Book Reviews I: Achebe, Akintoye, Collier, Marquez

Louis Armstrong: An American Genius by James Lincoln Collier
A History of the Yoruba People by Stephen Adebanji Akintoye
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe
No Longer At Ease by Chinua Achebe
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
No One Writes the Colonel / Leaf Storm by Gabriel Garcia Marquez


Louis Armstrong: An American Genius
By James Lincoln Collier

Collier notes that music was an integral part of life in New Orleans and that jazz begins in New Orleans.
Although most people called him Louie, Armstrong preferred Louis.
That the history of jazz goes back to Africa, where there was a basic concern for rhythm.
"Jazz is as New Orleans as red beans and rice."
For example, when three beats in one scheme existed, they should have done so in harmony not in conflict.
The tapping of one foot of the listener of the blues is deliberate, keeps a beat -- too fast would be a different style altogether.
Forms where the beat is abstracted from the melody.
Slower forms vs music that seems livelier, more exciting, which comes from experimenting with the rhythm.
Jelly Roll Morton did such and claimed that he invented jazz in 1902 (when he began beating his foot on the hard wooden floor at double the ostensible beat of ragtime.)
Different blacks which settled different areas became known for their music -- perhaps one can draw the analogy to the Charleston dance.
There was never a moment, really, when jazz lacked an audience in America.
Jazz would sweep the United States and soon would move out to the larger world.
Evolved from marching bands.
The Creoles played a role in Armstrong’s development.
Virtually all the New Orleans musicians played in street bands at times, which were, as a consequence, seedbeds where ideas flowered and cross-pollinated.
It is very frustrating for the jazz historian that none of these early bands ever recorded; in fact, some of the early musicians never recorded.
Discusses that Armstrong and fellow cornetist Buddie Petit played a lot of funerals together.
Mentions that the tonks which influenced Armstrong during his apprenticeship were usually housed in one- or two-story buildings, mostly wooden. They were likely to have outside balconies at least on the street sides to provide shade to the lower floor.
Armstrong began by playing the blues. He was gifted with a marvelous ear and the other musicians quickly realized his promise and encouraged him to keep at it.
"Kid Ory remembers a time when Black Benny, a drummer and notorious tough of the neighborhood, brought Louis, recently released from the home, to Lincoln Park, where Ory was playing. "Louis came up and played 'Ole Miss' and the blues, and everyone in the park went wild over this boy in knee trousers who could play so great."
Collier writes that you can discover the effect of excessive syncopation in ragtime for yourself. First tap out with your left foot a beat at a reasonable march tempo; then tap your right foot between the left-foot taps. If you tap the right foot only occasionally, it will not destroy your sense of the original left-foot tempo. But if you tap your right foot between all of the beats, so your two feet are alternating, you will quickly begin to wonder whether you are not tapping out a beat twice as fast as the original one. In ragtime, the “right foot,” so to speak, is tapped more than occasionally but not all the time; thus the ambiguity.
”This effect is not confined to ragtime,” he writes, “many types of music contain implied secondary and tertiary pulses… a number of New Orleans jazz pioneers have made it absolutely clear that the switch from 2/4 to 4/4 was the critical change that led ragtime into jazz."
According to Curtis Jerde, in the nineteenth century bands were customarily not paid at all but lived on tips given them for playing requests.
Joe Oliver sponsored, influenced and attracted attention to Armstrong. Oliver was a dominating personality, a natural leader.
New Orleans musicians realize that there is a market for their music across America, in the cities of the North, where the white man intruded less than he did in the South. So they moved North. This creates an enormous and growing market in the cities of the North for black music. A boom in black entertainment was beginning.
Jazz was at first badly misunderstood. There was no sense that this was a black music or that it came specifically from New Orleans. But some young people set out to discover how this new music was made. The jazz boom was on.
During this time (1920), Armstrong could now count himself a professional musician.
Although New Orleans was home for Armstrong, Collier mentions that he was astonished by the tall buildings of St. Louis.
Lucille Armstrong, his widow said that Armstrong was at his best when he was around people that he knew very well and very closely. And poor people. He had something in common with them.
Revived interest in the New Orleans style of jazz in the 1940's.
Armstrong's genius would have come forth anywhere in America.
Armstrong, like many of the jazz musicians couldn't read music- never mind an arrangement. But when they started improvising, the foundation was still there.
The improvising musician can go easy on himself, substituting something simpler for a difficult, risky passage; he is never forced by the music itself to upgrade his skills. The reading player, on the other hand, must play whatever comes along, and if he has a weakness… he is pressed to deal with the problems by the score in front of him.
Armstrong added reading music to his repertoire on the riverboats he played after being helped by two more senior musicians.
By 1922, Armstrong had become a first-rate jazz player.
Armstrong’s playing seems gifted to many people, it must have had to do with the hidden inner quality of music that draws us to it and shakes us with emotion.
In people we admire, in the best music, we have a clear sense that somebody is talking to us, saying something- exhorting, pleading, commanding, denying, explaining, admonishing. We feel that we are being told something of importance with great conviction. We feel that the music is "about" something, that it has "meaning." And we get from it the sensation that it is not simply created but already exists and that the author is merely putting it on display and perhaps calling attention to interesting aspects of it. The music Louis Armstrong made over his lifetime has struck four generations of people, living in dozens of different cultures.
Why is it that some very few people possess this individual voice, while the rest of us are denied it? Why Louis Armstrong? In part, certainly, it came from the flow of feeling, the freedom of expression he was used to from childhood. He was simply blessed.
Armstrong changes home base to Chicago. Where New Orleans was a town with a history, a tradition, and established families who ran things by right of birth, Chicago saw itself as all new, all fresh, a place where anybody could rise- the city of the future, so Chicagoans thought, which would shortly eclipse the older, dominant cities to the east. In New Orleans, music was for fun, in Chicago, its function was to make money.
Collier points out that jazz has a universal appeal: both for blacks and for whites.
Jazz was so far out of the ghetto by 1932 that President Hoover invited Duke Ellington to the White House... and Percy Grainger asked him to lecture in his course on music appreciation at New York University.
Collier notes that the early history of jazz was distorted (and despised) by the left-wing press of the 1930s and forties, where for political reasons, jazz was defined as a proletarian music.
By 1923, the rush to record New Orleans style jazz was on.
Armstrong distinguishes himself in his first recorded solo, "Chimes Blues," because he plays with a rhythmic spring, which is lacking in the playing of the others.
Later in his career, Armstrong was accused of repeating himself far too often.
He was justified, however, for he had learned early on that if a thing was right as it stood, why not use it again.
Among middle-class, upwardly mobile blacks, the blues had a bad rep. They felt that in order to rise they had to shuck off anything that smacked of the stereotypical black and replace it with what they perceived were white modes. The blues, the whining guitar, were included in the indictment.
A contemporary of Armstrong is far more famous today than he ever was in life.
The first time Louis Armstrong sang anywhere, he was great. He may have sung in church as a toddler, and he sang in the streets with his quartet. The band loved it, and the crowds just ate it up.
Armstrong works as an accompanist with Bessie Smith.
Most songs that went on to become jazz standards were pieced together out of music material that was floating loose around bandstands- fragments of hymns, blues, work songs, operatic arias, or traditional themes with ancient histories, and claims of ownership must be taken with many grains of salt.
Armstrong becomes a master horn player, playing New Orleans jazz at its hottest, and shows a mastery of musical construction that few other jazz players, many of whom studied formal music at length, have ever approached. That he was able to find a wide range of material and experiment with it shows the breadth of his musical intelligence.
Armstrong begins to make the sort of music which was to change all of jazz.
Although they can hardly be faulted, few ever reached Armstrong's level.
Jazz musicians, many of them self-taught, are frequently more impressed with the skills of such men than jazz fans are because they know how difficult these things are to do.
Bud Freeman, a white saxophonist who was learning to play jazz in 1925 said, "In the last forty-five years there has not been a soloist in jazz music who was not influenced by Louis Armstrong." His records influenced all jazz musicians and made jazz music remarkably better than before his arrival.
In 1925, then, Armstrong had established himself as a force in the music business, and was somebody whom people in the business respected.
Armstrong's artistry and reputation develops. He was astonished to hear his records blaring from record stores and cafes in town after town.
Armstrong was getting a great deal of exposure, locally and world wide.
During one of Armstrong's monster jazz concerts, his band "tore the roof off the Congress Hotel."
The music, in the early days, was seen as humorous, or at least eccentric, and not until the late 1920s did anybody but musicians and jazz fans begin to take it seriously.
Soon, either you attempted to play like Armstrong or you almost did not play at all, and the small minority was overwhelmed by the majority, who attempted to do what Armstrong was doing.
When we consider that today it takes a score of musicians, engineers, and specialists of one kind or another hundreds of agonized hours to produce one ordinary popular album, we are all the more impressed by Armstrong and his band, who could casually create two or three classic records in a day at the studio.
Where, in Armstrong's records, there are occasional hesitations and cracked notes and far fewer patches of accurate rapid-fire passages than in his later work, there is a steady improvement in his technical skills related to his growing confidence. Armstrong's work, at first somewhat tentative, becomes firm and sure.
He is utterly confident. Third-and this is extremely significant-he uses the written melody less and less as a guide and embarks more and more on wholly original verses, navigating only by the chord changes-the song's underlying harmonies. He is now inventing entirely new melodies. Fourth, there is a steady emotional deepening in Armstrong's work throughout the series. The earliest records are mainly in a rather cheerful and lively vein, but in the last ones he explores a whole spectrum of human feeling.
In the earliest records he is simply the classic New Orleans lead cornetist, leaving much of the solo space to others. By the end, the records are Armstrong's showcases, with the other musicians merely providing backing and occasional solo relief.
For one song, the first time Armstrong sings it, he does so theoretically as written, and the second he improvises a melody to vocal sounds, as if he were playing an instrument. Armstrong was growing at an astonishing rate, showing improvement at almost every recording session.
Armstrong makes cuts aimed at the race market. And of course, his recording directors were interested in hits, not great jazz, by and large.
Armstrong was essentially a linear thinker, although he employed melodic spicing.
Armstrong becomes involved in the business aspect of jazz music, and fans become disheartened, if not disgusted, by the change in his style.
Armstrong is now frequently going beyond speech to create dialogue, a principle that few musicians have grasped. Given the haphazard way in which these records were made, this spurred his return to the original personnel and the old formula.
It is difficult to know what was going on in Armstrong's life that brought this change to the surface.
To blacks in particular he was an important person. There were no blacks in major-league sports-they were confined to black leagues. There were few blacks in public office, few famous as artists, few in high places in business and industry. It was important that whites themselves said that Armstrong was the best trumpet player, the best jazz musician in the United States. In 1929, then, it was becoming clear to musicians, entertainment entrepreneurs, and Armstrong himself that he was a potential star who could attract substantial audiences, both black and white, and make a good deal of money for himself and others. He faced a great deal of internal and external pressure.
Armstrong makes his first movie. He was to become the first black to be consistently featured in first-class movies, with some sixty appearances.
Armstrong had for some time been a folk hero to blacks, and he always had an audience among them. He was also totally without pretense-in sum, a genuinely nice man, who went out of his way to avoid hurting anybody's feelings. The combination of personality and musical ability worked.
By the end of the 1930s Armstrong was a star. He had good management, finally, his financial problems were being solved, he was working as frequently as he cared to, making movies, broadcasting regularly.
Armstrong's funeral proceedings were covered by national television. The honorary pallbearers included Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Carson, Dizzy Gillespie, and more. The services were simple, and at his wife's request there was no music aside from the Lord's Prayer. Jazz bands played in New Orleans, however, at a memorial service that drew over a thousand people.





A History of the Yoruba People
By Stephen Adebanji Akintoye


The History of the Yorubas, by Samuel Johnson,
1. Indicates that the speech of the “Yoruba belongs to the agglutinated order of speech, not the inflectional.” Perhaps one thing that this means is that Yoruba speech starts from a different place than English.
2. The Yoruba language has no article.
3. In the Yoruba language, the word Baba means father.
4. "The Yoruba language is very defective in distinctive terms…One word must do service for different terms in which there is a shade of difference of meaning."
5. The Yoruba have their own system of counting. "In numbers that go by tens, five is the intermediate figure, five less than the next higher stage. In those by 20 , ten is used as the intermediate. In those by 209, 100 is used, and in those if 2,000 1,000 is used."

6. “The Yorubas are certainly not of the Arabian family, and could not have come from Mecca — that is to say, the Mecca universally known in history…”
7. Oduduwa, the God of the Yorubas, was a great warrior, whose legendary story represents early Yoruba history.
8. “The king of Benin inherited his money (which consisted of cowry shells), the Orangun of Ila his wives…the Olupopo the beads of the Oluwo, and the Alaketu the crowns, and nothing was left for Oranyan but the land.” The above is an exerpt from Johnson's story about the early history of the Yorubas.
9. There are seven principal Yoruba tribes which sprang from the seven grandchildren of Oduduwa. Many travelled and became spread out over the land.
10. Several Yoruba tribes are known for taking human sacrifices.
11. Here, the book indicates that the Yorubas admit the existence of many Gods. Johnson writes that the Yorubas believe in the existence of one Almighty God, whom they term Olurun, i.e. Lord of Heaven.
12. According to Johnson, the British outlawed the Yoruba practice of human sacrifice, in the late 1800s.
13. A Yoruba proverb says that God created all men, black, white, and yellow, in one place, and they spread out over time across the globe.
14. To be continued.



A History of the Yoruba People, by Stephen Adebanji Akintoye

1. Akintoye indicates that some Yoruba were farmers, others hunters. Women who were skilled at hair braiding became hair braiders. He indicates that some men held positions in Yoruba government, and implies that others were teacher-scholars.
2. With a population variously estimated at between thirty and forty million, the Yoruba are perhaps the largest single ethnic group, or nationality, in Black Africa. Moreover, their history is one of the most researched and analyzed of any people in Africa. For this latter fact there are various reasons, of which one is the traditional structure (and the consequent historical consciousness) of Yoruba society, another is the high level of literacy among the Yoruba people today, and yet another is the growing importance of Yoruba Studies in the overall spectrum of African and Black Studies.
3. The Yoruba were the most urbanized people in the history of the tropical African forestlands, having largely lived in walled cities and towns since as early as the eleventh or twelfth century. In those towns and cities they evolved a sophisticated monarchical system of government, whose governing elites established detailed institutions and processes for preserving society’s history and passing it on — a circumstance that has both encouraged and facilitated the study of Yoruba history in our times.
4. Then, since the beginning of the twentieth century, the Yoruba have invested more in education than any other African people and, by the end of the twentieth century, were widely regarded as the most literate people in Africa. A significant consequence of this growing literacy has been that much indigenous effort has gone into the writing of Yoruba history. Venturing into written reconstruction of the past began as soon as there were some literate Yoruba in the nineteenth century; then it flowered vigorously in the course of the twentieth century; and it has been augmented by contributions from many professional historians, indigenous and foreign. Finally, to black people in general, and especially to the people of the Black African Diaspora in the Americas (in the United States, Brazil, Central America, Cuba, Haiti, Trinidad, and other parts of the West Indies), a knowledge of Yoruba history has been growing in importance. This is not merely because of the size of the Yoruba population, but also because of the high level of civilization attained by the Yoruba people in the past, the growing knowledge of Yoruba contributions to Black cultures in the New World, and the continued dynamism of Yoruba civilization in modern times — all of which have attracted increasing interest into Yoruba research.
5. The present book is an attempt by a student and teacher of Yoruba and African history to synthesize for popular education the data that has become available to us on Yoruba history at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is a product of my life-long participation in the development of Yoruba and African History Studies — in universities in Africa and the United States. I offer it in the humble hope that it will contribute something to the growing knowledge of Yoruba history in particular and the history of Africa and black people in general, that it will provoke further interest in Yoruba and African history, and, above all, that it will increase the Yoruba people’s love of, and romance with, their impressive and fascinating heritage.

6. Because most of the Yoruba people have lived in the modern country of Nigeria since the beginning of European imperialist rule over Africa in the early twentieth century, there now exists a tendency to write of the Yoruba as if they are entirely a Nigerian people — to the dismay of those who are now citizens of the Republics of Benin and Togo. The Yoruba people and country are split by two international boundaries, and while the largest portion is to be found in Nigeria, some substantial parts are to be found in Benin and Togo. This book presents a history of all Yoruba people.
7. All these stemmed from my belief that a study of the experience of Africans transplanted to the Americas in the era of the Atlantic slave trade needs to be seen by scholars and peoples of Africa as a part of the African experience in general. In recent years, happily, considerable advances have been made worldwide in the study of the African Diaspora in the Americas. Since the 1990s, that study has moved beyond the computing of the numbers of Africans transported to the Americas, and beyond the impact of American slavery on enslaved Africans; it has deepened to include studies of the contributions of transplanted African heritages to the evolution of African-American and American cultures. In the context of this deeper approach, much light has been thrown on the contribution of the Yoruba heritage in particular to the development of the cultures of the African Diaspora in the Americas. People of Yoruba descent, and the heritage of Yoruba civilization, constitute a very significant component of African-American cultures in most parts of the Americas.
8. Therefore, I have ventured to include a short chapter on the history of the Yoruba Diaspora in the Americas in this book to highlight the unavoidable continuity between the history of Africa and the history of the African Diaspora, in the hope that the Yoruba people in the West African homeland will become more actively interested in the history of their people across the Atlantic, and in the hope that black people in the Americas will become more proactive in searching and proudly interacting with their African roots and heritage.
9. The Yoruba had gradually evolved as a group of many small fragments; each of the fragments spoke some dialect of the evolving common Yoruba language. Thousands of years followed the initial emergence of the Yoruba as a group, and their many mutually intelligible dialects remained more or less clearly distinct, and ultimately came to define the internal differentiations that constituted the Yoruba subgroups that we have today — the Oyo, Ijebu, Ekiti, Ijesa, Ife, Ondo, Egba, Ibarapa, Egbado, Akoko, Owo, Ikale, Ilaje, Itsekiri, Awori, Ketu, Sabe, Ifonyin, Idasa, Popo, Ife (also known as the Ana, and found today in Togo Republic), Ahori, Itsha, Mahi, Igbomina, Ibolo, Owe, Oworo, Jumu, Bunu,Yagba, Gbede, Ikiri — some large and some small.
10. A small subgroup — the Ibolo — lived to the southwest of the Igbomina, sandwiched between the Igbomina and the Oyo. All the territory of these northern Yoruba subgroups was grassland.

11. The Yoruba spread out and occupied much of Nigeria, including: the south, the forest belt, the grasslands of the north, near the coast.
12. There was considerable closeness between the Yoruba and the Aja. Like the Yoruba language, Aja belonged to the Kwa subfamily within the larger Niger-Congo family of languages. It seems obvious that when the Yoruba stream encountered the Aja people in this area, it continued and flowed past them westwards, so that over time Yoruba subgroups existed to the east, west and north of the Aja. With the Aja thus almost enveloped by the Yoruba, profound cultural affinities further developed between the two, with the smaller (the Aja) greatly influenced by the larger (the Yoruba) — in language, religion, and social and political institutions. Ultimately, the Yoruba and Aja became more or less one cultural area, and the Yoruba language became a sort of lingua franca for the two peoples, which means that while the Aja spoke their own language (which was strongly influenced by the Yoruba language) most of the Aja also spoke Yoruba.
13. Being considerably isolated from other Yoruba subgroups, the Popo subgroup (and the kingdom which was founded among them at a later time) probably became absorbed over time into the cultures of non-Yoruba neighbors...
14. In general, the subgroups differed from one another in dialect. But this must not be understood as meaning that each subgroup was completely homogenous in dialect. There were shades of local differentiations within the dialect of every subgroup. The most profound of such local differentiation existed in the Akoko subgroup, among whom dialect varied from village to village.
15. About the earliest settlements of Yoruba farming people in the forests, there are bodies of traditions in most parts of Yorubaland. Such traditions are found in nearly every town with a long history of existence in its present location. According to these traditions, some settlers inhabited, in great antiquity, the location where each of these towns now stands.

16. In an article entitled “Before Oduduwa,” published in the 1950s, Beier identified many of these early settlements and the towns into which they later became absorbed.9 Since then, interest in these early settlements of the Yoruba forests has grown, with the result that what we now know about the subject is quite considerable.
17. The traditions concerning these early settlements are integral to the traditions of the founding of the Yoruba kingdoms. When, in a period from about the tenth or eleventh century AD (the period usually regarded as the Oduduwa period of Yoruba history), various groups went out (mostly from Ife) to establish kingdoms in the Yoruba forests, they came upon some pre-existing settlements everywhere, and it was among these settlers that they established kingdoms.
18. In most parts of ancient Yorubaland, especially in central and eastern Yorubaland, it would seem that each such group was known as an elu, and therefore, for simplicity, the name elu will be adopted in this book, and each settlement in the elu will be called simply a settlement or village.
Each elu evolved slowly over a very long time. First, one small settlement lived in an area; then, over a long time, other small settlements came one by one to take locations in the same area. Each settlement had evolved, according to the traditions, in the nearby forests and, under pressure of some difficulties there, had moved and relocated to what it saw as a better place. In this way, the elu came into being, surrounded by virtually unoccupied virgin forests on all sides.
19. However, it would seem that the people of the time gave purely supernatural explanations to their troubles. Thus, to appease the wild beasts, people began to worship the spirits that were believed to materialize through some of them, especially such large carnivores as the hyena and the leopard, and large reptiles like the crocodile and the boa constrictor, and set up shrines and rituals for the purpose. The mysterious sicknesses and deaths were attributed to the anger and malevolence of the spirits inhabiting the land over which people had come to establish their dwellings. The worship of primordial spirits of the earth (called ore or ere or erele) became the major cornerstone of their religious life. In time, each settlement that managed to survive “discovered” a protector spirit in a local physical entity like a body of water (a river, stream, lake or spring), a rock, a hill or a tree that was believed to have magical powers.
20. Settlements also tended to relocate, repeatedly in many cases, in order to flee their terrifying experiences. To this, the end result was that settlements tended to relocate close together in places which came to be regarded as suitable (having reliable water supply, good for the crops, etc.) and, above all, safe. The process seems to be that when a settlement survived for long in a place and seemed to prosper there, other settler groups, seeking to share in the advantages of the place, would come and establish their own settlement nearby — and a group of small settlements (or an elu) would gradually emerge.

