Kingdoms of The Yoruba Smith Robert Sydney 1969

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STUDIES IN AFRICAN HISTORY ' 2
Kingdoms of the Yoruba

ROBERT SMITH
KINGDOMS
or THE YORUBA
METHUEN & 00 LTD

11 New Fetter Lane • London EC4
First Published in 1969 by Methuen & Co Ltd
© 1969 Robert Smith
Printed in Great Britain by
Richard Clay {The Chaucer Press) Ltd
Bungay, Suffolk
Distributed in the USA by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Contents
Map 1 page vi
Map 2 vii
Map 3 viii
Preface ix
PAET I
I The Yoruba and their Homeland 3

II The Primacy of Ife 15
III The Rise of Oyo 32
IV Kingdoms of the East: Ijesa, Ekiti, Owo, and Ondo 51
V Kingdoms of the West: Ketu, Sabe, and Dassa 66
VI Kingdoms of the South: Ijebu, Egba, Egbado, and
Lagos 74
PART II
VII The Traditions Reviewed 97

VIII An Oba and his People 107
IX War’ 120
PART ni
X The Decline and Fall of Old Oyo 133

XI The Wars and the New States 155
XII On the Threshold of Nigeria 175
Notes 190
Appendix - Crowned Oba 209
Sources and Bibliography 211
Index 218
1. THE YORUBA KINGDOMS AND THEIR
NEIGHBOURS
This map is intended to illustrate the political divisions of the Yoruba

between the foundation of the Kingdoms and c. 1830. The limits
shown for the Kingdoms and groups are extremely tentative. They
are mainly based on the ‘cultural groups’ shown on the map attached
to Forde (1951); important exceptions are in the northward ex¬
tension of the Egba before c. 1830 and the inclusion of the Ife,
Ijesa, OwQ, and Owu Kingdoms. The Oyo Kiagdom at its zenith
probably extended on the north-east as far as the Niger between
Ogudu and the junction of the Mpsi with the Niger, an area now
mainly inhabited by Nupe.
VI
2. THE NEW STATES, c. 1836-62
This map is intended to illustrate the rearrangement of the Yoruba

provinces under Alafin Atiba with Ijaye preponderant in the western
Ekun and Ibadan in the eastern as shown on the map in Morton-
Williams (1967), p. 47. The eastern extension of Ibadan dates only
from the 1850s. The regrouping of the Egba, both shifting southward
and extending west across the river Ogun, with their new capital at
Abeokuta, should also be noted.
vii
3. IBADAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS, 1862-86
This map is based on that in Awe (1964), p. 60. It will be seen that
from 1862 Ibadan absorbed the northern part of the former Ijaye
territory and also Ibarapa in the upper Ogun. On the other hand,
towns such as Saki and Iseyin in the northern part of the former
eastern province of the Oyp Yoruba (see map 2), were independent
of Ibadan and remained only loosely subject to the Alafin at New
Oyp-
viii
Preface
The history of tropical Africa, whose sources are largely un¬
written even for periods quite near in time to our own and
whose study has been undertaken systematically only in late
years, bears the marks of its necessarily provisional character.
But in fact any history of any area or any people, however rich
in primary and secondary material, shares this character. In
any study of the past, whether near in time or remote, there
are always new ways of looking at the material and new
evidence to be adduced. History can never be more than a
selection, both deliberate and fortuitous, of the factors in a
situation. ‘Ultimate history’, which would need no addition,
correction, or modification, and which to Acton seemed to lie
only just beyond the reach of his generation, is an elusive,
unattainable - though always attractive - goal.
The past of the Yoruba of West Africa, who form the popula¬
tion of the Western State of Nigeria, must be reconstructed, so
far as the period preceding the penetration of their country by
Europeans from about the mid-nineteenth century is con¬
cerned, almost wholly from tradition, or ‘oral evidence’ in the
cumbersome phrase, a method which is only now achieving
respectability among historians. As J. D. Fage pointed out
in his inaugural lecture at Birmingham in 1965, ‘The sense of
history, the need for history can be quite independent of the
ability to write’; many African societies in the absence of
writing ‘developed formal oral records of their past and elabo¬
rate methods of maintaining these records for their posterity’.
In the case of the Yoruba, the historian who is prepared to use
such material is fortunate, since they are a people unusually rich
IX
X PREFACE
in tradition, expressed and conserved in many ways. Their

country is made up of different, kingdoms all having specific
and complex traditions about their origins and subsequent
history, preserved deliberately and ritually by officials who
bear almost the character of professional historians. Although
these traditions are often of a legendary and miraculous kind,
they may be sifted, correlated, and cross-checked as any other
evidence until a residuum is obtained which is acceptable as
‘truth’. Moreover, such accounts can usually be supplemented
in other ways: from ceremonies recalling and re-enacting the
past which are performed on public occasions, from place and
proper names and titles, from a treasury of proverbial and
epigrammatic phrases (called owe). All these preserve, although
often enigmatically, fragments of the past. Unhappily, as new
forms of society impose new ways of thought and new con¬
ventions, much of this repository of knowledge is being lost.
Within a generation tradition may be so weakened among the
Yoruba as to cease to be an important source of new informa¬
tion for the historian.
To supplement tradition and to correct, corroborate, or
confirm it, there are few other sources. Barely a dozen un¬
ambiguous references to the Yoruba in written material before
the nineteenth century are known, and these throw only a
fitful light on their circumstances. But while it is unlikely that
much new written evidence will be discovered, there is greater
hope of obtaining information from archaeology. This is still a
rather neglected field in West Africa, but it is probably here
that the greatest advances in early Yoruba historical studies can
be expected, in conjunction with such newer ancillary studies as
comparative linguistics and the analysis of the distribution of
blood-groups.
The construction of a coherent narrative of the past, which
must precede any attempt at interpretation, provides as great a
problem for the historian of the Yoruba as the recovery of his
material. It is a platitude that oral tradition must be treated
PREFACE XI
with caution and reserve - as must all evidence - and that

precision is needed in the use of terms and the indication of
sources. Since a supernatural element frequently intrudes into
tradition, especially (but not exclusively) into tradition about
earliest times, it is useful to distinguish between ‘myth’, in
which the supernatural plays a large part, and ‘legend’, which
strains credulity less or not at all. A further distinction may be
made (and is made in this book) between ‘legend’, which is
tradition related by word of mouth, and ‘tradition’, which is a
wider term and embraces all methods of recording the past -
re-enactment ceremonies, for example - which are not ulti¬
mately based on contemporary written material or on archaeo¬
logy. Again, tradition is subject to falsification in several well-
known ways: for example, to what has been called ‘legendary
elision’ (the suppression of the ‘middle ages’ in a people’s
history by assigning all events to either the period of the
origin of their society or to recent times) and ‘legendary
stereotyping’ (the compression of a narrative by reducing and
stereotyping the names of persons and places), or to the pro¬
duction of official, often justificatory accounts of the past by
means of ‘Authorized’ and then ‘Revised’ versions of events.
Moreover, among the Yoruba tradition is closely concerned with
title to land, and this often leads to the production by different
towns or different families of rival ‘Authorized Versions’ and to
competition based on these accounts for precedence and
chieftancies. The difficulties which beset the historian working
from tradition are indeed many, and they differ at many
points from the difficulties which arise in connection with other
kinds of evidence. Yet, as Vansina has shown, there is no
priority among classes of historical material. All evidence must
be subjected to rigorous, even sceptical, examination, and in
using tradition the historian must strive to apply the same
standards, if not the same criteria, as he applies in the use of
other sources.
The Yoruba awareness of their past, expressed in the
Xll PREFACE
abundance of their tradition, has led over the last half-century

to an increasing flow of historical publications. Many local
histories have been produced, in both Yoruba and English.
These are of varying standard, and nearly all lack a critical
basis, but in every case they contribute in some degree to the
recovery and understanding of the history of the Yoruba in the
wider national sense as well as locally. More recently, academi¬
cally trained Nigerians, and a few expatriate historians, have
been producing books, articles, and theses which deal with
Yoruba history analytically and according to modern tech¬
niques of research and presentation. Most of these latter, how¬
ever, have concentrated on the last hundred or so years,
avoiding thereby heavy dependence on tradition. Both groups
are dominated by a figure who stands midway between them:
the Reverend Samuel Johnson, a Yoruba and an Anglican
priest of Oyo, whose History of his own people constitutes a
masterly narrative based on tradition and related in majestic
English prose. Johnson’s work lacks the references to sources
which would have trebled its value to later historians and is
handicapped by his preoccupation with the affairs of Oyo and
by his religious determinism. Nevertheless, the History of the
Yorubas is a classic to which resort will always be made. The
present writer’s first acknowledgement must therefore be to the
Reverend Samuel Johnson.
Meanwhile the process of reconstructing the Yoruba past is
gaining momentum, even though at present hypotheses pre¬
dominate over estabhshed fact. An attempt, such as this book,
to give a general account of the major Yoruba kingdoms, is
likely to be overtaken within a very short time by new evidence
and reinterpretations. The writer still hopes that his work may
serve as a summary of knowledge and current theories and
perhaps also provide for those working in this field an indication
of points where their efforts are most needed. His thanks are
now most sincerely rendered to his many helpers. In par¬
ticular, he expresses his gratitude to the great number of local
PREFACE XIU
rulers (the oha), their chiefs and officials, and other residents of
their towns, who have patiently answered his many and im¬
portunate questions about the days of their ancestors. His
thanks are due to his colleagues in the Universities of Lagos and
Ife for help in various ways; he owes special gratitude to Mr
R. C. C. Law, who read his manuscript and made many useful
suggestions, generously sharing his deep knowledge of West
African written sources. He also benefited greatly from the
advice of Mr Festus Adetula. Finally, he acknowledges his
debt to the students of Lagos and Ife, many of whom gave
their time to interpreting for him their history and customs, as
well as their language.
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PARTI
I TilA'^
I' The Yoruba and their Homeland
The political structure of West Africa in the twentieth century

tends to cut across the history both of the peoples living there
and of their earhest contacts with the world beyond. This is
partly the result of the drawing of frontiers by the European
empire-builders of the last century in such a way that in places
they divided a people between two or even more states. The
extent to which this was done has sometimes been exaggerated.
A more important factor is that the countries which have
developed from the coastal annexations of the British, French,
and Germans are all based upon that ‘penetration of the interior’
which was a prominent object of European missionaries,
traders, and officials alike; thus they group together peoples
whose disparate histories, cultures, and languages reflect the
different worlds of the Guinea forestlands and the savannah.
Nigeria exemplifies this contrast. Its six northern states
(until 1967 the vast Northern Region) consist almost entirely of
open countryside, of the type known as savannah (either grass¬
land or woodland), whereas the states to the south are much
more thickly wooded, especially within a hundred miles of the
coast, where the forest is dense. The contrast is repeated in the
social organization and history of these regions. Until the con¬
quest of the whole country by the British at the end of the last
century, the north was dominated by the Hausa (or, from early
in the same century, Hausa-Fulani) and Bornu emirates, which
have their place in the history of the empires of the West Sudan,
while to the south-east the Ibo and, farther south again, the
Efik, Ibibio, and other people of the Niger Delta preserved a
society which was highly fragmented.
4 KINGDOMS OP THE YORUBA
The Yoruba in the south-west, and also their neighbours to

the east, the Bini or Edo of Benin (now the Mid-West State),
make a transition and a link between these extremes. Much of
their homeland lies in the forest, while the rest can be described
as woodland savannah, and yet states developed here which,
although generally on a smaller territorial scale than the states
to the north, evolved forms of government which could be
adapted to areas far beyond the founding metropolis and to
situations involving a form of international relations between
themselves and with other peoples. It can also be claimed that the
Yoruba and Bini kingdoms were, as Michael Crowder puts it,^
‘purely African states whose growth was stimulated neither by
contact with Islam nor Europe’. They preserved their govern¬
ment, religion, and ways of life in this relative isolation until the
Europeans who had been trading on the coast from the fifteenth
century onwards changed their role in the nineteenth century
and became proselytizers of their religion, their economy, their
culture, and finally their political forms.
It is not difficult to explain the rise of states in the West
Sudan, where lateral communications across the savannah are
relatively easy, as the pilgrimage routes to Mecca show; even
the great Sahara was traversed by caravan trails leading to the
Barbary ports, and an almost ideal vehicle for the desert had
been available since Eoman times in the camel. But in the
Guinea forest the position was different. Here, climate, disease,
and limiting agricultural conditions made life hazardous, while
the dense undergrowth hindered communications. The coast
was forbidding; the beaches beaten with surf, and beyond them
the intricacies of the mangrove swamps. Such conditions would
seem to combine to hinder the rise of organized communities on
a scale which could be dignified by the term ‘state’, much less
‘empire’. Yet, despite these unfavourable conditions, such
states as Abomey, Ashanti, Benin, and the Yoruba kingdoms
arose both in the forest depths and on its fringes. Although they
seem to have emerged somewhat later and more slowly than the
THE YORUBA AND THEIR HOMELAND 5
better-known states of the grasslands, their polities and cultures
were no less distinguished than those of, for example, Ghana,
Mali, Songhay, Hausa or Bornu.
The origins of the Guinea states are likely to have been as
varied as their subsequent histories and institutions. The evi¬
dence about early times, coming almost entirely from tradition,
is unsatisfactory, but a number of factors which must have been
of importance can be isolated. The first is the development in
the Guinea forest of a type of food production capable of sup¬
porting an organized society. This depended upon the presence
of suitable crops and of metal tools for their efficient cultiva¬
tion. The dating of this development for any part of Guinea is
still a matter of controversy. Among the most important food
crops the common yam {discorea), the coco-yam (colocasia),
plantain, and banana seem to have been introduced from
Malaysia about the beginning of the Christian era, while maize
and cassava were brought to Africa only in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. But several species of yam, as well as the
kola tree and the oil-palm, are now known to be indigenous to
West Africa, and the theory that the forest and humid zone
could not be inhabited to any significant extent until after the
introduction from outside the continent of new crops is no
longer tenable; it has been claimed, for example, that ‘there
was already an ancient province of yam culture, extending over
the whole forest and woodland zone of Africa’, before the com¬
ing of the Malaysian plants.^ On the other hand, the use of iron
apparently did not spread into the forest until about a.d.
300-500, so that cultivation and population must have been

restricted until well after that time.
The next factor is trade. Here two distinct sets of trade rela¬
tions and movements must be considered. On the coast there
were the European traders, drawn there from the late fifteenth
century in search of the reputed gold of Guinea and then of
such tropical products as pepper and other spices, but for whom
the slave trade came all too soon to predominate. For the most
6 KINGDOMS OF THE YORUBA
part, however, contact between these Europeans and the West

Africans was limited, and in any case almost entirely confined
to the coast, the Africans there jealously guarding their control
of the trade with the interior. More important in this connection
than the sea-borne trade was the trade between the forest and
the savannah. The kola nut, indigenous to the Guinea forest,
was in great demand in the Sudan, especially after the spread
of Islam, as it was one of the few stimulants allowed by that
religion. But at first it had been gold for which Guinea was
chiefly famed; reports of this trade stimulated the Moorish con¬
quest of Songhay at the end of the sixteenth century, just as
over a century earlier it had lured the Portuguese explorers ever
farther south in the West Coast voyages. Ivory was produced
from the elephant herds, and there was some trade in slaves,
although this does not seem to have been on any considerable
scale until the nineteenth century. The forest products travelled
across the lagoons, up the river highways and along intricate
tracks through the bush until they reached the Sudan, and not
only the Sudan, since, through the markets of Kano, Timbuktu,
and lesser centres, they were brought across the desert to
Barbary and the Mediterranean. The widespread use of cowries
on the West Coast, which has so far been traced back to the
seventeenth century,^ is evidence both of the extent to which
communications had developed in Africa - cowries were im¬
ported via Egypt from the Indian Ocean - and of the existence
of a form of money economy which was independent of
European contact.
The third factor which seems likely to have affected the rise
of the older Guinea states is the influence of the states of the
West Sudan. In these latter, indigenous concepts of govern¬
ment fused, in proportions which are controversial and must
have varied from place to place, with Islamic concepts. They
may also have been influenced by remoter ideas from the Nile
Valley transmitting, perhaps via Meroe, a distant echo of the
Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt and a knowledge of iron working
which may have been evolved in Meroe itself - though this last
speculation is as yet unsupported by archaeological or other
evidence. The degree to which the idea of the Sudanic state and
its civilization and techniques influenced Africa south of the
savannah is a live question for historians, and perhaps the
recent tendency has been to exaggerate it.^ But it is credible
that events such as the fall of Ghana (to the Almoravids in
1076), the decline of Mali (in the late fifteenth century), and
the fall of Songhay (in 1590) affected societies several hundred
miles to the south of their area.
The last factor to be considered here is a more remote one,
and more difficult to trace: the influence of the Mediterranean
and Near Eastern worlds, an influence which, though tentative,
often interrupted, and relayed at third or fourth hand, was of
great antiquity. The Moors of North Africa were interested not
only in the products of the West Sudan but also in those of
Guinea farther to the south, and above all its gold, obtained
through the markets of the Sudan but derived from the alluvia
of the upper Senegal and Niger valleys. The word ‘Guinea’ itself
almost certainly derives from the Berber word for Negro, as in,
for example, the Bab Aguinaou (‘Gate of the Negro’) in
Marrakesh.^ Until the Moroccan invasion of the Sudan, the
caravan trade across the Sahara had a continuous history of at
least fifteen hundred years, and thus political, cultural, and
economic developments on the Mediterranean coast two
thousand miles away were liable eventually to affect the people
of Guinea. The Arab conquest of North Africa in the seventh
century, for example, is likely to have had repercussions far to
the south, and it has even been suggested that either this or per¬
haps the later movement up the Nile and then westward across
North Africa of those turbulent Beduin tribes, the Beni Hillal,
and Beni Sulleim may have brought about the move either of
the Yoruba people or of a group of conquerors who later became
assimilated with them in the present Yoruba homeland. Again,
it seems possible that the knowledge of iron-working came to
the Yoruba from the Mediterranean area, since the type of fur¬
nace used by them is identical with Roman furnaces found in
Europe.®
The states which arose in the Guinea forest and immediately
to its north all seem to have owed something to the preceding
factors, though in greatly varying degrees. Not unexpectedly,
therefore, they had in common certain characteristics. At the
centre, and usually as the outstanding political phenomenon,
was a divine king with whose well-being the well-being of the
whole people was identified and who either claimed descent
from a god or himself personified a god. This institution may
account for a second important attribute of many of these
states, the prevalence of towns on a scale unusual in Africa,
since such conglomerations of people probably took their rise
from the settlement of a divine ruler. With this urbanization
there developed an emphasis on internal trade. The Guinea
state was a commercial emporium; sometimes the king himself
had a kind of monopoly over all trading, the article most
vigorously dealt in being cloth, whether imported or manu¬
factured at home. Oliver and Fage write:’ Tt was this univer¬
sality of trade in cloth and other luxuries [in beads, for example]
which, together with the largely urban pattern of settlement,
chiefly distinguished the Guinea region from all other parts
of Africa south of the “Sudanic” savannah belt, at least dur¬
ing late medieval and early modern times.’ Security along the
trade-routes, combined with specialization in agriculture and
crafts, led to the development of markets on a greater scale
than elsewhere in Africa. They contributed also to the last, and
best-known, of the characteristics of the Guinea states to be
noted here. This was the high degree of skill attained by many
of the peoples, and notably the Yoruba, in the plastic arts:
wood, stone, and ivory carving, sculpture cast in bronze or
brass, terra-cottas, and the rarer mud sculptures and wall
paintings. This art of Guinea must in many cases be the product
of specialists and is an index of the social and economic condi-
tions prevailing there. Sometimes, too, it provides the historian
with more direct evidence, as in the case of the mud reliefs in the
palace at Abomey, which depict incidents in the wars between
the Dahomeans and the Yoruba in the nineteenth century.
The Yoruba of West Africa are a numerous people with many

