Bende Ekpe Club House

Interior of an Ekpe society house in Bende photographed by P. Talbot around or before the mid-1920s.

Ọ̀gwa - Igbo shrine hall

An ọ̀gwa, an ancestral meeting and reception shrine hall of household patriarchs photographed by P. Talbot around or before the mid-1920s in reference to Ogwashi Ukwu. Ogwa Nshi Ukwu means the great ọ̀gwa of founding Nri-Igbo migrants.

18th c. Ụ̀banị̀ Ìgbò vocabulary

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?

Les Békés

A woman from Guadeloupe (apparently en route to Montreal, Canada). Photographed by Augustus Frederick Sherman.

The word for white men in the French-speaking Caribbean island of Martinique and to a certain extent Guadeloupe is Béké presumed to be from bèkée in Igbo meaning the same. These islands were the disembarkation points for many Igbo people during the forced Atlantic migrations from the 16th to 19th century. Igbo is the main component of English Caribbean creoles and, as may be apparent, has influenced French Caribbean creoles.

Some of the Ubani (Bonny) Igbo recorded by slave trader Hugh Crow.

The popular folk etymology of the word bèkée in Igbo says that it was derived from the Scottish explorer William Baikie who had contact with Igbo people, however, what seems to be a word used in the same way as bèkée has been found in the memoirs of Captain Hugh Crow, a slave trader out of Liverpool who had close contacts with the Igbo speaking middlemen of Bonny Island in Rivers State today. His voyages largely took place in the 18th century and he died in 1829, Baikie was born in 1825.

The Peopling of Ikot Ishie, an Igbo Diasporic Town of Calabar

Photo: "The Calaba and Opobo people at the show, Lagos," 1909 postcard.

[Ikot Ishie, Calabar] was named after Ishie Offiong Okoho, an Igbo ex-slave of Chief Offiong Okoho of Archibong House in Duke Town[.] […] Oral tradition maintains that Ishie, an Igbo slave, was bought as a youth and grew up in his masters' household. He was adopted and acquired the name Offiong Okoho from his master, Chief Offiong Okoho. […] Having served his master faithfully, Ishie Offiong Okoho was manumitted and was allocated the whole expanse of land (consisting of Ikot Ishie area) to live and prosper on his own.

[Apparently, Ishie Offiong Okoho also became a wealthy trader during the slave trade era, obtaining his slaves from the interior of the Igbo area to his domain of Ikot Ishie.]

Photo: "Government Hill from Duketown, Old Calabar," 1903 postcard.

Beside the present Bassey Duke, Bedwell, Chamley and Nelson Mandela axis, Ikot Ishie has the highest concentration of Igbo community in Calabar. [...] [N]inety percent of traders in the Ikot Ishie market are of Igbo extraction, and [speak] Efik [...] though they have not lost contact with their original homeland, the Igbo at Ikot Ishie have been, and will remain, part of Archibong House.

[Edit: Chief Ishie Offiong Okoho apparently died in 1901 according to the recounting of the Ishie House's genealogy in a court case over land disputes in 2000 involving his descendants.]

– Winifred E. Akoda (2005). “The Socio-economic Impact of Stranger Communities in Calabar: A Study of the Igbo and Hausa Since 1900.” In: “History and Citizenship: Essays in Honour of Okon Edet Uya.” University of Calabar Press. pp. 160–161.

The forced human migration is a long and complicated history which can be attributed to the nature of slavery, more like indentured servitude, in the interior of the Bight of Biafra itself which, outside of Atlantic expulsion, resulted in the absorption of servants into a household resulting in a population today that is largely descended from a mixture of both masters and servants. (And this indentured servitude system seems to have survived in the form of houseboys and housegirls today.)

Ase, Ndị Osimili

"Assay Chief & wife." P A Mc C. British Museum. Ase is an Ndị Osimili settlement on the Ase River which connects to the Niger River, now in Delta State. It is an Igbo-speaking settlement with a mixture of Isoko and Ijo ancestry as it is near the border of these three cultural areas. In the late 19th century, British traders established a trading post in Ase, such posts were used for imperial expansion, as in the case of the bombardment of Patani in 1882 for its attack on the National African Company's factory in Ase.

In Assay village (Ejaw) some of the women were busy making fishing nets, whilst others were engaged in preparing the evening meal. Many of the girls had heavy bands of ivory around their ankles and wrists. They seemed to serve the same purpose as the bracelets of our English girls. As it was the dry season the river was very low, many sand banks being visible. On a number of these, fishermen had pitched their grass huts. I could not help thinking of them as Arabs in the desert resting by the wayside. Pitched on the golden sand in the middle of the river, they looked most picturesque.