21. In many communities in Yorubaland, it is still quite easy to identify the descendants of the earliest settlement in a place, because the rulers of earliest settlements usually held (and their descendants still hold) the priesthood of the local protector god or spirit. For instance, in the Ado kingdom in Ekiti, the Elesun, ruler of Ilesun (the oldest settlement in the place) is still much revered, even though the last holder of that title was defeated in battle and executed as far back as about the fourteenth century AD by the immigrant founders of the Ado kingdom.
22. 2 - The Development of Early Yoruba Society
23. The history of the beginning of the Iron Age in Africa south of the Sahara is, in general, markedly different from its history north of the Sahara, in the Middle East and in the Mediterranean world.
24. The coming of iron, and consequently the general improvement in tools and skills and in people’s management of their natural environment, also resulted over time in improvements in the dwellings in which they lived.
25. Architectural and aesthetic improvements to the agbo-ile made it gradually stronger, safer, more comfortable, and more beautiful. The preparation of the earthen plaster for walls, and the setting up of walls, became more skillful, thus increasing the intricacy, safety and durability of wall structures. The weaving of the roof thatch became an art in itself, making it possible for roofs to last many generations with only minor repairs every few years. Minor roof repairs were done often, but roof replacements were done at intervals of generations, and each such replacement job was usually taken as an opportunity to improve, and restructure if necessary, the whole agbo-ile. Decorations became a standard part of the construction of an agbo-ile, and grew more and more detailed. It became standard practice to carve (using iron tools) and paint (or stain) the wooden pillars that supported eaves, typically in stylized anthropomorphic or animal idioms, and to carve wooden doors in bas-relief, especially the large main door to the agbo-ile. Decorations also came to include murals (called iwope) on wall surfaces — some of them frescoed or engraved. All these features improved gradually in quality and beauty from generation to generation. Ultimately, with the broad and sweeping verandahs, carved and painted posts holding up the eaves, and the murals on the walls (many in elaborate geometric compositions), the courtyards of some agbo-ile could look quite imposing. And

26. Rivalries and competition between settlements and between compounds in settlements resulted in other forms of artistic expression also. One such was the oriki, a form of poetry in which each group glorified itself and preserved in cryptic language the high points of its history. Over time, as the oriki tradition grew, every unit of society (the settlement, the lineage, the leadership titles, and even the individual) came to have oriki, and every oriki tended to be amplified and grow richer in the course of history. Group pride also produced facial markings given to children at birth, to proclaim their ancestry; as well as exclusive group festivals, seasonal and annual, filled with special group songs and exhibitions of masks; and loud, elaborate, funerals for departed parents.
27. The Yoruba responded to this by evolving a rigidly patrilineal kinship system. By this system, every child belonged only to its father’s lineage, had to be raised in its lineage compound, and could only inherit title from it. As a corollary to this, when a woman married into another lineage, she became a member of her husband’s group; she could never revert to membership of her father’s group, and if she died her body had to be buried in the land of her husband’s group. Yoruba folklore has many tales of very serious penalties for mothers who dared to cling to their newly married daughters.
28. The general improvement in tools and skills also accelerated the growth of division of labor, and the rise of distinct professions. We do not know whether the making of stone tools ever developed into a special profession; but in any case, the making of stone tools ultimately ceased as a result of the coming of iron. Pottery remained the oldest craft profession. For many centuries before the knowledge of iron, women potters had made pots at locations where suitable clay deposits could be found in the forests near their homes. Almost certainly, the potter’s possession of iron tools for her work (for instance for cutting the covering vegetation and digging up the clay) increased her production capacity, and may also have improved the quality of her pots. The association or guild of potters was probably the oldest professional guild or association in Yoruba history.
29. Hunting, too, developed into a distinct profession. Although all men continued to be involved in farming the land and doing some hunting, using the greatly improved tools (iron-bladed machetes, knives, arrows, spears, traps), over time some men came to be more employed in hunting than farming, and the group of professional hunters ultimately came into existence. From the folklore and rituals surrounding the profession of hunting, it would seem that hunters were highly regarded from the beginning. Not only did they contribute to the meat supply, they also served society in some other ways. People depended on them to help find in the forests good clay deposits for the potter and the iron smelter, as well as springs and brooks — sources of good water supply. But most importantly, according to the traditions, hunters provided security for their settlements. Closely allied to this, if a group or settlement needed to move and relocate, it usually depended on its hunters to find a good relocation site and the easiest path to it. The group of hunters in every settlement early became a highly regarded professional association or guild which developed its own unique folklore, its own chants, music and dance, and acquired a near-sacred public image — almost akin to that of the iron smelters or that of the blacksmiths.
30. What was true of hunting as a profession came also to be true of many other pursuits. Most women could plait women’s hair, but some became professional hair plaiters in their community. Most farmers could climb palm trees and harvest palm wine, but it became a profession for some.

31. To be continued.


1. Yoruba people also began, after the coming of iron, to produce individuals who practiced art as a profession. The earliest sculptures would seem to have been done in terra cotta (that is clay) — almost certainly a development from the profession of pottery. The earliest carvings, made possible by iron tools, were presumably in wood — most of it, probably, for the decoration of houses and shrines. By the later parts of the first century AD, sculpture in stone appears to have become well developed also — as well as sculpture in metals, especially cast or wrought iron. Most of the growing sculptural art was devoted to the worship of gods and spirits and the celebration of rulers, leaders and heroes. A fuller attention will be given to this subject of the development of early Yoruba art in the next chapter dealing with the early history of Ife.
2. The improvement of tools and skills enabled the Yoruba farmer to incorporate more and more crops into his farming. At some point in this long process, cotton became one of the crops he cultivated. It would seem from some folklore connected with the cloth industry that cotton and the weaving of cotton cloth first appeared in the broad belt comprising the Yoruba savannah and derived savannah countries of the Oyo, Igbomina, northern Ekiti, northern Ijesa, Akoko, and the Okun Yoruba. This broad area was the vegetation belt most suitable in Yorubaland for cotton cultivation, and was also the natural home of most of the shrubs from which the Yoruba people obtained their dyestuff; over time, some of these shrubs came to be regularly cultivated (such as indigo). Cotton cultivation spread only slowly into the deep forests of southern Yorubaland, mostly into areas where agricultural activity resulted in more open vegetation. Even in such places, the cotton crop was prone to diseases because of the higher humidity of the southern Yoruba forest country. From the beginning, therefore, cotton cloth weaving in southern parts of Yorubaland depended heavily on cotton wool and dyestuff from the middle belt and the northern territories. Some Ekiti proverbs seem to indicate that the Igbomina were probably the earliest leaders in cotton cloth production in Yorubaland. Like the practitioners of other trades, weavers evolved early into local associations or guilds, with rules and obligations and a guardian deity.
3. is not known what mode of exchange was employed in this earliest of Yoruba trade. Some traditions, reinforced by some surviving traces of practice, suggest some sort of barter of products for products. The use of cowry shells as currency almost certainly, as will be seen later, began in times before Oduduwa — that is, before the tenth century. In the context of this age of varied growth and development, political organization of society also began and developed.6 Each settlement had a rudimentary government from very early, under the leadership of a headman. The oldest living male member of the group, he was a sort of ruler and priest. His religious authority and ritual functions sprang naturally from his being the group’s “father” and the nearest person to the departed ancestors of the group as well as to the primordial sprits inhabiting the earth upon which the settlement stood. He was keeper of the totem and other “secrets” of the group. The group’s totem was an object treasured by the first father of the group (a charm, article of personal adornment, favorite tool or artifact, etc.) and believed to have been bequeathed by him to the group on his deathbed, to be kept as the symbol of the group’s unity and identity. Sometimes, copies of the totem were made and given to members to keep or to wear on their persons, but the original was kept by the group leader and passed on to his successor. The group leader also kept and tended the group shrine, made the daily, periodic and seasonal rituals, and offered the sacrifices. His authority in trying and punishing offences was conceived of as flowing naturally from his religious authority and ritual powers. In modern political language, then, he was ruler, priest, judge and enforcement authority.
4. From this point, Yoruba traditions generally paint an implausible picture of sudden transformation of each village or settlement into one that had a government with an exalted ruler, subordinate chiefs, rituals and orderly laws. Such phenomenal transformation is made to seem as if it all happened in one generation, such as from father to son; but we are certainly right to assume a development that lasted many centuries and many generations. What most probably happened is that each group, which later became a settlement, started off as one small family whose surviving members kept in close association for generations until they became a lineage — that is, a group of families bound together by belief in common descent from a known ancestor. As the group grew larger, it kept regarding itself as one family, even if other persons joined it from time to time. The original family values of mutual loyalty and support, and individual acceptance of family rules and authority, continued as the group norm. The authority exercised by the father in the foundational family became institutionalized in the leader of the group. The original family demands on interpersonal behavior, and of group duty, became institutionalized into group rules and law. Continued expansion of group size and needs slowly generated devolution in the performance of group duties, which then gradually produced institutionalized offices and officers (that is, chiefs and priests) below the level of the group leader, complete ultimately with titles and insignia. The leader’s own title had to proclaim that he was father, head, and embodiment of the spirit, of the settlement. Hence, in practically every settlement, the leader’s title came to include the name of his settlement — as in Elefene (of Efene), Obajio (of Ijio), Olowagbon (of Igbon), Aro (of Ilaro) and so on.
5. Fittingly too, in addition to these specific titles, the evolving national culture began to identify and address the rulers with general, exalted, titles that set them apart from the rest of humankind. The Elefene, Obajio or Aro belonged to a special level of humans known as Olu or Osin or Oba — king. It seems probable that which common title people used for ‘king’ depended on which region they lived in. In some regions people used Olu, in others Osin, and in yet others Oba. An Ekiti tradition has it that in most parts of Yorubaland people first used Olu or Osin as leader titles.

6. At some very late point in the evolution of these settlements, their leaders began to wear a distinctive skull cap. Since the crowns of Yoruba kings have continued till our times to be regarded as sacred objects, it seems very probable that crowns started off as part of religious and ritual attire. For reasons unknown to us today, the ruler seems to have begun to wear some special cap as part of his religious garb as he performed the rituals and sacrifices at the shrine. Over time, wearing such a cap became a generalized part of his clothing while performing any of his other functions, even though the ruler’s skull cap never ceased being regarded as a sacred, religious object. We have very clear descriptions of these earliest Yoruba “crowns” in the traditions. Moreover, some ancient recesses of some Yoruba palaces are believed to have samples of them. They were simple looking caps woven from pieces of certain types of raffia yarn at first, and much later from certain types of cotton cloth and yarn — not anything like the elevated dome-shaped or cone-shaped crowns of a later period of Yoruba history.
7. The important consequence of the emergence of many compounds in each settlement is that each compound slowly, over many centuries, took on some life of its own — a latter day lineage. Each settlement thus became a sort of super lineage comprising many small lineages. Particular leadership roles in the settlement became domiciled in particular compounds. When the bearer of any such title died, the inhabitants of the compound became responsible to the village for selecting his successor from within their compound. But since the title (and its duties) belonged to the whole settlement and not just the compound, the village must accept the appointee and install him. The system whereby the chiefs gathered in council around the ruler to manage the affairs of the settlement gradually evolved. In each compound, the oldest member was the compound head, vested by practice over time with judicial and other authority in the compound. As earlier indicated also, the farms pushed farther and farther away from the villages, even though the areas immediately outside each village remained the most intensively farmed. Moreover, from each village, paths radiated into the neighboring forests — to the sites of the palm oil mill or eku, the pottery, the iron smelter, the brooks and springs (sources of the village’s supply of water). From the earliest times, these special forest locations and the farmlands were conceived of as common property of the village. In this way, the Yoruba laid the foundation of the system of land ownership that later became a very significant feature of their culture.
8. Although the oral traditions speak almost entirely of the roles of men in the ancient Yoruba villages, there are nevertheless glimpses of women’s roles. The traditions are clear that, from the very beginning, women were the makers of pots — a very important service to their settlements. For reasons not entirely clear to us, women were also the traders from the beginning. It is probable that this was a consequence of an early division of labor whereby the men cleared and prepared the ground and raised the crops (with significant assistance and back-up services from the women), and the women harvested most of the crops and offered the surplus for exchange (or sale). When yarn making and cloth weaving came too, they became exclusive industries of the women. The typical Yoruba loom, from early times, was the vertical loom installed over a shallow pit in the house. The other type of loom which also became common in Yorubaland, the horizontal draw-loom, a specialty of the men, came much later — and it long remained exclusive to northwestern Yorubaland, that is to the Oyo country.
The women were, in early times, the greater actors in the spinning, weaving and dyeing processes which, over time, gave Yorubaland its very important cloth industry.
9. But early Yoruba women may have been more active in the political process than the oral traditions would admit. For instance, it is possible that some very early influential position for women is what we have in very many folktales about a woman with the title of Anosin, represented always as first wife of the Osin (king).
Within the palace of the Osin, the Anosin wielded authority second only to that of the Osin himself. This very influential female official always starts off in each folktale as a glowing embodiment of power and authority (and feminine beauty), and then she is shown as coming to a tragic end on account of her wicked use of her power over the other women of the palace. It is significant, however, that in none of these folktales is the legitimacy of her authority ever questioned; her tragic end is always caused by the manner of her use of her authority. This seems to imply either that having women in positions of authority was acceptable, and perhaps even common, in early Yoruba settlements, or that women did in fact occupy leadership positions but were, in a generally male-dominant culture, depicted as temperamentally incapable of using leadership positions well. The Anosin was probably commonly “mother” of the settlement while the Osin was “father” of it.
Admittedly, the Anosin folktales do not rank as direct information about influential roles for women in early Yoruba settlements. About such roles for women in the kingdoms of later periods of Yoruba history, the oral traditions are replete with direct information. Women did become crowned rulers of Yoruba kingdoms in these later periods — and it does seem improbable that such eminence would have had no root whatsoever in earlier periods of Yoruba history.
10. Yoruba traditions hold up the development of herbal medicine as one of the triumphs of early Yoruba history.7 Slowly, over many centuries, the Yoruba people in their villages accumulated solid knowledge of countless herbs and herbal preparations for various sicknesses, as well as considerable knowledge of the nature of many diseases. Professional herbalists called onisegun emerged, on whom the people of the village depended for the treatment of their sicknesses. Over time, indeed, specialization developed in this profession — so that there were those (called onisegun aremo) who specialized in the treatment of infertility in women, the management of pregnancy problems, the delivery of babies and the treatment of childhood diseases, those who specialized in the treatment of mental and nervous diseases, those who specialized in the fixing of bone fractures, and so on. From those early times, the profession gradually set up rules and procedures for the training of those to be admitted to it; fourteen years of apprenticeship becoming a sort of general standard. The profession also evolved meetings of members for the exchange of knowledge, and established strictly binding rules of professional assistance of member to member.

11. However, Yoruba herbal medicine, in spite of its ever growing knowledge of diseases and treatments, never freed itself from its origins — the belief that sicknesses were often caused by malevolent spirits. Therefore, even the soundest of herbalists continued to mix with his practice the appeasement of, or combat with, spirits, as well as divinations, sacrifices, rituals, incantations, protective amulets (around neck, waist and wrist), protective magical preparations (of powder or liquid) inserted into parts of the body through lacerations. All these started early and continued through later periods of Yoruba history as part of the herbalist’s art.
12. In the context of high rates of infant mortality, the belief early developed that some children (especially of mothers who lost many babies in succession) were not ordinary children but spirits who came to the world as babies only for the purpose of tormenting certain women. Called abiku (born to die), these special children became the subject of a whole complex of lore, rituals and magical practices, all aimed at either warding them off from the women who were their victims, or forcing them to convert to real, ordinary, children if they were already born.
13. Omitted.
14. In earliest times also, having twin babies was regarded as a bad omen or a visitation by malevolent spirits. Yoruba people never ceased regarding twin babies as beyond the ordinary, but the attitude to twins gradually softened — until, in much later times, twin babies came to be regarded as friendly spirits or bearers of good luck, to be related to with special rituals and celebrations.
15. Belief in witches and witchcraft also became an important feature of Yoruba life — a witch being, according to Yoruba belief and folklore, a man or woman (most often a woman) who consented to hosting in her own person a malignant spirit sworn to causing harm to humans. Sicknesses which could not be explained or healed were usually attributed to witchcraft or the hostility of some spirit or deity. This usually provoked a heavy investment in sacrifices and rituals, and, if witchcraft was suspected, efforts to find and punish or appease the witch or to neutralize her powers. Herbalists developed potions which were believed, when ingested by suspects, to be efficacious in detecting the witch among them. And the penalty for being so publicly identified as a witch was death, sometimes by public stoning.

16. The religion of the people of the early Yoruba settlements, started in their earliest days, grew and amplified. To the original earth spirits and protector spirits of the neighborhood hill or rock or stream were, over centuries, added more and more gods and goddesses and spirits. Settlements and lineages deified prominent departed members and set up shrines to them — as special friends and protectors in the spirit world.
17. As various occupations developed, patron gods and goddesses emerged for them — for farming and other working folks, for women traders in marketplaces, for weavers and dyers of cloth and yarns, for potters, for herbalists, etc. Certain natural phenomena (such as lightning and thunder, and the sea), certain diseases — all came to have gods or goddesses associated with them. Over time, some deities became generally accepted and worshipped throughout Yorubaland. The god later known as Ogun (originally patron god of all working people) seems to have been the first of such pan-Yoruba gods — hence his salutation as “Osinmole” (first, or king, among the earliest spirits or gods).
18. By the tenth century, or perhaps even considerably earlier, the main outlines of Yoruba cosmology and religion had evolved. The Yoruba conceived of all existence as located in two realms — a lower realm known as aye (the earth or the world, the abode of humans), and a higher realm known as orun (heaven, the home of the spiritual beings). The realm of the spirits was conceived as consisting of two spheres — a higher and a lower.
19. The higher was the place of the Supreme Olodumare who created all things and ruled over all of existence. This Supreme Being was first given the name Orisa — roughly meaning “the source from which all things emanated.” Later, to his name was added Olorun (king of heaven) and Oluwa (king over all). Though some Yoruba groups (especially the southern and eastern peoples like the Ijesa, Ondo, Ikale, Owo and Ekiti) continued to apply the name Orisa to the Supreme Being, that name generally came to be used for the highest heavenly beings who were said to have been with the Supreme Being at the time when the Supreme Being created all things, and whom the Supreme Being later sent to the lower spiritual sphere where they became the most senior gods.
20. The Supreme Being’s sphere was so far above the human’s world that humans could not worship or relate directly with him. Therefore, only in a very few places in Yorubaland did shrines emerge for his worship. Generally, Yoruba people believed that no human could know what sacrifices would be acceptable to Olorun or Oluwa. At some late time, Olorun or Oluwa also acquired the name Olodumare, a difficult name that has been variously translated or deciphered. The central word in this name is odu, which means “fullness”, or “totality.” For this reason, Olodumare has been translated by some as “the absolute fullness that encompasses all.” Olu Alana suggests that its best translation would be “the king — who holds the scepter, wields authority and has quality which is superlative in worth and ... permanent, unchanging and reliable.

21. The second heavenly sphere existed in very close proximity to the world of humans and was the home of all the other gods (collectively known as imole) and the spirits, all arranged in grades from the highest to the lowest. The highest category consisted of the orisas — namely, Orisanla (arch divinity), Ifa (god of wisdom and divination), Ogun (god of working people and of iron), Esu (messenger of the senior gods), and others. Of these, Orisanla came to be regarded as the most senior; he was believed to have assisted Olodumare in the act of creating man. A goddess named Odudu was regarded as wife of Orisanla and mother of the gods (Eye umole or Iya imole). In certain liturgies and localities, the name of this goddess later became confused with the name Oduduwa, the name of an important male personage in later Yoruba history. (Oduduwa was later deified, as a male god.) Odudu is still worshipped in some places in Yorubaland as Odudu, not Oduduwa; Odudu’s shrine and rituals still exist in Ado (in Ekiti), where she is worshipped as mother of all mothers and their little children.
22. The total number of the gods (imole) varied from region to region of Yorubaland — but 401 appears to have been the commonest count. By the tenth century, many of the gods were already pan-Yoruba in acceptance and worship. Such pan-Yoruba gods increased in number in later periods of Yoruba history. Each imole was concerned with a particular department or pursuit of human life and demanded a particular type of sacrifice and rituals. Below the level of the imole were countless spirits, each in its own way in frequent contact with human life.
23. It is clear in the traditions that there were many kinds of divinatory practices and traditions in early Yoruba history, but over a long time they almost all became consigned to the province of Ifa. Some Yoruba traditions indicate a Nupe contribution to the earliest rudiments of the Ifa system in Yorubaland, but the extent of such contribution is uncertain. According to traditions recorded in the late nineteenth century by Samuel Johnson, there lived in Ife in pre-Oduduwa times a man of Nupe extraction named Setilu or Agboniregun (the latter being probably the name given him by his Ife hosts). Agboniregun, practicing Ifa divination, lived in some places in eastern Yorubaland (including Ado in Ekiti, and Owo) before he came to settle in Ife, where he acquired considerable influence on account of his Ifa divination, and where he initiated many people into Ifa mysteries and divination.
24. Thereafter,Yoruba creativity elevated Ifa divination and mysteries and enriched them with a profound body of folklore, until the whole Ifa system became a sophisticated theme in Yoruba religion and culture, and Ifa became a very important Yoruba god — the god of divination and of hidden knowledge, the mouthpiece of the gods. In the long history of their development of Ifa and of Ifa mysteries, practices, divination and folklore, the Yoruba people gradually evolved a rarified body of lore, knowledge and wisdom known as Odu Ifa (roughly, the body or fullness of Ifa wisdom).
25. In its final form, Odu Ifa became the longest corpus of poetry in Yoruba folklore, a massive and ever-growing cultic body of wisdom encompassing historical and mythological accounts, exalted precepts, snippets of divine wisdom, life-related instructions, and the profoundest in Yoruba philosophy.

26. It developed, most certainly, from very many generations of the loftiest in Yoruba folk wisdom, and it was meant to be, and was, the special preserve of the select elite known as the babalawo (father of the secrets), the priests of Ifa. As the exalted profession of the babalawo developed, the initial “schooling” of a babalawo, consisting of intensive, unbroken, instruction in the practice of divination and in spiritual development, and unfaltering memorization of the entire Odu Ifa, was generally supposed to last for fourteen years, but in reality his education was a lifelong pursuit. The nature of the babalawo’s life and profession demanded that he should be in regular contact, sharing and collaboration with other babalawo. In every settlement and in every elu, an association or guild of babalawo early came into being.
27. Another very important development in Yoruba religion and cosmology was the belief in the afterlife. the Yoruba believed that the dead went on to live in another place of existence (some part of the heavenly realm), from where they could see, interact with, and help humans in this world. For that reason, articles of clothing and of personal adornment, articles of food and of domestic value, were buried with the dead — in order to help them settle in their new other-world homes. The newly dead was believed to be welcomed “home” by family members who had earlier died. The quality of life that one would have in the afterlife was believed to be determined by the good or evil life that one had lived in one’s earthly life — and, for this reason, Yoruba society thought of its aged members as typically honest and trustworthy, in preparation for the afterlife. But there were also ways in which the living could assist their dead into a place of status and honor in the afterlife. One such way was a big, expensive, and prestigious funeral — the objective of which was to put on show (to both the living in this world and the people of the afterlife) the wealth and high status of the deceased, as well as his or her success in having many prosperous children. Another way, especially for the great and influential, was that the deceased’s children would add a second burial ceremony far more expensive and more demonstrative than the first. For this second burial, the children of the deceased would commission a life-size naturalistic sculpture of their dead parent, which they would then dress in gorgeous clothes, put on show for a couple of days, and then bury. This is the second funeral ceremony known as Ako in Owo.11 For the deceased who had been a great hunter in his earthly life, another kind of help was also commonly given. This was made necessary by the belief that the spirits of the animals that the deceased had killed as a hunter could ambush and harass him on his journey to the afterlife and make his journey unpleasant. To prevent such, the hunter’s children would mount a standing, life-size, effigy of their deceased father, dressed in his clothes, on the way to his farm — and the belief was that the animals would fix their attention on the effigy as if it was the hunter himself, while the hunter made an undisturbed journey to the afterlife. This practice was known as epade or ipade.
28. The dead were also believed to reincarnate in their descendants, and to come occasionally to visit their communities. The belief in reincarnation led to the practice of giving personal names that identified some persons in every Yoruba family as reincarnations of departed parents, and the belief in the occasional visits of loved ones from the other world produced the egungun cult. The annual calendar of religious rituals and festivals in every Yoruba community included one or two celebrations when egungun — represented by masked persons believed to be loved ones from the afterlife — walked the streets and visited homes. The egungun came in various types of masks (in combinations of cloth, fronds, varieties of raffia, beautifully carved wooden pieces, decorations with beads, cowry shells, etc.), and for various purposes. Some were very serious, very portentous manifestations specializing in performing rituals beneficial to society. Others went from home to home praying for and blessing people. Yet others entertained people with dancing or with sayings loaded with deep folk wisdom or with tales from Yoruba folklore. Some of the lighter ones just roused their community by fighting mock fights with people in the streets or by bearing whips and playfully chasing young people from compound to compound. In most communities, some prominent lineages came to have unique masks and egungun of their own. The egungun cult in every community had a highly revered priesthood, made up usually of men (since women were not supposed to be exposed to egungun mysteries), but always including one or two highly placed priestesses.
29. From a complex interplay of Yoruba religion and ritual practices and mysteries, of Yoruba knowledge of herbs, the power of herbs and of herbal preparations, of the mysteries of Ifa and divination, and of witchcraft and the occult, there ultimately evolved a more or less distinct profession whose practitioners came to be known as adahunse. The adahunse concerned himself very little (if at all) with herbal medications for health delivery purposes, or with treatment of the sick, or with divination as such. While he would usually know and employ any or all of these skills, his real focus was on the occult employment of herbs and other materials from nature, as well as the use of incantations, curses, charms, and amulets, to enable his clients to accomplish stated social purposes — good purposes such as success and wealth, evil purposes such as hostile occult interference in the lives and affairs of other persons, or power purposes such as protection from certain weapons, or ability to de-materialize, or the ability to engage in out-of-body actions. Usually feared by all the people of his community, the adahunse, in the full maturity of his art, had as his clients mostly rulers (kings, chiefs, warriors), the powerful, the influential and the ambitious, the practitioners of hazardous occupations such as hunting, and other persons seeking success or wealth, or seeking protection from physical or spiritual harm.
30. There were, altogether, many types of associations, guilds and cults in the early Yoruba settlements. But the most visible associations, to which everyone belonged, were the age-grade associations — called egbe, otu or igbamo. Agegrade associations very probably evolved in the earliest days of Yoruba settlements, no doubt in response to the needs of the settlements — to provide an appropriate pool of labor for each of the various functions for which the ruler needed to mobilize people. Depending on age, one team could be called upon to keep the open places in the settlement clean, another to keep paths clear of in-growing bush, another to effect repairs on public houses and shrines, another to give back-up services during large rituals and festivals, etc. Over time, the originally informal teams became formalized and institutionalized into age-grade associations. The youngest association in a settlement was constituted about every third year, and was made up of youths about nine to twelve years of age. The inauguration of the youngest age-grade association became a festival featuring consultations of the Ifa oracle, the ruler’s giving of a name to the new association, and the association’s election of its officers. Persons so elected held the offices for life, and there were two lines of offices — male and female. Over time, age-grade associations developed meetings, rules and regulations, seasonal and annual festivals, etc. Outside one’s own family and lineage, the members of one’s age-grade association came to be one’s closest associates and support in all phases and happenings in one’s life. The public duty of an association depended on its age — from the youngest who kept public places clean, to able-bodied youths whose males could be called to military service, all the way up to the most senior citizens who were revered as the very essential pool of wisdom and guidance for their village.