kings, among whom some twenty or more are rulers over what
were formerly distinct and independent states, while the rest,
amounting in one list to over 1,000, are subordinate rulers
whose territories consisted of single towns and groups of
villages.® They form the third largest ethnic group in Africa’s
most populous country, some nine million of them living in the
rich forest and farmland of south-western Nigeria; there is also a
Yoruba irredenta in Dahomey and Togo, cut off from their
brethren by the European frontier makers in the Scramble for
Africa at the end of the nineteenth century, while a diaspora,
derived partly from their trading operations and partly consisting
of Moslems who have failed to return home from the pilgrimage to
Mecca, is found over a wide area stretching from the Senegal to
the Nile. They are a Negro race whose language belongs to the Kwa
group (within the Niger-Congo family of languages) which pre¬
dominates in West Africa; though it remained unwritten until
the 1840s, Yoruba is rich in oral literature, and there are many
dialects. Primarily they are a farming people, cultivating their
family lands in individual holdings. At the same time they have
many ancient towns, so that they appear to be the most
urbanized of the people of tropical Africa; today Ibadan, the
capital of the Western Region, and Lagos, the Federal capital
but Yoruba in its history and the bulk of its population, each
have well over half a million inhabitants. Their art and culture
are being increasingly studied; the incomparable ‘bronzes’ of
Ife, for example, are no longer seen as isolated and enigmatic
phenomena, but are now confidently interpreted as testimony
to the greatness of the Yoruba past and to its continuity.
10 KINGDOMS OF THE YOEUBA
The homeland of the Yoruba - He Yoruba - stretches from the

swamps and lagoons of the coast across the rain forests, rising
gradually towards the oil-palm bush and woodland savannah
and the distant bend of the Niger. For the most part it is a fer¬
tile and verdant country, watered by many rivers and streams,
and with a landscape which varies from the gloom and mystery
of the swamps and high forest to the exhilarating panorama of
the northern uplands, where rocky hills stud a park-like scene
which recalls the paintings of the Romai tic School in Europe.
It was in the extreme north or this area that was founded the
great city and capital of the Oyo, while He Ife, the traditional
cradle of the race and their spiritual centre, hes in the forest
over a hundred miles to the south. When in the early years of
the last century Old Oyo was overthrown by the Hausa-Fulani
armies a great migration southwards followed, swelling the
towns in the forest and on its edge. Today the boundary of the
northern states with the Western State cuts through the north¬
ern third of the historic homeland, leaving many Yoruba in the
districts of Ilorin and Kabba.
The Yoruba have undoubtedly occupied this homeland (as
big as England) for many centuries. When the Portuguese first
arrived on the coast in the fifteenth century their political
organization into a number of major and minor states had
already been evolved, and may well have been in existence for
several hundred years, as an examination of their king-lists and
other oral data suggest. For the period preceding the formation
of the states almost nothing is known. But the Yoruba seem
never to have constituted a single political entity; their very
name was confined until less than a century ago to the northern
group among them, the Oyo (from whose own name it perhaps
derives), while the rest were called by the different names of the
proliferating kingdoms. Their language, despite its many
dialects, provides the main evidence of a common origin and
cultural heritage; the name sometimes applied to this language,
anago, has been used by their neighbours, especially the Daho-
THE YOEUBA AND THEIR HOMELAND 11
means, to describe the people, while another name, or nick¬
name, was Olukumi (‘my friend’).
A second pointer to a common origin of the Yoruba king¬
doms is the existence over the whole country of a cycle of myths
and legend which purports to describe the creation of the world
and its people and the foundation at He Ife, the world’s centre,
of the first kingdoms.® Into these myths are woven the names of
the heroes whom the Yoruba regard as their founding ancestors.
A commonly found version^® tells how Olorun, owner of the sky,
let down from heaven a chain by which Oduduwa, father of all
the original Yoruba kings, descended to the primordial ocean
below. Oduduwa threw into the waters a handful of soil, and on
this he placed a cock and a palm nut. The cock scratched at the
earth, which became land, and the nut grew to a tree with six¬
teen branches, symbolizing the crowned rulers of Oduduwa’s
house. The political counterpart to this story relates, on the
other hand, that Oduduwa was a son of Lamurudu, King of
liecca, who migrated westwards until he came to Ife and settled
there. From Ife his children and grandchildren went forth to
become the founders of kingdoms and royal dynasties in all
parts of Yorubaland.^^ These stories of the creation of man -
the myths - and of the foundation of the Yoruba polity - the
legends - are found in all the kingdoms, and most of the royal
houses trace their descent to Ife. The details vary considerably,
but the traditions remain recognizably the same in basis.
Rarely do they have the coherence of, for example, the myths
of Ancient Greece, but the historian may nevertheless conclude
that in this context incoherence is one of the marks of authenti¬
city.
There has been much speculation about the origins and pre¬
history of the peoples of West Africa. The growing appreciation
of Negro art stimulated this, and in particular the discovery of
the art of Ife led to numerous, sometimes fantastic, hypotheses
to account for objects whose artistic value was so high (and
which seemed to resemble and equal the classical art of Europe)
that they could not, it was said, have been in any way con¬
nected with the present inhabitants.^^ Anthropologists pro¬
pounded the ‘Hamitic theory’, according to which the Negro
populations of Africa were conquered at some remote period by
a ‘white people’, the Hamites, who brought with them from the
north of the continent a superior culture from which derives
any cultural and technical achievement of the Negroes of West
Africa in the centuries preceding European contact. This
theory has been subject in the last few years to devastating
criticism^^ and is no longer tenable.
The Yoruba legends relating how their ancestors ‘came from
the east’ are by no means peculiar to them: indeed, they are
found among many other West African peoples. These legends
are often interpreted to imply an Egyptian origin, and this
view, despite the naming of a ‘King of Mecca’ in one version of
their legend of origin, has been enthusiastically propounded by
Yoruba historians.^^ This interpretation may seem to some
extent supported by the possibility that certain of their tech¬
niques, for example, iron-working and the cire-perdue (lost wax)
method of casting metal objects, and forms of government, in
particular the ‘Sudanic state’ and the divine kingship, may
have been diffused from the Nile Valley. But these possibilities
are far from justifying the acceptance of the Egyptian theory,
while other parts of the argument, especially the supposed
resemblance in language between ancient Egyptian and
Yoruba, can be dismissed.^®
The best hope of throwing light upon the earliest times of the
Yoruba seems to lie now with archaeology. New techniques,
which are already adding to the depth of historical knowledge of
West Africa as of other parts of the world, may be important
here, and methods of excavation suitable to the physical condi¬
tions are being worked out.^® Yet in this field, too, the difficult¬
ies are immense. The characteristic building materials of West
Africa, mud and bamboo, are notoriously impermanent, especi¬
ally in a climate noted for the violence of its rainstorms. Again,
little success has yet been obtained in dating such artifacts as the
metal and terra-cotta sculptures of the classical period at Ife*
or the pottery fragments which abound on sites such as
OldOyo.
Finally, there are two other, relatively new, sources from
which help may be sought in this problem. The first is serology,
or the compiling and interpretation of the distribution of blood
groups among the population. So far, however, little useful
information is available from this about West Africa.^^ Lin¬
guistic data, on the other hand, has already produced interest¬
ing, though very general, findings. These are mostly based upon
glottochronology, the rebarbitive name given to the analysis of
relations between languages, especially their pace of change,
which leads to inferences about their respective ages.
Christopher Wrigley has deduced from ‘the general linguistic
configuration of Africa’ that the Niger-Congo group of lan¬
guages, which includes Yoruba, must have separated from one
another at a period very much more distant than 1,500 years,
his minimum for the differentiation of the Bantu languages, and
he concludes that ‘unless we posit a large number of separate
but parallel migrations into West Africa’ the present inhabi¬
tants ‘must have been living in that region for several thousand
years’.^® It has been tentatively suggested elsewhere, on the
basis of comparative word-lists, that Yoruba separated from
Edo, Ibo, and Ijo about 5,000 years ago, from Idoma 6,000
years ago, and from Igala 2,000 years ago.
If the broad conclusion from the linguistic evidence is
accepted, then the traditions of origin which are preserved by
the Yoruba seem to refer to movements over only compara¬
tively short distances or, less probably, to the advent of a small
group of alien conquerors who quickly became assimilated with
their new subjects. It seems likely that in either case movement
was from the grassland, where cultivation was earlier advanced
and where there might be some population pressure, into the
* See footnote on p. 31.
14 KINGDOMS OF THE YOBUBA
forest, and the legend of Oduduwa and the royal progeny of Ife
seems to be a distant memory of such a movement.
To speculate beyond this point is hazardous, since new myths
are all too easily created. There has, for example, been a ten¬
dency in recent writing about African history to attribute the
origin of most states to the conquest of the people of one culture
by people of another, postulating a sharp distinction between
the rulers and the ruled. Stereotyping of this kind usually
results in over-simplification and other distortions, for while
most states in the world develop under the stimulus of older
states, their origins are many and diverse.Meanwhile, new
material on the subsequent history of the Yoruba is being un¬
covered, and as more is established about what may be called
their ‘Middle Ages’, this should in turn shed light on earlier
times. But this kind of reconstruction has especial dangers for
the historians, whose study permits generalizations but has no
laws and whose material is unpredictable humanity; extra¬
polation unsupported by evidence should usually be left to
scientists and mathematicians. Early Yoruba history now
waits, not over-hopefully, upon archaeology and its ancillary
sciences.
II' The Primacy of Ife
At the heart of the life of all the Yoruba lies He Ife. All roads
in their religion, history, government, and art seem to lead there.
Some contend that the whole people should properly be called
‘Ife’ rather than ‘Yoruba’, a name which originally applied to
the powerful Oyo alone and only in the nineteenth century was
given, first apparently by the Christian missionaries, to the j
subjects of all the kingdoms and to their common language. The i
traditions of the creation of the world and of the origins of the
peoples and their states centre on Ife, the source whence all the
major rulers derive the sanctions of their kingship and which,
burdened with gods and their shrines and festivals, is the centre
of rehgion.^
This primacy of Ife is nearly everywhere admitted among the
Yoruba,^ but it is not easily defined. Until recently historians
adhered to the theory, on the authority of Johnson, that there
was a kind of Gelasian duality in the Yoruba polity, with the
Alafin of Oyo as the paramount political ruler and the Oni of
Ife as spiritual head.^ This conception even affected the appli¬
cation of Lugardian indirect rule to Yorubaland by the British
in the first part of this century. But it is open to question on
two grounds. First, it is evident that the political ascendancy of
Oyo for long periods over most of Yorubaland, including pos¬
sibly Ife itself, never led to the assimilation of the component
kingdoms of this empire, which retained their identities,
politically and culturally, and reasserted their independence
whenever possible. Secondly, it has been claimed that the in¬
fluence of the Oni over the Yoruba kingdoms other than his own
was not confined to religious matters, but was also exercised
15
politically through ancient constitutional devices.^ This con¬

tention, which would rarely find acceptance beyond Ife itself,
is discussed in Chapter VIII below. But an interesting demon¬
stration of the veneration felt for the ruler of Ife took place in
1903, when the British Governor of Lagos invited the Oni to
pronounce upon the claim of an Ijebu oba, the Elepe of Epe, to
wear a beaded and fringed crown, a type deriving from Ife. The
Elepe’s pretension had been bitterly contested by another Ijebu
ruler, the Akarigbo of Sagamu. The Oni travelled to Lagos for
a meeting with the Governor and the Lagos chiefs and there
ruled that only twenty-one of the oba of Yorubaland were
entitled to wear such crowns, and these did not include the
Elepe, who was thereupon fined £100 by the Governor, Sir
William MacGregor. This visit in itself marked a breach with
tradition, however, since no previous Oni had been known to
leave his palace {ajin) after his accession except for religious and
state ceremonies within the capital, and his journey caused
consternation in the land. A contemporary account of this
event claims that during the Oni’s absence from the Afin Ife
many other Yoruba oba, including the Alafin, left their palaces
and dwelt outside their walls until they were assured of the
Oni’s safe return. But no confirmation of this picturesque detail
can now be obtained.®
Oduduwa, sent from heaven by the Creator Olodumare (called

also Olorun, ‘Owner of the sky’) to establish land upon the sur¬
face of the waters, was both first ruler of Ife and ancestor of the
royal dynasties in the other principal kingdoms of the Yoruba.
This much of the myth is common to most of the country, but
thereafter the accounts diverge considerably. The historians of
Ife add many details about subsequent events, but agree about
these neither among themselves nor with the historians of other
kingdoms.® Paradoxically, such divergence is in an important
sense reassuring, since it shows that an ‘Authorized Version’
THE PRIMACY OF IFE 17
has not yet been established. Moreover, while it is useful to try
to identify and then knit together common factors in the differ¬
ing accounts, it must be remembered that the reconciliation of
conflicting tradition, a process which often leads to its rational¬
ization, can provide no more than a hypothesis.
The Ife accounts agree in describing the descent of Oduduwa
from heaven upon the Ora hill with sixteen companions to
share in his task of colonizing the earth. From the Oke Ora
the party moved a short distance to settle on the place where
the Afin Ife still stands at the centre of the town. But dissen¬
sion soon broke out between Oduduwa and Obatala, one of the
foremost of his followers. To Obatala, as to Oduduwa, both
divine and material functions are attributed. On the one hand,
it was he to whom Olodumare entrusted the fashioning of men
out of clay, into which models the Creator breathed life, and on
the other, he is described as one of Oduduwa’s subordinate
rulers at Ife. In this latter capacity he rebelled against the
authority of Oduduwa, who, with the help of Obameri (some¬
times described as the first among the sixteen and sometimes as
Oduduwa’s eldest son) drove him from the town. The quarrel
was composed, but Obatala retained leadership of the people
whom he had met in the surrounding forest. These, known as
the Igbo (possibly after a variety of bird^), have been held to be
the indigenous people whom Oduduwa and his followers had
found already dwelling at Ife. After his death Obatala was
venerated as ‘the great god’ {Orim-nla), and his festival is one
of the most important events in the Ife year.8
Myth now shades into legend, and all versions of the
Oduduwa cycle give prominence to the dispersal from Ife at
some point in Oduduwa’s lifetime of the princes of the royal
family, who travelled away from their home in all directions to
found new kingdoms and dynasties. This exodus has been
ascribed in one account to a drought, a feasible enough occur¬
rence towards the end of a long dry season in Yorubaland. The
tradition further suggests that a decision to extend the scope
of the Yoruba settlement may have been precipitated by the

pressure of a growing population towards the end of a long and
successful reign, combined with an impetus similar to that
which had led Oduduwa and his original followers to Ife - more
probably, as has been suggested earlier, from the savannah
lands to the north than direct from heaven to the Ora hill. The
place in Ife at which the dispersal was decided upon is still
known as ‘the place of conference’, Itajero. Here the children
of Oduduwa (or, in other accounts, his grandchildren by his son
Akanbi) were given crowns and sent away to found kingdoms.
Sometimes the number of these princes is given as sixteen,
elsewhere as only seven. One of the princes founded a new
dynasty in the already established kingdom of Benin,® and
another (who cannot be traced further) ruled over Popo, an
indeterminate area stretching from Badagry along the coast
into modern Togo, while the rest became rulers of the major
kingdoms of the Yoruba. According to the Oni’s ruling at Lagos
in 1903, the number of crowns conferred by Ife amounted to
twenty one, some, perhaps the majority, on this occasion and the
rest presumably by Oduduwa’s successors on the throne. This
story of the dispersal is told in all the major kingdoms whose
oba claim descent from Oduduwa, varying widely in its details
but always recognizable in its principal elements.
It was apparently at some time after the dispersal that the
people of Ife began to suffer from the depredations of the Igbo
from the nearby forest. The unearthly appearance of these
people filled them with such terror that they were unable to
offer any resistance. Thus the town was several times burnt to
the ground by the raiders before salvation came through the
heroism of Moremi. This was a local woman who, after sacrific¬
ing and making promises to the orisa (god or godess) of a
stream near the town, allowed herself to be taken captive by the
Igbo. Because of her beauty she became the favourite of their
king, and from him she learnt that the fearful Igbo were simply
ordinary humans who disguised themselves for war in all-
concealing garments of raffia fibre. Then she succeeded in
escaping, and on her return to Ife taught the people to defend
themselves against the Igbo by setting fire to their costumes
with lighted torches. By these means the Ife were at last able to
overcome their enemies. But when Moremi repaired to the
stream to express her gratitude her gifts were all rejected by the
orisa until she was brought to offer her only son, Ela Olorugbo.
The defeat of the Igbo and Moremi’s terrible sacrifice are com¬
memorated at Ife in the annual Edi festival,^® while the episode
has been interpreted both as an encounter between the abori¬
ginal inhabitants of the forest and the newcomers led by Odu-
duwa and as a clash between rival factions within the town.^^
Tradition is silent about the death of Oduduwa. His twofold
role as emissary of the Creator and as leader of a migration is
reflected in the reverence paid to him both as a principal mem¬
ber of the Yoruba pantheon, a god of indeterminate sex who is
nearly everywhere worshipped either under this name or as
Olofin, and who is widely regarded as a symbol of Yoruba unity,
and also as first oba of Ife, the Oni or Onife. There are differing
accounts of his successors in the latter role. Some say that his
son Obalufon reigned as second Oni, then his youngest son (or
grandson) Oranyan, who is also remembered as founder of Oyo,
the most powerful and extensive of the Yoruba kingdoms but
who even in Oyo tradition is believed to have died and been
buried at Ife, and next, as fourth Oni, Alaiyemore or Obalufon
n, son of Obalufon I. Other versions describe Obatala as either
second, third, or fourth Oni. At Oyo it is related that it was
Oranyan who succeeded Oduduwa and that before he left Ife
for Oyo he appointed one of his father’s former slaves, the son
of a woman who had been condemned to death for some crime,
to take charge of the royal treasures remaining there. This man,
Adimu, became the founder of the present kingship of Ife and
ancestor of subsequent Oni, whose title, according to Johnson,
is a contraction of the phrase omo oluwoni, ‘the son of a
sacrificial victim’.^^ But this is rejected at Ife itself, where
c
the succession of their oba from Oduduwa the national hero,

and thus his seniority among all the oba of Yorubaland, is
naturally preferred.
The names of many subsequent Oni are recalled at Ife, but
there seems to have been no practice there of reciting these
names formally at installation ceremonies or other times, and
no complete or chronological list has been compiled. The reign¬
ing oba (1967) has been described as the 47th,^^ but this is
derided in Ife as far too low a number, and those associated
with the court speak of over four hundred Oni having reigned.
There are two royal graveyards in Ife, but these have not been
excavated, and they do not shed much light on the present
problem; the first, at Lafogido near the Afin, has been much
built over, while the second, in the forest outside the walls
at Igbo Odi, described as the burial place for those oba whose
reigns were not markedly successful, contains some thirty or
forty mounds, some or all of which may be graves of Oni. An
Ife historian, J. A. Ademakinwa, has recorded the names of
forty-five Oni following Alaiyemore, belonging to four diiferent
royal compounds (or houses where the families are regarded as
of royal descent and eligible in their turn for the succession). He
could not indicate the order in which these oba reigned, and he
added that there were five other compounds in the town from
which had come Oni whose names he was unable to supply.^^
No documentary record of Ife earlier than the mid-nineteenth
century is known, nor does it seem likely that any such record
was ever made. But it has been suggested that two Portuguese
writers of the early fifteenth century refer incidentally to Ife in
the course of their descriptions of the contacts between their
countrymen and the kingdom of Benin. The earlier is Duarte
Pacheco, who in describing the slave trade from the West Coast
writes:
To the East of this Kingdom of Beny, 100 leagues inland,

there is known to be a country which has at this time a King
called Licasaguou. He is said to be lord of many peoples and
to possess great power. Near there is another great lord, who
has the name ‘Hooguanee’. He is considered among the
Negroes as the Pope is among us.^®
The second possible reference occurs in Da Asia by De Barros:
Among the many things which the King Dom Joao learnt
from the ambassador of the King of Beny, and also from
Joao Afonso de Aveiro, of what they had been told by the
inhabitants of those regions, was that to the east of the King
of Beny 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. Among the pagan princes of the territories of Beny
he was held in as great veneration as are the Supreme
Pontiffs with us. In accordance with a very ancient custom,
the Kings of Beny, on ascending the throne, sent ambassa¬
dors to him with rich gifts to inform him that by the decease
of their predecessor they had succeeded to the Kingdom of
Beny, and to request him to confirm them in the same.
... All the time this ambassador was at the court of the
Ogane he never saw him, but only some silk curtains behind
which he was placed, like some sacred object.^®
In these accounts, ‘Licasaguou’ has been identified with the

