owa, Igbenoba, Inyibo, Ukute I, Ukute II, Ikaria, Ekuneme, Echenim, Tete and Ijioma. On 26 September 1906, these men were found guilty of murder and sentenced to execution by the judge of the supreme court of Nigeria, J.M.M. Dunlop.
– S. N. Nwabara (1978). “Iboland: a century of contact with Britain, 1860-1960”. p. 130–131.
———[E]vents show the lack of sympathy coupled with the resort to driving tactics which could characterise early British rule in new districts. ... It was Crewe- Read's practice too, according to Gilpin, to flog the boys of the different towns in Agbor 'for not turning up to work on the roads as a rule'. Crewe-Read's … end in the Agbor district was … foreshadowed by the events of the first quarer of 1906. When he was an acting District Commissioner, Benin City district, the poeple of Alidinma had refused to see him at Akuku while on tour to the area. … Crewe-Read was not pleased by [the British D. C. Asaba’s] letter in which the … officer expressed the view that it was ‘hard not to say cruel to take people away at this time of the year'. Without any special qualification for knowing the Agbor people better, Crewe-Read pompously asserted that he ‘was the best judge if it was hard and cruel.
– Philip A. Igbafe (1967). "The 'Benin Scare' of 1906". In: “The African Historian”. pp. 10–11.
"Aro natives making road for us by order outside Bendi [Bende] Cutting bush with matchets" during the 'Aro Punitive Expedition', or Anglo-Aro war, 1901. British Museum.
Far from willingly conceding their territory to the military patrols, the people of Southeastern Nigeria opposed the British advance in more than three hundred pitched battles over a twenty year period, suffering at least ten thousand casualties. [...] Although violent resistance could not halt the British advance, it was effective in moderating and speed and thoroughness of that advance and in enabling Southeastern Nigerians to retain a measure of self-determination over the rate at which they absorbed technological and other changes.
– Robert D. Jackson (1975). "The Twenty Years War, Invasion and Resistance in Southeastern Nigeria 1900-1919".
Photo: Diobu Ikwere leaders protesting the 1958 (Willink) Minorities Commission (probably protesting the decision not to create a Rivers State and other states considered 'minority' states outside of the larger ethnic groups like the Igbo). August 27, 1958. National Archives UK.
Among the Ibo, as among other Nigerian nationalities, numerous tribal sections and sub-sections have their particular customs and traditions which inspire local or sectional loyalties. The Nnewi, the Mba-ise, the Ohafia, the Ngwa, the Ikwerri, etc., exemplify that remarkable "strength of Ibo clan feeling"' which sustains the vigor of the ubiquitous Ibo improvement associations and the enthusiasm with which programs of community development based on voluntary communal labor have been pursued. …
While the Ibo State Executive has not been amenable to facile manipulation by the NCNC leadership, the lower echelons of the Union—i.e., the town, village, district, and clan unions—work virtually without direction to identify the NCNC with the cause of Ibo welfare. In many instances, town and clan unions affiliated with the Ibo State Union have made up for the organizational failings of the official party organization. For example, the ground swell of mass support for Azikiwe in the summer of 1958, during his struggle with Dr. Mbadiwe, was generated largely by local units of the Ibo State Union. In addition, certain branches of the party, including the strong NCNC organization in Port Harcourt, derive their strength from sub-nationality associations affiliated with the Ibo State Union.
[In notes:] In 1958 numerous ethnic group associations affiliated with the Port Harcourt Ibo Union were represented informally within the official structure of the Port Harcourt NCNC by influential members of the branch executive committee and the executive committee of the Port Harcourt NCNC Youth Association. Among them were the following: the Nnewi Patriotic Union, the Orlu Divisional Union, the Orlu Youth League, the Oguta Union, the Owerri Divisional Union, the Mbasi Clan Union, the Bende Divisional Union, the Ikwerri Development Union, the Okigwe Union, and the Abiriba Improvement Union. The Ibo Union of Port Harcourt, comprising representatives of these and other Ibo associations, co-ordinates certain of the activities of its affiliates but has no power of direction over them. It does not constitute an effective alternative power structure to the NCNC branch, inasmuch as the latter draws its popular support directly from the people and indirectly from their sub-nationality associations.
– Robert L. Sklar (1963). “Nigerian Political Parties: Power in an Emergent African Nation.” pp. 147, 463.
Photo: Ikpe case from Enyong in nsibidi recorded by Macgregor (1909).