31. The primary building block of the village was the agbo-ile, the lineage compound.11 Each constituting a home where many families lived together, all of them believing themselves to be one family, the agbo-ile was a wonderfully fertile ground for cultural development, growth and refinement. Almost all the adult male residents lived by farming, supported by their wives and children. A typical day in the agbo-ile, we may imagine, dawned with most residents, in their nuclear families, heading out to the farms, leaving behind the very old, the children, the nursing mothers, and those engaged in home-based occupations (like traders, weavers and dyers and, if there were any, herbalists, babalawo, blacksmiths, etc.). For much of the day, these home-bound folks kept the agbo-ile alive and busy with their various pursuits, while the children played various games in the dust in the open courtyards, under the eyes of the aged and the nursing mothers. The farming folks returned in the late afternoon, bringing head-loads of farm produce and firewood. In the rest of the evening, each family cooked for supper, the main meal of the day. The hours after supper were the great time for socializing in the compound — the men in groups around kegs of palm wine, and the women (still doing all sorts of light domestic chores, like spinning yarn on spindles) gathering the children, if there was no moonlight, to tell stories (usually folktales accompanied with songs and refrains). These night folktale sessions were beautiful experiences in education and artistic expression, and a major contributor to the famed Yoruba wealth in folklore. If the moon was up, the children, joined by those older children who had spent much of the day on the farms, played in the courtyards. Moonlit nights could be very lively, beautiful and noisy in the compound, as the children played running games, engaged in wrestling contests, or put up some drama from their perception of adult life — a wedding, a chieftaincy installation, a festival, a dance, an inter-group disagreement, or a group meeting. In this whole context, Yoruba people invented many types of one-to-one and team games. Lineage meetings were frequent in the compound — some for lineage business, others for the elders to settle quarrels or to try infringements of lineage rules of conduct.
32. Days of celebrations were many in the agbo-ile — village and lineage festivals and rituals, chieftaincy rites, domestic rituals, funerals of departed aged members, weddings. A wedding was a celebration of a new pact and relationship between two (usually unrelated) lineages (the bride’s and the bridegroom’s) and was always accompanied with colorful celebrations in both. In the full development of the Yoruba wedding over the centuries, the processes of the introduction of the contracting lineages to each other, the betrothal ceremony, and the ceremonial journey of the bride to her husband’s lineage compound, all became greatly beautified by Yoruba creativity with dramatized banter, the giving of gifts, and the sharing of feasts. When all these were completed, the two lineages became linked together (ideally in perpetuity) by a bond of love and honor. The birth of a baby was a joyful event in the lineage compound — and for weeks, the oldest women members would serve the baby and its mother as nurses and house-help. Days of mourning were also quite frequent, and every death pulled the whole agbo-ile powerfully together in sorrow. Probably more children died in infancy than survived it. The death of a young adult kept an agbo-ile in mourning for days.
33. The agbo-ile buried its dead in the soil of its own compound and regarded them as continuing to be part of the lineage and as continuing to participate in its affairs. Children — both those who were living and those yet to be born — were regarded as important members of the lineage; in fact, the universal Yoruba belief was that the adults of a lineage held all its things in trust for its living and yet unborn children. In lineage caucuses, respectful references were commonly made to “the ones who went before” and “the ones who will come”; and some of the latter were regarded as direct reincarnations of some of the former — a belief often expressed in the names given to new babies. The agbo-ile took great care to involve its children in its affairs and rituals.
34. Every lineage raised its young in its own image, and equipped them with a strong knowledge of its history — especially its importance in the history of its village. This was the primary root of societal decency, and of the general historical consciousness, of Yoruba people. Children also learned the professions and trades common in their agbo-ile, and this is why trades and professions tended to run in lineages.
35. The professions of the herbalists (onisegun) and the diviners (babalawo) seem to have early developed some built-in dynamic that impelled their practitioners to go further and further afield in order to learn more and more and make wider and wider contacts. It became ultimately a character of the two professions that the onisegun or babalawo who was known to have traveled widely, to have resided in many parts of the country, to have established bonds with many members of his profession in distant places, was regarded as belonging to the peak of his profession. Such persons constituted a specially respected elite that traversed the country regularly and knew it quite well.

36. There was an ancient trade in herbal preparations, mostly a preserve of the herbalists. According to Robin Horton, by the ninth century AD, the Ife zone in central Yorubaland was becoming an area of some importance on the southernmost reaches of the trans-Sahara trade routes from the Mediterranean coast, through the Sahara Desert and the grasslands south of it and across the River Niger. More will be said about this later. Suffice it to say now that this would mean that by the ninth century some goods from the Mediterranean and the Sahara Desert region were entering into the trade of Yorubaland. It would also mean that Yorubaland was by then on the verge of the development of rapidly increasing long-distance trade.
37. Some village markets, as earlier pointed out, became known as the best places to sell or buy particular products, so that people from every village increasingly went there for those products. Over time, it became the way of life in the elu that some village markets were open on certain days and others on other days. In this way, the four-day market cycle peculiar to Yoruba commercial life evolved — each village market being open only every fourth day.
38. The great surprise is that in the face of all these unifying realities, the rulers and people of the villages in the elu setting persisted in regarding each of their villages as separate from its neighbors and as self-contained.
39. The explanation, earlier stated, is that the religious or spiritual guarantees which sustained separateness as the norm were so powerful that no groups internal to an elu could challenge them. That, as far as everybody knew, was the way people lived, and nobody knew any person or group of persons who lived any other way. All of the linkages among the villages in the elu were looked upon, not as negating the separateness of each settlement, but as necessary support for it. The individual settlement was home; beyond that was the outside world. The rules of inheritance and succession fitted perfectly into, and reinforced, such a world view.
40. 3 - Before Oduduwa: Ife in the Ninth to Tenth Century

41. As pointed out in previous chapters, then, we have the suggestion that there were thirteen settlements in the elu in the “Ife bowl” by the ninth or tenth century: Omologun, Parakin, Okeoja, Iloran, Odin, Ideta, Iloromu, Iwinrin, Oke-Awo, Ijugbe, Iraye, Imojubi, and Ido. However, it is important to note that there have also come down to us a few other important names not included in this list of thirteen. These include Ita Yemoo, Ilara, Orun Oba Ado and Idio. Also, some of the bigger settlements among the thirteen had quarters that were quite substantial in their own right, whose names keep showing up as separate settlements — a fact which tends to introduce some confusion into our attempts to ascertain the list of settlements. Finally, once the revolution commenced, the events occasioned by it were violent, tumultuous and long drawn out, and they caused the destruction of many settlements and the temporary emergence of others. The fact that the names of these settlements tossed about in the whirlwind of events also keep occurring in the traditions tends to add much to our difficulties. The consequence of all this is that, in the present state of our knowledge, our list of the tenth century Ife settlements is no more than tentative.
42. According to his findings, Iloromu lay along a stretch of today’s Ife-Ilesa road; Ideta, remembered as the largest of the settlements, lay along today’s road to Mokuro; Odin lay along the modern road to Ifewara; Ijugbe, Okeoja and Iraye were situated a few kilometers west of modern Modakeke, with Iraye being the farthest southwestwards; Ilare and Esije occupied the sites of today’s Sabo and Eleyele, respectively; Iwinrin covered the area of today’s Koiwo and Oronna quarters; Omologun covered part of what is now the campus of Obafemi Awolowo University; Imojubi lay along the modern Ife—Ondo road on the outskirts of today’s city of Ile-Ife. The sites of Ido (which is said to have been a large settlement), Oke-Awo, Iloran and Parakin are difficult to ascertain.
43. If some physical difficulty (like a stream, a piece of marshy ground or a rock) had made it necessary to leave a sizeable gap between quarters, some quarters could look like selfcontained settlements in their own right. Thus, for instance, Ijugbe consisted of four contiguous “villages” — Eranyiba, Ita-Asin, Ipa and Igbogbe; and Ideta consisted of three — Ilale, Ilesun and Ilia. Each agbo-ile was a large sprawling building consisting of a number of courtyards.
44. All relations in this whole system of government of a settlement were deeply rooted in religion — religious and spiritual bonds, proprieties, obligations, rituals. It is very clear in the traditions that a ruler in any of those Ife settlements of the tenth century was, much of the time, more a priest than anything else. The king, or chief, and the shrine belonged together, and the shrine was the heart of the settlement. The power of religion, the reality of supernatural sanctions, upheld and preserved the whole system.
45. Some Ekiti traditions strongly indicate that one Ife marketplace acquired the stature of a central marketplace in the Ife area. According to Olomola (relying on some versions of these Ekiti and Ijesha traditions), such a central marketplace did exist under the name of Oja Igbomoko, and traders came to it from as far away as parts of Ekiti. In early times, the people of the Ife settlements were known collectively as the Igbo — and Igbomoko therefore probably meant “a place for the gathering of the Igbo” (for buying and selling).

46. The settlements in the elu at Ife were therefore very close, not only physically but in many other respects — in their day-to-day pursuits, in their commercial life, in their sharing of special services, etc. The exogamous nature of their marriages interconnected all the settlements in a giant cobweb of human relationships. Consequently, significant events in any settlement (a festival, a wedding or a funeral) drew relatives from all the other settlements. By the tenth century, each settlement had grown so old and so diversified that some marriages could be contracted between persons of the same settlement, but most persons were the offspring of mothers married from other settlements. Some farmlands happened to be more desirable than others — because they were known to receive more rains usually, because they drained better, or because particular crops were known to do especially well on them. Therefore, farms belonging to farmers from different settlements tended to get interlocked in some areas, even though rigid respect for the traditional boundaries remained the norm. Some settlements became known as the leading producers of certain farm products. For instance, Ijugbe became generally recognized as the leader in the production of yams, which means that Ijugbe regularly produced large quantities of yam surpluses for sale. The other settlements generally believed that Ijugbe’s success with yam cultivation was the result of a special favor from its protector god, but the cause, probably, was that Ijugbe’s part of the farmlands was more suitable for certain types of yams. All the settlements also accepted the god of Ijugbe as the special giver of rains, the god to make sacrifices to for better rains for the farms — hence, the saying, “If the rains fail, make sacrifices to the god of Ijugbe.” In consequence, Ijugbe acquired some special prestige among the settlements.
47. In an article first published in the Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria in 1979,2 Robin Horton looks at the agricultural, commercial, and industrial sectors of the economy of Ife by the ninth century, and concludes that by that date Ife’s economy generally was experiencing great expansion. As indicated in Paul Ozanne’s article earlier referred to, the Ife farmlands were mostly very fertile, received adequate rains in the rainy season, were mostly well drained, and were not prone to catastrophic erosion. These conditions provided the base for successful farming from the earliest history of the Ife settlements. That the settlements took good advantage of them and accorded agriculture the highest priority is shown in their traditions. Thus, we have the traditions relating to Orisateko, who is said to have been the hero (or god) who brought yam from heaven — a tradition which, most probably, suggests that some species of yams were domesticated in the Ife farmlands. Another version of the Orisateko traditions, however, has it that Orisateko was one of the most prominent people in the revolution that occurred in the tenth century, a strong man who resisted Oduduwa very successfully for some time. We can be sure that this means that big farmers were heroes in the settlements, and that farming was a very prestigious occupation there by the ninth century. This would seem to be confirmed by the traditions, earlier referred to, that Ijugbe enjoyed special prestige as a settlement because it produced rich surpluses of yams.
48. Also, the cultivation of the kolanut appears to belong to early times, and this crop seems to have become a very important one in the economy of the Ife area by the ninth century. The same appears to be true of the type of kola known as orogbo (Cola garcinia). By the ninth century, before Oduduwa, Ife was already a major producer of oil-palm products (palm oil, palm-kernel oil, palm wine, etc.) as well as of the raffia palm, Raffia vinifera — mostly palm wine. As will be related later in this chapter, Obatala (Oduduwa’s most important opponent) was much given to these wines.
49. The interaction of production surpluses and trade established the foundations of wealth. Ife thus began the journey into greatness - economic, cultural and political - much earlier than the rest of Yorubaland.
50. Perhaps the earliest export merchandise of Ife to the north was kolanut. The earliest scholars to study early kolanut trade in West Africa came to a conclusion that left out the Yoruba forests as a source of kolanut for the trade with the savannah. They postulated that the principal type of kolanut involved in the trade was the Cola nitida (gooro) which existed in the western parts of the West African forests (modern Ghana, etc.) but not in the Yoruba forests; and that the typical Yoruba type of kolanut - obi abata - was not a significant part of the trade. They also thought that the principal route of the kolanut trade started around Kumasi in modern Ghana and ran through the Niger bend to Hausaland, by-passing Yorubaland. In more recent times, however, these opinions have undergone some serious modifications. Babatunde Agiri has pointed out that Cola acuminata was also almost certainly a very significant item in the trade (as was perhaps also orogbo.4 This would make Ife a major player in the kolanut trade.

51. By the ninth century, then, Ife was a center of considerable agricultural and commercial prosperity. But Ife was also prospering as a center of industrial production and already experiencing increasing manufactures of iron, beads and various other products that were to make it by the twelfth century the greatest manufacturing and artistic center in the West African forests.
For the existence of a very strong iron industry in Ife by the ninth century, before Oduduwa, the evidence is unambiguous. Ife appears, indeed, to have already become the major center of iron production in much of West Africa by that date, as well as a supplier of raw iron and iron manufactures (tools, implements, artifacts) to much of Yorubaland. The shrine of Ogunladin (deified blacksmith of Oduduwa), in front of the Ooni’s palace, has a pear-shaped hundredweight of wrought iron which was made in Oduduwa’s time. This, clearly, is a work of very skilled blacksmiths - a level of skill which already existed before Oduduwa. Abundant evidence of a vibrant early iron industry has been found in other parts of Ife. For instance, excavations by P. Garlake at Obalara’s land and at Woye Asiri have revealed, among other things, large quantities of iron nails, some of which seem to have been used in some large wooden construction.
52. 4 - The Revolution in Ife: Tenth to Eleventh Century
53. That direction was initiated by the Reverend Samuel Johnson in his famous The History of the Yorubas which was written in the final years of the nineteenth century and first published in 1921. According to Samuel Johnson, Oduduwa was leader of a group which left Arabia in the Middle East as a result of clashes between Islam and the traditional polytheistic religion of the place, and which finally found its way to Yorubaland and established itself over Ife. Until deep into the twentieth century, some of the best minds available to us in historical scholarship took up Johnson’s lead and followed it, and therefore it is important that we briefly examine the roots of Johnson’s ideas concerning early Yoruba history.
54. A son of Yoruba emigrants (liberated slaves returning home) from Sierra Leone in the nineteenth century, Samuel Johnson was educated for the service of the church. After elementary education in the Church Missionary Society (CMS) mission school in Ibadan, he was sent, for secondary education, to the CMS Training Institution in Abeokuta, where he studied from the age of 16 until he graduated at 20 (in 1866). He then returned to teach in Ibadan until 1882, after which he repeatedly featured in the peace-making missions seeking to end the wars among various Yoruba states in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. The book The History of the Yorubas, which he started to write in these years, was completed in 1897. At the Training Institution in Abeokuta, he had schooled under a German teacher named G.F. Buhler who, while training his students as church workers, gave them a very solid grounding in ancient history - the history of Egypt, Babylon, Greece and Rome. From such beginnings, Johnson developed a strong interest in the history and mythology of the Middle East. Moreover, Johnson’s Yorubaland of the late nineteenth century was increasingly affected by the growth of Islam and Christianity, two world-shaping products of the Middle East.
55. Ultimately, a different direction in the study of Yoruba history developed (as part of a more scientific study of African history in general) which focused on the indigenous evidence, as well as other source material, for the reconstruction of early Yoruba history. Consequent upon these efforts, we now stand able to lay aside, with respect, the Johnsonian hypothesis about the origins of Oduduwa and of the Yoruba. All who study the history of Ife and of the Yoruba people are now generally agreed that the great political changes which began in Ife in about the tenth century were indigenous in their origin, in their unfolding and in their dramatis personae. It is on the soil of Yorubaland that Oduduwa was born and raised; it is only in that soil that his roots can be found.

56. Nevertheless, by carefully sifting through the infinite variety of traditions and versions, we can put together the basic traditional narrative that follows.2 Some small settlements had, for a long time, existed on hills beyond the immediate environs of the settlements in the Ife bowl. At some point in time, one of them moved down, staked claims to some land within the area and started to build a new settlement. Its leader was a man named Oduduwa. Before this group came, there was already an area that the old settlements generally regarded as land for strangers. It was into this area that the group now commonly represented in the traditions as the Oduduwa group moved. From the moment that this group arrived, it was unprepared to accept the claims of precedence by the older settlements; it was also not willing to have any dealings with the existing alliance of kings. All this led to the beginning of conflicts between the Oduduwa group and some of the older settlements, and these conflicts got worse over a long time.
57. Explains that Oduduwa was responsible for the expansion and economic development of the Yorubas.
58. 5 - The Primacy of Ife: Eleventh to Fifteenth Century
59. The period from Oduduwa to the fifteenth century was a period of growing economic and political prosperity and power in the history of Ife.
60. After Oduduwa’s departure from the scene, his aura continued to glow over everything and everybody. His subjects had, of course, seen kings before — indeed some of them had been kings themselves, many were descendants of kings, and most adults had lived in the small pre-Oduduwa kingdoms. But nobody had ever seen a king with the sort of stature and glory that Oduduwa had had as king of Ile-Ife. Not only did the chiefs and priests take steps to deify him, the collective imagination of the masses began to represent him as larger than life.

61. The ancient god of divination, Ifa, also came to bear the name Orunmila, the name of perhaps the greatest Ifa priest in about the time of Oduduwa. Of the other Yoruba kingdoms, only the kingdom of Oyo-Ile shared a little of such religious honor: the ancient god of lightning and thunder (very probably originally known as Jakuta) had his name changed to Sango, the name of an Oyo-Ile king. But even Sango was usually thought of as originating ultimately from Ife.
62. The emergence of other centers of urban population in other parts of Yorubaland (of which an account will be given later) most definitely improved the channels of trade. This meant that more and more trade flowed into and out of Ile-Ife. After some time, some of the newly arisen kingdoms became important secondary centers of trade. Of these, perhaps the earliest were Oyo-Ile in the north, Ijebu-Ode in the southwest, Ilesa in the east, Owo in the southeast and some of the Ekiti kingdoms. Meanwhile, the coastal east-west lagoon trade was producing a significant center of trade in the far southeast, namely Benin.
63. Continuing a trend initiated in Oduduwa’s time, certain aspects of Ife’s industrial production became special buttresses of the political system and, therefore, matters for close royal regulation. The most important of these was the bead industry. In the first place, increasingly from Oduduwa’s time, beads became the distinctive material component of royal grandeur - beads in the making of crowns, insignia, scepters, ceremonial royal fans and horse-tail fly-whisks, beads on the royal person as necklaces, bracelets and anklets, beads woven into the royal regalia and into the braided hair of royal females.
64. Omitted.
65. To be continued.


1. Like all status ritualistic objects connected with the monarch, the brass sculptures were produced in secluded workshops and facilities. Each was produced during the lifetime of the Ooni whose head was being represented in brass or bronze, and it was most probably meant to be an exact portrait of him — accomplished through the lost-wax method of metal casting.
2. The production of these sculptures went on for about five centuries and then came to a more or less abrupt end in the fifteenth century. For five centuries, the sculptures had been a very important component of the symbolism of the Ooni’s royal majesty. What seems to have happened is that, as the economic foundations of Ife’s greatness eroded during the fifteenth century, much of the political greatness came to be lost, and economic and political realities brought some symbols of the Ooni’s power and pageantry, such as the naturalistic brass representations of royalty, to an end.
3. The above naturalistic sculptures in brass or bronze for royal purposes were only part of a very rich and vibrant artistic culture in the kingdom of Ife, and in Yorubaland in general, in the centuries beginning with Oduduwa’s time. The quality of wood scultures improved continually. Brass and bronze were also used in the making of accessories like bangles for ankles (ide ese), wrists (ide owo), and necks (egba orun), and for various ritual or decorative objects like stools, staffs, bells, vessels, and ceremonial or official rods. Silver also came into use - in accessories like bangles and rings, as well as in some decorative items for lineage compounds and palaces.
4. In addition to many impressive sculptural products in wood, clay, brass/ bronze, and iron, this period in Ife and Yoruba history also produced many important stone products — in stone carvings and stelae for shrines, and in human figures, many of which are naturalistic. Of all the stone works done in Ife, the most famous is the sculpture known as Opa Oranmiyan (Staff of Oranmiyan), which is located in a small shrine in the heart of Ile-Ife. Opa Oranmiyan is a shaft made of granite, standing over eighteen feet high (with an estimated one foot buried in the ground), and having iron nails studded in a curious pattern along its whole height. This stone sculpture was most probably produced to commemorate some important event in Ife’s history, while its pattern of nail studs must also have had some symbolic meaning; unfortunately, both meanings are unknown to us today.
5. Because these sculptures, as naturalistic art, stand far above and beyond any other found in tropical Africa, there has been much debate concerning them. Frobenius expressed the opinion that, since no indigenous African civilization could have produced this level of naturalistic art, it must be that “a race far superior to the Negro had settled here.” Such opinions persisted for decades, for quite understandable reasons. First, it seemed as if the tradition of brass or bronze casting was unknown in the modern city of Ile-Ife. Secondly, it seemed that similar art traditions did not exist in the region to which Ile-Ife belongs, including all the rest of Yorubaland. In short, then, the naturalistic sculptural art of ancient Ile-Ife seemed like an isolated occurrence in the history of the region, an isolation that thus raised legitimate doubts about its indigenous origins. However, in the course of the twentieth century, most of the supposed isolation disappeared. Some survivals of the brass/bronze sculptural tradition have been discovered in modern Ile-Ife; and evidence has come to light that the art tradition existed in many other places in Yorubaland (for instance in Owo, and in Obo-Aiyegunle in northern Ekiti, in Ijebu-Ode, etc). By the late twentieth century, therefore, there was no serious doubt left that the Yoruba people were in fact the creators of this naturalistic art tradition that ranks easily with the best in the history of the world.