Alafin and ‘Hooguanee’ and ‘Ogane’ with the Oni. But difficulty
immediately arises from the directions which are given, since
both Oyo and Ife lie to the north-west, not east, of Benin. The
identification of the Ogane with the Oni has been discussed by
A. F. C. Kyder, who concludes that the Ogane is more likely to
have been a ruler in the Nupe-Igala area straddling the Niger-
Benue confluence than the Oni of Ife. Kyder has also cast
doubts on the widely accepted theory of the derivation of both
the dynasty and also the associated lost-wax technique of
brass-casting at Benin from Ife, showing them to be based on

traditions which in Benin can be traced no further than records
made after the British occupation in 1897d^ Nevertheless, the
description in De Barros of the Pope-like ruler hidden behind
silk curtains and his relationship with the Benin kingship accord
so well with the veneration with which the Oni is still regarded in
both Yorubaland and Benin and with the traditions as recorded
by the local historians in both places that the debate on these
enigmatic texts is not closed.
Difficulties in establishing a coherent account of the past of
Ife have led to the suggestion that the present town does not
stand upon its original site. This would be far from surprising,
since many, perhaps most, Yoruba towns have traditions of
migration; Ifa verse is said to refer to six different Ife, and it is
known that in the nineteenth century the present Ife was twice
abandoned for short periods. J. 0. George wrote at the end of
the last century that ‘the old He Ife was much farther in the
interior’, but he cited no authority or evidence for this, while
Ryder has recently suggested that the ruling dynasty may have
removed to the present site at some time after the sixteenth
century.i® For some years since the Second World War archae¬
ological investigations have been carried on at Ife, though inter¬
mittently and on rather a small scale. The results so far throw
little light on the dating of the town. Willett, who has been re¬
sponsible for most of this work, cautiously concludes that since
the antiquities discovered there are so many and so varied, the
site must have been occupied for many centuries.^®*
The present Ife, with its population of some 150,000, is con¬
tained within a double circuit of the earthen ‘walls’ which are
characteristic of Yoruba towns, covering here an area of some¬
what over two miles. The outer wall is apparently that built by
Oni Abeweila between the collapse of Old Oyo about 1835 and
his own death in 1849, while an inner and older wall runs at a
radius of about one mile from the centrally placed Afin. It is
* But see the footnote on p. 31
evident that at some time in the past the town occupied a con¬
siderably greater extent than the present enclosure, since
several of the sacred groves associated with the town lie well
beyond the outer walls; moreover, potsherd pavements, which
are found in palaces and large compounds in several parts of
Yorubaland, have been discovered at distances up to four miles
from the Afin in several directions. Pavements have also been
uncovered under both town walls, which suggests that the
walls were built long after the disappearance of the buildings
associated with these particular pavements. Presumably all the
buildings of ancient Ife, like most of those of the present day,
were constructed by puddling mud on the site, and it is im¬
possible by present archaeological techniques to establish either
the dates of surviving walls or even to distinguish confidently
between collapsed buildings and the surrounding soil. Willett
has written that, ‘The “pavement period” is in part, if not
entirely, later than the introduction of maize into West Africa
at the beginning of the sixteenth century, for pottery decorated
with the impressions of maize cobs has been found beneath at
least one pavement.But this is far from conclusive, since no
starting or terminal points have been suggested for a pavement
period, and indeed the making of pavements in the more
important compounds seems never to have entirely died out.î
In the absence of other evidence, it seems reasonable to
assume, as do the inhabitants of Ife and indeed all Yoruba, that
the present town both represents the ‘cradle of the Yoruba’, as
it is so often called - the place where the dynasty of Oduduwa
was established and whence it spread over the land - and also
that it stands on or very near to its original site. That the town
has contracted at some period is clear from its archaeology.
Local historians, in particular the present Oni himself, have re¬
ferred to traditions of a drawing together of the people after the
dispersal of the princes and their followers.22 But it seems more
likely that the contraction indicated by the relation between
the existing town walls and the groves and pavements was a
consequence of forgotten wars, perhaps arising from the restless

ambition of the Oyo.
It is not the central position of Ife in the history of the

Yoruba which has given the town its wider fame but the in¬
comparable ‘bronze’ and terra-cotta sculptures, mostly human
figures, which have been discovered there during the present
century. The art of Ife is now known throughout the world.
Attention was first called to it by the German anthiopologist
Leo Frobenius, who spent some weeks investigating the sacred
groves and shrines of Ife in 1910 and 1911. During these visits
he was shown the bronze head known from the grove where it
had been buried as Olokun, the sea-god of the Yoruba,^^ and
collected a number of terra-cotta heads and fragments. He also
recorded many of the stone monuments which he saw in various
parts of the town. His publication of these unexpected finds
caused excitement, and some understandable scepticism, in
Europe, and aroused the interest which has led to the many
later discoveries. In 1919 the existence in the Afin of the bronze
Obalufon mask (reputed to represent Obalufon II, the third or
fourth Oni) and the large terra-cotta head called Lajuwa (after
a palace official said to have attempted to usurp the Oni’s
throne) was disclosed to the public, and then in 1938-9 seven¬
teen bronze heads and the upper part of a male figure were
found buried in the Wunmonije compound, one of the royal
houses of Ife. A number of small bronzes and terra-cottas were
next discovered in 1957 during excavations at Ita Yemoo on the
eastern side of the town. Since then there have been many other
finds, though of nothing so spectacular as those from Wun¬
monije.
The twenty major figures now known, unlike most African
sculpture, are all m a naturalistic style, and are apparently
somewhat idealized portraits of individuals; sixteen of them are
life-size. Of the heads it has been written that ‘they would stand
comparison with anything which Ancient Egypt, Classical
Greece and Rome, or Renaissance Europe had to offer.’^^ The
smaller bronzes, four of which represent full-length standing
figures, are of almost equal excellence. Like the larger heads,
they were made by the lost-wax method of casting and are in
much the same style, though the full-length figures have heads
which occupy a quarter of the overall height, a proportion
characteristic of African art. To quote Willett again, these
‘show a broader range of subject (than the heads) . . . and a
humour which was qmte unsuspected.The terra-cottas form
a much larger body of work and, since the majority are in the
same naturalistic style as the bronzes, make it almost impos¬
sible that Ife art should represent the output of one isolated
genius (as was once suggested) or even one generation. They
consist of fragments of full-length figures and of heads, at least
some of which appear to be portraits, and there is even a full-
size stool in this material whose making must have required as
much skill as did the casting of the bronzes.
In addition there remain in and around Ife a number of stone
monuments and other objects which have no discernible
stylistic connection with the bronzes and are usually held to be
anterior to them. These consist of monoliths, crudely carved
figures of humans and animals, and decorated stools, and are
found mostly near the centre of the town, especially in the area
of the palace, and in the groves and shrines. Since they seem in
most cases to occupy their original positions, whatever their
purpose, they are classified, unlike the bronzes and terra-cottas,
as primary material. The most notable is the eighteen-foot-high
granite column known as the Opa Oranyan, or staff of
Oranyan’, studded with a mysterious pattern of 123 nails. The
Opa is said to mark the grave of Oranyan, but no burial pit has
been found in the vicinity, and it has been alternatively sug¬
gested that it was originally dedicated to Ogun, the god of iron
and war.27 Equally interesting are several elaborate quartz
stools, objects which (alone among the stone carvings) provide
a link with what Willett has called the ‘Classical Period’ of Ife,
since similar representations are found in bronze and terra¬
cotta.
For the historian the art and antiquities of Ife raise a number
of major questions. Who were the artists? Were they ancestors
of the present inhabitants of Ife, or did they belong to quite
another people? When and where did this art flourish, and if at
Ife itself, did it precede or follow the establishment of the
dynasty of Oduduwa? What was the purpose of the sculptors
and what kind of society produced and nourished this school of
artists? And what is the relationship between this art, the art of
the Yoruba in general, and the art of neighbours of the Yoruba
in West Africa? Unhappily, to none of these can answers be
confidently returned, and the historian must speculate against
a background even more puzzling than in the case of the politi¬
cal origins of the Yoruba kingdoms. Apart from the stone
monuments and perhaps the so-called Obalufon mask and
Lajuwa head, all these antiquities have been discovered on
secondary sites, that is they seem to have been brought from
elsewhere and to have been in situ at the place of discovery only
for a comparatively short time.Moreover, they seem to have
been neither understood nor much valued at Ife before the
present century, and to bear no real relationship to the myths
and legends associated with the Oduduwa dynasty or Yoruba
religion, despite some rather suspect attributions.^® Again, no
recollection exists in Ife today of the intricate lost-wax tech¬
nique by which all the bronzes were cast, and tradition throws
no light upon its introduction nor whence it came. Another
mystery lies in the source of the materials used in the bronzes.
These are in fact not really bronzes (though it is convenient to
continue to call them so), since they contain little tin and are
either of brass or, in a few cases, of almost pure copper. But
copper is not found in Nigeria, and must have been imported
from far afield. Finally, the naturalism characteristic of this art,
which is naturalism of the highest order, remote from expert-
merit, distinguishes it sharply from almost all other African
sculpture, including that of other Yoruba schools.
These challenging difficulties have led to a wealth of specula¬
tion, ranging from the theories of Frobenius, who thought that
he had discovered the traces of a Greek colony on the Atlantic
coast, to almost equally unlikely suggestions about wandering
Roman or Renaissance artists or the ubiquitous Portuguese.
But as archaeological investigation and comparative studies
continue, more rational interpretations emerge. In the first
place, it has been realized that the facial characters of most of
the sculptures are undoubtedly negroid, and indeed striking
similarities to the modern inhabitants of Ife can sometimes be
detected, as well as family resemblances between different groups
of the sculptures. The striations, or skin scarifications, which
appear prominently on some of the faces, and in the large
bronze figure on the abdomen, probably represent tribal marks,
though most are in a form not used by the Yoruba within recent
tirnes.^® An important development has been the discovery of a
number of terra-cottas in the naturalistic or classical Ife style
in association with others which are non-representational and
immediately recognizable as ‘African’. These finds, at the small
village of Abiri near Ife, at Obgon Oya near the Oni’s palace,
and on a farm along the Ondo road, reveal, in Willett’s words,
that ‘beside the naturalistic art of Ife, and almost certainly
contemporary with it, there was a freely imaginative style as
well’.®^ Moreover, since attention was first drawn to the anti¬
quities of Ife, finds have continued apace, and excavations in
and around the town produce a flow of objects. Thus the
theories of a non-African origin for the art become ever more
unlikely, and in their place it is reasonable to assume that these
antiquities were the product of a civilization in Ife itself which
was ancestral to the present culture of the Yoruba, and that
both the artists and their human subjects were the ancestors
of the Ife of the present day.
The isolation of the art is now beginning to break down. As
Yoruba art as a whole is subjected to study, links, both incono-

graphical and technical, with classical Ife are observed. Many
centres of bronze casting, using the lost-wax method as at Ife,
existed, and indeed still exist, in the rest of Yorubaland, and
also elsewhere in Nigeria.®^ The nine bronze figures from Tada
and Jebba in Nupe country show striking affinities in style and
technique with the Ife sculptures - indeed, one of them, the
famous seated figure from Tada, has been claimed by Willett as
belonging to the Ife corpus.®^ At Benin tradition relates that
the art of bronze-casting was brought there from Ife. Denis
Williams has, however, pointed out a small but significant
technical difference in the preparation of the Benin and Ife
bronzes. Moreover, Benin art is stylistically very different from
that of Ife, especially in its comparative lack of naturalism, and
it has been suggested that it was evolved in other materials
than bronze, such as wood, terra-cotta, and ivory.^ Finally, the
revelation in recent years of the Nok art and culture, covering a
wide area of north-eastern Nigeria, has seemed to provide both
Ife and Benin with a remote ancestry, since the objects found
on the Nok sites (mostly terra-cotta figures of humans and
animals in varying degrees of semi-naturalism) show stylistic
affinities with the sculptures from both places, as well as with
other West African art. But these objects have been ascribed by
radio-carbon tests to a period between c. 900 B.c. and c. a.d.
200, and thus there is a gap of a whole millennium between the

latest date for the Nok culture and the earliest date which has
been suggested for the Ife bronzes.
As to the purpose and the subjects of the Ife sculptures, the
suggestion has been advanced that the major heads are port¬
raits of the Oni and of leading members of his court for use in
the ceremonies for the dead which are still held by the Yoruba,
and other West African people,,at an interval of usually about
a year after the hasty burial of the corpse necessary in a tropical
climate. Willett has pointed out that in the second funeral cere¬
monies at Owo, called ako, effigies of the dead, with naturalistic
heads mounted on roughly carved bodies, were carried in pro¬
cession and subsequently buried. He concludes that the bronze
heads of Ife were used in the same way, the small holes in the
tops of the heads being intended for the attachment of crowns
(rather than for hair, as has also been suggested).Resemblan¬
ces between the symbols of authority still used by the Oni and
his chiefs and those depicted on the sculptures increase the like¬
lihood that the heads were portraits of rulers and of their
courtiers, probably those required to follow the king to his
grave. This explanation applies equally to the life-size heads
and full-length figures in terra-cotta, but the majority of the
terra-cotta heads and the smaller bronzes must have had a
different purpose. Most probably these latter were produced for
the shrines of the numerous cults of Ife, on whose altars they
were placed, or in commemoration of sacrificial victims, human
and animal, at these shrines.
The ever-growing quantity and variety of the sculptures from
Ife and the evidence of links between the art of Ife and that of
its neighbours make it clear that this was the production of a
whole school of artists working within a tradition. On the basis
of his view that the heads were effigies of the dead, Willett has
advanced alternative theories about the duration of the
classical period. If the nineteen major bronze heads (to which
possibly the half-length figure should be added) are all port¬
raits of Oni, then, allowing about twenty years for each reign,
they would seem to have been produced over a period of some
300 or 400 years. But if they represent not only the kings but
also members of the court (as seems more likely), then the great
period may have covered only a couple of generations.®^ The
stylistic homogeneity of the major works suggests, indeed, that
they were all produced within one or at most two hundred years,
but African art is in general so conservative that this can only
be tentatively advanced.
The dating of any part of Ife art provides the greatest pro¬
blem of all. Willett considers that Ife art reached its peak in the
thirteenth or fourteenth century and that the stone and terra¬

cotta sculptures, with their greater variety of style, flourished
considerably longer, both before and after the bronze or classi¬
cal period. The end of bronze casting in Ife may then have been
due to the cessation of supplies of metal from farther north, per¬
haps because of the spread of Islam in the fifteenth and six¬
teenth centuries.This theory seems to be based upon the
tradition at Benin that bronze casting was introduced there
from Ife during the reign of Oba Oguola, apparently in the late
fourteenth century. But, as has been seen above, the traditional
connection between Ife and Benin has recently been questioned
so effectively that it can no longer be assumed that the art
and culture of Ife are anterior to those of Benin. Denis Williams
has pointed out that until about the sixteenth century the
Yoruba, like other West African people, were dependent for
their production of iron upon local ore and inefficient local
smelting, which, he claims, led to a ‘chronic iron hunger’.^®
After about 1500, however, the supply of metal was supple¬
mented by imports in increasing quantities of iron and copper
in wedges and ‘pieces’ and later (from the mid-seventeenth
century) as bars, wire, and manillas, and this in turn led to a
greatly expanded and improved metal industry in the Guinea
forests. It may therefore be that the bronze sculptures of Ife and
Benin were roughly contemporaneous and both products of this
belated metal age. The extinction of the art at Ife might be
explained by the unrecorded factors, whether catastrophe or
decline, which accounted for the contraction of the town at
some time before the building of its present older (and inner)
wall, and which, as suggested above, could have been a con¬
sequence of the depredations of the powerful Oyo.
As to the society which produced the art of Ife, nothing is
known, since the antiquities include almost no objects of every¬
day use. Yet such art presupposes a setting of sophistication.
The inspiration and aesthetic judgement which enabled the
artists to create their sculpture must have been rooted in a
THE PRIMACY OF IPE 31
culture of distinction and maturity, which in turn could only
have evolved against a background of a sufficient political
stability. Modern analogies among the Yoruba suggest that the
sculptors were also the craftsmen who cast the bronzes and
fired the terra-cottas, but whether or not these functions were
performed by the same men, considerable technical knowledge
and skill were required. These artists and craftsmen, from the
quality of their work, must have been professionals whose
activities were only possible in a society where economic life
had attained a high degree of organization and differentiation.
There are few facts in this account of the history of Ife. The
traditions and the antiquities can be put together to form
hypotheses, and though those now current are more acceptable
both to the historian and the local patriot than the prejudiced
speculations of Frobenius and others at the beginning of this
century, they do not at best amount to more than probabilities.
The search for new evidence continues in the realization that
present theories, like those of Frobenius, may have to be
abandoned in the light of discoveries to come. But the primacy
of Ife in the life of the Yoruba - their religion, their political
system, their culture - is unlikely ever to be contested. Until
now, Ife preserves its major mysteries inviolate: its kingship,
gods and shrines, its incomparable sculptures, cannot as yet be
placed confidently in any coherent pattern. For the Yoruba, all
this is seen through the eye of faith. Ife remains the centre of
his universe: Ife ondaiye, ibi oju ti imo wa, Tfe, the creator of the
world, whence comes the light.’
NOTE. Since this book went to press, five radio-carbon dates from
Ife have been announced by F. Willett (Thurston Shaw, Radio-carbon
Dating in Nigeria, Ibadan 1968, privately circulated, p. 14): (1) from
excavations below potsherd pavements, two dates of the tenth and
twelth centuries respectively; (2) from a layer in which terracottas
were excavated, an eleventh century date; (3) from the burial place of
the heads of the Oba of Benin (Orun Oba Ado), two dates of the sixth
and tenth centuries respectively. Willett writes that these confirm the
antiquity of the site, while (2) suggests that the terracotta sculptures
associated with Iffi were being made before Europeans first visited Benin.
Interpretation of this small sample cannot go further.
Ill ‘ The Rise of Oyp
In the remote north-eastern corner of the Western State of