– R. Hope (1906). “With Pen and Camera in Nigeria.” In: “Journal of the Manchester Geographical Society.” p. 130.

Omambara

Crossing the Omambara River (or ‘Anambra River’) at Ogurugu in present day Uzo-Uwani LGA, Enugu State, Nigeria, c. 1916. Photo: Hugh Nevin Nevins.

Mkpuru

Plain woven raffia cloth (mkpuru?) taken from the Igbo ('Eboe') country by William Baikie before 1856. British Museum. The first Igbo textile is ajị, beaten bark cloth. Before the 9th century CE weaving was done with vegetable fibres and, from an unknown date, local cotton.

Several areas of the Igbo country grew their own cotton, sometimes cotton was also gotten from the Igala and Idoma. The cotton was locally spun and dyed. Igbo people used narrow cloths as loin cloths to cover the needed areas when they reached maturity.

A lot of the weaving now uses imported machine-made and coloured yarn which is the case for all Akwete weaving today and for the Nsuka ori cloth. These yarns are supposedly more colourful and have a greater variety of colours.

Before these textiles, the body was likely covered with skins and interwoven leaves and other vegetable fibres. Many of these textiles were and are still used, often times ceremoniously, along with cotton textiles.

Jịọjị

Photo: Sinhalese people and an Ikwere Igbo boy photographed during a Rumuji Owu play by G. I. Jones, c. 1930s, MAA Cambridge.

Have you heard of the lungi? This plaid material commonly known as madras is a textile from India that has become ethnic wear in southeastern Nigeria, known as George (Jịọjị) by the Igbo and injiri by the Kalabari. This is a brief history.

The lungi has been worn in India for centuries particularly in the south, today in India the lungi is relatively cheap and widely made and is associated with the working class. With British colonialism, the lungi was exposed to empire.

Madras, now Chennai, was a British East India Company post centred on the Fort St. George factory in the 17th century. It became the principal weaving and distribution spot for the lungi when empire exponentially increased its amount of weavers, marketing the madras worldwide.

Ndị Otu Ọdụ

"Rich Women. Onitsha. (church members.)" G. F. Packer, 1880s. Pitt Rivers Museum.

These women are likely part of the Ndị Ọdụ or Otu Ọdụ society which is a women’s socio-political and economic organisation in Onicha (Onitsha) made up of wealthy members who either bought the rights to the title or whose relatives bought the rights to either wear ọdụ aka, ivory bracelets, or ọdụ ụkwụ, ivory anklets, or both.

Before the 1890s, the Ọmụ Ọnicha, the female counterpart to the Obi, the overall leader of Onicha, the last being Ọmụ Nwagboka, who was also the head of commerce and trade, wielded great power over most women and the Otu Ọdụ society. Ọmụ Nwagboka, initially resistant to Christianity and the church, later became a catalyst for the growth of church attendance among women after encouraging them to attend services which brought many women, including quite influential ones, to the Anglican mission.

Ọmụ Nwagboka was initially a traditional practitioner before converting to Christianity, at least, formally. Her change in attitude to the religion may have been due to pressure from missionaries and her European trade partners who worked as two arms of European imperialism in the area, traders later becoming invaders and subsequently forming a colonial government. Indeed this may have been the case for other women traders, the most successful of whom would have no doubt been Ndị Ọdụ.

Pressure to convert also came from their children trained in mission schools; although older generations may have been resistant towards conversion, the mission school attenders eventually came to take the position at the top of society in politics, in the courts, and in what was termed ọrụ or ọlụ bekee or ọrụ oyibo, civil service and other jobs introduced by the British Empire that formed a decade after the last Ọmụ Ọnịcha. While there hasn’t been a woman appointed by the Obi Ọnịcha to the position of Ọmụ for well over a century now, the Otu Ọdụ society is still quite prominent.

Onicha Lady

A woman of Onitsha, c. 1890 engraving from the travels of the French Foreign Legion officer, Antoine Mattei. [Captioned in French: “Civilised woman of Onitsha: Onitsha women wear only a loincloth which goes down at mid-leg and which is tied around the kidneys; it is civilised.”]

Europe

The first description of the Igbo area written in Europe was made by the Portuguese explorer and sea captain Duarte Pacheco Pereira (c. 1460 – 1533) in the manuscript Esmeraldo de situ orbis, composed between 1505 and 1508, in which he describes "a land of negroes, called Opuu, where there is much pepper, ivory, and some slaves." 'Opuu' has been linked to 'Opu', the 19th century Igala term for the northern Igbo, other theories say 'Opuu' is the Jukun word for man, 'apu'.