In a class I was teaching, a pupil deeply resented the statement that the civilisation of the people in Nigeria was primitive because they had no writing. He [Ezeikpe Agwu?] declared that they had a writing called nsibidi. This happened in April, 1905. ... I set myself to find out all I could about nsibidi. People smiled when I asked for information and declared that they knew nothing about it. The reason for this is that in Efik nsibidi is used almost only to express love [and sex], and this term covers such a multitude of most abominable sins that no self-respecting Efik person will confess that he knows anything, about the writing of it. ... Still from them it was possible to see that here we have a genuine product of the native civilisation the origin of which is so old as to have become the subject of a Märchen.
– J. K. Macgregor (1909). Notes on Nsibidi.
Unidentified women photographed by Henry Crosse with the Royal Niger Company, c.1886–1895. MAA Cambridge. It’s almost safe to assume that this is Omu Nwagboka (left), the last Omu of Onicha (Onitsha).
Omu Nwagboka was a wealthy trader who was appointed as Omu by the Obi of Onicha, Obi Anazonwu in 1884. She had her own ofo and it seems an abani (royal Benin-style staff) also. She had a son who she bought the Ozo title for and gave over ten wives.
The encroachment on women's authority (due to Victoriana and the exclusion of women from leadership) lead to her leading a women's protest which was so effective that after her death in 1888, Obi Anazonwu did not appoint another woman to the position of Omu in Onicha.
(With all these photographs, whoever this woman was, she certainly did not want to be forgotten, along with the lady who seems to be accompanying her in all these photos. See: Unidentified Women, Niger River)
Photo: Twins with their mothers, Nigeria, ca.1920-1940, C.M.S. Bookshop, Lagos.
[…] multiple births (umu ejime) were considered by Igbo-speaking peoples an abomination (nso ani) […] "In the 1980s, however, I heard stories relating to grandmothers and great-grandmothers who, fearing they would bear twins, would “go to the farm” […] returning with a single child. I also heard that midwives […] would ensure, for a fee, [...] women were not embarrassed by bearing living twins. Wealthier women might thus have been able to avoid the stigma of […] twins[.]
– Misty L. Bastian (2001). "“The Demon Superstition”: Abominable Twins and Mission Culture in Onitsha History." Ethnology. pp. 18–19.
The killing of twins was common in a few societies around the world, it was also practiced in Medieval Europe.
In medieval Europe, it was believed a woman could not conceive twice (simultaneously), so twins could not be from the same father. A woman might abandon twins to protect her reputation (Shahar 1990: 122). Mothers are unable to sustain two infants, especially where both are likely to be underweight. As Gray (1994: 73) notes, "even today, with the availability of western medical services it is difficult to maintain twins."
– David F. Lancy (2015). "The Anthropology of Childhood." p. 94.
Twin killing has a ‘practical’ origin; in the pre-industrial past twins were a burden on the mother and the community, strained resources would’ve been put under more pressure, other factors like superstition kept the tradition, in some societies it was believed twins couldn’t be from one father.
The most common reason twins were killed in Granzberg's research was that the society had insufficient facilities to properly rear two children at once and still allow the mother the ability to fulfill her other responsibilities.' As Dickeman pointed out, the maternal workload was so great that raising two infants at the same time was not feasible.'
– Larry Stephen Milner (2000). "Hardness of Heart/hardness of Life: The Stain of Human Infanticide." p. 462.
In these societies, and in Igboland, twins were often not killed, sometimes one was kept or one or more were secretly fostered; in Ohafia folklore, many of the matriarchs were abandoned due to fears of twin birth. Many women did however suffer the full brunt of bearing twins.
Within the context of imperial interest, the killing of twins was evidently sensationalised for a purpose; reports taken back to Britain were carefully made to allay any anxieties the population may have had pertaining to the purpose of the British imperial mission, these news reports and journals and other published works also served to silence any anti-imperial voices among the British people.
See: The British in Ezza-Igbo country, present day Ebonyi State, 1905.Imperialism was presented as a moral altruistic mission, which included the stamping out of perceived barbarism among subjected peoples.
To give a clearer picture of the time period, as missionaries were combating twin killing in parts of southeastern, central, and southwestern Nigeria, infant mortality rates had only started to come down worldwide, surpassing 30% in areas. Infanticide was widespread even in Britain itself.
Infanticide persisted in western Europe during the Middle Ages; although in some cases it was defined as a crime, prosecutions were rare and penalties were mild. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it reached epidemic proportions in England and France: many dead infants were found in the sewers of Paris, and in England infants' corpses were found in streets, ditches, and parks and floating in the river Thames. Historians usually attribute this to oppressive social conditions—female domestic servants and factor), workers were often sexually exploited by their male employers and saw no option but to dispose of their illegitimate infants. England eventually addressed infanticide in 1922, when it passed the Infanticide Act; this was replaced by a new act in 1939 (Bourget and Labelle, 1992; Lyon, 1985).