Nigeria are the remains of a great city: Oyo ile (‘home Oyo’),
now usually called Old Oyo to distinguish it from its successor
town some ninety miles to the south, and known to the Hausa
and Nupe and to its first European visitors as Katunga. Here
was the capital of the kingdom and empire of the Oyo, ruled by
the Alafin, said to descend from Oranyan, the youngest son (or,
in another account, the grandson) of Oduduwa. The Alafin’s
title describes him simply as Lord of the Palace, but his
authority was that of king {oba) of the Oyo people, and he
was also ‘Lord of the World and of Life’ (Alaiyeluwa),
‘Owner of the Land’ (Onile), and ‘Companion of the Gods’
{Ekeji Orisa).
The site of Oyo ile is on the edge of the Yoruba highlands,
which here slope towards the River Niger; from this area
streams flow north to the River Mosi and south to the Ogun.
This is a gently undulating country covered with low savannah
woodland, diversified by frequent rocky hills and outcrops and
by the giant baobab (the characteristic tree of the West Sudan,
and perhaps deliberately planted here for its supposed benign
influences). Some fifteen to twenty square miles were enclosed
by the earthen walls encircling the town, which may still be
traced, while the remains of compound walls, numerous grind¬
ing holes in the rocks (for the crushing of maize, cassava, and
yams), and the abundance of pottery fragments on the surface
testify to the large population which lived here before the
abandonment of the town in the first part of the last century.
Today the site is deserted and thickly overgrown; lying twenty
32
THE RISE OF OYO 33
miles from a motorable road and ten miles from the nearest
village, it is rarely visitedd
Tradition relates that Oyo was founded by Oranyan as part
of the great dispersal of princes from Ife. The account given by
Johnson, the Oyo historian, differs from that of Ife since it
claims that on Oduduwa’s death Oranyan succeeded to the
throne of Ife and was entitled Alafin there. The dispersal was
occasioned by a military expedition against ‘Mecca’, an
explanation which more probably reflects a fanning-out over
the land of a dominant race of conquerors such as happened in
England after the Norman Conquest. The story continues that
the royal brothers quarrelled and that Oranyan with his follow¬
ers made his way through Nupe country into the land of the
Borgu, or Ibariba as the Yoruba call them. Here Oranyan
consulted the king about where he should settle and was then
guided by a serpent, on which the king had fixed a charm, to a
hill called Ajaka, where the serpent halted. Still following the
instructions which he had received from the king, Oranyan
built his town here, calling it Oyo, meaning the ‘slippery place’
where his horse had slid and stumbled on the hillside.
After establishing the settlement at Oyo, Oranyan next re¬
moved to Oko (whose site has not been identified), where he re¬
mained for several years. But at the end of his life he is believed
to have returned to Ife, where he died and was buried. Mean¬
while his elder son, Ajaka, ruled at Oyo as his father’s regent
and successor until eventually he ceded the throne to his more
vigorous brother, Sango. The new oba’s first act was to refuse
tribute which the ruler of Owu had demanded from Ajaka.
After routing the army which the Olowu had sent against him,
Sango proceeded to remove the government from Oko to Oyo,
recovering the latter town by a trick from Egboro, the Oloyo-
koro, a prince who ruled over a people living at Oyo before the
arrival of Oranyan and his followers from Ife.
Sango was equally reputed as a warrior and a magician. But
the exercise of his magical powers was to have a tragic result.
for one day when demonstrating to his courtiers his power to

call down hghtning, he accidentally destroyed his palace and
whole household. After this disaster, either in despair or in order
to escape the hostility of his people, he hanged himself on an
ayan tree. The gentler Ajaka then resumed his reign, while Sango
entered the Yoruba pantheon as god of thunder and lightning.
Johnson writes that with the next reign, that of Aganju,
Ajaka’s son, the period of the ‘historical kings’ begins, after
that of the legendary first three rulers. Although Crowder com¬
ments here that ‘we are still very much in the land of legend’,^
Johnson’s distinction is useful, since from this point there is a
decline in the miraculous content of the traditional accounts.
The picture is still shadowy, but certain features can be dis¬
cerned. It seems clear that the Alafin’s kingdom was only one
among a number of Yoruba states which were already in exis¬
tence and had sprung like Oyo from the womb of Ife, and that
it was by no means the most important. It is significant that
Oranyan, Oyo’s founder, is described as the youngest either of
Oduduwa’s sons or grandsons and that Ajaka was compelled to
pay tribute to the ruler of Owu (a town about 125 miles to the
south and only about twenty miles from Ife itself). The very
site of Oyo on the extreme edge of Yoruba country suggests
that its founder was forced by his junior status to settle farthest
from the base at Ife. This site, moreover, was dangerously near
to two difficult neighbouring people: to the north and west,
across the River Mosi - which provided an effective barrier only
in the wet season - lived the Borgu, renowned as warriors, and
across the Niger, some thirty to forty miles to the north-east,
were the Nupe, who controlled the river crossing at Jebba
island. But this situation proved to have advantages. The town
lay under a range of low, rocky hills which ran from north to
south down the western walls and formed an extended acropo¬
lis. It was strategically placed athwart the tracks which led
from the southern forests and across the nearby Niger towards
the markets of the West Sudan. Most important, it lay within
THE RISE OP OYO 35
the savannah, where lateral communications were far easier
than in the dense forests to the south and where horses could
range comparatively freely and also be maintained, and
occasionally bred and reared, without succumbing to the tsetse
fly as in the south. Thus the Oyo were enabled to raise a
cavalry force as an important, probably predominant, element
in their army. There is an apparent reference to the Oyo
cavalry by a Dutch writer of the late seventeenth century,
Bosman, who describes the army of an unnamed inland power
which had overrun the kingdom of Ardra (or Allada) as ‘all
Horsed’ and adds that ‘This Nation strikes Terror into all the
circumjacent Negroes’.^ Finally, the traditions indicate that
Oyo maintained close relations - which might frequently be¬
come hostile - with its northerly non-Yoruba neighbours, the
Hausa, Nupe, and Borgu, the first of whom, at least, were in
turn in touch with the distant Arab and Berber across the
Sahara. This must have been as much a stimulus as a danger;
both trade and warfare would serve to bring the pohtical,
miUtary, and technical ideas of the Sudan and even beyond to
the Oyo and through them to the other Yoruba.
Thus the state of Oyo came to be firmly estabhshed as a
power in northern Yorubaland, at a period which can be pro¬
visionally and tentatively assigned to the fourteenth century.^
The names of two early Alafin (if the title was used then),
Aganju and Oluaso, are recalled as long-hved and strong rulers.
Between their reigns came that of Kori, who is beheved to have
established a subordinate king at Ede, on the frontiers of the
growing Oyo influence and nearly 100 miles to the south. The
duty of this ruler, entitled the Timi, was to protect the kingdom
against the neighbouring Ijesa, or, in another tradition, against
the Nupe.
Under Onigbogi, Oluaso’s son, a time of troubles began.^
There was discontent both in the capital and in the subordinate
towns. While the army was deahng with rebellion by one of
these towns, Oyo itself was attacked by Nupe from across the
D
Niger. Onigbogi was forced to flee from his capital, making his
way north-west, into the country of the Borgu, a people who,
like the Yoruba, were divided among a number of kingdoms.
Here he might expect to And friends and allies; not only was his
wife, the lyalagbon (mother of the Aremo or eldest prince), a
woman of Borgu but also the senior of the Borgu rulers, the
King of Bussa (farther up the Niger), claimed a common
ancestry with the Alafin, since according to the tradition of his
country both descended from Kisra - that elusive hero who
figures in Nigerian legend as an ancestor also of the Hausa and
who, like Oduduwa, entered West Africa ‘from the east’.
Relations between Onigbogi and his Borgu host - who was
more likely to have been the ruler of Nikki than of Bussa® -
were apparently cordial, for Onigbogi was allowed to settle with
his followers at a place called Gbere, apparently a few miles
north of the Mosi, the river which formed the boundary between
the Borgu and the Oyo.^ Here Onigbogi died, to be succeeded
by his eldest son Ofinran. But now relations between the exiled
Oyo and the Borgu began to deteriorate, and eventually Ofinran
decided to return to his own land. According to a story pre¬
served by the Bada of Saki,® he was opposed in this by the Borgu,
and the escape had to be accomplished by a ruse, a Nupe man
in Ofinran’s party carving models of archers which were placed
in the bush to cover the withdrawal of the Oyo.
From Gbere the Alafin travelled some fifty miles to the south
into his own country, halting eventually at Kusu on the banks
of the Okin stream. Here the Court remained for some years,
during which, it is said, the Ifa and Egungun mysteries were
introduced among them. At last Ofinran was ready to set out
again for the old capital, but he died before he could leave,
being succeeded by his son the Aremo Egunoju. His oriki, or
praise words, describe him as one ‘not fearing a fight’ {Ofinran
ko ko’ja). The new Alafin now left Kusu, but before he turned in
the direction of Oyo ile he settled for some years in the town of
Saki. Eventually, after disagreements with the Saki people, he
THE RISE OF OYO 37
set out towards Oyo. But about balf-way along his path he
came to a hilly place where two streams flowed together; here,
propitious omens suggested that a halt should be made and a
town established. Thus it came about that a new capital, called
Oyo Igboho, was founded, destined to be occupied by Egunoju
for the rest of his reign and by three of his successors.
Igboho offered security to the Court after its long wanderings
and its natural defences were presumably soon strengthened (it
became famous for its triple walls), so that the Oyo were
enabled to resist the continued menace from the Nupe and now
also from the Borgu, dangers which, it may be assumed, made
hazardous the reoccupation of the ruined and more exposed
former capital. Bgunoju’s reign was followed by that of
Oromp oto, who, according to tradition in Igboho (though not
in New Oyo), was a woman ruler {oha obinrin), but who in any
case is remembered as having formed a large army whose
rearguard alone consisted of 1,000 horsemen and 1,000 foot-
soldiers.
Orompoto was succeeded by Ajiboyede, called also Sopasan,
whose stern character is recalled by his oriki: ‘. . . the world
complained to God, and God gave them oba Sopasan who
flogged many of them to death.’ During this reign the Nupe
sent yet another expedition against the Oyo, which penetrated
as far as Igboho itself. The counter-attacks of the Eso, the
Alafin’s Noble Guard of seventy leading warriors, had failed to
halt the enemy when the tide of battle was turned by a curious
episode. In order to protect the Alafin, a warrior named Ajan-
lapa exchanged clothes with him and drew on himself the con¬
centrated fire of the Nupe bowmen. His dead body, transfixed
by their arrows, remained upright, his teeth set as in a grin.
The Nupe, supposing themselves to be opposed by a super¬
natural being, fled in terror from the field, leaving their king a
prisoner of the Oyo. Ajanlapa’s son was later honoured with
the right of intimate attendance on the Alafin and of deputizing
for him on certain public occasions. This ofiice, whose holder
was called the Osi ’efa (‘the deputy on the left hand’), has
continued at Oyo to this day.
The last of the Igboho Alafin was Abipa, said to have been
born to one of Egunoju’s queens as the royal party was
approaching Igboho from Saki (his name is a contraction of a
hi si ipa - ‘one born on the wayside’). The menace from the
Nupe had now been contained, and Abipa determined to carry
out the return to Oyo ile. His leading nobles, unwilling to
abandon their farms and houses at Igboho, tried to frustrate
his decision by a trick. Hearing that the Alafin had decided to
send an advance party to reconnoitre the site of the old city,
each dispatched there one of those unfortunates called enia
orisa, ‘people of the gods’: the Basorun sent a hunchback, the
Asipa a leper, the Alapini an albino, the Samu a man with a pro¬
jecting jaw, and the Akiniku a cripple. When the royal mes¬
sengers arrived at the site of the former palace, where they were
to offer sacrifices, these odd creatures roamed all night over the
nearby Ajaka hill with torches in their hands, hooting and
shrieking ‘ko si aiye, ko si aiye' (‘no room, no room’). The terri¬
fied messengers hastened back to tell the Alafin of their adven¬
ture, but Abipa soon learnt what had happened and sent six
hunters to round up the bogus phantoms. From this episode he
received the attributive name by which he is often referred to in
Oyo, Oha m'oro, ‘the king who caught ghosts’, and Old Oyo it¬
self is often called Oyo oro, ‘Oyo of the ghosts’. The story is
still re-enacted during annual festivals at Oyo and on the in¬
stallation of a new Alafin (and in recent years has provided a
plot for one of Duro Ladipo’s folk operas).
Oyo ile was re-occupied, it seems, only towards the end of
Abipa’s reign, a halt being made for some time at an inter¬
mediate place known as Kogbaye (‘not room enough’), perhaps
while the former capital was being repaired or rebuilt. When at
last the royal party re-entered Oyo, sacrifices were offered by
the palace priests, and the Alafin gained further honour with
his people by handing over for this purpose a son newly born
THE RISE OF QYO 39
to one of his wives. His oriki refers to him as . the royal
catcher of ghosts who sacrificed his son for the peace of the
world’ (. . . oba moro ti o fi ’omo re tun'le nitori ki aiye le roju).
The return was marred, however, by a quarrel with the Ijesa,
who had been absent from the delegations sent from other parts
of Yorubaland to congratulate the Alafin. Subsequently the
Oyo army set out to punish the Ijesa, but was forced to retreat
with the loss of many warriors.
Meanwhile, after the departure of the Alafin, Igboho con¬
tinued to be a place of importance, and in the early nineteenth
century it was still accounted by Lander, the Cornish traveller,
as ‘the second town in the kingdom’.® Despite the stormy events
of that century, the town survived, and today the Alafin’s
representatives still rule there, the remains of its three fines of
massive earthen ramparts can be seen, and the graves of four of
the five Alafin who died in exile (Ofinran, Egunoju, Orompoto,
and Ajiboyede) are tended by an official established there for
the purpose.
The exile of the Alafin from Oyo has been described at some
length partly in order to illustrate the nature and wealth of oral
material which is available, and the extent to which Johnson’s
account, based on material gathered mainly at New Oyo, can
still be supplemented, even for such relatively distant periods,
from additional sources, and partly because the recovery in the
fortunes of Oyo which occurred during the sojourn at Igboho
seems to have marked the beginning of the rise of Oyo to its pre¬
dominant position. Under a series of resolute and capable
rulers, this northern Yoruba state was rescued from near col¬
lapse and the foundations for future advance were laid. The
introduction (at Kusu) of new forms of religion, Ifa and
Egungun, which survive among the Yoruba to this day, must
have had a tonic effect upon the morale of the Alafin’s subjects.
A military reform carried out by Onigbogi, by which half the
Eso were required always to be available for the defence of the
capital, and the enlargement of the army, with emphasis on the
cavalry, which is suggested by the account of Orompoto’s re¬

organization, made the Oyo strong enough to face and repel the
attacks of their Borgu and Nupe neighbours. Again, the history
of the royal succession suggests that some constitutional
advance may have resulted from the difficulties which the
kingdom underwent during the exile, since, after Orompoto (a
doubtful example in any case) and with the exception of Ayibi,
no regencies or accessions to the throne of minors were recorded
in Oyo. It seems likely that either at Igboho or in the hundred
years after the return to Oyo ile the principle was established
by which the most suitable of the princes stemming from
Oluaso became candidates for the succession on the Alafin’s
death, to be chosen by the Council known as the Oyo Mesi, thus
superseding the system of primogeniture which had apparently
been followed previously. (The first Alafin to whom Johnson
refers as having been ‘elected’ was Ayibi, and in his case, though
he was too young to rule, the electors wished to do honour to his
dead father, whose own father, the hated Alafin Jayin, had
been suspected of murdering him.)
Finally, the Alafin at Igboho were favoured, as are all suc¬
cessful men in the end, by good fortune. This was especially so
in their external relations. While the fall of Oyo ile was in large
measure due to the dynamism and power of the Nupe (who
may have been welded into one kingdom at about this time),
the recovery of Oyo at Igboho seems equally to reflect a
slackening of Nupe aggressiveness. Thus, having met the
challenge of adversity (to use Toynbeean language), the Oyo
were enabled first to hold out against the onslaught of their
enemies, then to return to their former capital, and lastly to
establish their own empire from the Niger bend, and perhaps
beyond, to the coast south of Dahomey.
The return of the Oyo to their old capital, now strengthened

against the Nupe and Borgu, was followed by an expansion of
THE RISE OP OYO 41
their kingdom. In the first place they asserted, or perhaps re¬
asserted, their authority over the country to the south of the
capital, extending roughly to where the present New Oyo lies
on the edge of the forest. Here in the Oyo kingdom, or ‘Yoruba
Proper’ as it was called in the last century, are still found many
old towns, such as Saki, Iseyin, Igbetti, Kisi, and Ilorin, all
owing allegiance to the Alafin but ruled by their own oba. Until
the Moslem ‘holy war’ against the Oyo by the Fulani in the
nineteenth century, this northern part of Yorubaland seems to
have been more prosperous and populous, and certainly con¬
tained many more towns and villages, than today.
The Oyo next began to extend their influence over the other
Yoruba kingdoms. It is difficult to determine the extent to
which they were successful in this, and tradition is silent about
the process of expansion. The strong Owu kingdom became
their vassal state in the south, while Ede protected them on the
south-east. But they were now entering a region where the
forests detracted from the effectiveness of their cavalry, and
Johnson’s only reference to Oyo’s wars against her sister-states
of the Ife tradition is his account of how the army, unaccus¬
tomed to fighting in the bush, was defeated by the Ijesa in the
reign of Alafin Obalokun (just as they had been under his pre¬
decessor Abipa). It seems likely that the Oyo never succeeded
in controlling either the Ijebu or the southern Ekiti; the hills
and forests of the latter would have constituted an especially
formidable obstacle, and it has been suggested that this area
was regarded in Oyo as a reservoir where captives could be
taken for the slave trade, which came to play a large part in
their economy from the latter part of the seventeenth century.
This was also an area where expansion was checked by the
powerful Edo kingdom of Benin. The traditions of the latter
relate that war occurred between Oyo and Benin in the time of
the warrior Oba Ehengbuda, who is beheved to have reigned in
the last quarter of the sixteenth century. At the end of this war
the armies of the Oba and the Alafin are said to have planted
trees at Otun in the savannah of northern Ekiti to demarcate

the frontier between their kingdoms^'’ Though it is impossible
to substantiate the claim that Ife and Ijesa were brought within
the ‘empire’ of Oyo (either as semi-independent provinces or
merely as tributaries), there is no doubt that the extensive
countries of the Egba and the Egbado were subject to Oyo, and
it was through the latter’s territory that ran Oyo’s vital south¬
western trade-routes to the coast.
The growth of Oyo was by no means confined to Yorubaland
(and it is unhkely that any distinction was made or felt between
Yoruba and non-Yoruba before the nineteenth century). To the
east and north of the capital respectively, parts of the terri¬
tories of their old enemies and neighbours, the Nupe (called
‘Tapa’ by them) and the Borgu (‘Ibariba’), were conquered by
the Alafin’s armies, a development which probably preceded
the extension of the power of Oyo to the south and south-west.
These non-Yoruba areas, as far as the Niger on the north-east,
probably, remained tributary to Oyo until quite late in the
eighteenth century. That the Alafin had confidence in the
loyalty of his northern subjects is shown by the appointment of
Nupe as his representatives in the client kingdom of Ijana in
south-western Yorubaland^^ and by the Borgu origin of the
ruling families of several towns in Yoruba Proper, notably
Saki, Kisi, and Ogbomoso.
But it was in the economically important south-west that
Oyo’s expansion was most marked. In the reign of the warrior
king Ajagbo (probably about the middle of the seventeenth
century), ‘Iweme in the Popo country’ (the small state of Weme
on the Nokwe coastal lagoon) was destroyed by the Alafin’s
army,i2 which implies that the Oyo had already brought under
control the intervening territories of Ketu, Egba, and Egbado.
Then in 1698 they overran the kingdom of Allada, some twenty-
five miles inland, apparently a repetition of a previous attack
in 1680-2.13 During the first half of the eighteenth century, a
period which has been described as Oyo’s ‘golden age of
THE RISE OF O YO 43
imperial conquest, the Oyo succeeded in imposing their

authority over the emergent Fon kingdom of Dahomey (some¬
times known after its capital as ‘Abomey’), farther inland from
Allada, and the coastal area which was the home of the Ewe
and Adja people (who, it has been claimed, are related to the
Yoruba and originally migrated from their countryi*). Between
1726 and 1730 the Oyo army undertook four expeditions
against Dahomey, the first being a consequence of an invasion
in 1724 of Allada, now tributary to Oyo, by Agaja, the Daho-
mean king, and the subsequent ones being occasioned by
Agaja’s invasion in 1727 of Whydah, which, with Weme and
Allada, sent messengers to Oyo imploring the Alafin’s help. In
1730 the Oyo reached an important agreement with the
Dahomeans under which the latter were to pay an annual
tribute to the Alafin and to respect the independence of the
surrounding states.^® These expeditions took place during the
reign at Oyo of Ojigi, one of the most successful Alafin and a
ruler who could rely on the support of such prominent men
among his chiefs as Basorun Yau Yamba and Gbonka (general)
Latoyo. After Ojigi’s death about 1735 the Dahomeans broke
the agreement of 1730, and the Oyo army was twice dispatched
against them, until in 1748 Tegbesu, Agaja’s successor, agreed
to a re-imposition of the 1730 terms, said to include an annual
payment of forty men, forty women, forty guns, and 400 loads
of cowries and corals. This tribute was paid each November to
Oyo representatives at Kana (or Calamina), a few miles south¬
west of Abomey. In addition, Oyo ‘ambassadors’ were sent to
Abomey, where they could keep the Alafin informed of events
in the Dahomey kingdom.
Johnson records that the glories of Ojigi’s reign were con¬
summated by a military expedition which encircled the Alafin’s
domain, first going north (through the Nupe province) to the
Niger, proceeding south along the west bank until the coast was
reached, then west to the country of the Popo, and returning
north-eastwards to the capital. This demonstrated, Johnson
writes, the ‘sovereignty’ of Oyo over a vast area which, he adds,

even included Benind^ The account seems exaggerated. As
suggested above, it is unlikely that the authority of Oyo was
ever a continuing reality in south-eastern Yorubaland, and it is
even more unlikely that Benin was subject to Oyo, though there
was debatable territory between them. Nevertheless, the tradi¬
tion of this great sweep through the land by the Alafin’s army
indicates that at this time Oyo power was felt from the coast to
the Niger bend, and that the empire in this reign stood at the
zenith of its power and its greatest territorial extent.
At the centre of this formidable state of Guinea was its divine

king, the Alafin. Oyo history is mainly recollected according to
the Alafin, in whose reign occurred memorable events. This,
although a convenient and natural method for the aroken (the
court drummers and official historians) to follow, does not imply
that the Alafin was always a dominant figure nor that he
wielded autocratic power; he was in fact subject, like all
Yoruba oba, to elaborate restraints embedded in the custom
(which can justifiably be called the constitution) of the king¬
dom. He had to submit his decisions in the first place to his
council of seven notabilities, the Oyo Mesi, whose principal
officer was the chief known as the Basorun. In turn, the Oyo
Mesi were checked by the council of the Ogboni, a society which,
in its worship of the earth, embodied both religious and political
sanctions. An Alafin of strong and resolute character could
initiate and carry through a policy, obtaining the support and
perhaps sometimes overruling the opposition of his counsellors.
But not all Alafin were of this calibre, and the constitutional
restraints on them were always stringent. The Oyo Mesi were
even entitled to pronounce a sentence of rejection on an Alafin,
upon whose receipt (it was sometimes tactfully conveyed by a
symbolic gift of parrots’ eggs), the king was bound to commit
suicide. The first recorded rejection and suicide seems to be that
THE RISE OF OYO 45
of Alafin Ayibi.^® Another rule, apparently established during

the reign of Ojigi, provided that the Aremo, the Alafin’s eldest
son, should take poison on his father’s death, the intention
being doubtless to protect the oba and his officers against the
possible ambitions of a prince who was usually associated with
his father in the Government^®
The system of government of the capital was repeated on a
smaller scale in the provincial towns of the kingdom, and
paralleled also in the subject kingdoms. There are many
indications that these latter were allowed by Oyo to retain a
large measure of independence, although regular tribute had
to be paid and the Alafin sometimes assumed the right to
nominate a new ruler, and his confirmation of one was required.
Oyo authority was expressed in a form of indirect rule by the
stationing all over the empire of resident political represent¬
atives known as ajele - asoju oba, ‘the eyes of the king’ - who
in turn were supervised by the ilari, the royal messengers from
Oyo. But in some places client kingdoms or towns were founded,
as was the case at Ede or among the Egbado on the road to the
sea.
The military strength of the Oyo goes far to explain their pre¬
dominance over their neighbours. Another factor underlying
the growth of Oyo’s power, and also its expansion south-
westwards, was the capital’s position as a commercial centre.
Oyo ile was so situated that it linked together the trade of the
coast, where from the late fifteenth century European traders
had been active, with that of the cities of the West Sudan. Most
important, the Oyo had become by the late seventeenth century
exporters on a large scale of slaves for the Atlantic trade. In
return they received iron, salt, cutlasses, and such luxuries as
cloth and mirrors; rather oddly, firearms do not seem to have
featured among their imports (except for the tribute from the
Dahomeans) until the early nineteenth century.
The earliest route for Oyo’s south-western trade seems to
have led through the territories of Ketu, then round the Kumi
swamps to Allada, and thence to the port of Whydah (or