6. Kings and Reigns
7. It is against the general background described above, then, that the reigns of Ife kings from the eleventh century to the fifteenth century must be viewed. By and large, it was a long period of economic growth and political stability, punctuated by comparatively minor political troubles and short periods of drought and famine. Historical interpretations that see apparent intrusions into the royal line as proof of violent political disturbances most probably exaggerate.
7. Finally, from looking at the names of the kings as well as some versions of the traditions, some historians have come to the conclusion that the pre-Oduduwa ruling families must have somehow made their way to the throne of Ile-Ife at certain times in the years after Oduduwa. Such an occurrence is not necessarily improbable. However, since we do not have definitive information to this effect, we need to look also at other possibilities. For instance, intermarriages among the leading families must have been common. Intermarriages would produce situations in which the pre-Oduduwa ruling families would have members born into the royal family. In the contest for the selection of king, an influential family would normally support the princely candidate close to itself by blood - and the victory of such a candidate could be couched in the traditions as the victory of the influential family that pushed his candidature. Also, intermarriages could have resulted in the interposition of typical family names - so that some royal princes could bear names drawn from their maternal ancestry. We do not know for sure whether either of these things happened at any point, but the possibility of either needs to be borne in mind.
8. Oduduwa was succeeded by a man identified in the traditions as his son. However, the picture at this point is not too clear. Whoever succeeded him was, of course, officially his son; but the traditions are so complicated that this successor may have been his biological son or grandson, a close relative of his, one of his most loyal followers, or even one of his closest adherents from among the leading families of the pre-Oduduwa settlements. Some traditions name this successor as Ogun, but the name by which he has come down most clearly is Obalufon Ogbogbodinrin (probably Obalufon, follower, or maker, of the straight path) Obalufon Ogbogbodinrin is said to have been a very impressive personality. His subjects said of him that he shone like a large sun in the sky; hence, his other cognomen Osangangan-Obamokin (roughly, “the great sunlight that illuminates the earth at the height of day”). All traditions agree that his reign was long, and that it was peaceful most of the way. Towards the end of his life, he seems to have done something (or some things) that caused trouble with some sections of the kingdom’s leadership. Whatever the problem was, it spilled into the reign of his son and successor, Obalufon Alayemore. By then, the dissidents had grown so strong that the king himself died fighting them. Alayemore’s son or younger brother, Obalufon Ejigimogun, who was crowned after him, plunged straight into the same trouble.
9. At this point, there appeared on the scene one of the greatest, one of the most enigmatic, characters in the early history of the Ife kingdom, Oranmiyan. One of the youngest grandsons of Oduduwa, Oranmiyan was probably the foremost warrior prince and adventurer that the Ife kingdom ever produced. According to many traditions, after prolonged adventures that took him to Benin in the southeast and to the Niger Valley in the northwest, he returned to Ile-Ife, welcomed back by all as Akinlogun (hero in battle). Finding the king, Obalufon Ejigimogun, confronted by strong opponents led by a personage named Orisateko, he intervened, crushed Orisateko and his followers, drove Ejigimogun into exile, and accepted the throne. His intervention brought the troubles to a complete end. His reign was peaceful and long, lasting seventy years according to some traditions.
10. The tradition, made popular by Samuel Johnson in his The History of the Yorubas, of a radical change of the royal line from Oduduwa’s descendants to some older Ife family, probably derives from the traditions relating to this period.

11. Some traditions indicate that a woman Ooni reigned during this time. The political picture of this period is so cloudy, however, that a clear statement of its happenings and developments is extremely difficult. On the whole, what we seem to have here is a period characterized by frequent and tortuous succession disputes. The chosen system of selection of a king was still in its infancy, and it was prone to pitfalls, interferences and dissonance. Stories of seizures of power and change in the line of succession fit temptingly easily into the picture, but none of them are easy to authenticate. In the final analysis, the clearest feature in the picture is that the kingdom of Ife, in these its apparently stormy early years, continued to move forward as one kingdom, continued to grow in economic and cultural prosperity at home, and continued to rise in luminance, adoration and influence in the rest of Yorubaland.
12. Meanwhile, the system of government of the Ife kingdom evolved slowly but surely. About the ultimate form of that government, more will be said in another chapter. In the kingdom of Ife, the final outlines of the monarchical government of the Yoruba people were developed in the first few centuries after Oduduwa.
13. The Ife kingdom gradually became the exalted leader of the world around, not by the use of arms, but by the influence of its commerce and the expansion of its enormous cultural heritage. As the other Yoruba kingdoms emerged, each of them acknowledged Ife as head, and looked up to Ife as source of life and light rather than as a rival.
14. 6 - Traditions of Kingdom Founders
15. It is known that in other parts of Yorubaland, the following are also mentioned among the earliest kingdoms founded by princes from Ife: the Ilesa kingdom founded by Ajibogun (also known as Obokun), the Ijebu-Ode kingdom founded by Obanta, the Owo kingdom founded by Ojugbelu (and his son Imade), the Ado kingdom in Ekiti founded by Awamaro, some other Ekiti kingdoms, the Ode-Ondo kingdom founded by the Osemowe, and others.
16. Causes of the Migrations
17. All this raises the question: Why did people go out on these kingdom-founding adventures? What factors or incentives were at work in Yoruba society that made so many prominent persons leave their homes to go and found kingdoms and that made many ordinary folks go with them into largely unknown forests?
The Ife palace traditions quoted above present the earliest kingdom founders as only loyally responding to the expressed desire of their great progenitor. However, some verses of Odu Ifa offer a purely economic explanation. According to those verses, the Ife kingdom, very early in its history, suffered a severe famine caused by a long drought. The famine was made the more devastating by the fact that the city was overpopulated. The rulers of the kingdom therefore sought counsel from the Ifa oracle and, through a priest named Agirilogbon (a resident of Ita Asin in Ile-Ife), the oracle counseled that some of the people of Ile-Ife should migrate to other parts of the country. The rulers accepted the counsel and embarked on encouraging the Ile-Ife citizens, led by their princes, to go out and found new kingdoms like the Ife kingdom.
18. This tradition would, therefore, make Ketu the oldest existing kingdom established in other parts of Yorubaland by persons from Ife.
19. Reminds me of the cultural and intellectual contributions that I have personally made to American society.
20. Concerning this, some historians have, rightly, counseled caution in our acceptance of the traditions of the origins of Yoruba ruling dynasties, pointing out that, in particular, probably many of the traditions of origin from Ife are open to question or even doubt. Yet there is a sense in which all Yoruba kingdoms can be said to originate in Oduduwa and Ife. Oduduwa and Ife gave the Yoruba people their first kingdom, elaborated the structure of their type of kingdom, and pointed all of the Yoruba people in the direction to this higher level of political existence.

21. No decline in the fortunes of the Ife kingdom itself seems to have been enough to shake this belief. For instance, at the time that Samuel Johnson made our first written collection of the traditions in the last decades of the nineteenth century, there was no incentive for any Yoruba kingdom to claim an Ife origin for its ruling dynasty. Ife was in ruins (for the second time in about three decades), its badly shrunken population was camped in a small farm village called Isoya, the site of the ancient city itself was covered by thick bush, and there was not even a king over Ife (the man selected as Ooni remained uncrowned in exile some forty miles to the south, in the village of Oke-Igbo in the Ondo country).
22. In spite of this situation, the strongest and proudest states of the Yoruba people of the time unhesitatingly, and with all gravity, recounted to Johnson and other writers the traditions of the coming of Yoruba dynasties from Ife. Obviously, the most that we can say about this subject is that our knowledge of this important development in Yoruba history — the processes of the emergence of the Yoruba kingdoms and the growth of the powerful belief in Ife and Oduduwa as the source and springhead of Yoruba kings — is still limited.
23. Ways and Means of the Kingdom Founders
24. The end result was always a new community, the beginning of an Ile-Ife type of city. At its beginning, the new community always comprised many clearly defined groups. First, there was each of the old settlements led by its own ruler. The immigrant group too consisted of segments. The overall immigrant leader had his own personal following (his family and relatives and other persons directly attached to him). Then there were prominent men who had agreed to come with him, each bringing a group comprising his own personal following (family, relatives and persons directly attached to them).
25. The Kingdoms of Yorubaland

26. The other considerable kingdom in the Ife forests was Ifewara, a short distance to the southeast. Ifewara was founded, as would be remembered, probably about one century after the foundation of Ife, by a prince, Olojo Agbele, who migrated from Ile-Ife after being rejected for the Ife throne. Olojo Agbele came with his large following to a group of old settlements, and these were glad to receive him as their king.
27. Not much is known about the pre-nineteenth century history of the Ilaje. The nature of their country made large centers of population impossible. But it does not seem to have made the concept of kingdom, of a group of settlements owing allegiance to a king, impossible. During the centuries marked by the creation of kingdoms in Yorubaland, the coastal spread of Ilaje settlements appears to have gradually come to recognize two kingdoms — an eastern kingdom with its royal center at the small old settlement of Ugbo ruled by the Olugbo, and a western kingdom with its royal center at another small settlement called Mahin ruled by the Omopetu. Roughly, the eastern Ilaje villages accepted the Olugbo as their king, and the western Ilaje villages acknowledged the Omopetu as their king.
28. The details of the process that resulted in the emergence of these two kingdoms are obscure. Like all the other peoples living in the lagoons, the Ilaje were principally a fishing people living in small, mostly remote, settlements. Their traditions, and even surviving practices, indicate that these settlements were shrouded in spiritual rituals based on the worship of various traditional Yoruba gods and water spirits. These deities and spirits mediated disputes on conflicting claims over fishing rights and enforced high standards of probity.
29. According to the Ondo palace traditions, a royal wife in Oduduwa’s palace in Ife had twins, one female and one male. Since having twins was regarded with horror or fear in those early days among the Yoruba, the woman was driven from the town with her twin babies.
30. The Extreme Northeastern Subgroups

31. The Northern Kingdoms
32. The country of the Ibolo, sandwiched between the Igbomina and Oyo countries, is small. The Ibolo and their much larger Igbomina neighbors were so closely related in their history that some Igbomina traditions regard the Ibolo as a branch of Igbomina. A number of kingdoms were founded in the Ibolo country — Offa, Ikirun, Okuku and others. Of these, the most prominent in history was Offa. Offa traditions trace the origin of the founder of the kingdom to the Oyo country. The Offa kingdom takes great pride in its peacock (or okin) symbol (for which reason Offa people are known as “omo-olokin”), and the Offa people are reputed among all Yoruba people for their passion for wrestling — hence the saying, “Ijakadi l’oro Offa” (“wrestling is Offa’s favorite festival”). According to Okuku traditions, the founder of the Okuku kingdom was a prince of the Ara kingdom in Ekiti who emigrated in protest after he was passed over in a selection to the Ara throne.
33. To be continued.


1. 8 - The Politics of Kingdom Rule
2. The Yoruba kingdoms came into existence during the long period of about six or seven centuries starting in about the eleventh century. The present chapter will attempt to describe general trends and themes in their history, with the exception of the Oyo-Ile kingdom, in the period ending with 1800. From the sixteenth century, Oyo-Ile achieved such successes that set it above the general family of Yoruba kingdoms and made its history a significant chapter in the history of the Yoruba people. Consequently, a subsequent chapter will be devoted to the outstanding history of the Oyo-Ile kingdom.
3. The immediate, most visible, result of the creation of each kingdom was the emergence of the new king’s city, Ilualade, which we shall here call the royal city or royal town. In every kingdom, the royal city amalgamated the populations of the pre-existing settlements and the immigrant founders of the kingdom. The most important consequence of the amalgamation was the almost sudden rise of a town of considerable population. From about the eleventh century to about the eighteenth century, then, Yoruba people saw such significant centers of population springing up all over their homeland.
As soon as one of these cities arose, inhabitants of settlements in the neighboring forests tended to migrate into it and thereby quickly increase its population. Usually, most of these people came as single families or lineages; but sometimes whole settlements moved. The total effect of all this was that the Yoruba became increasingly an urban-dwelling people. Ultimately, they became the most urbanized people in the tropical African forests.
4. In most cases, it would seem, the creation of the royal city was effected by destroying the pre-existing settlements and massing all their population and that of the immigrants together in one area, just as had happened in the case of Ile-Ife. The founders of Ilesa destroyed many pre-existing settlements, and so did the founders of Owo through a long-drawn-out war. In Ijebu-Ode, however, Obanta and his followers simply took control of the place as they found it, and then began to build the structures of one common city — a palace, the king’s marketplace, and city walls. The founders of the Ado kingdom under Awamaro in Ekiti did much the same as Obanta. The old settlements here were stretched out around the foot of the Olota Rock. Awamaro left them where they were, and settled his immigrant followers as a continuation of the chain around the foot of the rock. Then he established a palace and the king’s market place, and began to build the city walls.
5. Thus, as would be remembered from an earlier chapter, the population of each royal city or town was made up of many distinct segments — many distinct old settlements each under its own ruler, and many distinct segments of the immigrant group, each under a sub-leader who accepted the leadership of the overall immigrant leader. In the new royal city or town, each of these segments settled as a quarter under its own leader as quarter chief, and they and their quarter chiefs acknowledged the over-all leader of the immigrant group as king.

6. Creating the Royal Government
7. From the above steps, there followed the formulation of the system of royal government in the royal cities — a process that was apparently made easy for most cities by the fact that the basic outlines of a Yoruba monarchical system had become generally familiar. The initial order of seniority among the quarter chiefs was based on various factors. In general, the leading chiefs of the largest quarters became, in principle, the most senior chiefs in the new kingdom. But in practice, almost in every kingdom, other factors influenced the order of seniority — such as how high the ancestry of the new quarter chief had been in the place from which the immigrant group came; whether the new quarter chief had been, in his own right, a famous person before joining the migration; and how personally close to the new king the new quarter chief was. If, subsequently, a migrant group arrived to join the king’s city, the King’s Council met to decide the appropriate slot in the whole system for the newly arriving immigrant leader. Over time, the King’s Council established lower chieftaincies for the streets of each quarter, to assist the quarter chief. A quarter chief could recommend to the king’s government the creation of such a lower chieftaincy, and also recommend the lineage to be vested with it.
8. The initial highest group of the quarter chiefs became the King’s Council (or Inner Council), and its membership usually numbered five (occasionally more, but hardly ever more than seven). In addition to providing leadership in their quarters, the members of the King’s Council met with the king daily in the palace (as the King-in-Council) to take all decisions affecting the kingdom.
9. The King-in-Council also served as the kingdom’s highest Court of Appeal. The king was prohibited from taking decisions of state outside this King-in-Council, but all its decisions were presented to the people as the king’s decisions.
10. The highest council of state bore different names in different kingdoms (Olori-Marun, Oyo Mesi, Ihare, etc.) but its composition and functions were roughly the same in all kingdoms. The composition of this council was deemed as perpetual; the chieftaincies included in it could not, usually, be removed, and the number of its members could not be increased or decreased without an exceptionally important decision of the council itself.
Below this highest level of government, there were other important councils on which the other quarter chiefs served. Each of these met in the palace also, not every day but each on its traditionally appointed day of the week. The “kings decisions” on any matter were reported first to these meetings as appropriate and, at this level, they would be discussed and the message could be sent up to the king to modify them.

11. When the “king’s decisions and orders” had been thus formulated and finally settled, they were communicated to the populace through well established channels. Usually, the simpler decisions and orders were announced to the people of the royal city through an official town crier who would go through the streets in the cool of the late evening, at short intervals strike a gong to attract attention, and then proclaim, “The king, the owner of the world, greets you all, and says so and so”. At the sound of the gong, the citizens would stop everything and listen, and when the announcement was completed, they would answer back from their homes, “May the king’s will be done.” Besides this occasional process, royal decisions and orders in general reached the citizenry through the detailed and powerful channels laid out in the system. Each quarter chief informed meetings of the lower chiefs and lineage heads of his quarter; each lower chief informed meetings of the people of his street; each lineage head informed the meeting of his lineage compound. The high chief who served as the official liaison between the royal government and the Baale (ruler or minor king) of a subordinate town or village informed the Baale, and the processes carried out in the royal city were then replicated in the subordinate town or village. All the chiefs and officials involved in these processes also bore the very important responsibility of seeing to the implementation of the king’s decisions and orders in their respective areas of authority.
12. In addition to serving on the various councils of state and as the executive in their various spheres of authority, most highly placed chiefs also bore some executive responsibility in the kingdom at large. The most senior member of the King’s Council served as Prime Minister and was regarded as second-in-command in the kingdom. Holders of other titles served in lower, but important positions — special friend of the king, liaison officer between the king and other organs of state, bearers of particular duties in the king’s installation ceremonies, overseer of the palace, overseer of the marketplace, officer in charge of particular city gates, keeper of the king’s regalia and crowns, officer in charge of the purse, etc. Of these various special functions, perhaps the most important was the selection of a new king. The monarchy was hereditary in the royal family, but, as earlier pointed out, all male members of that family (sons and grandsons of former kings) qualified to be selected as king. In general, the Yoruba people rejected the principle of primogeniture (automatic succession of a king by his oldest child) and even any succession of a king directly by his own biological son. In some kingdoms, this was carried so far that certain categories of a king’s offspring were totally excluded from selection as king. For instance, at different points in the history of the kingdoms, it came to be laid down in the Ado (Ekiti) kingdom that the Ewi’s first son (titled Abilagba) could never be selected as Ewi, and in the Oyo-Ile kingdom that the Alaafin’s first son (titled Aremo) could never be selected as Alaafin.
13. A small standing committee of the highest quarter chiefs served as the Council of Kingmakers. Selection by this body was always final, and any agitation after the selection was deemed an extremely high crime. While the Council of Kingmakers was still busy considering the candidates, however, its members could be lobbied by agents and supporters of the candidates and by other members of the public. But while the council was obliged to keep itself open to the currents of opinion in the public, it owed the very critical responsibility of not letting any citizen have any idea how its mind was working. Its members were forbidden, on oath, to divulge its information even to members of their own families. For this reason, its members would reject no candidate’s gifts — or, if the decision were to accept no gifts, would reject gifts from all candidates and their agents. The level of accountability and discipline expected of the Council of Kingmakers was very high. And once the selection was made, the chosen prince was handed immediately to the officials and priests responsible for the first steps in the process of installation. Usually, most members of the public might not even be aware a king had been chosen until the heavily ritualized installation process had gone some way.
14. Another small standing committee of high chiefs bore a responsibility that could occasionally be far from pleasant. the Yoruba system provided that a king could be removed if he habitually acted beyond the established controls on royal power, or if he made himself repulsive through greed, tyrannical tendencies or immorality. In such situations, a committee of the high chiefs existed to counsel, admonish or even rebuke the king in strict privacy. If the king would not mend his ways, the situation could develop to the point that this committee would bring the matter before the other councils of state as well as before the Ogboni (described in Chapter 4) — and the decision could be taken to remove the king. Once, however, a Yoruba man had been installed king, he could never revert to ordinary citizenship in his kingdom or in any other kingdom. Deposition or exile was therefore not an option. The small committee of chiefs would approach him respectfully and urge him to “go to sleep” because the duties of kingship had become too burdensome for him. In some kingdoms they would present him with a covered empty calabash, in others a parrot’s egg. All these symbols had only one meaning — the king was being asked to remove himself with dignity by committing suicide, and he would do so. Briefing the incoming king about all this (and instructing and equipping him for it) was part of the process of installation. Usually, the new king lived in a special compound outside the palace for a few months for such briefing as well as for important rituals, while the palace was being prepared to receive him.
15. All the chieftaincies touched upon above, from the very highest quarter chieftaincies to the lowest street chieftaincies, were, like the monarchy, hereditary in particular lineages. When the holder of any hereditary chieftaincy died, his lineage selected from among its members a suitable candidate for the king’s government to accept and install. Being suitable meant that the candidate enjoyed strong support of his lineage and was adjudged by the king and his council as deserving of the position and as an asset to the interests of the kingdom. The use of selection in the appointment of public officials (kings and chiefs) usually meant that each Yoruba kingdom or community was served by very capable persons. To earn selection as a chief, for instance, one had to be strongly acceptable to one’s lineage, be broadly respectable in the community, be a manifestly good manager of one’s own nuclear family, be a hard-working and achieving person. The selectors of kings looked for these same qualities in the princes, as well as for a modest yet princely bearing. In short, to be selected and inducted into the formal titled elite, the Yoruba person had to belong to an elite of character and personality.

16. Besides the hereditary titles, there were some titles that were not hereditary — like those of the war chiefs, commanders of the citizen armies in time of war. Usually, the king’s government appointed from the citizenry for these titles, men who had distinguished themselves in some way; an arrangement which usually produced very capable military commanders. Holders of military chieftaincies held their titles for life.
17. Over this whole system, the Yoruba king or Oba reigned in every kingdom of the Yoruba people, surrounded unceasingly by grandeur, pomp and ceremony. To his subjects, he was so high above all humans that it was prohibited to call him by his personal name; instead, he and the high chiefs chose an appropriate cognomen for him — some grand composition from the history or circumstance of their kingdom, or from their hopes for the new reign. In the various kingdoms and dialects, the Oba’s inexhaustible oriki included countless names — such as Ekeji Orisa (companion or lieutenant or likeness of the gods), Alaye (owner of the world), Alase (owner of all power or authority), Agbogbomojaekun (the all-powerful leopard that stalks the wicked and the lawless, and therefore the strength of the weak against the injustice of the strong), Iku (death — that kills, so that society, and order in society, may live), and Babayeye (father and mother — for every one of his subjects). He was too much like a god to visit any private home or to be seen ordinarily in the streets, and if his natural parents were alive, he must never set eyes on them. He must never step on any floor that had not been broom-swept that day, and he must drink or otherwise use only water that was freshly fetched from the springs that day. Those who fetched his water had to be unmarried young females, and they had to do so naked — and protected from meeting anybody on their way. Those who prepared his food did so under the strictest supervision. He must not be seen by anybody while he ate or drank. If he needed to drink when people were present, he must be screened off in the act. For his subjects, it was a great blessing to see their king on the few festivals when he ceremonially showed his person — adorned, on his throne, in gorgeous clothes, and wearing the beaded crown with the dangling beaded frills veiling his face. If he graciously spoke to the assembled crowd, no citizen would hear his voice; one of the high chiefs would echo his words. On a daily basis, even the highest chiefs greeted the Oba on their knees before the throne (even if he was not there), and any citizen passing by the gate of the palace paid respect on bended knees.
18. Universally, Yoruba people thought of the title of king as a title exclusively for men. In reality, however, many Yoruba kingdoms had women rulers in their history.
19. Most of what has been written in the above paragraphs concerns the commanding heights of the governmental system of the Yoruba kingdoms. However, it is important to note that, on the whole, governance involved the broad spectrum of the community — that is, that the system was considerably open and participatory. Thus, for instance, the political system featured, from the lowest to the highest levels, important, established, meetings. The primary level, or base, of the system, was the lineage in its compound. The lineage had many important corporate assets, interests and functions, for which general and special lineage meetings were held. There were all-member meetings to take decisions on the care, maintenance, improvement, or expansion of the lineage’s sprawling compound, the management of issues arising from members’ use of parts of the lineage farmland and the conditional admission of non-members thereto, the sharing of certain common goods (like the tolls paid by non-members for permission to use the lineage’s farmland), arrangements for weddings and funerals of members (and for participation in such events in other closely related lineages), arrangements for festivals and rituals, selection of the chief (if a chieftaincy title was domiciled in the lineage), reception and consideration of decisions and directives from higher levels of government. And then there were special leaders’ meetings for the settlement of disputes and quarrels, for trying cases of indiscipline and assigning punishment, for consultation of the oracles and carrying out of sacrifices for the welfare of the lineage, and for the disposal of a deceased member’s belongings. Beyond the lineage compound, the age-grade associations, of which all citizens were members, had appointed days for their all-member meetings — for the purpose of carrying out their duties to the community, and for mobilizing support for members during important events in their lives (and also for holding association feasts and festivals). Each chief of a street had appointed days for meetings with lineage heads in his street (and also held occasional meetings of all the people of his street) — mostly for the purpose of disseminating the decisions and directives of the king’s government, and for other matters affecting the street. For these types of purposes too, each quarter chief had appointed days of meetings with the street chiefs, and with the lineage heads, in his quarter. Over most important matters, it was established practice that the palace government consulted directly with leaders of lineages and age-grade associations, as well as with leaders of professional and trade associations — like the hunters’ association, market commodity associations, the diviners’ association, the herbalists’ association, the priestly leaders of all cults, etc. Very important also was the fact that, as would be remembered, every citizen was in a position to influence the selection of a prince as king, through contact with the Council of Kingmakers or its members. In every kingdom, there were days traditionally designated as days of town meetings, when citizens who cared to come would solemnly gather at the palace (always early in the morning) with the high chiefs (with the king in usually concealed attendance), hear their chiefs over important current issues, ask questions and express opinions. In every kingdom also, there were one or two special festival days in the year on which people paraded peacefully in crowds through the streets and openly voiced criticisms of their chiefs and king (and satirized them), usually in impromptu and crudely composed songs — without any intervention from the authorities and without any repercussions whatsoever. Also, in every Yoruba community, certain classes of persons (like musicians, singers, humorists, egungun masquerades, and certain categories of priests) enjoyed a near sacred freedom to voice their feelings or thoughts (whether serious or humorous) about kings, chiefs, prominent citizens, and everyone else.
20. On the whole, therefore, the typical system of government of a Yoruba kingdom had a considerably democratic character, and the Yoruba people in general were strongly established in the tradition of participation in the making of decisions that affected their lives in the community. At every level, (even on the occasions when ordinary citizens gathered for meetings with the chiefs in the palace), the system enshrined freedom of speech; in fact, at certain levels (such as in the lineage), it was regarded as a sacred duty of the leader to ensure that every component section of the lineage and every individual had a say before a decision was concluded — because every member was regarded as a chip of the ancestors. As for the women of the lineage (called obirin-ile — women married into the compound), no compound would take an important decision without involving and hearing its women. In fact, in certain matters (like weddings and some aspects of some festivals), leadership in the compound sometimes belonged more to the women than to the men. Lineages took meticulous care to involve their children in everything, and children’s celebrations were common in lineages. For their part, the age-grades operated in a tradition of very conscious respect for the opinions of members. In the affairs of age-grade associations, it was not uncommon for a well-attended meeting to decide to suspend decision on an issue if it was felt that absent members needed to be given a chance to voice their opinion. And if things were shared in a meeting, the association would go to great lengths to see that absent members received their shares, no matter how small the shares were. Participation in an age-grade’s community tasks was compulsory for all members, and members who were absent for reasons other than sickness had to make some payment to their association. The effect of all this on the individual was that he or she was usually confident to speak (and could be quite eloquent) as a member of the community, and was used to being respected by those who held positions of authority over him or her in the community. This, then, is the basic outline of the system of government under which Yoruba people lived in their many kingdoms until Europeans came and imposed foreign rule on Yorubaland. To complete the description, a number of facts need to be briefly noted. Although each kingdom gave its own unique institutional and functional interpretations to various details of the system, the governments of the kingdom’s were, in essence, remarkably similar. Chieftaincy titles, and the functions assigned to titles, might vary somewhat from kingdom to kingdom, but a Yoruba person traveling through, or relocating to, another part of the country knew broadly what to expect in terms of governance, the laws, and the functionaries of state. This served to a great extent to facilitate contacts, internal migrations and relocations, and broad intermixture and integration of Yoruba people throughout the Yoruba homeland.