– Margaret Abraham (2004). "Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women." Routledge. p. 1135.
In Igbo societies, children weren’t named until some time after birth, this probably originally had to do with infant mortality, which later would have been enshrined in the belief of a child becoming a full human member of the umunna (patrilineage) usually after two Igbo weeks (8 days) after which they can be circumcised and a naming ceremony could take place.
Text underneath the photos reads:
The development of our West African possessions is constantly being checked by interminable inter-tribal wars. It was with a view to settling such disputes that early in March a column of 300 men left Calabar to patrol the country on the right bank of the Upper Cross River. The greater part of it is inhabited by the Ezzas, a tribe hitherto unvisited by Europeans and living in round grass-thatched huts. The Ezzas, though at first they actively opposed the column, submitted with a good grace, and proved themselves to be an intelligent, manly race, far superior to their pagan brothers of the delta. Horses, although not bred in the country, are in great demand for the purposes of sacrifice on the death of a big chief. Large herds of anego, the native name for a species of waterbuck, and other smaller buck were met with. The country is well cultivated
– "Newly Discovered People Southern Nigeria Ezzas." The Sphere: An Illustrated Newspaper for the Home, August 19, 1905.
A European describes tactics of invasion and suppression of indigenous people in what became eastern Nigeria.
Early in November a disturbance among the tribes in Southern Nigeria was reported at Opobo, and a force of Hausas was sent to restore order. These little frays seldom attract much attention in the Press, yet they are of frequent occurrence, the condition of the country being very unsettled, even at the best of times. The particular offence this time was raiding, a common form of amusement with the natives, but on more than one occasion truculent tribes have closed the mail route and threatened to kill any white men and soldiers who appeared. When this happens somewhat stern repressive measures have to be taken; but for raiding a couple of hundred men and carriers nearly always suffice to restore order, for it is seldom that any serious opposition is encountered. Generally, however, in order to make sure of the quarry, the officer in common makes a couple of forced marches (or more, of course, if necessary) and comes upon the marauders suddenly and unexpectedly.
TREE-CLIMBING EXTRAORDINARY. | The way natives of Nigeria "shin up" a tree."
The destruction of native villages is a great factor in the punishment, but tender-hearted folk at home need not cry about “methods of barbarism!” As one of the accompanying illustrations shows, the houses in these parts are very loosely and easily put together, and the punishment does not consist so much in having the home destroyed as in having to build a new one, for niggers in Nigeria are, despite the good old proverb, as lazy as can be found anywhere, and hate work of any sort, Sometimes as many as twelve “towns" will be razed to the ground by one expedition, and yet the total of casualties will not exceed a score and a-half.
A NATIVE CLEARING. | Plenty of these are to be seen in the vicinity of the villages."
Last week news was received that a further Ju-Ju had been discovered [the Igwe ka Ala oracle] and reported at Oweri, more ancient even than the famous Long Juju which the Aro Expedition suppressed twelve months ago. The expedition reached Oma Nahah [Umunneoha] on the morning of November 17. Sharp fighting ensued, the chiefs sending back a most defiant message to a demand for a palaver. The Maxim which the force had with them did good service, but the enemy kept well out of sight. Fighting lasted altogether for nearly six hours, but only slight wounds seem to have been received by the British troops. As there did not appear to be much chance of getting food and water, the force retired, and further preparations were rapidly made for the effectual suppression of the rebels. In order that the whole tribe should be captured, it was decided that Oma Nahah should be attacked from two sides, but up to the time of writing the results of the movements of the force have not been reported.
READY TO MARCH. | Men of an expedition leaving a dismantled village."
Officers of the West African Frontier Field Force do not, unfortunately, get very much spare time for writing, or they could send home some strange stories of life in the Hinterland. The tale of the massacre of Mr. Phillip’s party at Benin and the subsequent disposal of King Duboar is now old history, but it is history which is repeating itself on a small scale every two months or so. Wholesale murder is not perhaps quite so rife as it was at that time, but life is by no means comfortably safe in certain parts, even in these enlightened days. The increase of trade, however, is rapidly improving the condition of affairs, and what was once the worst human shambles of Africa is becoming to a certain extent civilised. There can be no doubt that this is due in a great measure to the various men who have gone out there both in military and civil command of affairs, and to the wholesome fear the natives entertain for the Hausa troops.
– "Fighting in Nigeria". The Navy And Army Illustrated, January 3, 1903