Ouidah), a distance of over 200 miles.ô The route ran through
country where a break in the forest belt must have enabled
the Oyo cavalry to give protection to the caravans almost as
far as the coast. But the rise of Dahomey towards the end of the
seventeenth century threatened this access to the sea, while in
the same century the westward expansion of Benin, which had
already set up a number of subject towns on or near to the
coast, including Lagos and Ado, posed a similar threat. Pro¬
bably as a result, the trade route was shifted to the east and
passed through the vassal kingdom of Ifonyin and its two off¬
shoots, Ihumbo and Ikolaje, which were founded by the Oyo on
Ketu territory about 1700.^^ For greater security, however, the
route was later moved still farther to the east, leading to the
development of Badagry and Porto Novo (Ajase), both of which
were tributary to Oyo, as the principal outlets for Oyo trade.
This easternmost route - the ‘Egbado trade corridor’ - was
protected by a series of towns, notably Haro, Ijanna, and Jiga,
which, Morton-Williams considers, were probably founded by
Oyo during the long reign of Alafin Abiodun (about 1770-89).^^
Oyo’s northern trade was almost certainly of greater anti¬
quity than its connections with the coast. Probably the main
routes were two: one towards the Niger at Bussa, where there
was a ford, and the other to the Niger crossing at Jebba island
on the edge of Nupe country. The most important items sent
northwards seem to have been kola nuts from the forests to the
south-west, peppers grown near the coast, cloth, and marine or
European salt. Possibly slaves were sent from or through Oyo
to the northern markets, but there are no indications of such a
trade on a large scale. In return, many different items were
imported, deriving either from the West Sudan itself or from
the trans-Saharan trade, in particular horses, natron, swords,
and knives, leather, beads, unwrought silk, and in early times
probably Saharan salt (Johnson records that salt was first
introduced into Oyo during the reign of Obalokun, the first
THE RISE OP OYO 47
Alafin after the return from Igboho, but he does not indicate its
provenance).^^ The Oyo probably purchased slaves as well as
horses from the Nupe, since in the late eighteenth century they
were supplying Hausa slaves to Porto Novo.^^
Oyo’s great age of conquest covered the reigns of Ojigi and

his second and third successors, Amuniwaiye and Onisile. It
was followed by ‘the age of Gaha’ - to use Aldnjogbin’s termin¬
ology - which lasted from 1754 to 1774. The beginning of the
reign of Labisi saw the advent to power of Gaha, a son of the
former Basorun Yamba, who succeeded to his father’s office and
then subjected both the Crown and Government of Oyo to his
personal rule. Johnson summarizes his career thus: ‘He lived
to a good old age, and wielded his power ruthlessly. He was
noted for having raised five kings to the throne, of whom he
murdered four, and was himself murdered by the fifth.
The ascendancy of Gaha and the violent deaths of the four
Alafin have reasonably been interpreted as symptoms of the
approaching decline of Oyo. But Akinjqgbin argues that the
primary significance of the Basorun’s career was that it re¬
flected a dilemma which now confronted the government of
Oyo: whether to continue on the path of territorial expansion or
whether to consolidate and concentrate on the economic
opportunities which had been opened up, especially the ever-
increasing trade in slaves through Badagry and Porto Novo.^®
He claims that it was the Alafin who were anxious to preserve
peace and expand trade, while the Basorun stood for a forward
military policy. In the event neither policy could be carried out
consistently. Although Gaha succeeded in imposing his will in
internal matters, he could make no major war, since under the
constitution only the Alafin could give the order for a mihtary
expedition (although on one occasion Gaha did insist on war
being waged against the Elehin-Odo, the Ifonyin vassal king
whose display of wealth when on a visit to TUafin Agboluaje at
Oyo had angered him). Akinjogbin concludes; ‘The only pos¬

sible achievement was to maintain a status quo and this Gaha
did, to his eternal credit... he kept the boundaries of the Empire
intact and completely inviolate.’ Perhaps, however, he did more
than that, since a trader’s report of 1764 suggests that an Oyo
army stationed - or at any rate, operating - as far west as
Atakpame had in that year defeated an Ashanti army there.^^
That the power of the Oyo continued to impress their neigh¬
bours is confirmed by what Eobert Norris heard of them in
Dahomey: ‘The Dahomans may possibly exaggerate,’ he wrote,
‘but the Eyeos are certainly a very populous, warlike and
powerful nation.’^®
During the reign of Majeogbe Gaha’s power was at its zenith.
According to Johnson, he had stationed his sons as his agents in
every part of the kingdom, and it was to them instead of to the
Alafin that tribute was paid. Meanwhile Majeogbe, who was
living in constant fear for his life, attempted to rid himself of
the Basorun by magic (or poison?) and had so far succeeded that
Gaha was disabled in both his legs. But Gaha resorted to still
more powerful magic by which he finally encompassed the
Alafin’s death, an event which apparently occurred in about
1770.2® By now the Basorun’s physical powers were waning,
and Abipdun, the new Alafin, was content to bide his time until
in 1774 he felt strong enough to challenge him. He negotiated
through an intermediary with the Kakamfo Oyabi (commander
of the frontier army), who at this time was stationed at Ajase,®®
and who agreed to lead his troops to Oyo to support the Alafin.
There ensued a short, sharp struggle inside the capital between
the Kakamfo’s men and Gaha’s family and supporters. After a
desperate resistance the Basorun’s compound was entered and
put to fire, and Gaha himself was taken captive. His end was
violent. Johnson writes that he was ceremonially burnt, but
another account is that his body was cut in pieces and distri¬
buted over the empire.®^
Akinjogbin maintains that the overthrow of Gaha was ‘no
THE RISE OP OYO 49
more than the usual power tussle in the capital’ and did not
imply any weakening in the empire. Indeed, Abiodun’s success
greatly strengthened his personal authority. Yet the career of
Gaha, with its defiance of the hallowed institutions of the king¬
dom, must in the long run have diminished the prestige of the
Alafinate and set an example of disloyalty in high places to
future generations.
Abiodun now proved himself a strong and capable ruler, and
his reign is still remembered as an age of peace and prosperity
before the storm. The kingdom of Dahomey, for example, was
so firmly under the sway of Oyo that the Alafin was apparently
able to use its army (perhaps to the detriment of his own
forces) to carry out his policies in the south-west. In 1784 a
strong Dahomean army, joined by contingents from the western
Yoruba and supported by Lagos, attacked Badagry; according
to Dalzel, ‘The operations of the Dahoman army were directed
by the Eyeo messengers, who had conducted them hither; and
nothing of importance was undertaken without their con-
currence.’^^ In 1786, again apparently at the suggestion of Oyo,
the Dahomeans took Weme, but when they proposed to follow
this up by an attack on Ardra and Porto Novo the Alafin fore-
bade the enterprise: ‘Ardrah was Eyeo’s calabash out of which
nobody should be permitted to eat but himself.
Yet it is evident that during Abiodun’s reign the army, on
which the power and wealth of the kingdom depended, dechned
in effectiveness. The reasons for this are not clear. Akinjogbin
surmises that the very nature of the Alafin’s victory over Gaha
involved a diminution in the influence of the military leaders
and thus, he implies, an eventual lowering of the efficiency of
the army.®^ This is not wholly convincing, especially as it was
the co-operation of the army and its general which had enabled
the Alafin to triumph in this crisis. Possibly the sense of
security which he felt after ridding the kingdom of its over-
mighty Basorun led Abiodun to neglect his military forces, or
possibly the inactivity of the first peaceful years of the reign
after 1774 diminished the capacity of the Oyo for waging war.
Whatever the explanation, the Oyo army was heavily defeated
by the Borgu in 1783, six years before Abiodun’s death in
(probably) 1789, and in 1791, during the reign of his successor,
the unfortunate Awole, the Nupe inflicted a similar blow on the
kingdom.®^
By the end of the century the influence o f the Oyo to the
north and east of their capital, across the Mosi and to the Niger,
had been overthrown, despite the fact that this was an area
within which their cavalry operated under favourable physical
conditions. It even seems (if credence can be given to a
contemporary report in Dahomey®®) that in the late eighteenth
century the Nupe were exacting tribute from the Oyo and
that the Oyo expedition of 1791, so far from being an attempt
to reassert ascendancy over the Nupe, was designed to
end their own subjection. StiU more serious, at about this
time the Egba of the southern forest rose in revolt against
the Oyo ajele stationed in their towns and gained their
independence, an event which seems to have taken place about
1796. This had two dire consequences for the Oyo: first, it
endangered their important trade route to the coast, and
secondly, it set an example of rebellion to the other Yoruba
states under their control. Thus the eighteenth century saw
both the apotheosis of the empire of Oyo and the first stages of
what was to be a swift decline.
IV' Kingdoms of the East:
Ijesa, Ekiti, Owp, and Ondo
He Ife, the historic centre of the Yoruba, lies in a level land of
tall and dense forest, a closed landscape befitting its many
mysteries. But east from Ife the scene changes as the wooded
hills of Ilesa are reached and then the rocky summits of Ekiti.
Here, in an Arcadian country where gods and goddesses abound
in the rivers and on the hilltops, kingdoms proliferate. They
range in size from Ijesa, Ondo, and Owo, each occupying some¬
thing like the area of an English county, to the miniature states
of Ekiti.
Ijesa
The Ijesa have sometimes been grouped by writers about the

Yoruba with the Ife,^ but their pohtical and cultural traditions,
history, and dialect all emphasize their separateness. Their
kingship is held to derive from Ife, and their ruler, the Owa,
wears a beaded crown. Ilesa, his capital, is the centre of a dis¬
trict of some forty square miles, the heart of the former king¬
dom, which stretches from Ife and Osogbo on the west to Ekiti
on the east; it is bounded on the north by the httle-known
Igbomina kingdom of Ha under its ruler, the Orangun, and on
the south by Ondo, ruled by the Osemawe. Writing about the
origin of the Ijesa, Johnson suggests that their name is a con¬
traction from ije orisa, ‘the food of the gods’, and refers to that
part of the people already living in the area before the arrival
of the founder of the present kingship from Ife, and who were
looked upon by tbeir neighbours as potential sacrificial victims

- hence their name - and slaves.^ He adds that until the aboli¬
tion of human sacrifice by the British at the end of the last
century, the Ijesa continued to be preferred, especially by the
Ife, to other victims.
Ajaka (alternatively Ajibogun), the founder of the Ijesa
kingdom, is described in local tradition as a son of Oduduwa by
the sister of one of his wives.® The legend relates that as Odud¬
uwa grew old his eyes dimmed, so that at last he was advised by
an Ifa priest to send for sea-water to bathe them. But the
princes held back from making the long and hazardous journey
to the coast, until finally Ajaka, youngest or (from the circum¬
stances of his birth) lowest-ranking among them, offered to
perform this service. After many adventures and the passage of
years, Ajaka returned to his father’s court at Ife. When he
entered the market-place the people there, astonished to see him
after so long an absence, called out 0 wa\ (‘So you are back’) -
from which the title of Ilesa’s oba, the Owa, derives; he replied
Mo b’okun (‘I have the sea-water’) - and was thereafter called
Obokun. Then he gave the water to Oduduwa, who (the story
contains no more surprises) regained his sight.
During Obokun’s long absence Oduduwa’s two eldest sons
had died, and the other princes, taking with them their inheri¬
tance from their father, had left Ife to found their own king¬
doms. The only reward for Obokun was a sword, ida ajase, ‘the
sword of victory’. With this he angrily pursued his brothers,
seized from them a share of the family treasure, and returned
to Ife. As he entered the Court he mistook his father, whose face
was hidden by the beaded fringe of his crown, for one of his
brothers and raised his sword against him. Slicing off the fringe
of the crown, he reahzed, just in time, his dreadful error. Soon
after this he left Ife to found his own kingdom and was given by
his father a crown which was like that of his brothers’ except in
one particular, that it had no fringe at the front, a peculiarity
still preserved in the crowns worn by the Owa Obokun of
KINGDOMS OF THE EAST 53
Ijesa. The event is described in an Ijesa song:
The ebon rider Okunrin dvdu ori esin,

The lord who was given beads for Oluwa Okile gVokun,
propitiating the earth, Ajaka onida arara,
Ajaka, master of the sharp sword, 0 b’okunja,
He fought the sea. 0 bokun jo Aele.
He danced home with the sea.
Armed with his sword, Obokun led his followers to a place

known as Igbadaye,^ where they settled. It is said that he alone
of Oduduwa’s sons returned to Ife (no great journey for him) to
attend the ceremonies which followed his father’s death. He
himself died at Igbadaye, and his son, Owa Oke Okile, resumed
the migration, leaving in charge of Obokun’s grave a follower
whose descendants still rule there with the title of Agbadaye.
The next settlement was at Ilowa (‘the Owa’s town’), and then
in the next reign the Owa and his people removed yet again to
Ilemure, renamed Ibokun, where the Owa displaced the Ita, a
king whom he found already installed there. During their
sojourn in Ibokun the Owa brought under his control the town
of Hare, whose ruler, the Alare, claimed (like the Owa and even
the Ita) to have received a crown from Ife. Then from Ibokun
the next Owa, Owari, removed to Ilaje, four miles distant,
called after his death Ipole Ijesa. Finally, in the fifth reign, that
of Owa Oge, the town of Ilesa was chosen as capital. Tradition
relates that it was already famous for the water-pots made by
its women, a circumstance from which its name may derive:
He isa, ‘the town of water-pots’, though it may also mean ‘town
of the gods’. It was already ruled by a king, the Onila (the ‘king
of the okro planters’, who had built the town), who now be¬
came deputy to the Owa and whose successor, the Obala, still
ranks second in Ilesa. According to Johnson, the town was re¬
built, and in this the Ijesa called on the help of a prince from
the Alafin’s family so that it could be laid out on the same plan
as that of Oyo ile.
A list has been preserved of the names of thirty-eight pre¬

decessors to the present oba; it is alleged that in addition the
names of nine Owa have been lost, five of these having died
before their coronation.® Of those named, five are said to have
been women, but there has been no female ruler since Yeyeori,
the eighteenth Owa. Little is recalled about the history of the
Ijesa in early times. A derisory epithet sometimes applied to
them, ‘children of sticks’ [gmo igi), is explained by the myth
that Obokun, the first Owa, found himself short of subjects and
by magic converted bundles of sticks into human beings - which
may reflect the thinness of the population in these forests at the
period. Johnson adds unkindly that the epithet may instead be
accounted for by the nature of the Ijesa, who are ‘as proverb¬
ially deficient in wit as they are remarkably distinguished for
brute strength’.® At all events, the Ijesa, as omo Obokun, were
famous warriors, and in their heyday (which may have pre¬
ceded the rise of the Oyo empire but more probably came during
Oyo’s decline at the end of the eighteenth century) their king¬
dom evidently occupied a considerably greater extent than the
present boundaries of Ijesaland, since Ijesa communities are
found in the Osun area to the north-west (usually accounted a
part of Oyo), and to the east among the Ekiti, Ahoko, and
Owo.
Over many of the places conquered or settled by his warriors,
it was the Owa’s custom to place as ruler one of his sons. Des¬
cendants of these princes are known in the kingdom by the title
of Loja. There are now seventeen Loja among the minor rulers
of Ijesaland, and every new Owa was required to have served
as a Loja in the provinces before becoming eligible for the
throne.'^
At some time, probably in the seventeenth century, a group
of Ijesa founded the now-important town of Osogbo on the
River Osun, some twenty miles to the north-west of Ilesa. This
may have been intended, as Johnson suggests, as an outpost
against the Oyo and an answer to the establishment by them of
the warrior Timi as ruler at nearby Ede.® Apart from this, there
are no indications in Ijesa tradition about relations with their
powerful Oyo neighbours. Nothing is heard, for example, of the
stationing in the kingdom of the Alafin’s ajele nor of the visits
with presents which, Johnson alleges,® were made annually by
the Owa to the Alafin. This is not surprising, since tradition
tends to suppress the disagreeable - though on the part of the
Oyo, Johnson does record the defeat of an expedition sent by
Alafin Obalokun into Ijesa country, ‘the Oyos being then un¬
accustomed to bush fighting’.^® On balance, the claim by Oyo
to have achieved political hegemony over eastern Yorubaland
seems likely to allude to no more than the occasional exaction
of tribute.
Oyo was not the Ijesa’s only powerful and ambitious neigh¬
bour. To the east lay the kingdom of Benin, and though the
Ekiti provided a buffer between them, Benin seems at times to
have exercised some influence at Ilesa. It is related that the
seventh Owa, Atakunmasa, spent a number of years in exile in
Benin. During his absence the throne was occupied by two
women rulers, also styled Owa. Kenyo’s version of the legend is
that the purpose of the oba’s sojourn in Benin was to ‘to study
effective medicine ... in order that his wives might begin to
bring forth male children’. The Benin account is that after an
already long reign the Owa’s restless subjects wanted a change
of ruler, and so sent Atakunmasa into exile; the Oba of Benin
eventually summoned their elders and persuaded them to allow
the Owa to return.
Ekiti
The Ekiti and Owo form the marches of the Yoruba with the
Igbira, Kukuruku, and Edo or Bird of the Benin kingdom.
There are many recollections of incursions here by the Benin
army, and it seems that at times parts of the area were subject
to the rule of Benin. At least one of the Ekiti dynasties, that of
Ikerre, was established by Benin, and in some towns there are

groups who, though they are now Yoruba-speaking, trace their
descent from Bini settlers there - for example, the Ado living
in the Igiso, Eyinke, and Oritogun wards of Akure. Little is
recorded about relations between the Oyo and the people of this
area, and Ekiti traditions are silent on the subject. As suggested
in the last chapter,^^ Ekiti may have been looked upon by the
Oyo as too difficult and rugged a terrain to control politically,
and convenient therefore to be left for slave-raiding. The
establishment of the Oyo-Benin frontier at Otun does, how¬
ever, imply that the northern part of Ekiti was regarded as
within the sphere of Oyo.
The name ‘Ekiti’ denotes a country of hills, and it is perhaps
this physical feature which, more than any other factor, ac¬
counts for its division into a number of small kingdoms or
city states, all centring on towns which are in the traditional
definition ilu alade, ‘towns with crowned oba’. There has long
been uncertainty as to which towns can properly be considered
as belonging to Ekiti. Usually sixteen oba are named, and from
1900 a sort of federal assembly of these rulers has met; this, the
Pelu-pelu (from pe olu, ‘to call the lords together’) was based
on the military league of the late nineteenth century known as
the Ekiti Parapo. All authorities seem to agree that the four
leading rulers are: the Ore or Owore of Otun, the Ajero of Ijero,
the Elewi or Ewi of Ado, and the Elekole of Ikole. About the
others there is less agreement, but the rulers of the following
sixteen towns have been included in different lists: Efon Alaye,
Ogotun Iddo, Aiyede, Igbara Odo, Oye, Omuwo, Ire, Ise, Itaji,
Ikerre, Isan, Emure, Aramoko, Oke-Messi, and Akure.^^ Most
of these claim to derive their crowns and dynasties from Ife.
Between the four leading ilu alade there has been controversy
about precedence. When the Pelu-pelu first met in 1900 the
presidency was given to the Ore of Otun, but after the adminis¬
trative separation of Otun from the other Ekiti towns leader¬
ship passed to the Ewi of Ado-Ekiti, who represented the Ekiti
oba at the conference of Yoruba rulers held at Ibadan in 1939.