21. The system was not without significant weaknesses, however. One of the most important weaknesses inhered in the system of selection of kings from members of the royal family. In spite of the Olympian solidity and responsibility presumed of the Council of Kingmakers, selection occasionally generated an open contest and dispute, with all that this implied. The laws made it a high crime to protest after the selection had been made, and that sometimes meant criminal trials and stiff punishments — including executions. But even though an aggrieved prince might not be able to protest (with his supporters) in the streets, he could cause other painful troubles for the state: he was free to emigrate, taking family, friends and sympathizers with him — usually a very sad event in the life of a royal town. The fear of provoking this painful outcome always weighed heavily with the Council of Kingmakers and made its members usually meticulously cautious and responsible; but sometimes, its very best performance proved insufficient to prevent this trouble. One cumulative consequence of all this was that interregnums or short-term disruptions were not unknown in the system. Similar problems also attended the selection of chiefs at lower levels of the system. Given the large number of chiefly positions in each kingdom, chieftaincy contests and disputes tended to be a rather frequent feature of the life of every city.
22. Another source of weakness was the provision for the removal of kings. Ordinarily, this provision was very infrequently invoked and, whenever invoked, usually passed quite quietly. But it was not unknown for kings who were urged to “go to sleep” (or who saw it coming) to slip out of the palace and flee into exile, and whenever that happened, it usually shut down the high functions of the monarchy — because then the royal funeral rites could not be performed, a new king could not be enthroned, and vacant chieftaincy titles could not be filled. In such a tight predicament, the high chiefs commonly fabricated legends (such as that the king turned into a great animal and went into the wild, or that he simply entered into the earth) — in order to calm the populace, and in order to manipulate the priests into agreeing to undertake alternative rituals. But the problem would usually not end with the installation of another king; the authorities of the kingdom would for long be engaged in efforts to ensure that the news of their self-exiled king would not seep back home. It could be a very destabilizing circumstance. And, therefore, it was quite common for self-exiled kings to be quietly invited back to their thrones.
23. Finally, the limited monarchy of the Yoruba presupposed a king who was well adjusted to, and respected, the systemic limitations placed on royal power, and the whole system was managed in ways that were designed to ensure this. For instance, it was for this reason that the Council of Kingmakers took care, ideally, not to select as king a prince who was powerful, rich or influential in his own right — for fear that their king might claim later that he had obtained the throne on his own strength. Consequently, the history of every kingdom is replete with stories of rich or influential princes who were passed over for their humbler brothers or cousins. Many details in the installation rituals, and the intensive briefing of the new king in a special compound for some months before being taken to the palace, were designed to communicate and inculcate the true nature of the kingship. So too were many seasonal and annual rituals, including the ritualized recounting of the kingdoms history during certain festivals. In spite of all this sophisticated structuring, however, and in spite of all the grandeur attending to kings, it sometimes happened that a kingdom would find itself with a king who exhibited inappropriate ambition or troublesome independence — a king who thereby brought stress upon the whole system by threatening the balances crucial to its stability. Also, though much more rarely, Yoruba traditions tell of chiefs below the level of king who became ambitious and aggressive, and sought to readjust the systemic balances in favor of their particular chieftaincies — thus setting off unhealthy rivalry or conflicts among chiefly lineages. Whenever any of these situations developed, the monarchical system experienced troubles and even instability.
24. Religion and the State
As had been the case in the small ancient settlements before Oduduwa’s time, the governance of every Yoruba kingdom was deeply rooted in religion. The king was, as earlier pointed out, a “companion of the gods.” Every act, function or affair of state was anchored on the gods of the nation. The annual calendar of every kingdom was marked with many days of public festivals, holidays and feasts for the gods, some such festivals occasioning mammoth public celebrations usually centered on the palace. Shrines, large or small, stood at significant locations in every town or village — at town gates, at many locations in the palace, at the market place, and in every quarter. Besides such public shrines, every lineage compound had a small shrine of its own, at which the leader and elders of the lineage performed rituals and offered sacrifices to the gods and the ancestors for the welfare of the lineage.
25. The Yoruba king was a sacred king. His selection, installation and daily life as king were all shrouded in religious mystery, rituals, observances and sacrifices. The installation of a newly selected king involved a round of rituals at many shrines (located not only in the royal city but also in some towns and villages in his kingdom), as well as initiation into various mysteries. When the process was completed, the king emerged from it a sacred being. Therefore, for any citizen to touch the person of a king (not to talk of striking him) was ultimate sacrilege. Typically, there were, in the year, only a very few days in which some sacrifices were not offered in the palace to one or more of the hundreds of gods worshipped by the Yoruba people. The king was the highest priest of the kingdom, and all the high priests of all the cults were, in principle, his assistants. Unlike all other persons, he was supposed to be a priest in the worship and rituals of all gods in his realm. The cult of Ogun (the god of all working men, of iron, and of war) was the special royal cult to which the king paid more attention than he did to other cults. In the Oyo-Ile kingdom, however, the cult of Sango (the god of thunder and lightning) early developed as another, and somewhat higher, royal cult. For the welfare of his kingdom, the king bore the important duty of regularly seeking counsel from Ifa, the god of divination, and of offering prescribed sacrifices to the other gods. The king’s highly ritualized burial and the location of his grave were perhaps the most closely guarded secrets of every kingdom.

26. The Yoruba were very sophisticated in the use of symbols and icons to express deep and powerful statements, and everything around the king conveyed profound messages. Thus, every significant detail of the palace building — the carvings of the wooden pillars and doors, the murals on the walls, etc. — all were iconographic statements relating to aspects of the origins of the kingdom, the Oduduwa source of its royal dynasty, the all-pervading oversight and care of the gods, the perpetual presence of the kings who had ruled in the palace, and the visible and invisible powers or authority of the king.
27. The crown therefore was no ordinary ceremonial head covering, but the object holding in itself the unification of the life forces (ase or power) of the progenitor of the Yoruba nation, and the royal ancestors of the reigning king. When, therefore, the crown was put on the king’s head, his life force was added to the powerful combination of life forces inherent in the crown — thus making it a sacred object with unimaginable visible and invisible powers, the visible totemic image of the invisible essence, power and authority of the kingdom. For this reason, the Yoruba regarded the king’s crown as an orisa or deity. The conical crown usually had a beaded figure of a bird on its top, and sometimes other smaller birds (usually numbering from four to sixteen) attached to the sides near the top. Pemberton and Afolayan (writing specifically about the crown of the Orangun of Ila) wrote as follows:
Henry and Margaret Drewal have shown in their studies of bird imagery in Yoruba iconography that birds are associated with the power ... of women or “our mothers” ... It is their hidden, procreative power, a power that can give birth but can also be used to deny others their creative power. It is woman’s power upon which the continuity of a husband’s patrilineage depends. And ... “without the mothers” (a king) “could not rule”. Furthermore, the large bird at the peak of the crown is attached to a peg the other end of which is bound to a packet of powerful ingredients ... placed in the top of the crown ... The packet touches the top of the Oba’s head ... which is thought to contain (his) life force ... It makes the Oba powerful over all kinds of spirits ...
28. If the Oba left the palace (only on festival or ritual processions), he was surrounded by his entourage (made up of his chiefs and priests and servants) and was barely visible to his other subjects. Nobody must walk to meet him and his entourage; all must stand by the roadside, and those who wished to join his entourage could only do so after he had passed them by. The king must not witness the birth of a child, and he must not see a baby who had not yet had its birth hair shaved — the hair on the head of a newborn baby came from the spirit realm, and this property of the spirit realm must not encounter the spirit of the king. Also, the Oba must not see or touch a dead body or see a grave dug for burial; a corpse was a threat to the king’s life-giving power.
29. The King’s Palace
Usually the first public facility constructed in every royal city was the palace. For this, an effort was usually made to find a distinctive location, normally a low hill around which the new city could evolve.
30. In every kingdom, therefore, the palace buildings tended to grow into a sprawling establishment with many, and ever increasing, halls and courtyards. In most palaces, the oldest buildings became, in a few centuries, no more than a museum or curiosity, visited only on certain festivals and rituals by persons in the innermost circles of government. Somewhere in some deep recesses of the palace grounds, the bodies of deceased kings were buried. However, the popular myth, propagated by the highest chiefs and priests, was that kings never died but turned to rocks or other objects or simply entered into the earth. Partly for this reason, partly to preserve the awe attaching to the king, cultivation of any part of the palace grounds was strictly forbidden in every kingdom — forbidden even to the king himself. In many kingdoms, the palace forest was known as igbo-orunkoja (“the forest through which even ants may not crawl”) or some other such fearsome name.

31. City Walls
The typical Yoruba city wall, calledyara or odi, was a combination of trench and earthworks. The deeper and wider the trench, the higher were the earthworks. Against the weapons employed in warfare in their times, the Yoruba city walls provided a reasonably formidable defense. The invader must first climb to the top of the outside earthworks, then drop to the bottom of the trench, and then attempt to climb up the perpendicular wall of the trench, with the inner earthworks still waiting for him to scale on the inner top of the trench. The trenches were usually some fifteen feet deep, the better ones being considerably deeper, and, in most cities, much more than twenty feet wide at the top, with the earthworks heaped on both sides, higher on the inside than on the outside. Nature usually helped to increase the efficacy of these walls. Good rainy seasons left considerable depths of water at the bottom of most trenches, making a descent into them very dangerous. A stretch of thick vegetation was usually planted, or allowed to grow, on the outside of the wall, to make an approach to the outside earthworks difficult. Gates, called bode, punctuated the wall system, each gate secured with a guard post under the command of a palace official with the title of Onibode, some of whose staff also collected the customs and tolls on merchandise. Some of the highest chiefs acted as superintendents over particular gates. Most walls enclosed considerable acreages of farmland with their cities, as a sort of reserve for times of prolonged emergencies.
32. Besides the Oyo-Ile walls (which will be described in another chapter), the greatest city walls in the country seem to have belonged to Ijebu-Ode, Owo, Ilesa and Owu-Ipole. The total destruction of Owu-Ipole in 1822 makes a description of that city and its walls impossible; but Yoruba traditions speak of that city and its defenses as truly magnificent. According to Owo traditions, Owo embarked, under Osogboye in the early seventeenth century, on the construction of very mighty city walls. The end product was widely regarded as one of the greatest in Yorubaland. Of the Ilesa city walls, we have some midnineteenth century descriptions by a literate visitor — William H. Clarke, who traveled extensively in Yorubaland in 1857–8 and spent three days in Ilesa. His assessment was that Ilesa surpassed Ilorin in size, population, and in the strength of its defenses. Of Ilesa’s defenses he wrote: “Four or five miles from the town, my attention was drawn to three separate ditches ten feet wide, cut through the woods and running, how far I could not tell.”9 The missionary David Hinderer visited Ilesa about the same time and described it as one of the larger towns of the country, in extent perhaps next to Ibadan.... The walls are at least fifteen feet high and no less than six feet thick, with a trench around it of about twenty feet in depth, whereas inside there are high trees close to it all at a distance of about ten yards one from the other, so that a scaffolding can be erected between their branches to defend the walls from it. Hundreds of human skulls are tempered into these walls; at the north gate I counted upwards of a hundred, all of which are of war captives.
33. Most other royal towns of Ekiti had similarly fortunate locations owing to the hilly nature of the Ekiti country. Ijero, Ikere, Ara and Ido perched partly on the slopes of hills, and Effon and Imesi-Igboodo (now Okemesi) on top of steep-sided hills. The Olosunta Hill and rock provided a near perfect defense for much of the city of Ikere. “The hills,” says an Ekiti proverb, “make the Alaaye (king of Effon) defy all invasions.” Even these, as well as most other Ekiti towns, had some wall systems. In the Ekiti, Akoko, Igbomina and other hilly areas of Yorubaland, some towns arranged large rocks to form balustrades and ramparts serving as walls.
34. The King’s Marketplace
The creation of a king’s marketplace or oja-oba was one of the most important developments in every new royal city. Trade was very important to the Yoruba people, and the kings took seriously the provision of facilities for its proper running. As soon as the building of the palace commenced, therefore, an area in its foreground, a short distance beyond the palace gate, was cleared and measured out for the king’s marketplace. A marketplace close to the palace, usually located just outside its front walls, became an unalterable attribute of the Yoruba royal city or town.
35. The king himself was the grand patron of the marketplace, although one of the chiefs would traditionally stand in for him as master in charge. Palace messengers laid out the marketplace to the satisfaction of the traders themselves, ensuring that vendors of each particular article of merchandise had one area (called iso) allocated to them. While the traders constructed their sheds and the facilities for spreading out their wares, palace messengers planted shade trees, needed to prevent excessive heat in the marketplace and also to provide some decoration. When the marketplace became functional, senior palace messengers did patrol duties in it as peace officers and also collected tolls authorized by the king’s government. The sellers of each article usually formed a market commodity association — of which the king was usually patron, even though each association would also appoint other citizens as additional patrons. In short, then, the influence of the king pervaded the marketplace. In fact, the creation of the king’s market place was a major item in his establishment of sovereignty over his new kingdom. The king’s marketplace was a special and symbolic banner of royal sovereignty; therefore, whenever it was time for the authorities to announce the death of a king, they would order the symbolic act of having the tops of the shade trees of the king’s marketplace trimmed.

36. Photo: Market scene, Ibadan. Photo:R. Mauny, 1949, IFAN.
37. Subordinate Towns and Villages
Many kingdoms never expanded their sovereignty beyond the royal city and its farmland. All of the Akoko and Ikale kingdoms, some of the Ekiti, Ijesa and Egbado kingdoms, and most of the far western Yoruba kingdoms stagnated in their royal cities.
Of the rest, some acquired only a few towns and villages, while others acquired quite considerable territory with many towns and villages in it. The Ekiti kingdoms were generally small territorially, the three largest ones being Ado, Akure, and Moba (with Otun as capital). During the first two or three centuries of the history of the Ado kingdom, it gradually expanded the territory under its control until it came to rule over twenty subordinate towns in a kingdom stretching from northwest to southeast for some sixty miles, the largest kingdom in Ekiti. The Owo kingdom was somewhat larger than that, consisting of forest territory more than seventy miles in length from north to south with more than twenty towns. The Ilesa kingdom quickly became the largest Ijesa kingdom, while the Olowu’s kingdom dwarfed the other kingdoms of the Owu. The Osemowe of Ondo ruled over a large forest kingdom extending all the way from the Oni River in the north to boundaries with the Ikale and Ilaje in the coastal lagoon country, and from the Owena River in the east to indefinite forest boundaries with the Ijebu in the west, certainly one of the largest kingdoms in Yorubaland.
38. Subordinate towns and villages were known as ereko — that is, settlements of the farmlands. Usually, a subordinate town or village retained the line of rulers it had had before coming under the authority of the city. In some cases, however the city authorities placed their own nominee over an ereko town or village, usually in instances where some vital interest (like an important road junction) required special control.
39. All this must be seen against the backdrop of a national culture in which reference to Ife’s name was a constant, unavoidable, factor in all worship, all rituals and all divination. Moreover, Yoruba and Benin traditions have it that whenever a Yoruba kingdom or the Benin kingdom enthroned a new king, envoys were sent to the palace of Ife to inform the Ooni that “a new sun had arisen” over their kingdom, and that the Ooni would then send gifts back to the new king as a token of his pleasure.
40. Among the many things which the King Dom Joao learnt from the ambassador of the King of Beni, and also Afonso de Aveiro, of what they had been told by the inhabitants of those regions, was that to the east of the King of Beni at twenty moons’ journey — which according to their account and the slow pace at which they travel, would be about two hundred and fifty of our leagues — there lived the most powerful monarch of those parts whom they called Ogane.

41. Among the pagan princes of the territories of Beni he was held in a great veneration, as are the Supreme Pontiffs with us. In accordance with a very ancient custom, the Kings of Beni, on ascending the throne, sent ambassadors to him with rich gifts to inform him that by the decease of their predecessor they had succeeded to the Kingdom of Beni, and to request him to confirm them in the same.
42. In short then, by the fifteenth century, Ife’s control of almost all the trade of Yorubaland was beginning to unravel, while Nupe incursions into Ijesa threatened the kingdom. All this compelled Ife to invest in large, prolonged, military ventures, a step which it had never had to take in all the centuries since the fight against Igbo-Igbo in the eleventh century. The military ventures appear to have been successful in the short run. Benin avoided a direct clash with Ife by shifting its operations largely eastwards where, to some extent in Akoko and on a large scale in Afenmai (called Kukuruku by the Nupe), Benin forces came into heavy clashes with the Nupe. The armies of Ilesa also repulsed the Nupe in Ijesa.
43. Brothers against Brothers
Another face of the relationships among Yoruba kingdoms, however, featured conflicts and wars. In spite of the undoubted acceptance by all Yoruba kings of the brotherhood of all of them, differences in success, prosperity and power led, in the end, to territorial and other ambitions that produced conflicts. Ultimately, the general picture came to be that a successful and ambitious kingdom tended to aspire to dominance over kingdoms in its own subgroup — that is, to unify the subgroup into just one kingdom. In a number of cases, indeed, very successful kingdoms aspired to even greater expansion than that, into Yoruba territories beyond their own subgroup territory.
44. The Ijesa kingdom of Ilesa, as would be remembered, embarked on a career of conquests even before it had fully established itself in the eleventh or twelfth century. It became, early in its history, a meeting point of very important trade routes, and grew to become one of the most powerful kingdoms in Yorubaland. Local wars feature strongly in the traditions of this kingdom, wars against the other kingdoms of the Ijesa country. These wars appear to have resulted in the splitting up of some Ijesa royal towns like Imesi and Otan. A section of Imesi migrated up the hills into the Ekiti country and founded the Ekiti kingdom of Imesi-Igboodo (now Okemesi), and a section of Otan moved northeastwards and founded Otan-Koto (now Otan Aiyegbaju). Igbajo was the most fortunate of these other Ijesa kingdoms. Secure on top of a hill, it was able to resist Ilesa. The power of the Ilesa kingdom reached its peak in the late seventeenth century in the reign of Atakunmosa, reputed to be the greatest warrior king of the later eras of Ilesa history. On the whole, although the Ilesa kingdom did not achieve its ambition of making its Owa the ruler of all the Ijesa, it did make the Owa the highly exalted senior brother among the Ijesa kings. The Ilesa kingdom also brought pressure to bear on kingdoms of western Ekiti, notably Ogotun and Effon, in the seventeenth century. Effon’s location on the hills made repeated aggressions against it futile; but Ogotun appears to have become tributary to Ilesa for some brief period.
45. In the Ondo forests, the kingdom of Epe, for reasons that remain unclear, remained small, poor and stagnant. The Idanre kingdom was largely isolated because of its hill location, but derived considerable wealth from the trade that flowed through the ancient paths in the valley below its hills. It is not known whether this kingdom ever developed territorial ambitions or some military power. The Osemowe’s kingdom of Ode-Ondo, therefore, controlled almost all the Ondo forests. It became a fairly rich trading and military power, taking advantage especially of trade with the Ikale and Ilaje on the coastal lagoons, and with the Ijebu to the west and southwest, the Owo to the east, and the Ife to the north.

46. To be continued.


1. In the Ikale country, the Abodi’s kingdom of Ikoya seems to have emerged early as the most powerful kingdom. However, the nature of the Ikale country — thick forests broken up by lagoons, rivers and swamps — compelled each Ikale kingdom to remain fixed in its own forest patch. Much as among the Ekiti, the Ikale kings remained a family of equal brothers throughout their history, with hardly any traditions of conflicts among them.
2. In Ijebu, the Awujale early became the richest and most powerful king — acquiring a specially exalted status and influence among the Ijebu kings, as well as certain privileges which no other Ijebu king could claim. Among such privileges may be mentioned the exclusive ownership of odi (a special kind of court official) and apebi (a special priest who performs the crowning of the Awujale), and the right to have brought to him from all over Ijebuland the skins and some other parts of certain animals regarded by the Yoruba as royal property — such as elephants, bushcows (African buffalo), and leopards. The Awujale also occupied the very influential position of patron of the powerful Osugbo (the Ijebu version of Ogboni) council of Ijebu-Ode, to which all other Osugbo councils in the Ijebu country were subordinate. And he enjoyed the important ritual supremacy of holding certain great and colorful festivals annually, one of which culminated in the gathering in Ijebu-Ode once every year of the sixteen Agemo priests (earth fertility high priests), each accompanied by large numbers of followers, and each bringing a sacred load to bless and to honor the Awujale. In short, then, the Awujale was supreme among the Ijebu kings, and, by and large, he could, whenever there was need to, influence the affairs of all kingdoms in the Ijebu forests.
3. Considering the large expanse and the wealth of the country over which he was thus the most influential ruler, the Awujale would seem to have regularly been the most powerful king in the southern Yoruba forests, and, in the centuries of the greatness of the Alaafin, second only to the Alaafin in Yorubaland. This political picture in the Ijebu forests would seem to have been generated mostly by the magnitude of trade in the Ijebu country and the nodal position of Ijebu-Ode on the overall complex of trade routes in that part of Yorubaland.
4. In Igbomina, the Orangun of Ila was generally regarded as the most senior king from the earliest, because of his descent from a line clearly traced to Oduduwa. However, research by Funso Afolayan, to whom we are indebted for an impressive study of Igbomina history, shows that while the cultural antecedents and political seniority of the Orangun were generally acknowledged all over the Igbomina country, he does not appear to have exercised any form of serious political hegemony over the Igbomina kingdoms before the nineteenth century. A few of the Igbomina kings, most notably the Olomu of Omu Aran and the Olupo of Ajase Ipo, increasingly came to challenge and threaten whatever paramountcy might have originally been attributed to the Orangun. One important cause of this state of affairs was the constant Nupe aggression on the Igbomina country, a military pressure which became intensified in the eighteenth century and resulted in the destruction of Ila. The failure or inability of the Orangun to resist and contain the Nupe threat weakened his prestige and influence among the Igbomina kings. In this situation, when, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Oyo-Ile kingdom of the Alaafin became a great power in northern Yorubaland, some of the Igbomina kings (especially the Olomu of Omu Aran and the Olupo of Ajase Ipo) happily established military alliances and political association with the Alaafin, and thus considerably enhanced their power, prestige and influence vis-à-vis that of the Orangun.
5. Migrations and Other Folk Movements

Migrations of people in large or small groups, families and individuals, within Yorubaland, were a very important phenomenon in the history of the Yoruba kingdoms and of the Yoruba national society. The primary, kingdom-creating, migrations had resulted in the emergence of kingdoms and cities in Yorubaland, and the populations of the cities had been generally enhanced by migrations from their neighboring forests. After these, a second generation of migrations moved significant groups and elements from kingdom to kingdom and imparted what one might call a “national flavor” to every significant city and kingdom of the Yoruba people.