The Ewi claimed, indeed, that his being placed third in rank at
the 1900 convention was a mistake, arising in part from his
deference to the Elekole (placed second) as his senior by age.
But more probably Ado had lost prestige with the other Ekiti
through having held aloof from the Parapo and not having
taken part in the Kiriji war fought by the Parapo at the end of
the last century.
The history and legends of Ado have been recorded by a local
historian, the Rev. A. Oguntuyi. The legend of origin which he
recounts follows a familiar pattern. The ancestor of the present
ruler of Ado was one of Oduduwa’s sixteen sons, known from
his talent as an orator as Ewi, ‘the speaker’. He left Ife at the
time of the dispersal of princes in the company of the prince
who was destined to found a new dynasty at Benin. For a time
these two settled side by side at Benin, but eventually they
quarrelled, and Ewi with his followers returned westwards. The
party halted in various places, and at length Ewi died, to be
succeeded by an unrecorded number of rulers, now called ‘Ewi’
after him. Finally, they came to the site of Ado, where they
made their home among the hills. The Ewi at this time was
named Awamaro (‘the restless one’), and the present qba, his
descendant, is enumerated from him as the twenty-first, though
Fr. Oguntuyi thinks that a number of names of additional Ewi
have been forgotten.
As in many other places. Ado tradition records that the
emigrants from Ife found on their arrival that there was already
an organized settlement of people living there who, it seems,
spoke either the same language as themselves or one similar
enough to be understood without difficulty. In this case the
earher settlers were known as the Ilesun and their ruler as the
Elesun. They received the newcomers kindly, but a subsequent
struggle for power led to their overthrow and to the execution
of the Elesun. At the grave in the Erekesan market where
Awamaro buried the Elesun’s head, all subsequent Ewi have
carried out propitiatory ceremonies as part of their installation

rites.
Oguntuyi suggests that the settlement by Awamaro at Ado
was made at the end of the fourteenth or early in the fifteenth
century. His precise dating for all subsequent reigns seems to
have been calculated from the number of years traditionally
ascribed to each reign. It can hardly be more than an approxi¬
mation, but by no means a far-fetched one. During the first
three or four centuries of Ado history two themes predomin¬
ated. The first was the gradual expansion of the Ewi’s rule over
the surrounding district, so that today, in addition to Ado, the
Ewi rules over seventeen subordinate towns, of which Igede is
the largest. The second major theme consisted in a series of
defensive wars which Ado fought with Benin. It was the expan¬
sion of Ado which apparently brought about the intervention in
the area of Benin, since Ikerre, a town some ten miles to the
south of Ado which had formerly been subject to the Elesin,
invited the Oba of Benin to send his troops there. According to
Oguntuyi, this occurred during the reigns at Ado of Ata, the
first oba after Awamaro whose name is recalled, and at Benin
of Ewuare, and if this association with Ewuare is correct it can
be ascribed to the middle or second half of the fifteenth cen¬
tury.^® During the ensuing war Ekiti was overrun by the Bini,
while the ruler of Ikerre, the Olukerre, was himself replaced by a
Bini whose title was the Ogoga.^® The Ewi survived, but the Bini
seem to have acquired a form of suzerainty over Ado, probably
expressed by the payment of tribute. Thenceforth Ikerre under
its Benin dynasty was to be a rival and a threat to Ado.
A second war between Ado and Benin took place during the
reign of Ewi Obakunrin. It was again occasioned by an appeal
for help to Benin by the Ikerre, who were protesting against
the Ado’s attempts to enlarge the area under their control. The
Ado say that in this Oluponnokusuponno (‘let everyone die in
front of his own house’) war, the Bini for the first time had
firearms, but they merely discharged them into the air to cause
terror - perhaps the most effective use of the primitive muskets
which these must have been. Once again Ado submitted to
Benin and affirmed its loyalty.
Another town in this region whose history is bound up with
Benin is Akure.^^ Although it has not always been accounted
an Ekiti town, lying on the southern edge of the area, its ruler,
the Deji, sat among the Ekiti oba in the local administrative
council formed in this century, occupying fifth place, until a re¬
organization in 1946. Accounts of the origin of the town are
contradictory. S. 0. Arifalo has pointed out that the people in
two sections of the town, the Isikan and the Isolo, have tradi¬
tions which are distinct from those of the majority of the in¬
habitants, and that the former claim to be the original owners
of the land. Both these groups seem to represent earlier settlers
on the site of Akure. As to the present kingship, Arifalo has
examined six different accounts.^® The official version, not un¬
expectedly, traces the origin of the kingship to Ife, describing
how the first oba, Asodeboyede, received the crown from
Oduduwa, his grandfather. The original title of these Akure
kings was Ajapada, said to mean ‘one who kills a rat with a
rattle’, derived from an endurance test which Oduduwa forced
his grandson to undergo before he left Ife and which is still com¬
memorated at Akure in the annual Ifunta festival when the
oba withdraws into an inner part of the afin for seven days. The
majority of accounts agree that the present title of Deji arises
from an episode which links the dynasty with that of Ilesa. As
related above, Owa Atakunmasa, seventh ruler of the Ijesa,
journeyed to Benin, where he spent some years in exile. On his
way he passed through Akure, and later a son was born there,
either to one of the Owa’s wives or (the story has, of course,
fissiparated) to one of his daughters given in marriage to the
Ajapada. When the Owa returned, again passing through
Akure, he saw this child, named Ogunja, and joyfully placed
him on his knee, conferring on him a crown and the additional
name of Olufadeji. When Ogunja came to the throne of Akure
he preferred to use the shortened form of his new name, ‘Deji’,

as his title, and it is thus that his successors are usually known
to this dayd**
The presence in Akure of a sizeable population of Bini
origin, known as the Ado-Akure, living in the Igiso, Eyinke,
and Oritagun quarters of the town and subject to a chief known
as the Olotu-Ekiran,^® is evidence of the close relations which
have existed between the two kingdoms. Akure was the main
base for Benin’s trade in this area and, indeed, was apparently
regarded at times as being within the western frontiers of that
kingdom. The Ado-Akure may have constituted a kind of
colony like those established by Benin in the south-west, and
the name ‘Ado’ is probably here the Yoruba form of Edo, an
alternative name for the Bini. Egharevba, the Benin historian,
refers to an attack by the Bini on ‘rebellious Akure’ during the
reign at Benin of Oba Ewuare. During this war the town was
surrounded and all resistance eventually crushed. The ruler,
whom Egharevba calls the Alakure Orito - a name which does
not occur in the list of forty-two rulers compiled by Arifalo -
was allowed to remain as nominal head of the town, but Benin’s
authority was maintained by the posting there of a resident
ofihcial, the Odionwere (equivalent to an Oyo ajelej.î About a
century later, in the reign at Benin of Oba Ehengbuda, Akure
was again ‘rebellious’, and the Benin army under the lyase,
returning from a campaign in Yorubaland, passed through it in
order to make a show of strength.22 By the early nineteenth
century Akure seems to have regained its independence, but
the murder there of an ambassador announcing the accession of
a new Oba at Benin was followed in or about 1818 by a re¬
conquest in which the Deji was taken captive and executed.^^
It is nearly superfluous to add that none of these events have
been admitted to Akure tradition as it is related today.
One of the smallest of the independent towns in Ekiti is Ire,
some fourteen miles to the north-east of Ado. It is of interest
as the centre of the worship of Ogun, god of both war and iron
in the Yoruba pantheon. According to the ruler, the Onire, the
town was founded by Ogundahunsi, son of Ogun, who himself
was a son of Oduduwa - or so they say at Ire, though not at
Ife. On return from a long campaign, Ogun lost his temper with
his son and killed him. Overwhelmed by remorse, he sank into
the earth at the place in Ire where his shrine now stands. The
Onire claims descent from Ogun and recites a list of rulers,
ending with himself as twenty-ninth.^^
Another small kingdom deserving mention is Idanre, south of
Akure and east of Ondo. Its old town lies under the peak of
Mount Orosun - the highest point in Western Nigeria at 3,098
feet - and until a few years ago could only be reached by rope
ladder up a vertical rock face. The ruler here, the Owa, claims
the usual Ife ancestry, but his kingship and government are on
the Benin pattern.
Smaller even than these last two states are the independent
villages of the Akoko to the east of Ekiti. In this area, writes
Forde, ‘No right or authority beyond that of the village is re¬
cognized and each village or quarter of a village has its own
particular tract of land, the boundaries of which are jealously
guarded.’^® This form of social organization is in marked con¬
trast to the system of kingship obtaining generally among the
Yoruba and probably results from the uncertainty of life in a
marcher country and from the intermingling here of Yoruba,
Kukuruku, and Bini customs.
Owo
The kingdom of Owo lay athwart the approaches of Benin to
southern Yorubaland. Its role could appropriately be described
as that of a palatinate were it not that the Yoruba, despite
their common language and claims to a common ancestry and
culture, neither acted nor regarded themselves as a nation be¬
fore the present century. The major units were the kingdoms,
and among these Owo, although lying in an exposed position
between the more powerful Oyo and Benin states, was one of
the largest, its territory stretching from the Kabba country in

the north (bordering the Nupe) and Akoko in the north-east to
Okeluse, some 100 miles to the south. The importance of the
kingdom is reflected in its afin, which, containing over one
hundred courtyards, is among the largest in Yorubaland. Every
town and village in the kingdom was obliged to contribute to
the maintenance of this vast building.®^
Owo’s historian. Chief Asara,^® has arranged his account
under the reigns of twenty-nine rulers, the Olowo. The first was
Ojugbelu, alternatively called Arere and Omolaghaiye, one of
Oduduwa’s sixteen sons; his pleasant manner earned him from
his father yet another name, Owo, ‘respectful’, and this came to
be applied to his followers and their descendants. According to
Asara, Ojugbelu was absent from Ife on a hunting trip when the
dispersal of princes took place and was obliged to hasten after
his brothers and force them by his sword to give up a share of
their father’s treasure - a story recalling that of the Owa of
Ijesa. He then parted from them and, after a halt at Uji,
settled with his followers at Upafa in the south of the present
kingdom. Thence, under his son, the Owo removed first to Oke-
Imade and then, seeking a good supply of water, to Igbo
Ogwata, now called Okiti Asegbo, near the centre of the present
Owo town. There was already dwelling here a group of people
led by a ruler called the Elefene. For a time the Owo were con¬
tent to live alongside them, but in a later reign they were
driven away. Asara, presumably working from tradition about
the length of reign of each Olowo, has assigned a date at the
beginning of the eleventh century to the foundation of the
kingdom by Ojugbelu.
Asara, whose history (like many local histories) has a strong
‘authorized’ flavour, maintains that ‘from the first dynasty,
Owo was never conquered nor defeated by any kingdom’. This
does not accord with several references to Owo in Egharevba’s
history of Benin. The first occurs in the reign of Ewuare, whose
army is said to have captured Owo after a severe battle, but
Egharevba admits that the Benin general, Iken, was attacked
and killed before he could leave the city, having sent on his
soldiers in advance.^^ A few reigns later, under Oba Ozolua at
Benin, Owo was again attacked by a Benin army, this time sub¬
mitting without a fight.Egharevba and Asara agree, however,
that Osogboye, heir to Olowo Omaro, was sent as a young
prince to Benin for his education at the Oba’s court and en¬
rolled as a page to the Oba {emada, literally ‘sword-bearer’).^!
When Omaro died, Osogboye seems to have returned to Owo to
claim the throne without first obtaining the Oba’s permission
to leave the palace, and when messengers were sent to him from
Benin he feigned illness. As soon as his coronation had been per¬
formed, Osogboye set about fortifying the town against an
attack from Benin, causing a ditch to be dug (and presumably
also a wall). The History of Owo implies that an attack
was made and repulsed, but Egharevba confines himself to say¬
ing that the Oba now ‘confirmed’ the Olowo’s appointment and
bade him continue the payment of tribute. What seems to
emerge from these conflicting accounts is that the Owo were
able to maintain virtual independence for their capital and sur¬
rounding district, but that from time to time tribute had to be
paid to Benin and probably also that the southern parts of the
Owo kingdom were subjected to control by the Bini in order to
maintain access to the coast on the south-west (although, as will
be seen in Chapter VI, a route by waterway leading to and
across the lagoon was also used).
Like many Yoruba towns, Owo was a centre of brass casting
and of sculpture in wood and ivory. Here again the influence of
Benin is evident, and Owo art has been described as ‘inter¬
mediate between the Yoruba and Benin styles’.
Ondo
South-west from Owo live the numerous people known as the

Ondo, ‘the settlers’. Ondo, the capital and principal town, is
situated in the north-west of their extensive but somewhat

amorphous kingdom in a countryside much broken up by the
same system of hills as that which covers Ekiti and much of
Owo, and which has served as a protection against the Oyo and
the Bini; from the latter Ondo must also have been shielded to
some extent by Owo. But the eastern and southern parts of the
kingdom were much affected by Benin influence and settlers,
and the southern region, which stretches to the intricate system
of creeks and lagoons on the western edge of the Niger Delta,
has been peopled by other non-Yoruba, especially the Ijo. The
Yoruba themselves are essentially an inland race, and those
now in the creeks and near the coast are almost certainly late
settlers there. The Mahin, living by the lagoon and coastal
beach of that name, and ruled by the Amapetu, seem to have
no lengthy tradition of occupation of their area, while the com¬
munity of the Holy Apostles of Aiyetoro was established as a
sort of phalanstery or kibbuz on a desolate and remote part of
the coast, unclaimed by any of the nearby peoples, only in
1947.
There are three main accounts of the foundation of the Ondo
kingship. Egharevba claims that it was founded by migrants
from Benin in the time there of Oba Ozolua;®^ Johnson writes
that it was founded from Oyo by a wife of Alafln Ajaka with her
twin children, the king having sent them away from Oyo in¬
stead of complying with the custom of putting twins to death
finally, there is a tradition preserved in Ondo itself which is
similar to Johnson’s account but substitutes Ife for Oyo and is
in more specific terms, and, moreover, is re-enacted annually at
the pba’s festival there.^® According to the Ondo account, it
was one of the wives of Oduduwa who gave birth to the twins,
a circumstance which was regarded at Ife with such horror that
the mother with the two babies was driven into the forest. One
twin was a boy, and it was he who founded Epe, about ten
miles to the north-west of Ondo. The other was a girl, Pupupu,
who became founder of Ondo and whose son Airo was the
second ruler tHere and the builder of the town walls. The present
oba, entitled the Osemawe, claims to be the forty-seventh to
reign over the kingdom.^® The origin of the dynasty is reflected
in the importance given to women in the government of Ondo.
There is, for example, a council of women chiefs which has
access to the council of males, and the Osemawe’s installation is
carried out by the leading woman chief, the Lisa Labun. But
although Ondo, for reasons which are unrecorded, has far sur¬
passed Epe, now a mere village within the kingdom, the
seniority of the ruler of Epe, the Jegun, is acknowledged. As
elsewhere, traces of settlers preceding the estabhshment of the
present dynasty are found. Here they are the Idoko, a people
who still form a separate group in Ondo with their own gods and
who do not participate in the Ondo festivals.
V' Kingdoms of the West:
Ketu, Sabe, and Dassa
The western kingdoms of the Yoruba lie for the most part
beyond the frontiers of Nigeria in the neighbouring state of
Dahomey - the latter a French creation in the same sense that
Nigeria was created by the British, and taking its name from
the Fon kingdom in the south-east of the country which had
Abomey as its capital. There are nearly 200,000 Yoruba speak¬
ers in modern Dahomey, where they form about 9 per cent of
the population, living in their towns and villages in the centre
and south of the country, and they even extend into Togo still
farther to the west. By the French administrators they were
called Nago or Nagot, a word probably deriving from an
opprobrious nickname given them by the Fon.^
Like other Yoruba, those of the west formed themselves into
kingdoms. The two most important of these, Ketu and Sabe in
central Dahomey, trace their origins to the dispersal of princes
from Ife, while a third, Dassa, seems to be of less antiquity. To
the west of these former states, and spilling over the Togo
frontier, are the groups of Yoruba speakers known as Itsa or
Sa; it has been suggested that at a remote period they migrated
westwards from the neighbourhood of Ilesa, but there seems
little basis for this beyond a superficial resemblance in the
names.2 A separate small group, which extends to the vicinity of
Atakpame in Togo, is known as the Ife and claims to have
migrated direct from He Ife. To the south of Ketu a group
which seems to be Yoruba in language and religion is the Ahori
or Holli, living in the marshes north of Pobe. On the coastal
lagoon Porto Novo, the capital of modern Dahomey, seems to
66
KINGDOMS OF THE WEST 67
have been originally a Yoruba town and is known to the Yoruba
as Ajase (which could mean ‘conquered by the Adja’).^ In the
hinterland of Porto Novo and stretching north to Pobe a
number of once-independent towns and districts preserve tra¬
ditions of migration from various parts of Yorubaland.^ Finally,
the Fon themselves are usually held to descend from a fusion of
Adja conquerors with indigenous Yoruba living on the Abomey
plateau.
Apart from that of Ketu, the histories of all these Yoruba
are exceptionally complex and confused. Their kingdoms and
chieftancies, situated precariously among other peoples and
separated from each other by ahen territories, were neither
sufficiently large nor well organized to contain the external
dangers which beset them in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. In the south the Gun and the Fon attacked, in¬
filtrated, and overran their homelands; farther inland their
enemies included the Fon again, the Borgu, then the Fulani of
Ilorin, and even their kinsmen from Oyo and Egba - the latter,
indeed, were known to the Sa as ‘the sons of war’ {omojagun).
The impression which emerges is that these were the advance
guard of a migration which finally petered out, leaving them in
an exposed position far from the centres of Yoruba life and
sources of strength.
Ketu
An account of the westward migration from He Ife which

resulted in the foundation of Ketu and Sabe was recorded by
the Yoruba missionary, and later Bishop, S. A. Crowther, in
Ketu in 1853 and was used by Parrinder in his Story of Ketu.^
Under the leadership of Sopasan,® a grandson of Oduduwa, the
migrants crossed the Ogun river and then split into three
groups; the first, under Sopasan and his nephew Owe, moved
westwards and eventually foimded Ketu; the second travelled
first to the north-west and then was forced south again, foimding
F
the kingdom of Sabe, while the third, according to this

account, turned north up the Ogun and eventually founded the
kingdom of Oyo. The first party settled on the hill known as
Oke Oyan, apparently in the vicinity of Saki (the River Oyan
is a tributary of the Ogun), and later moved to Aro, where
Sopasan died and was succeeded as leader by Owe.^
In the reign of the seventh oba, Ede, another migration took
place, and this, like the original one from Ife, also split into
three parties: one founded a village called Idofa after the
hunter who was its leader, the second settled in Ibarapa
country at Igbo Ora, and the third, apparently the principal
one, under Ede and guided by the hunter Alalumon, settled on
the present site of Ketu, building their town around an iroko
tree (whose alleged fragments can still be seen). Tradition re¬
counts that Ede was accompanied from Aro by 120 families, the
founders of the present wards of Ketu town. The history of the
journey from Aro to Ketu is re-enacted during the installation
ceremonies of every ruler, the Alaketu. One principal event
which is recalled is the borrowing of fire by Alalumon on the
first night at Ketu from Ya Panka, an old woman who was
found living a few miles to the south. Apart from this episode,
there are other indications that the Ketu encountered people
already in occupation of parts of their new homeland; Parrinder
considers that these cannot have been Yoruba,® but there is not
sufficient evidence for an assertion either way.
The traditions of Ketu have been unusually well preserved
and recorded. The list of Alaketu, which numbers forty-nine (in¬
cluding the present oba, who was installed in 1963), is one to
which considerable weight can be attached, since it was the
special duty of a herald, the Baba Elegun Oyede, to recite the
names and parentages of ail preceding Alaketu during the
coronation ceremonies. Moreover, approximate dates of reason¬
able reliability can be assigned to reigns from the eighteenth
century onwards, partly (as in the case of Oyo) by cross-reference
to the history of Dahomey as recorded by European writers.
Today the most striking feature of Ketu, now a remote and
neglected town, is its fortifications, comprising a circuit of
massive earthen walls, still in some places over twelve feet in
height and nearly as broad, outer ditches to a depth of some
eight or nine feet and twenty feet wide, planted with thorns,
and above all the great Idena (‘Sentry’) Gate, a fortress in itself
with inner and outer covered gateways and a central courtyard,
certainly the most impressive example of Yoruba military
architecture in existence.® Ketu historians attribute the build¬
ing of these fortifications to Sa, the fourteenth Alaketu, and add
that the oba himself supervised the work, which was accom¬
plished by the townspeople with the aid of two giants living
near by. The Idena Gate is said to stand upon the place where
Ede first entered the site of his new capital and where later a
hunchbacked weaver, one of those already living on the spot
when the immigrants from Ife arrived, was killed as a pro¬
pitiatory sacrifice - a circumstance from which the town and
kingdom are said to derive their name (a proverb in the form of
a riddle: Ke ’tu ike ? Ke fo ilu ?: ‘Who can straighten a hunch¬
back’s hump? Who can break our town?’). Sa’s successor,
Alaketu Epo, completed the fortifications, and it is claimed that
to give strength to the walls the clay was mixed with palm oil
instead of water.
The extent of the kingdom can only be tentatively described.
On the east it included Meko, some twenty miles distant from
Ketu (and now within Nigeria). This had been founded as a
farm from Ketu and gradually grew into a town whose wards
retained the names of the different areas of Ketu whence the
inhabitants had come. During the reign of Ande, the thirty-
ninth Alaketu (c. 1760-80), a dispute arose over the Bale of
Meko’s claim to wear a crown and to rank as an oba, but even
down to the present time the subordination of Meko to Ketu is
acknowledged by its inclusion in the ceremonial intineration of
his kingdom by a new Alaketu, though he now has to cross a
modern international frontier in performing this. To the west
the kingdom was probably bounded by the River Weme

(Oueme), while on the north the Okpara seems to have separ¬
ated Ketu from Sabe territory. Southward from the Ketu
kingdom were the marshlands of the wild Ahori, who seem
never to have achieved any notable degree of pohtical organ¬
ization.
For the first centuries of its existence - perhaps for some 400
years if the suggestions about chronology in Chapters I and VII
are near the truth - the history of Ketu seems to have been un¬
eventful. It may be that the passage of time has simply erased
all record of triumph and disaster. On the other hand, it is
equally likely, and somewhat more probable, that in this early
period, when the Guinea forest and its hinterland were much
denser^® and more lightly inhabited than in modern times, a
city state or small kingdom would be able to protect itself and
to expand without much fear of disturbance or even much
contact with outsiders. But if this happy isolation lasted up to
the seventeenth century, conditions changed considerably in
the following century. Ketu found itself in the path of the en¬
croaching Oyo, a related state, but none the less an aggressive
neighbour, and for a period, probably of a hundred years or
more, it seems to have been subject or tributary to the Alafin,
though doubtless regarded as a distant and unimportant vassal
when shorn of those areas where Oyo had erected its satellites
to guard the route to the coast. Two of Oyo’s subordinate rulers,
whose territories had apparently been previously a part of
Ketu, the Elehin Odo of Ifonyin and the Oniko of Ikolaje, are
remembered as having been accustomed to travel in company
with the Alaketu to pay their annual tribute of thatching grass
to the Alafin.
But Oyo was not the only, nor in latter days the most danger¬
ous, menace to the peace of Ketu. On the west the kingdom
found itself confronted by the powerful Fon state of Dahomey.
From the reign of Agaja in the early eighteenth century, the
Dahomeans had been intent upon controlling territory along
the coast. As has been seen in Chapter III, they came into
conflict in this region with the Oyo, a conflict which resulted in
the imposition of tribute on Abomey by Oyo. But Dahomey
showed great powers of recovery, and the peace settlements of
1730 were followed by a rebuilding and consolidation of
strength which enabled the kingdom to retain its hold on the
slave port of Whydah and the coast as far east as Badagry. It
was also extending to the north-west, and after a war with the
Ashanti agreed upon a new frontier with that state. In 1789 the
Dahomeans invaded Ketu for the first time. According to
Dalzel, they crushed all resistance and carried off many cap¬
tives, but Ketu tradition claims that they confined themselves
to pillaging the nearby village of Iwoye and abstained from an
attack on Ketu itself. Whatever the truth about this first
encounter, Ketu was destined, like much of western Yoruba-
land, to suffer dreadfully at the hands of the Dahomeans in the
n(jxt century.
Sabe
Ketu tradition describes how the westward migration of the

Yoruba from Ife split into three groups after crossing the River
Ogun. The second of these, under the ‘youngest prince’ in the
Ketu version, moved north-west and settled at Kilibo, ‘the
forest of lions’, whence they were forced southwards again to
the hills of Sabe, where they established their capital.^ rather
different version of what is nevertheless recognizably the same
legend was gathered at Sabe by Fr Moulero, who relates that
Saloube, the leader of the Sabe migration, was the senior of the
princes, and that his group, after separating from the others at
Oke Oyan, moved north into Borgu, where Saloube died. Here
his followers founded the town of Parakou. Only under their
third leader, Adjongou, and after an intermediate settlement at
Tchaourou, did they come to Kilibo, where they remained for
the duration of nine reigns. Finally, under pressure from their
72 KINGDOMS OK THE YORUBA
Borgu neighbours they retreated southwards into the Sabe

hills. Here they encountered a people called the Ojodou, whom
they defeated after a series of battles, some of whose sites are
still remembered and one of which lasted five days.^®
Fr Moulero has recorded the names of twenty-one rulers of
the Sabe, from the exodus from Ife until 1848. These include
only five rulers at Sabe itself, and the list seems, therefore, to be
incomplete, especially when it is compared with that for Ketu,
which at forty-two for what professes to be the same period is
twice the length of that of Sabe.
As regards its physical boundaries, the kingdom of Sabe can
be described as occupying the confluence of the Rivers Weme
and Okpara and as extending north to Tchaourou. Today, how¬
ever, this area is by no means inhabited solely or continuously
by the Sabe, and in recent years groups of Main and Dassa have
been settling there. This may imply that the kingdom was never
populous, or it may reflect the external troubles which beset it,
especially in the last century, when after withstanding for
several hundred years the menace of powerful neighbours to the
north, Borgu and Oyo, it was attacked by newer powers, the
Fulani of Ilorin, the Fon of Abomey, and even their distant
Yoruba neighbours from Abeokuta and Ijaye.
Dassa
About thirty miles south-west of Sabe and forty miles north¬

west from Ketu is the town known in French-speaking Daho¬
mey as Dassa-Zoume, capital of the former kingdom of the
Dassa or perhaps more accurately, Idassa. A list of twenty-six
rulers has been compiled for this kingdom,i^ beginning with
Jagou Olofin, the founder of the dynasty, who according to
tradition came from Egbaland. A peculiar feature of the king-
ship is that it passes from a ruler to all his children in turn, in¬
cluding apparently women, and then to the eldest son of the
first king of the preceding generation (excluding the children of
KINGDOMS OP THE WEST 73
the female rulers). The twenty-six rulers in the list - which in¬
cludes two women - are arranged in nine generations, and from
this it has been calculated, on the basis of allowing thirty years
to each generation, that the kingdom was founded about 1700.
Little is known about the history of the Dassa. There is some
recollection among them of pressure from Oyo, under a leader
called in their tradition Adjinakou, a name which does not
occur in the list of Alafin but may refer to an Oyo general.
During the first part of the nineteenth century the Dassa found
themselves harassed, like the Ketu and the Sabe, by the Daho-
means under their powerful warrior king Ghezo, and they with¬
drew for greater safety to their hill-tops. Here they founded the
present town of Dassa-Zoume as a strong place.
VI' Kingdoms of the South:
I jebu, Egba, Egbado, and Lagos
It has already been suggested that the Yoruba, as their tradi¬

tions indicate, are in origin an inland people who ha»d moved
south from the savannah into the ever-deepening forest but had
not until comparatively recent times settled near the coast.
Among their major towns, only Lagos, founded apparently
some centuries after the other kingdoms and not attaining
importance until the eighteenth century, lies near the sea; He
Ife is some eighty miles inland, and Oyo ile, on the savannah
edge, was 200 miles from the sea. Snelgrave was told of the
Oyo that, ‘For as their national Fetiche was the sea, they were
prohibited by their Priests from ever seeing it, under no less a
Penalty than Death.So fas as is known, the Yoruba did not
venture on the open sea until modern times, and it plays little
part in their oral literature.
Nevertheless, the inhabitants of the southern kingdoms,
Ijebu, Egba, and Egbado, must have been aware of the great
and mysterious ocean which washed the boundaries of their
land. The fishermen on the lagoon knew that these placid waters
were separated by only a narrow strip of land from the tumultu¬
ous Atlantic waves. Among their gods, they numbered Olokun,
owner of the sea, and Olokunsu his wife, goddess of the bar
which runs eastward from the entrance to the Lagos lagoon to
the Niger Delta. The health-giving properties of salt water
were known, according to the Ijesa legend, at the far-off court
of Ife. Then, towards the end of the fifteenth century
outsiders began to appear, coming from the sea. With their
arrival, at first few in number, new developments in religion,
74
KINGDOMS OF THE SOUTH 75
trade, and government began, very gradually, to disclose
themselves.
Ijebu
Twelve or thirteen leagues upstream from Lagos [wrote the

Portuguese Duarte Pacheco Pereira in the first years of the
sixteenth century] there is a large town called Geebuu, sur¬
rounded by a very large ditch. The river of this country is
called in our days Agusale, and the trade which one can con¬
duct here is the trade in slaves, who are sold for brass brace¬
lets, at a rate of twelve to fifteen bracelets for a slave, and in
elephants’ tusks.^
This seems to be the first clear mention in writing of any of the

Yoruba kingdoms - ‘Geebu’ must be Ijebu and the River
Agusale either the Osun, which flows into the Lagos lagoon in
Ijebu country, or (less probably) the Ogun, which enters the
lagoon to the north of Lagos. It is significant that this early
account should refer to the commerce of the kingdom for the
Ijebu, though hard-working farmers, are still better-known to¬
day as traders and middlemen, energetic and enterprising.
Although the Portuguese never took the interest in Ijebu which
they showed in Benin - probably because their reports of the
trade in the Lagos lagoon were less encouraging than for other
parts of West Africa and also because of the difficulty of access
- Ciudad do Jubu continued to be marked on their maps in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and there is a belief in
Ijebu Ode that Portuguese traders once lived in the town.
Captain John Adams, 300 years after Pacheco, writes of the
same trade in slaves being conducted there and also mentions
the export of ‘Jaboo cloth’.^ In one sense, however, it was in¬
appropriate that the Ijebu should have thus come to the atten¬
tion of the Europeans before other parts of the country, since
their reputation has long been one of hostility to strangers -
meaning not only foreigners but all non-Ijebu - as well as
76 KINGDOMS OP THE VORUBA
intense local patriotism. Ijebu-Ode ajeji ko wo: bi ajeji ba wo

laro, won afi sebo lale - ‘Ijebu-Ode, a town forbidden to strang¬
ers; if a stranger entered it in the morning, he was sure to be
made a sacrifice in the evening.’
The Ijebu kingdom was a large one, probably next in size to
Oyo. At its greatest extent it stretched south-westward to the
confines of Lagos and eastward across the River Sasa to
the Oni; on the west it bordered the country of the Egba, on the
north the Oyo, on the north-east the Ife, and on the east the
Ondo. Most of this area of some 2,000 or 3,000 square miles is
covered by rain-forest, still dense in places, but nevertheless it is
a fertile land (though the soil has often proved rather too light
for the spread of the cocoa tree). The southern edge of the king¬
dom lay along the coastal lagoon whose waters were fished by
the inhabitants of the villages on the shore, while the farther
side of the lagoon was a remote and sparsely inhabited land of
swamps, creeks, and sandy wastes, bordered by the empty
beaches beaten by the Atlantic.
The capital of the kingdom and seat of the senior ruler, the
Awujale, was the centrally placed town of Ijebu Ode. But
although the culture of the Ijebu is homogeneous and all speak
the same dialect, their political organization has always been
fragmented. The Awujale was recognized as first among their
numerous oba rather than as king of all Ijebu. After the Ode
the next largest group was the Remo, their capital now being
Sagamu, the seat not only of the Akarigbo, the leading Remo
oba, but also of three other crowned oba (the Ewusi, the
Elepe, and the Amunisan) and the heads of the other former
towns (there were in all thirteen) which concentrated here for
greater security in 1872. Other towns in the kingdom with
crowned oba were Idowa, Iwoye, Ijebu Igbo, Owu-Ikija, and
Ijebu Ife, ruled respectively by the Dagburewe, the Ebumawe,
the Orimolusi, the Olowu, and the Ajalorun.
Accounts of the foundation of the Ijebu kingdom describe
three separate migrations into the area. The first was led by
KINGDOMS OP THE SOUTH 77
Olu-Iwa, who settled at Iwode, now a part of Ijebu Ode town.
His two companions, Ajebu and Olode, marked out the bound¬
aries of the new land and town respectively, and the name
‘Ijebu Ode’ is said to derive from the combination of their
names (though an alternative explanation is that ijebu means
‘food of the deep’ and refers to the supposed descent of the
people from victims sacrificed by an Oba of Benin to the sea,
while ode is used both in Yorubaland and elsewhere, for example
among the Itschekri, to mean ‘town’). Then a second group
arrived, led by Arisu, and settled in the district known as
Ijasi. The third migration was the most important, since it was
led from Ife by Ogborogan, afterwards called Obanta and recog¬
nized as founder of the kingdom and first Awujale.
The legend of Obanta relates that he was a son of Oduduwa
by a daughter of Olu-Iwa. After the dispersal of princes from
He Ife he travelled first east to Imesi and then south through
Ondo before turning towards Ijebu. During this journey he was
involved in many adventures, some of which are recalled in the
elaborate ceremonial journey undertaken by a new Awujale
before his installation,'* and gained numerous adherents to his
party. At Igbo he defeated the local ruler in a wrestling match,
and from this derived his title, ‘one who understands the art of
wrestling on land’. (Johnson gives a different explanation, say¬
ing that an ilari was sent from Oyo during the reign of Alafin
Jayin to adjudicate in a land dispute between Iseyin and Owu
Ipole; this ilari later became ruler of Ijebu, and the title of
Awujale derived from his name Agbeja-ile, ‘an arbiter in a
quarrel over land’.^) On entering Ijebu Ode Ogborogan was
at once acclaimed by the inhabitants, who called out oba wa
nita, ‘the king is outside’: hence the name ‘Obanta’ by which
this founding hero is widely known. There now ensued a dis¬
persal of princes rather like that from Itajero, Obanta sending
his followers, among whom was Akarigbo, son of the Olu of
Igbo, to rule over different parts of the land.
It will be noticed that, like most of the Yoruba legends of
origin, the account of Obanta refers to a people already in occu¬

pation of the land before the arrival of the party from Ife. Here
these included both Obanta’s predecessors at Ijebu Ode in the
first two migrations and also those whom Obanta met during
his journey, especially the Olu Igbo, ancestor of the Akarigbo,
and the Oloko of Idoko, who may have ruled a kingdom once
more powerful than Ijebu.® It has also been suggested that the
cult of Agemo, the supreme deity of the Ijebu (to whom the
other Yoruba gods seem to have been considered subordinate)
and worshipped all over their country, originated not with
Obanta, as is held by the orthodox, but in an earlier society.'^
Obanta’s descendants reigned after him on the Ijebu throne.
As with most Yoruba monarchs, the Awuj ale’s power was
strictly circumscribed by his chiefs and councils; ‘The Awujale
did nothing for himself, though everything was done in his
name.’® According to Ijebu custom, only a man born to a reign¬
ing oba - one of those called abidagba - might succeed to the
throne, and the candidates were chosen in rotation from four
branches of the royal house. But in 1960 these rules were set
aside in favour of the present oba, the fifty-second Awujale, a
grandson but not a son of a previous ruler.
Tradition relates that during the reign of the thirteenth
Awujale there was a split in the succession to the kingdom. This
ruler fell ill, and after nominating his brother as regent left the
capital to seek a cure in the small town of Idowa, a few miles
to the south-west. When he had recovered he found himself
prevented by his brother from resuming his rule. Eventually
the brothers agreed that the former Awujale should remain as
an oba at Idowa and should take a share of the kingdom’s
regalia. The present ruler of Idowa, the Dagburewe, claims des¬
cent from this Awujale and is guardian of a fine collection of
antique crowns and effigies {okute) of his royal ancestors.®
A testimony to the greatness of Ijebu’s past, and probably
also to the pre-eminence of Ijebu Ode among the other divi¬
sions of the kingdom, is the survival of much of the course of
the vast earthwork known as the Eredo. This mud-built ram¬
part (which may justifiably be identified with Pacheco’s ‘very
large ditch’jio has a circuit of some eighty miles and appears to
enclose an area of some 400 square miles around the town of
Ijebu Ode. It is still in places twenty feet high, with an outer
ditch of twenty to twenty-five feet in depth. Legend describes
it as the creation of Sungbo, a wealthy but childless woman who
caused it to be built as a memorial to herself. But it has been
suggested more prosaically that it may have been constructed in
two phases, the eastern section being intended for the defence of
the Idoko kingdom, which possibly preceded Ijebu as the power
in this area, and the western section being a later fortification
for Obanta’s capital. There does not seem as yet much evidence
to support this hypothesis, nor can the intention of the builders
be confidently determined. The function of the Eredo in mark¬
ing the limits of the Awuj ale’s immediate area of authority -
his Hausmacht, so to speak - was probably as significant as its
use as a fortification, though doubtless these two roles were, as
so often elsewhere, complementary. Meanwhile the Eredo
awaits archaeological investigation, and especially a detailed
survey of its course.
Tradition in Ijebu throws little light on the external relations
of the kingdom. There are tenuous reports of contact with the
Portuguese, but nothing to support or contest the claims of
first the Oyo and then the Bini to have subjected them by arms.
In the case of Oyo there is a tradition there^^ that Alafin Ajagbo
(probably reigning in the seventeenth century) entered Ijebu
Ode with his army and installed his candidate Fasojoye as
Awuj ale. That there was a war about this time with Oyo is con¬
firmed at Ijebu Ode, although Fasojoye’s name is not recol¬
lected there as an Awujale. Johnson, describing the circuit of
Yorubaland by the army of Alafin Ojigi in the early eighteenth
century, implies that the expedition passed through Ijebu terri¬
tory on its return to Oyo via the Popo country, and in his
account of the extent of the Oyo kingdom under Agbolaje later
in the century he includes Ijebu within the boundariesd^ But an