A substantial part of the second-generation migrations were protest migrations — of persons going away from a city where they felt that they had been unfairly denied a royal title or chieftaincy or other position. As earlier pointed out, most leaders of such migrations ended up as chiefs in other cities and kingdoms. Every Yoruba royal city had at least a few such chiefs, always heading quarters constituted by the followers who had come with them. Besides this, Yoruba people seem to have very commonly reacted to disasters (communal troubles, famines, epidemics, etc.) by migrating to other parts of their country — as individuals, lineages, or even whole settlements. And, moreover, the Yoruba elite in general appear to have been very prone to migrating. It was common that if a famous king ruled over a kingdom, persons of substance and fame came from far and near to live in his city, share in his glory, and contribute to his fame. Kingdoms or kings or other accomplished persons who prospered or became famous usually attracted distinguished persons. This represents a major theme in Yoruba folklore.

6. Finally, most really good musicians, dancers and other entertainers (male and female) usually traveled the country extensively to ply their trade. The best often spent most of their lives traveling and living away from home, sometimes as guests and clients of kings. Widespread traditions indicate quite strongly that alarinjo (traveling entertainment) groups were constant features of social life in all Yoruba cities. To the itinerant entertainers must be added masked entertainers (egungun), the best of whom usually traveled far from home. Some kingdoms were famous all over Yorubaland for their egungun. Egungun from parts of Ekiti are said to have been eagerly awaited annually (during the dry season) in even distant towns like Otta and others in the Awori and Egbado countries. Egungun from various towns in the Oyo country were usually the most numerous, most diversified in the types of their masks, offered the most varied entertainments, and were leaders in traversing the country from end to end. Igunu, the Nupe type of egungun, were also often drawn into Yoruba culture as regular entertainers in Yoruba towns, far from their own country on the banks of the Niger. Visual artists (especially sculptors) are treated as special national assets in Yoruba traditions. The best of them usually became widely famous, and usually lived their lives sojourning in town after town (as guests or under the patronage of kings, chiefs and priests), carving decorative posts, doors, and other pieces for palaces, shrines and famous lineage compounds. Some families of great sculptors remained nationally famous for generations.

All of the above was also generally true of some other types of artists and artisans — like the makers of beaded products (crowns and insignia), and the makers of bodily decorations (facial marks and body tattoos). In short, the Yoruba national community in the era of the kingdoms, cities and towns, commonly circulated its brightest and best. All these trends in the cultural, political and economic behavior of Yoruba people in the long era of the Yoruba kingdoms (eleventh to eighteenth century) were profoundly influential in molding the Yoruba nation into a strongly intermixed, and continually intermixing, people. They account for the fact that countless Yoruba towns and villages, as well as quarters, chieftaincies and significant lineages in practically every Yoruba town, are traceable to distant places of origin within the Yoruba homeland. And they played a great part in the molding of the remarkable homogeneity of Yoruba civilization, in the enrichment of Yoruba culture, and in the reinforcing and strengthening of Yoruba national consciousness.
7. Omitted.
8. Omitted.
9. 9 - The Kingdoms and the Economy: Part I
10. Omitted.

11. The Main Pillar: Peasant Farming

The civilization that ultimately produced the Yoruba kingdoms was developed over many hundreds of years by a farming people whose agricultural economy became progressively more efficient and more productive as a result of the growing sophistication of iron tools as well as increasing numbers of cultivated crops. Agriculture was the pillar of the economy before and after the creation of the Yoruba kingdoms. The emergence of the royal cities, as well as other major towns, as the kingdoms were springing up, widened opportunities in other occupations — like house building, government and military service, the arts, artisanship, entertainment, priestly occupations, health care and herbal occupations and, very importantly, commerce. But agriculture remained the employer of the vast majority of people in the Yoruba kingdoms.
12. The raising of livestock was not a significant feature of Yoruba farming. Unlike their northern neighbors (the Hausa and Fulani and others beyond the Niger), the typical Yoruba farmer did not rear herds of cattle or flocks of goats or sheep. In the extreme northwestern part of the Yoruba country, in the Oyo grassland, it was common for rich families to own some heads of cattle (and also goats and sheep), for the care of which they procured labor (as employees or slaves) from beyond the Niger. For the rest, the typical Yoruba livestock were goats and sheep — and birds like chickens, ducks, pigeons, and sometimes turkeys — all of which were raised free range around the home, and almost all of which were owned by the women. Most women owned one or two goats or sheep and a few birds, which they raised in their compound homes; some of the wealthier women had many, and frequently derived considerable income from sending a few to the marketplace for sale from time to time.
13. Urbanism

A active peasant-based urbanism evolved all over Yorubaland. Surrounding each city or town were farmlands spreading out for miles. Members of the predominantly peasant population of each urban center left home in the morning to work on their farms, and returned to their city or town in the late afternoon. On their farms they built the barns for preserving the harvest, and usually makeshift huts (called aba) where they cooked and sheltered from sun and rain while away on their farms. These were the daily farms called oko etile (neartown, or precinct, farms), which were normally not farther than five miles from the city. Of the farmers who owned precinct farms, a few would also have farms in the more distant forests near the ultimate boundaries of the land that belonged to their city. In such distant farm locations called oko egan (farms of the forests), there developed small outposts called abule consisting of small, fragile, family homes. Farmers could stay in the abule for many days; a few turned the abule into semi-permanent homes. Small towns or villages called ileto existed in every kingdom, but the pattern of life in them was the same as in the city — with family compounds, near-home farms and distant farms. Even in such villages, most residents would claim that their ultimate homes belonged in a lineage compound in the large local town or city. By and large, the ideal home for the Yoruba person came to be an apartment in a lineage compound in a city or town. Emotionally, and almost completely in fact, the Yoruba people, after the creation of their kingdoms and cities, became a nation of urban dwellers.
14. Krapf-Askari describes Yoruba towns and their farms as follows:

The classical plan of a Yoruba town resembles a wheel: the Oba’s palace being the hub, the town walls the rim, and the spokes a series of roads radiating out from the palace and linking the town to other centers. Beyond the walls lie the farmlands; first the oko etile or “farms of the outskirts”, then the oko egan or “bush farms”, merging imperceptibly with the oko egan of the next town.
15. Manufactures

The emergence and growth of many cities and towns in all parts of Yorubaland, and the consequent growing demands of an urbanizing people, stimulated manufacturing in general. In the process, regional specialization was also generated. Over time, the country looked to the towns of the Osun Valley for its best quality dyes,3 certain types of dyed cloth, and iron goods; to Ife, Ijebu, Ilesa and Ondo for iron products; to western Ekiti (especially Ogotun) and eastern Ijesa (especially Ipetu) for the best mats and raffia products; to the towns of the northern Oyo country for leather and the best quality leather goods; to certain Ekiti towns for different types of pots as well as certain types of cloth; to the Akure and Owo areas for the best cosmetic camwood and some types of cloth, to Ife for beads and beaded products.

16. Commerce

All the developments of the period added up to create enormous benefits for trade. The emergence of kingdoms, cities and towns opened up the country by developing and strengthening the channels of transportation and communication. Regional diversity in agricultural products, and the growth of regional specialization in manufactures, pushed up the volumes of internal trade. Generally increasing agricultural and industrial productivity generated increasing exports to places within and beyond Yorubaland. Increasing sophistication of economic demands consequent upon growing urbanization boosted the volume of imports from distant lands. The Yoruba became a great trading people, their women, especially, ranking among the best traders in Africa. Long-distance traders called alajapa began to rank among the elite. Every one of the Yoruba cities, with its king’s marketplace, became an emporium, generating, receiving, distributing and sending out merchandise on a large scale. In very distant parts of the West African region, Yoruba trading colonies emerged — as far north as the Hausa country beyond the River Niger and the Kanuri country on Lake Chad, and also far eastwards and westwards. Some Yoruba traditions even seem to suggest that Yoruba trading colonies might have existed as far west as the valley of the Senegal River and as far east as the lands of the Congo. Inside Yorubaland itself, Hausa and Nupe trading communities arose in most cities, and traders from even further north (especially Tuaregs from the Sahara) became frequent features of the trading population. So much regard was had for the Hausa and Nupe trading communities that Yoruba kings generally became their patrons, and many a king set aside space for them to live in or near his palace, close to the king’s marketplace. When increasing numbers of the Hausa traders came to be Muslims, Yoruba cities usually gave them land to build their mosques close to the marketplace — so they could observe their prayer breaks near their merchandise. In eastern and southern Yorubaland, Edo resident trading communities emerged in many towns.
17. - 19. Omitted.
20. The Yoruba marketplace, then, was typically a pleasant place, laid out in order so that merchandise of the same type was displayed side by side. Shade trees, planted in some order, provided both shelter and decoration. Traders built their own tents in accordance with specifications acceptable to the authorities (especially to the leaderships of the market associations), or used portable tents. Sellers and buyers alike paid careful attention to the preservation of law and order, even though their haggling usually generated a lot of noise. Commotion or disruption in a market place was, among all Yoruba, regarded as a terrible omen, and saying that a town’s marketplace broke down was equivalent to saying that the town itself broke down. Therefore, any breach of the peace in the marketplace was visited with very severe penalties and called for ritual sacrifices. The Yoruba marketplace was much more than a place of buying and selling; it was the heart of its community — a place which exercised powerful influence on the government, the place of some of society’s most powerful shrines and rituals, the place where young people found and courted their future spouses. Sellers of the same or similar merchandise formed a commodity association, with its own officers, rules, rituals and festivals. These market commodity associations were the richest, and among the most influential, associations in every Yoruba community. Between them, they established the site rules for the market place and bore most of the responsibility for maintaining law and order there. The president of each association, with the title of Iyalaje, was one of the most influential persons in society.

21. Rooted in a local market, but operating far and wide in order to serve it and other markets, there were two classes of big traders. The first, known as the alarobo, did business as gatherers of local produce from the producers, for wholesale distribution to retailers in local markets. The other, known as the alajapa, did business as long-distance traders all over the Yoruba homeland and beyond, taking the products of one part of the country to local retailers in other parts. Persons engaged in these levels of commerce were usually the richest in society, and commanded large trading establishments employing large numbers of porters. The alajapa usually became very knowledgeable about trading conditions in various parts of Yorubaland. Those of them who took trade beyond Yorubaland often became fluent in foreign languages.
22. The trade routes were paths trodden by humans (and, in some areas, horses) over many centuries. In accordance with ancient practices, each town cleared the sections of the paths that traversed its territory, the clearing being done on the days of certain festivals by the male population. According to Samuel Johnson, the paths in the Oyo area of northwestern Yorubaland were cleared twice a year — during the egungun and ayan (drum music) festivals. In the thick forests of the south (in the Ijebu, Egba, Ondo and Owo areas) clearing was done more often. Each kingdom was responsible for maintaining peace on the paths that went through its territory. Usually the paths were well maintained and protected. The authorities of kingdoms, towns and villages, had vested interests in ensuring good paths, since the best and safest paths attracted the most traders and trade. If there was some threat of danger on a road, the local authorities would usually send armed escorts to accompany the caravans. The English explorer, Clapperton, traveled on the road from Badagry on the coast to Oyo-Ile in 1825–6 and his general assessment was that the road was good and peaceful, and quite pleasant in some sections.12 Unfortunately, the transcriber of his notes had difficulty with the Yoruba place names, as a result of which some of the towns visited by him are now impossible to identify. Between a town named “Dagmoo” in his diary and the town of Ihumbo, Clapperton noted that the road surface was “rather uneven” and that the forest on either side of it was thick and impenetrable. Soon after, however, between “Atalaboloo” and Ilaro, the road lay “through fine plantations of yams” and was “nearly as level as a bowling green.” Between Ilaro and Ijanna, the road lay “through large plantations of corn and yams and fine avenues of trees” in some sections, and through “plantations of millet, yams, avalanches (sic), and Indian corn” in other sections. Between “Ega” and “Emado,” the road was “a long broad and beautiful avenue of the tallest trees.” Between “Washoo” and Saki, the road lay through a mountain pass that was “grand and imposing, sometimes rising almost perpendicularly, and then descending in the midst of rocks into dells, then winding beautifully round the side of a steep hill.” Of the towns that lay on Clapperton’s route, he noted of Eruwa that it was “large and very populous,” and of “Kooso” (Koso) that it was “a large walled town.” These western parts of Yorubaland had started to experience minor political troubles by the time of Clapperton’s 1825 visit. For instance, he wrote of one small town that it had suffered destruction and that its “gate and the ditch are now all that remain.” In spite of such political conditions, Clapperton met streams of traders on the road, all going about their business without trouble. He himself commented at a point that he had done sixty miles in eight days and changed carriers many times, and yet he had not had even the smallest thing stolen from him.
23. In 1855, A.C. Mann, a missionary based in Ijaye, traveled from Ijaye to Ilorin, passing through Ogbomoso and the ruins of the formerly great city of Ikoyi. In 1858, Hinderer traveled the road from Ibadan to Iwo, Ede, Osogbo, Ilesa, Ile-Ife and Apomu. And in the same year, the American Baptist missionary, T J. Bowen, and the English commercial traveler, Daniel May, traveled various roads that led to the Ijesa, Igbomina and Ekiti countries.14 It was during his travels in northern Ekiti that May met Esugbayibi building the town of Aiyede close to Isan. All of these travelers found that, in spite of wars in many places, the roads through Yorubaland were reasonably well maintained and safe, and carried a heavy traffic of traders.





Things Fall Apart
By Chinua Achebe

“Having spoken plainly so far, Okoye said the next half a dozen sentences in proverbs. Among the Ibo the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten. Okoye was a great talker and he spoke for a long time…”
"Unoka had a sense of the dramatic and so he allowed a pause.”
Unoka says “our elders say that the sun will shine on those who stand before it shines on those who kneel under them.”
"Age was respected among his people, but achievement was revered.”
At night, sometimes there is "a vibrant silence, a silence made more intense by the universal trill of a million million forest insects."
Because of a great crime towards a daughter of the Umuofia people, a young man and a girl were offered for compensation.
We are introduced to an Oracle, called Agbala, and people came from far and near to confront it. "They came when misfortune dogged their steps or when they had a dispute with their neighbors. They came to discover what the future held for them or to consult the spirits of their departed fathers."
The shrine of the Oracle was a round hole at the side of a hill, a cave.
No one had ever beheld Agbala, except his priestess. But no one who had ever crawled into his awful shrine had come without the fear of his power.
"Sometimes a man came to consult the spirit of his dead father or relative. It was said that when such a spirit appeared, the man saw it vaguely in darkness, but never heard its voice. Some people even said that they heard the spirits flying and flapping their wings against the roof of the cave.”
Many years before this story, Okonkwo’s father Unoka had gone to consult Agbala. Every year, Unoka farmed and performed rituals on the land. “It is the law of our fathers.”
Okonkwo had begun, even in his father’s lifetime to lay the foundations of a prosperous future, although it was slow and painful.
Okonkwo’s first son, Nwoye, was then twelve years old but was already causing his father great anxiety for his incipient laziness.
Okonkwo, who was a skilled yam farmer, said that he began to fend for himself at a very early age. "If you give me some yam seeds I shall not fail you," he said.
Share-cropping was a very slow way of building up a barn of one’s own, but there was no other way.
”The year that Okonkwo took eight hundred seed-yams from Nwakibie was the worst year in living memory. Nothing happened at its proper time; it was either too early or too late.” The rains were late, the sun was fierce. During this drought, many of the yams were killed. Okonkwo planted what was left of his seed-yams when the rains finally returned.
Achebe describes chi, or personal god, and refers to an Ibo proverb that says that when a man says yes his chi says yes also.
One character, Nwoye's mother was very kind to him and treated him as one of her own children. This is similar to what I learned reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography, that in many African cultures, you are considered the son of many of the men in your family, and that in their cultures, families operate based on respect rather than asking of questions.
"Okonkwo never showed any emotion openly, unless it be the emotion of anger. To show affection was a sign of weakness, the only thing worth demonstrating was strength. He therefore treated Ikemefuna as he treated everybody else - with a heavy hand. But there was no doubt that he liked the boy."
In Chapter Five, Achebe writes that "so much yam foo-foo and vegetable soup was cooked that no matter how heavily the family ate or how many friends and relatives they invited from neighboring villages, there was always a large quantity of food left over at the end of the day."
When a swarm of locusts descended on the land, Achebe writes, "it was a tremendous sight, full of power and beauty."
Of the locust he writes, "everybody knew by instinct that they were very good to eat."
"Many people went out with baskets trying to catch them, but the elders counseled patience till nightfall. And they were right."
Here enters Ogbuefi Ezeudu. "Ezeudu was the oldest man in this quarter of Umuofia. He had been a great and fearless warrior in his time, and was now accorded great respect..."
During one rather serious scene, Achebe writes, "a deathly silence descended on Okonkwo's compound."
Of a song Ikemefuna sang, "he sung it in his mind, and walked to its beat."
In one scene, Achebe writes, "Gome, gome, gome, gome, boomed the hollow metal."
A protagonist in the novel is Amalinze, the great wrestler.
Ekwefi gave Ezinma delicacies such as eggs, which children were rarely allowed to eat because such food tempted then to steal.
"The relationship between them was not only that of mother and child. There was something in it like the companionship of equals, which was strengthened by such little conspiracies as eating eggs in the bedroom."
Because Ekwefi had borne ten children and nine of them had died in infancy, the birth of her children, which should be a woman’s crowning glory, became for Ekwefi mere physical agony devoid of promise. The naming ceremony after seven market weeks became an empty ritual.
Achebe says that the birth of her children should be a woman’s crowning glory.
Ekwefi’s bitterness did not flow outwards to others but inwards into her own soul; she did not blame others for their good fortune but her own evil chi.
A medicine man told Okonkwo that Ekwefi’s second child was an ogbanje, one of those wicked children who, when they died, entered their mother’s wombs to be born again.
Okonkwo had called in another medicine man who was famous in the village for his great knowledge about ogbanje children.
Here, "'No,' said Ezinma, whose feeling of importance was manifest in her sprightly walk."
At this point in the novel, the characters decide to solve their quarrels.
At night, Achebe writes, “the world was silent, except for the shrill cry of insects, which was part of the night.”
I can’t find the exact passage, but in one scene, while a male and female character were talking in their hut, the other people in the village in their huts could also hear them.
At one point, Achebe writes, “it seemed to Ekwefi that the night had become a little lighter. The cloud had lifted and a few stars were out.”
Here, he writes “it was not the same Chielo who sat with her in the market and sometimes bought beancakes for Ezinma, whom she called her daughter. It was a different woman — the priestess of Agbala, the Oracle of the Hills and Caves.
"At last they took a turning and began to head for the caves. From then on, Chielo never ceased in her chanting. She greeted her god in a multitude of names."
"The moon was now up and she could see Chielo and Ezinma clearly. How a woman could carry a child of that size so easily and for so long was a miracle.”
"As soon as the priestess stepped into this ring of hills her voice was not only doubled in strength but was thrown back on all sides.”
Achebe discusses extended relatives in one scene.
In another scene, Achebe describes a character whose actions were deliberate, who spoke as he performed them.
Here, there is a scene where the village, Umuofia was still swallowed up in sleep and silence when the ekwe began to talk and the cannon shattered the silence.
He writes that “the land of the living was not far removed from the domain of the ancestors. There was coming and going between them, especially at festivals and also when an old man died, because an old man was very close to the ancestors. A man’s life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.”
”Ezeudu had been the oldest man in his village, and at his death there were only three men in the whole clan who were older, and four or five others in his own age group.”
”Ezeudu had taken three titles in his life. It was a rare achievement. There were only four titles in the clan, and only one or two men in any generation ever achieved the fourth and highest. When they did, they became the lords of the land.”
At one point, after a rainstorm, Achebe writes “the earth quickly came to life and the birds in the forests fluttered around and chirped merrily.”
”A vague scent of life and green vegetation was diffused in the air.” At this point, all were happy, refreshed and thankful.
Okwonkwo’s life “had been ruled by a great passion — to become one of the lords of the clan. That had been his life-spring. And he had all but achieved it. Then everything had been broken and he had been cast out of his clan like a fish onto a dry, sandy beach, panting.”
At one point, when Uchendu spoke, “he began to speak, quietly and deliberately, picking his words with great care.”
In one scene Achebe discusses “good days when a man had friends in distant clans. Your generation does not know that. You stay at home, afraid of your next-door neighbor. Even a man’s motherland is strange to him nowadays… I am an old man and I like to talk. That is all I am good for now.”
Nearly two years later, “the missionaries had come to Umuofia. They had built their church there, won a handful of converts and were already sending evangelists to the surrounding towns and villages. That was a source of great sorrow to the leaders of the clan, but many of them believe that the strange faith and the white man’s god would not last.”
This regards the argument that there are pros and cons to deforestation. Pros include urbanization but cons include loss of traditional values.
Although one of these missionaries, a white man was strange in many ways, “he was a man of commanding presence and the clansmen listened to him.”
”Where is the white man’s horse?” a villager asked. “The Ibo evangelists consulted amongst themselves and decided that the man probably meant bicycle.” “‘Tell them’, he said, ‘that I shall bring many iron horses when we have settled down among them. Some of them will even ride the iron horse themselves.
Chapter Seventeen
The villagers did not really want the white men in their clan, so they sold them a piece of land in the Evil Forest upon which to build their church.”
It was a surprise that the missionaries were able to build a church on this portion of land.”
At this point, Nwoye, against the wishes of his father Okwonkwo, “decided to go to Umuofia where the white missionary had set up a school to teach young Christians to read and write.”
Chapter Eighteen
”Stories were already gaining ground that the white man had not only brought a religion but also a government.”
”The Christians had grown in number and were now a small community of men, women and children, self-assured and confident. Mr. Brown, the white missionary, paid regular visits to them.”
Chapter Nineteen
A villager says, “you do not know what it is to speak with one voice.”
At this point, trade also grows in the villages.
Chapter Twenty
"Our own men and our sons have joined the ranks of the stranger. They have joined his religion and they help to uphold his government.”
Chapter Twenty-One
”The white man had indeed brought a lunatic religion, but he had also built a trading store and for the first time palm-oil and kernel became things of great price, and much money flowed into Umuofia.”
Here, Achebe writes that “the leaders of the land in the future would be men and women who had learned to read and write. If Umuofia failed to send her children to the school, strangers would come from other places to rule them,” so “more people came to learn in his school. They were not all young, these people who came to learn. Some of them were thirty years old or more.”
New churches were established in the surrounding villages and a few schools with them. From the very beginning religion and education went hand in hand.” Mr Brown’s mission also earned social prestige.
There is also a training college for teachers in a village named Umuru.
When Okwonkwo returned to his native land, the clan had undergone such profound change during his exile that it was barely recognizable. The new religion and government and the trading stores were very much in the people’s eyes and minds.
Okwonkwo was deeply grieved. And it was not just a personal grief. He mourned for the clan, which he saw breaking up and falling apart…”
Chapter Twenty-Five
In this chapter Okwonkwo takes his own life.
During an investigation, Achebe discusses that a District Commissioner must never attend to any undignified details, for such would give the natives a poor opinion of him.



Arrow of God
By Chinua Achebe

Chapter One
In this chapter, Achebe writes of a character, “his mind, never content with shallow satisfactions, crept again to the brink of knowing."
Here he also writes that “Nwafo tried in vain to make sense out of these words.”
Achebe writes, “Obika was one of the handsomest young men in Umuaro and all the surrounding districts. His face was very finely cut and his nose stood gem, like the note of a gong. His skin was, like his father’s, the color of terracotta."
Chapter Two
“Ezeulu often said that the dead fathers of Umuaro looking at the world from Ani-Mmo must be utterly bewildered by the ways of the new age.”
There are many proverbs throughout his novels, and I like his use of proverbs here.
Chapter Three
In this chapter, Achebe suggests that coming to Africa is a serious task for visitors, not to be taken lightly.
"For those seeking a comfortable living and quiet occupation Nigeria is closed… but for those in search of a strenuous life… Nigeria is holding out her hands.”
Winterbottom explains of a feud between two villages, “a regular war developed between the two villages, until I stepped in. I went into the question of the ownership of the piece of land…”
Chapter Four
A character in the novel, Ulu, would not allow himself to be bullied and disgraced.
Achebe suggests that African-Americans came from true leaders of each village who had been men of high title in Africa.
Achebe writes that the earth and the sky are two different things.
Ezeulu sends his son Oduche, to learn the white man’s wisdom, Christianity.
In a hut, a character comes into contact with several masks “and other regalia of ancestral spirits, some of them older than even his father. They produced a certain ambiance which gave power and cunning to his fingers. Most of the masks were for fierce, aggressive spirits with horns and teeth the size of fingers. But four of them belonged to maiden-spirits and were delicately beautiful.”
This excerpt inspires me to view pre-colonial African art.
Chapter Five
Captain Winterbottom stared at a memorandum with irritation and a certain amount of contempt.
I like Achebe’s expression of the emotion of irritation here.
As he walked up and down his office, “he noticed for the first time, although it had always been there, the singing of prisoners, as they cut the grass outside.”
”One of them supplied the beat with something that looked like a piece of stone on an empty bottle and sang a short solo; the others sang the chorus and swung their blades to the beat.”
Of a corrupt overseer, Achebe writes, “he was a man from another clan; in the eyes of the native, a foreigner. But what excuse could one offer for a man who was their blood brother and chief?”
Chapter Six
Of Ezeulu’s son, Achebe writes, “he was full of amazement at the calumny which even people he called his friends were said to be spreading against him.”.
Achebe writes that it is good for misfortunes to happen once in a while, because positive things can come from them.”
At this point, “Ibe and his people made some vague, apologetic noises.”
Chapter Seven
I wanted to mention, that in the first book, Things Fall Apart, we are introduced to Okonkwo, who threw Amalinze the Cat. Amalinze was a great wrestler who was called the Cat because his back would never touch the earth.
During one scene in a festival, Achebe writes, “their walk was perforce slow and deliberate, like the walk of an Ijele Mask lifting and lowering each foot with weighty ceremony.” In another scene Achebe writes, “he took a few long strides, pausing on each foot.”
I wanted to mention a passage in Chapter Five, where Achebe writes of the memorandum sent to Winterbottom “Words, words, words. Civilization, African mind, African atmosphere.”
In a ceremonial scene, Achebe writes, “at this, many fled in terror before the priest and the unseen presences around him.”
At this point, the men go on a journey, where they meet with Afo.
Through his use of storytelling and proverbs, Achebe suggests that Afo invented the Afro.
Updated Saturday, August 27, 2022
Chapter Eight
”The new road which Mr. Wright was building to connect Okperi with Umuaro, had now reached its final stages.”
We meet a character who “had little respect for administrative red tape.”
”Although Ezeulu did not ask for details he knew without being told that Ofoedu was behind this latest episode.”
Obika changed his matchet from the left hand to the right and his hoe from the right to left.
The men’s feet were covered with red earth.
When a disagreement ensues, one of the men says “we have not come here to abuse ourselves.”
One man says of another, “he has come to make trouble for us.”
In this chapter, Achebe uses impressive advanced storytelling skills.
I wanted to mention that in chapter seventeen of Things Fall Apart, Achebe mentions that “to abandon the gods of one’s father and go about with a lot of effeminate men clucking like old hens was the very depth of abomination."
Chapter Nine
We are introduced to Edogo, whose small hut was deliberately built small for, like the compounds of many first sons it was no more than a temporary home where the man waited until he could inherit his father’s place.
This suggests that the life of traveling peoples is interesting because of their hard life.
While Edogo faced his farm work, he envied craftsmen like Agwuegbo whose farms were cultivated for them by their apprentices and customers.
Here, it is interesting that Achebe notes of Edogo, “as he carved his mind kept wandering to his wife’s hut from where the cry of their only child was reaching him.”
As the scene progresses, he goes on to write that “Edogo’s thoughts refused to stay on the door he was carving. The child had now stopped crying and Edogo’s thoughts wandered to the recent exchange of words between his father and brother.”
Achebe writes that he remembered how “with the passage of years his father had transferred his affection first to Obika then to Oduche and Nwafo. Thinking of it now Edogo could not actually remember that their father had ever shown much affection for Oduche. He seemed to have lingered too long on Obika (who of all his sons resembled him most in appearance) and then by-passed Oduche for Nwafo. What would happen if the old man had another son tomorrow? Would Nwafo then begin to lose favour in his eyes? Perhaps. Or was there more to it than that? Was there something in the boy that told their father that at last a successor to the priesthood had come? Some people said Nwafo was in every way an image of Ezeulu’s father. If Ulu should choose him to be Chief Priest what would he do?”
“Akuebue was one of the very few men in Umuaro whose words gained entrance into Ezeulu’s ear.”
Achebe suggests that a goal of life is to live well with all your people.
A character tells a proverb that I like, “when we old people speak it is not because of the sweetness of words in our mouth; it is because we see something which you do not see.”
Chapter Ten
We meet a character, Tony Clarke, who was going to have dinner with Winterbottom. He was going to be the host and the onus would rest on him to keep the conversation alive.
Here, Clarke speculated briefly on the nature of knowledge. “Did knowledge of one’s friends and colleagues impose a handicap on one? Perhaps it did. Perhaps facts put you at a great disadvantage.”
Clarke says that he has gone through records and found a man whose title is Eze Ulu. He goes on to say the prefix eze in Ibo means king. “So the man is a kind of priest-king.”
During Clarke’s discussion with Winterbottom, he “could not help being impressed by a new aspect of the man’s character.”
Chapter Eleven
We meet a character, Ekuebue, friend of Ezeulu, who in a dialogue, says of one land, “it is a great land, such a land makes lazy people look like master farmers.”
In this scene, “Ezeulu laughed,” and said “What do we say happens to the man who eats and then makes his mouth as if it has never seen food?”
Then Ezeulu replies with a wise saying.
Ezeulu says to Akuebue, “A man can not be too busy to break the first kolanut of the day in his own house.”
Akuebue says of Ogbuefi Amalu, “I went to see him this morning. His breath seemed to be scraping his sides with a blunt razor.”
In one scene, Achebe writes of Ezeulu, “when he returned to the hut he found the sick man even more restless, saying meaningless things.”
At the end of the chapter, Achebe simply writes, “He smiled.”
Chapter Twelve
In one scene in this chapter, Achebe writes that Ezeulu said, “The abomination all you people commit in this house will lie on your own heads.”
In a scene that follows, Akuebue, when speaking to Edogo says, “Obika’s mind is not on such things — neither is mine.” Then Edogo replies, “But Ulu does not ask if a man’s mind is on something or not…”
Chapter Twelve (continued)
Akuebue was saying of Ezeulu that he was half-man, half-spirit.
“Ezeulu opened the round basket and brought out a boiled and smoked leg of goat and cut a big piece for Akuebue and a very small one for himself."
In this scene, Ezeulu sent Nwafo to wrap the goat meat in a banana leaf, dipped in peppered palm oil. Then, Ezeulu gave a little strand from his own piece and threw the remainder into his mouth.
In this scene, the Court Messenger was wearing a blue fez.
Akuebue says, “look round and count your teeth with your tongue, sit down, Obika, you must expect foreigners to talk through the nose.”
Here, Ezeulu says“Do not take my question amiss. The white man has his own way of doing things.”
Towards the end of the chapter, Ezeulu says, “I know a man like you would not want to spend many days outside his village.”
Chapter Thirteen
In this chapter, Achebe writes, “no one spoke of war any more in these days of the white man.”
He also writes that the giant ikolo was never beaten out of season except in a great emergency.
Achebe offers a proverb, that “Our people say that if you thank a man for what he has done he will have strength to do more.”
In a scene in this chapter, he says, “For a long time no one stood up to reply. Instead there was general talking (which sometimes sounded like murmuring) among the assembled rulers of Umuaro."
He writes, “When we have a feast do we not send for friends in other clans to come and share it with us, and do they not also ask us to their own celebrations?"
”You may go with him if your feet are hungry for a walk,” says Nwaka.
A delegate says, “Ogbuefi Nwaka, please do not speak into my words.”
”Ezeulu stood up then. The big fire which had been lit some distance away shone in his face.” Ezeulu then says, “Sometimes when we have given a piece of yam to a child we beg him to give us a little from it, not because we really want to eat it but because we want to test our child. We want to know whether he is the kind of person who will give out or whether he will clutch everything to his chest when he grows up.”
“Ezeulu’s father had indeed been a great medicine-man and magician,” but that “true medicine” had died with his father’s generation. He performed countless marvels but the one that people talked about most was his ability to make himself invisible.”
During a war, “the chief priest passed through Aninta as often as he wished.” During this war, he writes “any passer-by who approached them suddenly stopped before they reached him and began to peer into the bush on the other side of the path like a hunter who had heard the rustle of game.”
Okeki Onenyi learnt many herbs and much anwansi or magic from his father. But he never learnt this particular magic whose name was Oti-anya afu-nzo.
He goes on to write, “There were few priests in the history of Umuaro in whose body priesthood met with medicine and magic as they did in the body of the last Ezeulu. When it happened the man’s power was boundless.
During a scene which involved police officers he writes, “The two policemen were not in the least surprised. The only way to make people talk was to frighten them.” “The policemen marched into a hut and found an old woman chewing her toothless gums.”
In the next scene he writes, “when a masked spirit visits you you have to appease its footprints with presents.”
At the end of this chapter we learn of a character whose name is The Bow that shoots at the Sky.
In a previous chapter, a character places his palms up to the sky to pray.
Chapter Fourteen
Obika “watched his father with the tail of his eye,” as he ate and pounded cassava and bitter-leaf soup.
Ezeulu went out at night to look at the new moon, “the sky had an unfamiliar face.”
A character in this chapter admired people who “were always looking for the lighter side of things.”
Of another character, Achebe writes, “his job was said to comprise licking plates in the white man’s kitchen in Okperi, which was a great degradation for a son of Umuaro.”
Of this character he writes, “Ezeulu was beginning to soften towards the man, and see that even a hostile clansman was a friend in a strange country. For the Okperi of Government Hill was indeed a strange country to Ezeulu.”
”It was not the Okperi he had known as a boy and young man, the village of his mother, Nwanyieke. There must still be parts of that old Okperi left, but Ezeulu could not possibly go out in search of it in this time of his disgrace. Where would he find the eye with which to look at the old sites and faces?”
Here, I think it is interesting that Achebe discusses physical change in the appearances of our childhood homes.
During a scene at night, Achebe writes that “Ezeulu’s sharp ear picked out a few voices that sang in a curious dialect. Except for the word moon he could not make out what they said. No doubt they were children of some of these people who spoke a curious sort of Igbo — through the nose. The first time Ezeulu heard the children’s voices his heart flew out.”
Chapter Fourteen (continued)
Achebe suggests simply that proverbs are sayings that make sense.
Of a character, Achebe writes, “although he was only a little boy he had the mind of an adult.” This picks up on the concept of rites of passage into adulthood. For Ray Charles, a rite of passage was marijuana use.
In one scene after Nwafo reached for the ogene and made it beat, Achebe writes, “Ezeulu was still hearing in his mind the voices of the children of Government Hill.”
In one scene, a character says, “I have seen it with my own eyes.”
In another scene Nwodika’s son says, “Our wise men have said that a traveler to distant places should make no enemies. I stand by it.” This is a reference to diplomacy.
Of the white man Nwodika’s son says, “I had not learnt his language or his custom.”
He says “a man of sense does not go on hunting little bush rodents when his age mates are after big game,” “he told me to leave and join in the race for the white man’s money.” “I can tell you that I do not aim to die a servant. My eye is on starting a small trade in tobacco as soon as I have collected a little money.” The markets are growing.
Akuebue says, “I have told her many times that a woman who carries her head on a rigid neck as if she is carrying a pot of water will never live for long with any husband.
"The white man watched Ezeulu with something like amusement on his face.”
In the end of this chapter, the men were about to elevate the priest above his fellows.
Chapter Fifteen
In this chapter, of a character Achebe writes, “in certain circumstances such a man as this compelled respect.”
"The wife who had seen the emptiness of life had cried: Let my husband hate me as long as he provides yams for me every afternoon.”
In this chapter Ezeulu learns that the white man was his ally.
Of Clarke Achebe writes, “Clarke was not the person to lock a man up without fully satisfying his own conscience that justice had not only been done but appeared to have been done.”
Chapter Sixteen
"The weather held until they were about half-way between Okperi and Umuaro. Then the rain seemed to say: Now is the time, there are no houses on the way where they can seek shelter.
Achebe suggests that there is definitely something majestic about the natural world.
In this chapter, “‘Hi-hi-hi-hi,’ laughed Ifeme.”
"Yes, it was right that the Chief Priest should go ahead and confront danger before it reached his people. That was the responsibility of his priesthood.”
Obiageli asks Ugoye to tell the story about Eneke Ntulukpa. The story is about a man who had two wives who went to work on their farm. This farm was on the boundary between the land of men and the land of spirits.”
Ezeulu realizes that he was not in the position to instruct his deity. He draws the conclusion that he “was no more than an arrow in the bow of his god. This thought intoxicated Ezeulu.”
"If he had spotted the white man as an ally from the very beginning, it would explain many things,” the thoughts that had come into his head at the time. One half of him was man and the other mmo—the half that was painted over with white chalk at important religious moments. And half of the things he ever did were done by this spirit side.”
Chapter Seventeen
In the opening lines of this chapter Achebe writes, “the people of Umuaro had a saying that the noise even of the loudest events must begin to die down by the second market week. For a while people talked about nothing else; but gradually it became just another story in the life of the six villages, or so they imagined. In short, life went on as though nothing had happened or was ever going to happen.”
Achebe writes that the year’s minor celebration was “to have an added interest because Obika’s age group would present a new ancestral mask to the village. The coming of a new mask was always an important occasion especially when as now it was a mask of high rank.”
All the arrangements were made secretly in keeping with the mystery of ancestral spirits.
Everyone formed a big ring on the ilo, and as more people poured in from every quarter the ring became thicker and the noise greater.
From what was known of the wicked medicine-man “and by the way he sat away from other people it was clear he had not come merely to watch a new mask.”
An occasion as this was often used by wicked men to try out the potency of their magic or to match their power against that of others. There were stories of Masks which had come out unprepared and been transfixed to a spot for days or even felled to the ground.
The approach of the mask caused a massive stampede. The metal gong became louder and louder and the crowd looked around them to be sure that the line of flight was clear.
There was another stampede, here “the young men wore raffia and their machets caught the light as they threw them up or clashed them in salute of each other from left to right and then back from right to left. The crowd at that point would scatter and the man would brake all of a sudden and tremble on all toes.
The first spectacle of the day came with the arrival of Obika and a flute man at his heels singing of his exploits. The crowd cheered, especially the women because Obika was the handsomest young man in Unuachala and perhaps in all Umuaro.
Obika and the medicine man have a scuffle which at one point causes the crowd to cheer.
The Mask arrived appropriately on the crest of the excitement. It approached a few steps at a time, each one accompanied by the sound of bells and rattles on its waist and ankles.” It started to sing , “but there was not much of a song in it. But then an Agaba was not a Mask of song and dance. It stood for the power and aggressiveness of youth.”
”It changed it’s song into an appeal to all and sundry not to be the first to provoke the ancestral Mask, and it gave minute details of what would befall anyone who ignored this advice. He would become an outcast, with no fingers and no toes, living all by himself in a solitary hut, a beggar’s satchel hanging down his shoulder; in other words, a leper.” Then the mask breaks into another song.
Achebe mentions that, “some of the gods would be very old, nearing the time when their power would be transferred to new carvings and they would be cast aside; and some would have been made the other day. The very old ones carried face marks like the men who made them, in the days before Ezeulu’s grandfather proscribed the custom.”
”At last year’s festival only three of these ancients were left. Perhaps this year one or two more would disappear, following the men who made them in their own image and departed long ago.”
”The festival thus brought gods and men together in one crowd. A man might look to his right and find his neighbor and look to his left and see a god standing there—perhaps Agwu whose mother also gave birth to madness or Ngene, owner of a stream.”
In this scene Onenyi Nnanyelugo says, “shall we then sit down and watch our harvest ruined and our children and wives die of hunger? No! Although I am not the priest of Ulo I can say that the deity does not want Umuaro to perish.”
Ezeulu’s announcement was such as had not been known in Umuaro in living memory.
Of another character Ogbuefi Ofoka says, “today he would rather see the six villages ruined than eat two yams.” And of yet another character Ezeulu says, “he was not prepared to compromise on such things as sacred animals.”
Of another character Achebe writes, “his intention was not originally to antagonize Unachukwu more than was necessary for making his point.”
Of items to be brought to the church instead of Ulu, the man says, bring “not only yams, any crop whatsoever or livestock or money. Anything.”
When “the mighty tree falls and the little birds scatter in the bush… the little bird which hops off the ground and lands on an ant-hill may not know it but is still on the ground."



No Longer At Ease
By Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe is best known for his masterful African Trilogy, consisting of the two previous critiques as well as the present one. The trilogy tells a story of a single Nigerian community over three generations from first colonial contact to urban migration and the breakdown of traditional cultures.
Chapter One
"For three or four weeks Obi Okonkwo had been steeling himself against this moment. He wore a smart palm-beach suit and appeared unruffled and indifferent."
Obi is in a proceeding with Mr. Justice William Galloway, Judge of the High Court of Lagos and the Southern Cameroons.
A lawyer, Mr. Adeyemi explains to the judge that he is sorry because he is late as a result of his car breaking down on the way. When the judge accepts Mr. Adeyemi's apology, there was laughter in the courtroom and "Obi Okonkwo smiled a wan and ashy smile and lost interest again." Perhaps he had other things on his mind.
The case had been the talk of Lagos for a number of weeks, and everyone who could leave his job was there to hear the judgement. The judge says to Obi, "I cannot comprehend how a young man of your education and brilliant promise could have done this."
We are introduced to Mr. Green who had been playing tennis since five o'clock. After Mr. Green states that he understands why the defendant did took a bribe, "the British Council Man looked about him furtively, more from instinct than necessity.
We learn that Umuofia is an Ibo village in Eastern Nigeria and the home town of Obi Okonkwo. When Umuofians leave their home to find work, they return to Umuofia every two years or so to spend their leave. When they have saved up enough money they ask their relations at home to find them a wife, or they build a "zinc" house on their family land.
We learn that people in the Umuofia Progressive Union paid eight hundred pounds to train a young man in England. Instead of being grateful, however, they feel insulted by him over a "useless girl."
Still, the union had faith in the young man. "For, as the President pointed out, a kinsman in trouble had to be saved, not blamed." And so the union decided to pay for a lawyer from their funds.
The judge said that it was a thing of shame for a man in the senior office to go to prison for twenty pounds. He said, "I am against people reaping where they have not sown." This perhaps regards justice.
One man said that "it is all lack of experience" which caused Obi to accept the money. "Obi tried to do what everyone does without finding out how it was done," the man said, then told a related proverb.
When the President spoke, the congregation answered Amen. "We are strangers in this land. If good comes to it may we have our share. Amen. But if bad comes let it go to the owners of the land who know what gods should be appeased." Then he says how this young man could potentially contribute to the productivity of the town."
We learn that Obi Okonkwo's full name was Obiajulu and that Obi "was not the kind of man who carried sorrow on his face."
We also learn that "six or seven years ago Umuofians abroad had formed their union with the aim of collecting money to send some of their brighter men to study in England." Obi was a star student, despite some slight failures.
Shortly after this scene night falls, and "people blinked and rubbed their eyes to get used to the evening light once more."
A speaker reminds Obi that in times past Umuofia would have required him to fight in her wars, now however, they send him to bring knowledge. He says, "I have heard of young men from other towns who went to the white man's country, but instead of facing their studies they went after the sweet things of the flesh. Some of them even married white women." "The crowd murmured its strong diaproval of such behavior." "A man who does that is lost to his people. He is like rain wasted in the forest."
One speaker says "we are sending you to learn book.. Enjoyment can wait. Do not be in a hurry to rush into the pleasures of the world like the young antelope who danced herself lame when the main dance was yet to come."
At this point the Christian gathering ended with the singing of "Praise God from whom all blessings flow," and the guests then said there farewells to Obi and gave him presents to help him on his journey. These were "substantial presents in a village where money was so rare, where men and women toiled from year to year to wrest a meager living from an unwilling and exhausted toil."
Chapter Two
In this chapter we learn that Obi has spent four years in England, but the four years seemed to him like a decade because of the hardships that he faced there.
We also learn that when he returns to Nigeria he discovers a different place than what he pictured. For example, a new custom there is to, “if you see a white man, take off your hat for him.” It is amusing to learn this.
During this scene, Achebe writes, “Obi raised himself instinctively to look at the pillow he was lying on.” It’s interesting that he discusses the influence of instinct in our lives.
In one scene, we are transported to a meat stall in Lagos where a man was helping a woman grind maize. It is good to learn that those things in countries like Lagos are called various kinds of stalls.
Obi and another character have a heated debate about Nigeria’s future. “Whichever line Obi took, Christopher had to take the opposite.”
Obi makes a wise saying, that “our people say that if you pay homage to the man on top, others will pay homage to you when it is your turn to be on top.”
Chapter Three
This excerpt is interesting, because it describes times when we feel one way but can not express what we are feeling.
Chapter Four
I learned of the term "formalities in government," which is similar to the term administrative red tape that I learned about in a previous chapter of Achebe's novel.
Chapter Five
In this chapter, Obi and a chairman talked for the greater part of half an hour. “Obi said afterwards that he talked a lot of nonsense, but it was a learned and impressive kind of nonsense. He surprised even himself when he began to flow.”
During this discussion one of the speakers indicates that The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene is, “the only sensible novel any European has written on West Africa and one of the best novels I have read.”
They discuss that a theme of the novel is being torn between one’s love of a woman and one’s love of God.
Obi gets frustrated at what he calls “a colonial mentality.”
The man who Obi is speaking to says, “you know more book than I, but I am older and wiser.”
In this scene, “he then went across the street to a shop where iced water was sold at a penny a bottle and brought them two bottles.”
In the discussion that follows, Joseph says, “it’s no laughing matter.”
Obi travels through Ibadan to Umuofia on a wagon with an engine called God’s Case No Appeal.
In this scene, “the driver’s mate had run back, knowing that they would be more amenable when there were no embarrassing strangers gazing at them.”
A discussion begins about how government can educate the masses. During this scene, however, Obi “was not really in the mood for consecutive reasoning. His mind was impatient to roam in a more pleasant landscape.”
He meets a young woman and her baby who were going to Benin.
While in the lorry, “Obi continued in his state of half-asleep until the driver suddenly pulled up by the side of the road,” and “everyone agreed that sleep was a most unreasonable phenomenon.” As for Obi, sleep had fled from his eyes as soon as the driver had pulled up. His mind cleared immediately as if the sun had risen and dried the dew that had settled on it.”
In this chapter, when a couple songs are sung, “the song of the traders was now so loud and spicy that he could not concentrate on his thinking.”
In his village, “nowadays going to England has become as commonplace as going down to the village green. But five years ago it was different.
On Obi’s return to his village, “the first thing that claimed his attention was an open jeep which blared out local music from a set of loudspeakers. Two men in the car swayed to the music as did many others in the crowd that had gathered round it.”
During a discussion in his town, a man tells Obi, “when a new saying gets to the land of empty men they lose their heads over it.”
"Four years in England had filled Obi with a longing to be back in Umuofia. He spoke Ibo whenever he had the least opportunity of doing so. Nothing gave him greater pleasure than to find another Ibo-speaking student in a London bus.”
"After the first four hundred handshakes and hundred embraces, Obi was able to sit down for a while with his father’s older kinsmen in the big parlor.”
During one discussion, a man says, “this is not a day for quarrels,” and Okwonkwo says, “do not trouble yourself, Ogbuefi Odogwu.”
During the end of this chapter, one of the characters says, “Iguedo breeds great men,” “‘when I was young I knew of them — Okonkwo, Ezeudu, Obierika, Okolo, Nwosu.’ He counted them off with his right fingers against the left. ‘And many others, as many as grains of sand. Among their fathers we hear of Ndu, Nwosisi, Ikedi, Obika, and his brother Iweka— all giants. These men were great in their day. Today greatness has changed its tune.'"
Chapter Six
In this chapter we learn that when Obi had begun to go to school, “the teacher called on any pupil to tell the class a folk story.”
Obi said to himself, “there are many young men in this country today who would sacrifice themselves to get the opportunity I have had.”
During a scene when it rains, Achebe writes that, “it was as though the deity presiding over the waters in the sky found, on checking his stock and counting off the months on his fingers, that there was too much rain left and that he had to do something drastic about it before the impending dry season.” Then, “Obi composed himself and went off to sleep.”
Chapter Eight
One of the young people criticizes a policy of the commission. Achebe writes, "The words were hard, but Obi felt somehow that they lacked bitterness; especially since they were English words taken straight from today's newspaper."
"[Obi] spoke about the wonderful welcome they had given him on his return. "If a man returns from a long journey and no one says nno to him he feels like one who has not arrived."
"He tried to improvise a joke, but it did not come off, and he hurried to the next point."
"He thanked them for the sacrifices they had made to send him to England. He would try his best to justify their confidence."
"His audience still seemed highly impressed. They liked good Ibo, but they also admired English."
The people have a discussion about what Obi will do with "the big money which Government would give him."
One of the villagers says, "You are very young, a child of yesterday. You know book. But book stands by itself and experience stands by itself. So I am not afraid to talk to you."
The villager says, "You are one of us, so we must bare our minds to you. I have lived in this Lagos for fifteen years," and then proceeds to say, "What the Government pays you is more than enough unless you go into bad ways, and [we] must deny ourselves many pleasures."
When Obi gets frustrated and threatens to take the village to court, "'Please sit down, Mr. Okonkwo,' said the President calmly." "You may take me to court when I have finished."
Obi remained upset, however. "A number of people tried to intercept him. 'Please sit down.' 'Cool down.' 'There is no quarrel,' but Obi refused to listen and stormed away from the meeting.
Chapter Nine
Obi talks to a girl about seventeen or eighteen years old. "A mere girl, Obi thought. And already so wise in the ways of the world."
Chapter Ten
In this chapter, in a discussion with Obi and a villager about policy, "[the villager] then reverted to Ibo."
Achebe's line, "If one didn't laugh, one would have to cry. It seemed that was the way Nigeria was built."
In the lines that follows, Achebe writes, "'Anyway, I'll pull through,' he assured himself. 'The beginning was bound to be a little difficult.'"
Achebe writes, "Clara's way of getting anything from him was not to argue but to refuse to talk."
Chapter Eleven
Of a character, in this chapter, Mr. Green, Achebe writes, "Obi had long come to admit to himself that, no matter how much he disliked Mr. Green, he nevertheless had some admirable qualities."
Further on in the chapter, Achebe writes, "Whenever Obi had a difficult discussion with Clara he planned all the dialogue beforehand. But when the time came it always took a completely different course."
Of Christopher, Obi's economist friend, Achebe writes, Clara had gradually come round to liking him.
"He was very likeable really, quite unlike Joseph, who was a bushman."
"Whether Christopher spoke good or 'broken' English depended on what he was saying, where he was saying it, to whom and how he wanted to say it."
When Obi was parking his car, he was directed by half a dozen little urchins who helped him park.
Chapter Twelve
Mr. Green said to Obi, "You know, Okonkwo, I have lived in your country for fifteen years and yet I cannot begin to understand the metality of the so-called educated Nigerian.
Mr. Green says, "I think Government is making a terrible mistake in making it so easy for people like that to have so-called university education.
I like in this chapter that Achebe describes how Obi overheard one person talking to another.
In reading Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah, published in the 1980s, and other works, I learned that literature tells a story about the period that it was written, outside of the main narrative, about life during that particular time.
"Everyone shares in the good fortune of the village child who does good and returns home.”
Achebe also cautions against being too theatrical in life.
The masked ancestral spirits are beyond human knowledge; that some things are beyond human knowledge.
Obi was used to speaking to his mother like an equal, but his father had always been different. He goes on to write that Obi felt some strange happiness from the little ground he won in a discussion with his father.
When Obi’s mother got sick, she lost faith in the European medicine and wanted to try a native doctor.
Obi paused to collect his thoughts, then began speaking again.
Obi drove the 500 miles between Umuofia and Lagos in kind of a daze.
Obi suggests that Clara was being childish.
Christopher says, “I have learnt not to interfere with a matter between a man and a woman.”
In one scene, a character says, “women are very funny creatures, you know.”
In the scene that follows, Achebe writes, Obi “quietly and calmly crumpled the paper in his left palm until it was a tiny ball, threw it on the floor, and began to turn the pages of the book forwards and backwards.
Of the crisis in Obi Okwonkwo’s life, Achebe in No Longer At Ease writes, “Why could he not swallow his pride? Could a person in his position afford that kind of pride?”
"It is from listening to old men that you learn wisdom. I know that when I return to Umuofia I cannot claim to be an old man. But here in this Lagos I am an old man to the rest of you.”
“[Obi’s father] was not really a man of action but of thought. When faced with a problem under normal circumstances, he was apt to weigh it and measure it and look it up and down, postponing action. He relied heavily on his wife at such moments.”
"The patient idealist says: ‘give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.’ But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.”
A man came to Obi’s office and asked him to give his son a scholarship in exchange for a wad of money and other incentives.
In the novel’s end, Obi accepts the bribe and is arrested after an official tricks him.
M.A. Nanga is one of the characters names. There is also nangavanga.



One Hundred Years of Solitude
By Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez exiled himself to Mexico City and was a native of Colombia. The editor notes that as he spent his first eight years in his maternal grandparents' home, listening to their nonstop stories, superstitions, and folk beliefs, because of their way of storytelling he was unable to distinguish between the real and the fabulous. Marquez wrote, "I feel that all my writing has been about the experiences of the time I spent with my grandparents." In 1959, "he had become favorably impressed by Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution and helped found the Colombian branch of Castro's news agency. Thus began a friendship that continued, with occasional criticism from Garcia Marquez, until he passed away.
As a result of his writings, Marquez received popularity and fame and consequently the term "magical realism" entered readers' vocabularies around the world. He is recognized as "the most popular and perhaps best writer in Spanish since Cervantes," and he was one of those very rare artists who suceeded in chronicling not only a nation's life, culture, and history, but also those of an entire continent, and a master storyteller who, as the New York Review of Books once said, "forces upon us at every page the wonder and extravagance of life."
"All of a sudden - I don't know why - I had this illumination on how to write the book." "The book" was Cien Anos de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude, U.S., 1969.) One Hundred Years of Solitude was inspired by a family vacation Marquez took to Acapulco. In June 1967, eight thousand copies of One Hundred Years of Solitude were printed and within three years it would sell over half a million copies. "The Buendia family, Cien Anos de Soledad, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez were celebrated throughout the world, and One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the hallmarks of twentieth-century fiction."
Chapter One
Marquez writes that “things have a life of their own, it’s simply a matter of waking up their souls.”
The above statement was made by Jose Arcadio Buendia, “whose unbridled imagination always went beyond the genius of nature and even beyond miracles and magic,” and “thought that it would be possible to make use of that useless invention to extract gold from the bowels of the earth.”
Melquiades, the gypsy, however, who was an honest man, “warned him: ‘It won’t work for that.’”
Still, Jose Arcadio Buendia was determined to devise a way to make gold.
After some time, Jose Arcadio Buendia decides to make a weapon of war out of a gigantic magnifying glass.
He sent it to the government, with numerous explanatory sketches, by a messenger through the mountains, but it was a failure.
That was the period in which he acquired the habit of talking to himself, of walking through the house without paying attention to anyone, as Ursula and the children broke their backs in the garden, growing banana and caladium, cassava and yams, ahuyama roots and eggplants.
By then Melquiades had aged with surprising rapidity. On his first trips he appeared to be the same age as Jose Arcadio Buendia. But while the latter had preserved his extraordinary strength, which permitted him to pull down a horse by grabbing its ears, the gypsy seemed to have been worn down by some mysterious illness.
At this time, Macondo was a village that was more orderly and hard-working than any known until then by its three hundred inhabitants. It was a truly happy village where no one was over thirty years of age and where no one had died.
That spirit of social initiative disappeared in a short time, pulled away by Arcadio Buendia’s inventions.
Arcadio Buendia had no desire to understand the natural world of forests around him.
Upon discovery of a galleon in the forest where jaguars roamed, destiny is discussed because Arcadio Buendia considered it a trick of his whimsical fate to have found it all of a sudden without looking for it.
Jose Arcadio Buendia had not thought that his wife’s will was so firm, until her reply express her intent to stay in the village.
His wife mentioned that instead of going around thinking about his crazy inventions, he should be worrying about his sons.
Here, Arcadio Buendia had the impression that only at that instant had his children begun to exist, conceived from his wife, Ursula’s spell.
He takes his wife’s advice and begins to work with the children. His eldest son, Jose Arcadia, had his father’s physical characteristics but lacked his imagination, and his parents gave thanks to heaven that he had no animal features.
He taught his sons about the wonders of the world, and it was in that way that the boys ended up learning that in the southern extremes of Africa there were men so intelligent and peaceful that their only pastime was to sit and think.
Here we are introduced to new gypsies, young men and women who knew only their own language and who transformed the village. The inhabitants of Macondo found themselves lost in their own streets, confused by the crowded fair.
Here, Arcadio Buendia again seeks the help of Melquiades, but discovers that Melquiades had succumbed to illness and died.
During this festival Arcadio Buendia examine what they first think is a giant diamond, but learn that it is ice, “the great invention of our time.”
In this chapter, the protagonist dresses himself in the dark by feel.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez suggests that you just focus on the sense of smell. He also suggests that you shouldn't stray too far from the norm.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes, of a character in One Hundred Years of Solitude, “he made a formal visit, sitting uncomprehendingly in the living room without saying a word.”
Marquez talks a lot about the influence of the senses in our lives, he describes the influence of the sense of smell often, as well as the influence of “the glacial rumbling of his kidneys, and the air of his intestines, and fear, and the bewildered anxiety to flee and at the same time stay forever in that exasperated silence and that fearful solitude.”
In one scene, Marquez writes that the people were served guava jelly on crackers to celebrate an achievement. Guava has many health benefits.
After a disagreement, Marquez writes that Pilar Ternera put arnica compresses on the swelling. Arnica is used topically for a wide range of conditions, including bruises, sprains, and muscle aches.
Of one discussion, Marquez writes, it inspired a serene courage in him.
In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes, the wife of Jose Arcadio says, “‘Now you really are a man.’ And since he did not understand what she meant, she spelled it out to him. ‘You’re going to be a father.’”
Jose Arcadio meets a gypsy girl. The girl was physically small, but “she had a decision and warmth that compensated for her fragility.” Marquez writes, “she had a firmness of character and a bravery that was admirable.”
In the passage that follows, Marquez writes that someone shouts of a character, “He’s become a gypsy!” After which Jose Arcadio said, “I hope it’s true. That way he’ll learn to be a man.”
Jose Arcadio Buendia later says, “If you don’t fear God, fear him through the metals.”
Marquez suggests that Jose Arcadio Buendia met “men and women like him, with straight hair and dark skin who complained of the same pains.”
In the following chapter Marquez writes, “they were put in the care of Visitacion, a Guajiro Indian woman who had arrived in town with a brother in flight from a plague of insomnia that had been scourging their town for several years.”
Marquez writes, “that was how Arcadio and Amaranta came to speak the Guajiro language before Spanish, and they learned to drink lizard broth and eat spider eggs without Ursula's knowing it."
Marquez writes, “it was also Jose Arcadio Buendia who decided during those years that they should plant almond trees instead of acacias on the streets, and who discovered, without revealing it, a way to make them live forever.”
Of one character, Marquez writes, “she began to eat what was on her plate without tasting anything.”
Marquez suggests that agua is a word from an Indian language.
Soon Rebecca became incorporated into the life of the family. She would sit in her small rocker playing with her toys in the most remote corner of the house.
It did not take long for them to consider her another member of the family.
In this chapter Marquez also suggests that we may forget our childhood, and Jose Arcadio Buendia says that this is okay.
When the main characters contracted the illness insomnia, Ursula prepared and made them all drink a brew of monkshood, but this too, didn’t work.
Those who wanted to sleep tried all kinds of methods of exhausting themselves, to tell over and over for hours on end the same jokes, and to tell stories.
Marquez describes Rebeca and Amaranta, whose bright clothes seemed to have given them a new place in the world.
Marquez writes that Ursula engaged with an oven that went all night turning out baskets and more baskets of bread and a prodigious variety of puddings, meringues, and cookies, which disappeared in a few hours.
In an early chapter of One Hundred Years of Solitude, Garcia Marquez writes that one character found it hard to feel sympathy for characters in movies because his own life was such a struggle.
In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez describes two characters whose "bright clothes seemed to have given them a new place in the world."
We learn that Jose Arcadio Buendia’s hands had the useful strength with which he used to pull down horses.
Marquez writes, “it was not manly to make trouble for someone in front of his family, and of a disagreement, he decided to resolve the situation in a pleasant way."
We are introduced to two of the daughters of Don Apolinar Mascote. They were gracious and well-mannered.
As soon as the men came in, before being introduced, they gave them chairs to sit on. But they both remained standing.
They begin to organize a party. Ursula ordered costly necessities for the decorations and the table service. They delivered Viennese furniture, tablecloths from Holland, and a rich variety of lamps and candlesticks. The import house sent along an Italian expert, Pieter Crespi, to assemble and tune the pianola, to instruct the purchasers in its functioning, and to teach them how to dance the latest music printed on its six paper rolls.
We learn that one character had opened a sewing shop, where they made felt flowers as well as guava delicacies.
Marquez talks a lot about nostalgia. Define nostalgia for past, present and future generations.
In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez describes that there was a current of politics in the town and Don Apolinar Moscote had views that were in line with his background.
Marquez talks about military processes without any due process of law.
In one scene, they had played dominoes until nine in the evening.
In another scene, Don Moscote says, “We leave Macondo in your care. We leave it to you in good shape; try to have it in better shape when we return.” Then Arcadio gave a very personal interpretation to the instructions.
Marquez writes, Pietro Crespi had found love. Happiness was accompanied by prosperity.
Of one character Marquez writes, he was ashamed of his certain traits, including his female buttocks.
At one point, Colonel Aureliano had “resolved to defend the town to the death.”
Marquez often describes the setting of South and Central America: the jungles, the mountains, the towns.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez uses the term “political labyrinths,” to describe administrative red tape.
Marquez describes a town where there was a school which had a teacher who made students who talked in class eat hot chili.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is a Nobel Prize winner.
In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez suggests that we embrace our sensuality.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in One Hundred Years of Solitude discusses normality in life and compares it to the landscape, sometimes mountains, sometimes flat grasslands, and sometimes you see a flower or a majestic sight.
It is a fortunate coincidence that I began the book critique on Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude during Latin American Heritage Month.
For me, nostalgia is that sense of peace that I used to get during different times in the past.
Marquez suggests that the city is a madhouse.
Marquez describes the "intricate game of confusion," which often refers to administrative red tape. He also describes "theological tricks used to confuse the devil."
Of a character, Marquez suggests, "he displayed the wisdom that his years of learning had given him."
Of a prosperous time Marquez writes, “his mares would bare triplets, his hens laid twice a day, and his hogs fattened with such speed that no one could explain it."
Marquez suggests that we have it good in America, with very little to worry about.
Marquez tells the story of a woman who “sat at a table, and ate nothing but kernels of rice, which she picked up with a pin."
Gabriel Garcia Marquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude suggests that government is Conservative.
Marquez reminds us that government should not be useless and should deal with the realities of the world.
Of a character, Marquez describes a time when he became lost in “labyrinths of disappointment.”
Marquez writes a lot about keeping true to tradition, for example he writes how every night before dinner the table was set.
He also reminds us that certain things are against our natural human instincts.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude writes that Aureliano Buendia was a man who had love for his family.
Of one character Marquez writes that “in the house they simply thought her mind was wandering.”
In this chapter Ursula “asked God, without fear if he really believed that people were made of iron in order to bear so many troubles and mortifications.”
Of one character Marquez writes, she consumed an entire side of veal without breaking a single rule of good table manners.
In One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez there is a scene where a character's room is equipped for his blindness. The items are arranged where he will remember them by touch, and in addition to the sense of touch, the character also relies on the sense of smell. In one room it smells like food, so he knows it's the kitchen, etc.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude writes that “if Aureliano Segundo detested anything it was complicating his life with modifications and changes."
Marquez writes that there were dances that were the only one’s of their kind where gringos and natives mingled.
He writes that at one point Aureliano Segundo’s body and soul no longer permitted him the indulgences of days gone by.
In one scene Marquez writes “'Say goodbye to Fernanda' Amaranta Buendia begged her. 'One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship.'”
Fernanda had a dream that Mauricio Babilonia was saving her from a shipwreck and she did not feel gratitude but rage.
Marquez writes that Ursula “worked out an intricate web of false dates to throw Fernanda off the track,” regarding an inquiry.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude suggests that you take notice of a journey and record it, a valuable literary exercise.
Marquez also suggests that you should not let yourself be defeated by resignation.
I like the scene where Marquez writes, Meme was still thinking about Mauricio Babilonia, and she would keep thinking about him for all the days of her life.
In one scene Marquez writes, “‘If they believe it in the Bible,’ Fernanda replied, ‘I don’t see why they shouldn’t believe it from me.’”
Marquez suggests that sometimes some people want to make other people tremble.
Marquez illustrates a macrocosm and a microcosm through his examination of the major political events in the town of Macondo, and the close portraits of the people’s lives.
In one scene Marquez suggests that you should not look at a person without seeing him.
I like the heroic character Gerineldo.
In one scene Marquez writes, “Ursula shuddered with the evidence that time was not passing, but that it was turning in a circle.”
Marquez writes of “the wise men of Babylon.”
Marquez describes Ursula as “a modern woman without prejudices.”
He suggests that certain things bring about a new confusion.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez suggests that a goal of literature is to entertain.
In One Hunded Years of Solitude he describes a character “who dedicated a whole life of solitude and diligence to the rearing of children although she could barely remember whether they were her children or grandchildren.”
He writes that Ursula played tricks on Aureliano by changing the location of things in his room.
Of one character Marquez writes, “nor did she do anything that did not have as an aim the search for a comfortable life and peaceful old age in Macondo.”
Marquez describes a proprietress who “was a smiling mamasanta, tormented by a mania for opening and closing doors.”
Marquez reminds us that we have the patience to wait at least a few minutes.
Marquez explains that the Arabs have the age-old custom of sitting in their doorways.
He writes that a scorpion bite can cause infertility.
He also writes that Aureliano and Amaranta Ursula were so close that they preferred death to separation.
In one passage Marquez writes, “In the lethargy of her pregnancy, Amaranta Ursula tried to set up a business in necklaces made out of the backbones of fish."
Marquez explains that in the early days of Macondo the people had the custom of naming their children after streets.



No One Writes the Colonel / Leaf Storm
By Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In one scene the colonel wrapped himself in a blanket.
The Colonel listens to the rain, and he also listens to his wife’s breathing.
In one scene he writes, “the woman fell into a momentary torpor. When she opened [her eyes] again, her breathing seemed more even."
He wandered about the town during the siesta, without thinking about anything, without even trying to convince himself that his problem had no solution. He walked through forgotten streets until he found he was exhausted.
Then he kept silent, drumming on the package until he realized someone had noticed it.
One woman says, “Everybody says death is a woman. But I don’t think it’s a woman. I think it’s an animal with claws.”
Writes, "poverty is the best cure for diabetes."
Sleep broke his resolve. He fell to the bottom of a substance without time and without space. Dawn was breaking.
** Updated Monday, December 12, 2022
Outside, in the mysterious silence of the plantations, the shadows seemed clean.
In one scene he writes, “the town was floating in the heat.”
In another scene he writes, “Damaso bit his lips.”
One character tells another, “You would have been an extraordinary architect.”
Marquez writes, then, “the trace of that episode disappeared forever from his memory.”
Writes, “it was like a lightning stroke inside him… when he thought astonishingly, Gracious, this is the third one I’ve found this week.
A sequence follows where the Colonel encounters three dead birds.
Of the Colonel, Marquez writes, “he himself did not realize that he had become so subtle in his thinking that for at least three years in his meditative moments he was no longer thinking about anything.”
Marquez writes, “the priest sat in the house that had not become peaceful since a pistol shot rang out, more than twenty years before.”
** Updated Saturday, December 24, 2022
Leaf Storm
In one scene writes of a character, “he seems to be looking for something to occupy his thought for a moment.”
Writes, “Meme was sitting opposite me, and was eating listlessly, as if the jelly and rolls were only something to hold together the visit.”
Writes, “I understood that and let her lose herself in her labyrinths, sink into the past with that nostalgic and sad enthusiasm…”
Writes, “it was obvious that Meme felt like recalling things that night,” and suggests that she improved in doing this over time.
Writes, “she spoke about the feudal splendor of our family during the last years of the previous century.”
Writes, “Meme recalled things with sadness, although she still had a favorable amount of good memories left.”
Writes, “Adelaida had more refined customs than we did (setting eight places on the table, for example.)”
In one scene writes, “and four years have passed without his ever bringing up the subject with me again.”
Writes, “only with your father and in a house as disordered as this one, where everybody does whatever he wants to do, could such a thing have happened.”
Writes, “still, Martin seemed to be linked to my father by a deep and solid friendship.”
Suggests that Martin had taken pains to have such refined customs.
Writes, “I get just as upset thinking that God exists as thinking that he doesn’t. That’s why I’d rather not think about it.”
Writes, “eight years of experience have been of some use.”
Writes, “I knew that sooner or later he would come out because there isn’t a man alive who can live a half-life, locked up, far away from God.”
In the scene that follows he writes, “he was telling things calmly, but with assurance. All I could do was listen to him.”
One character in the novel is a Guajiro Indian.
In one scene writes, “his way of expressing himself was too challenging and aggressive now and I couldn’t accept it calmly.”
Writes, “I wouldn’t have dared go through with what could have been a tremendous burden on my conscience later on.”
Writes, “because of that one single stain on my conscience it would be quite right for me to suffer for the rest of my life. He, on the other hand, was at peace with himself.”
Writes, he “invites me to visit the doctor, certain that I’d be able to get a satisfactory explanation from him.”
Writes, it was then “I noticed the extraordinary resemblance between those two men. They weren’t exact, but they looked like brothers.”
Writes, “there was something bitter, in her way of moving and of feeling sorry for our way of life.”
Writes, “Adelaida remained silent, and I felt infected by her nostalgia.”
Mentions that in many societies there is a requirement for people to have a death certificate.
In one scene, the narrator yearned to smell the soil from the earth.
Writes, “he had just rescued me from death then.”
Writes “that’s all very true colonel. But don’t forget that a dead man wouldn’t have been able to bury me.”
Is critical of the town’s appearance, and writes, “it’s as if God had declared Macondo unnecessary and had thrown it into the corner where towns that have stopped being of any service to creation are kept.”
Writes, “‘it must be three o’clock already,’ and almost at that precise moment the first hammer blow sounds on the nail.”
The Handsomest Drowned Man In the World.
A man washes up on a beach. The man is almost a giant.
Writes that the people thought “that if the magnificent man had lived in the village, his house would have had the widest doors, the highest ceiling and the strongest floor.”
The villagers also believe that the man would have done hard work and contributed to the bounty of the land.
Writes, the women also knew from then on, “that their houses would have wider doors, higher ceilings, and stronger floors so that Esteban’s memory could go everywhere… yes, over there, that’s Esteban’s village.”
Writes, “the parish priest had his first suspicion as an imposter when he saw that he did not understand the language of God or how to greet his ministers.”
Writes, “his only supernatural virtue seemed to be patience.”
The narrator writes, when he asked me what I do for a living, I answered that “I didn’t do anything except stay alive, because nothing else was worth the trouble.”
The commander of the cruiser had tried to repeat the experiment with the antidote and that he’d been changed into a glob of admiral jelly in front of his staff.
Writes, “only then did he have the courage to confess to me that his antidote was nothing but rhubarb and turpentine.”
Writes, “since then I’ve gone through the world drawing the fever out of malaria victims for two pesos, visioning blind men for four-fifty, draining the water from dropsy victims for eighteen…”
Writes, “the more she thought about her dead husband, the more the blood in her heart bubbled up and turned to chocolate, as if instead of sitting down she were running.”
Marquez suggests you view rain as “a water wind.”
In one scene writes that during the rain, “the sense of distance was lost. The notion of time, upset since the day before, disappeared completely.”



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