Oyo cavalry force would have encountered tremendous diffi¬
culty in penetrating the rain-forest, and for the Oyo to have
retained political or military control here for any length of time
seems almost impossible. With regard to Egharevba’s assertion
that Ijebu was conquered by the Bini in the reign of Oba
Ozolua and ruled by them ‘for some years’,^^ Ijebu tradition
is similarly silent. Yet Dapper, in his Description de VAfrique of
1686, writes that the king of ‘Jaboe’, by which Ijebu must be
meant, was one of the Oba of Benin’s vassals.There is no
doubt that at some time before 1700 Benin had extended its in¬
fluence along the coast to the west of Ijebu and had erected a
tributary state at Lagos. This suggests that the Bini controlled
at least the southern parts of Ijebu territory linking them to
Lagos and the coast beyond. But it seems probable that they
depended for their communications mainly on the waterways,
passing through the creeks around Mahin and across the lagoon,
quicker and more convenient than the land route and less pro¬
vocative to the Ijebu. Finally, from the early eighteenth cen¬
tury onwards, the Dahomeans to the west were a growing
menace to Yoruba security, despite the checks administered to
them by the Oyo. Snelgrave mentions what may have been an
attack on Ijebu by a Dahomean army in or about 1731.^^ But
nothing else is known of this war, and even if it took place it
seems unlikely that the Dahomeans obtained any major results
from an ambitious push so far to the east of their kingdom.
Meanwhile the Ijebu continued both to keep away strangers
from their towns and to play their profitable role of traders and
middlemen, principally supplying slaves to the Atlantic trade
in competition with the Oyo and importing European cloth and
miscellaneous goods. According to Clapperton, Ijebu merchants
used to travel into Nupe before the outbreak of the civil wars
there, and in 1826 their cloth was still being sold as far north as
‘Koolfu’ (Kolfo).^® Apart from their ports of Ejinrin and Epe at
the north-east corner of the lagoon, the Eemo town of Ikorodu
at the north-west corner developed a famous market, and in the
nineteenth century the Ij ebu were able to control the important
trade in firearms between Lagos and the interior through this
market. Their commercial ability has never deserted them, and
today their country still looks more prosperous than other
parts of Yorubaland, with its many ‘storey houses’ and the
Brazilian-style mansions which were built at the end of the last
century.
Egba
Since about 1830 the Egba have been concentrated in their

great metropolis of Abeokuta, the town ‘under the rock’, and
in the surrounding district on both sides of the River Ogun.
Until the collapse of the Oyo and the outbreak of the civil wars
in the early part of the last century, however, the Egba state
- or the ‘Egba forest’ as it is more distinctively called - ex¬
tended considerably farther to the north-east than the present
area of Egbaland, and included the sites of Ibadan, Ijaye, and
other towns which were subsequently occupied by refugees
from the Oyo kingdom. Ajisafe^^ describes old Egbaland as
stretching ‘from the river Oba on the north to Ebute-Metta on
the south, and from Osun River on the east to Ipokia with
Yewa River on the west’. Thus its frontiers marched with the
Ife and Ijesa kingdoms on the east, Ijebu to the south and
south-east, Egbado on the south-west, Ketu on the west, and
Oyo to the north. Much of this area is covered by the rain
forest; the name ‘Egba’ is itself said to be a contraction from
^balugbo, ‘the wanderers towards the forest’.
Like the Ijebu, the Egba were ruled as a federation rather
than centrally, and its towns, said by Ajisafe to be ‘not less
than three hundred in number’, were grouped into three pro-
vinces.i® The largest and most northerly province was that of
Egba Agura (or Gbagura), said to consist of 144 towns, of
which seventy-two owed allegiance to the Agura in his capital
at Iddo and seventy-two to the Onigun of Ilugun; later the

Agura became predominant over most of the area except
Ilugun, which then adhered to the province of Oke Ona. This
second province, Egba Oke Ona, was so called from its situ¬
ation to the south-west of the River Ona in the vicinity of the
Ijebu Remo. The principal oba was the Osile (or Oloko) of Oko.
The third province, which occupied the south-west of the
Egba forest, was that of Egba Alake. This was originally called
Egba Agbeyin and subject to the Ojoko of Kesi, who was later
displaced as leading oba by the Alake, whose capital was at
Ake, but who was chosen by king-makers from the five sister
towns {omp iya) of Ijeun, Kemta, Iporo, Itoku, and Ake. Among
the provincial heads the Alake came to be accepted as senior,
followed by the Osile, the Agura, and the Onigun. The different
towns within the provinces also had their oba, but in the whole
kingdom only the Alake, the Osile, and the Agura wore beaded
crowns. All the major rulers now live with their peoples in their
several sections of the town of Abeokuta, where they were
joined by a fourth crowned oba, the Olowu and his followers
from the ruined town of Owu, and later still by Oyo refugees
from Ijaye. The sites of many of the original towns have long
been abandoned, their ruins being now barely discernible in the
bush or in other cases obliterated and forgotten, but a few, such
as Ilugun and Iddo, are again prosperous villages.
The organization of the Egba suggests that their entry into
the forest took place in three or four migrations, each associated
with one of the provinces. Biobaku considers that the first to
arrive were the Gbagura, settling in the north, then the Oke-
Ona, followed by the Agbeyin, who went farthest to the south;
the arrival of the Alake with his followers represented ‘pro¬
bably a fourth and certainly the last major wave of migration
into the Egba Forest’.^® Johnson maintains that the Egba
rulers mostly descend from the Eso, the warriors of Oyo, and
cites in connection with this the absence of a distinct royal
family and the consequent eligibility of any Egba, whatever his
birth, to be chosen as oba.^*’ Although some towns, for example,
Ilugun, are indeed said to have been founded from Oyo, Egba
traditions for the most part look to Ife for the origins of their
towns. It is in particular maintained that Ajalake, the first
Alake, was a son (or grandson) of Oduduwa, who after the dis¬
persal of the Ife princes travelled and for a time settled with the
Alaketu - a tradition which receives some support at Ketu.^^
The tradition continues that Omonide (‘child of brass the
most precious metal then known), mother (or grandmother) of
the founding princes, had a special love for the Alake which led
her to settle with him in the Egba forest. After her death every
new Alafin sent presents to the Alake because of Omonide’s
burial in his town. The prestige accruing to the Alake from his
legendary membership of the house of Oduduwa may account
for his success in replacing the Ojoko of Kesi as the leading
southern oba of the Egba, though it seems equally possible that
the tradition was the result rather than the cause of his ascend¬
ancy. The Egba account explains his rise in more material
terms, since according to this, the Alake overcame the Ojoko by
first breaking his monopoly in the supply to the other Egba of
corn, which only the Kesi knew how to grow; his capital at
Ijoko was then destroyed and its ruler killed.
There seems no doubt that the Egba were subjected to the
empire of Oyo at some period, since, in addition to both Egba
and Oyo traditions about this, a considerable assimilation of
culture and governmental practice seems to have taken place;
this can be observed especially in the case of the northern Egba,
the Gbagura. How and when the Egba came to accept Oyo
domination is not known, but it seems likely that this occurred
during the century following the return of the Alafin from
Igboho to Oyo ile; Biobaku suggests that the situation evolved
peaceably, the Egba having (he asserts) no military organiza¬
tion capable of defending their land and so being prepared to
pay tribute to Oyo in return for protection.But this Oyo over¬
lordship came to be increasingly resented. The Alafin placed his
G
ajele in the Bgba towns to represent him and to collect annual

tribute, and the presence and exactions of these officials, who
had become ‘the lords of even the kings’,eventually provoked
a national rising.
The liberator and hero of the Egba was Lisabi, born at Itoku
and living in Igbein, both in the Alake’s province. He is remem¬
bered as a man of gigantic stature, and his career shows that he
was a great organizer and leader. At first he worked in secret,
grouping his followers into the Bgbe Aro, a society of farmers
pledged to help each other in their work. This society gradually
extended over the whole of Egbaland and at the same time
changed its character, becoming an underground army, the
Bgbe Olorogun. When the time was ripe, Lisabi gave the signal
for a general rising by killing the ajele in his own town of
Igbein, and from here the movement spread through the
Bgbe to all the other towns of the land. Tradition claims that
over 600 of the Oyo ajele were massacred in this rising. The
Alafin replied by sending a large army, made up of Oyo,
Ibarapa, and Egbado troops, against the rebels. This army
crossed the Ogun at Mokoloki and advanced towards Igbein.
Lisabi now showed his qualities as a general. Having ordered
the town to be evacuated, he concealed his followers in the
nearby Melego ravine and then, as the Oyo searched the
deserted town, fell upon them, routing them and gaining at one
stroke independence for his people.
It is uncertain at what point in the decline of Oyo this revolt
of the Egba occurred. Circumstances suggest that it may have
been at some time during the long reign of Alafin Abiodun;
Biobaku places it during the disturbance at Oyo which resulted
in the downfall of Basorun Gaha, and Akinjogbin considers that
it was in those latter years of Abiodun which also saw the un¬
successful Oyo campaigns against the Borgu (1783) and Nupe
(1791).^^ But tradition in the Oyo kingdom, as recorded by the
Bada of Saki, places the revolt during the short regency of
Basorun Asamu at Oyo, after the suicide of Alafin Awole, and
therefore in or about 1796 or 1797.^® This would accord with
what is known of the general military and political decline
which had set in at Oyo by the end of the eighteenth century
and also with developments among the Egba under Lisabi and
up to the opening of the long wars of the nineteenth century
in Yorubaland.
Lisabi’s role was not confined to winning independence for
the Egba. Biobaku describes him as the Lycurgus who gave his
people laws. He was yet more than that. He taught them the
art of defending themselves by arms and fortifications, so that
they were able to throw back the raids of their fierce neigh¬
bours, the Dahomeans. He also encouraged the Egba to take
advantage of the changed political conditions of the country by
engaging in trade on a wider scale than before, especially in
sending kola from their forests to the markets in the north. He
boasted that he had fought for the Egba so that they should
wear the best kinds of cloth, alari and sekini, and his country¬
men still look on him as father of their nation and on them¬
selves as his children, omo Lisabi.
The circumstances of Lisabi’s end are mysterious. He is said
to have died in the forest, perhaps murdered by a group of
jealous chiefs, though another account is that he was killed
during a Dahomean raid. It seems that towards the end of his
life he lost his popularity with the Egba, despite the benefits
which he had brought them. Biobaku suggests that they did
not understand his anxiety about the defence of their land and
resented the conscription into his militia of men whose labour
was needed on the farms.
After the removal of Lisabi’s influence and example, political
conditions among the Egba deteriorated and local differences
re-emerged. Tradition recollects four outbreaks of civil war pre¬
ceding the wider conflagration of the Owu war.^’ The first arose
from a quarrel between the people of Igbein and Itoku, both
towns subject to the Alake, over the petty offences of a former
slave, now a wealthy trader, Ogedepagbo. The second grew out
of a competition for office between rival chiefs in Ilugun, which

drew in other towns as mediators and then participants. The
third came about when Alake Okikilu raised an army in
Egbado under the warrior Agbaje (who gave his name to this
war) in order to attack a group of towns in his province whose
Court was depriving him of the revenue which he expected from
his own jurisdiction. The last was a bitterly fought contest
between the Ijeun and Itoku against the Oba people; this again
concerned towns within Ake, apparently the most disturbed
and unruly of the Bgba provinces.
Thus the stage was set for the Owu war of the early nine¬
teenth century, which was to bring in its wake the direst and
most far-reaching consequences for all the Yoruba. Among
these consequences was the destruction of the town and king¬
dom of Owu and the eventual removal of its ruler and people to
Abeokuta, the new metropolis of all the Egba, where they have
since then occupied the south-west part of the town.
The Owu did not originally belong to the Egba. Their king¬
dom lay to the east of the Egba forest across the River Osun,
with Ife to the north-east and Ijebu on the south. Little is re¬
membered about the history of Owu, but the impressive
fortifications of the capital, Owu town, consisting of massive
earthen walls still some twenty feet high, suggest that here was
a formidable power. Johnson describes the Owu as a martial
race and adds: ‘Hardihood, stubbornness, immorahty and
haughtiness are marked traits in their character’; to illustrate
the equal fierceness of their women he quotes a proverb: ‘a
child is born at Owu and you ask (whether) male or female:
which will be a proper child?’ {obi omo VOwu, o ni ahg tabi abo
ni, ewo ni yio se omo nibe?)^^ Nevertheless, like their Egba
neighbours, the Owu were subject to the Oyo, and indeed were
proud to act as the Alafin’s warriors in the south. ‘From the
days of Sango,’ claims Johnson, ‘they (had) been very loyal to
the Alafin of Oyo.’ This loyalty in latter days was to lead to
their downfall.
Egbado
To the west of Egbaland live the Egbado, their name con¬

tracted from egbaluwe, ‘the wanderers towards the river’ - pro¬
bably an allusion to the River Yewa, which runs through their
land to the lagoon at Badagry. They seem never to have con¬
stituted a state or federation as did the other major Yoruba
peoples. The traditions of origin of their towns are disparate,
referring to Ife, Oyo, Ketu, and Benin, and the population
includes communities of Anago, Gun, Awori, and Ahori (the
last being the people called ‘Holli’ across the frontier).
The oldest of the Egbado communities are probably the Ilobi
and Erinja, who have traditions of migration from Ife via
Ketu;29 the Ilobi, indeed, claim that their ancestor, Onidokun
Leke, was a member of Oduduwa’s house. Later arrivals in the
area were the Ado and the Ipokia, both tracing their origin to
Benin, though the people of Ipokia have been joined by emi¬
grants from Oyo. Other Egbado towns, such as Igan, Egua,
and Aiyetoro, seem to have been founded by Anago groups
moving - or possibly, returning - eastward from Dahomey. But
the most important of the Egbado towns are those founded
directly or indirectly by Oyo. There are two main groups of
these, and in each case the settlements were apparently made
by the Oyo in order to protect their communications with the
coast.^® The first group consists of the former kingdom of
Ifonyin (sometimes called Nago), ruled by the Elehin Odo (‘the
king behind the river’), and its daughter kingdoms of Ihumbo
and Ikolaje, to whose rulers the Elehin Odo, with the Alafin’s
permission, granted crowns. (Ifonyin lies across the present
frontier in Dahomey.) They seem to have been founded about
1700, at the time when Oyo became aware of the threat to her
route to the coast from the westward expansion of Benin and
the growing power and ambition of the Eon of Dahomey. The
second group was founded probably late in the eighteenth
century by Alafin Abiodun when the Oyo trade route was
moved farther to the east; it includes the two leading towns of

Haro and Ijana, established in an area which, perhaps as a result
of slave-raiding, was only lightly populated. Haro was ruled by
its oba, the Olu, who was crowned by the Alafin; according to
Johnson, each Olu ruled for a period of only three years and
then retired to Oyo ile with ten of his wives. Ijana was subject
to an official known as the Onisare, who was chosen from among
the Alafin’s ilari, the titled slaves; Johnson writes that he was
always a Nupe, but the Onisare whom Lander met in 1830 was
described as a Hausa.^^ Haro became the principal town of
Egbadoland, while nearby Ijana took second place. Formerly
their rulers held a ceremonial meeting once a year, sitting back-
to-back on a hilltop boundary between their kingdoms - since
kings should never meet each other - and the Onisare had the
alarming honour of being one of the Oyo abobaku - those re¬
quired to take their own lives on learning of the Alafin’s death.
These satellite kingdoms of Oyo in Egbado country seem to
have fulfilled well their purpose of protecting the road to the
coast up to and even some years beyond the outbreak of the
general wars of the nineteenth century. They had their own
troops and remained, as Johnson writes, ‘very loyal subjects of
the Alafin’.®^ Many travellers passed through the towns bet¬
ween Oyo and the coast, and though the tolls which they were
required to pay (in cowries) on entering and leaving had to be
transmitted to the Alafin, their patronage of the local markets
was profitable and the Egbado grew wealthy. When Clapperton
and Lander, the first Europeans to give a first-hand account of
Yorubaland, travelled up this route at the end of 1825 they
were impressed by the order, peace, and prosperity which they
saw around them. But four years later, as the Landers noted,
conditions had deteriorated.
Two towns lying in the mainly Awori area to the south of the
Egba and Egbado countries (and sometimes included in one or
the other) must be mentioned. The first is Otta, ruled by a
crowned oba, the Olota, who claims to derive his title from Ife,
and now a wealthy centre of cocoa production and trade. The
second is the former port and slaving centre of Badagry, which
is situated, like other West African ports, not directly on the
coast but on the coastal lagoon; from the west it is protected by
the Yewa estuary and on other sides by swamp and forest.
Although surrounded by Awori villages, the town seems to have
been founded in the 1730s by Egun (or Popo) refugees driven
eastwards by the Fon. As it became important as an outlet for
the trade of Oyo and for the commerce of the Egbado, its popu¬
lation grew, other Popo refugees and Awori from the surround¬
ing district being attracted there, as well as Spanish, Portu¬
guese, French, Dutch, and English slave traders who estab¬
lished their baracoons along the shore. The leading chief, the
Akran, was normally a member of the Jegba ward of the town
which traced its descent from Whydah (Ouidah, Hueda), the
Popo port some fifty miles to the west,^'* but he had little
authority over the other wards. The town seems to have con¬
stituted a semi-independent city-state; in the eighteenth cen¬
tury it was apparently tributary to Oyo, which controlled the
hinterland down to Ipokia in the south, while by 1830, accord¬
ing to the Landers, it had become tributary to Lagos.
Lagos
The interaction of geography and history, of trade and politics,

of the outside world and of local affairs: all this is illustrated in
the past of Lagos. This is the first of Nigeria’s ports and also the
terminus of the railway which, far more than the River Niger,
has linked together the disparate regions. Today Lagos is the
Federal capital, a crowded, cosmopolitan city of half a million
inhabitants. Its names reflect its past: to the Yoruba it is Eko,
deriving probably from the farm {oko) of the earliest settlers,
though alternatively - or additionally - it may be the Bini word
{eko) for a war-camp; to other Nigerians and to the rest of the
world it is Lagos, contracted from the Portuguese Lago de
Curamo (the name Kuramo survives for an inlet of the great

lagoon near by), while there are traces of yet another, probably
later but now almost forgotten name, Onim or Aunis, appar¬
ently also used by the Portuguese.^^
Here at Lagos occurs the first permanent break in the miles
of beach and dune of the outer coast-line to the east of the Volta
estuary. The bar which had to be crossed in order to gain access
to the harbour was one of notorious difficulty and danger, and
so shallow and of so narrow a tidal range that until the com¬
pletion of the breakwaters in 1916 entrance was denied to ships
of over twelve feet draught. But once across the bar and in the
calm waters of the lagoon, there opened up a vast system of
inland waterways connecting Lagos by canoe (and today by
motor-launch) with Porto Novo and beyond on the west and
with the creeks 100 miles to the east. This Rio de Laguo, or
entrance into the lagoon, was noted by the earliest Portuguese
visitors to the West African coast. Pacheco writes of it in his
Esmeralda de Situ Orbis:
There is no trade in this country nor anything from which one

can make a profit. All this region of the river Lagua, of which
we spoke above, as far as the river Primeiro, and beyond for
a distance of a 100 leagues, is all broken up inland by numer¬
ous other rivers in such a way that the whole consists of
numerous islands. It is very unhealthy and is very hot
throughout the year, on account of the proximity of the sun.
The middle of the winter occurs here during the months of
August and September when it rains heavily. The Negroes
of this country are idolaters and circumcised, without having
any law, and without knowing the reason for their circum¬
cision.®^
But even if Pacheco’s rather superficial account of Lagos is

correct in its estimate of trade at the end of the fifteenth
century, three centuries later the position had entirely changed.
Captain John Adams, describing conditions at the end of the
eighteenth century, wrote that ‘An active traffic in slaves’ was
carried on at Lagos, a town ‘built on a bank or island, which
appears to have been raised from Cradoo lake, by the eddies,
after the sea and periodical rains had broken down the bound¬
ary which separated it from the ocean’. He continues:
It has always been the policy of the Lagos people, like those
of Bonny, to be themselves the traders and not brokers. They
therefore go in their canoes to Ardrah and Badagry, and to
the towns situated at the NE extremity of Cradoo lake,
where they purchase slaves, Jaboo cloth, and such articles as
are required for domestic consumption.^®
A Portuguese report of 1807 ascribes the growth of the slave trade

at Lagos to warfare between Dahomey and Porto Novo which
had interrupted supply to ports farther west.®^ By the 1830s the
slave trade here was booming, and until the British occupation
in 1851 Lagos remained its main centre on this part of the coast.
The early traditions of Lagos®® ascribe the peopling of this
sandy waste near the edge of the ocean to a small-scale migra¬
tion of Awori Yoruba, who had first settled under the leader¬
ship of a hunter named Ogunfunminire about twelve miles up
the river Ogun at Iseri, a village which though still mainly
inhabited by Awori is now at the southern limit of Egbaland.
Ogunfunminire is said to have been a member of the royal
house of Ife, but his settlement of hunters and fishermen seems
to represent the farthest and latest extension of one of those
movements which peopled the Awori region. From Iseri the
settlers spread to Ebute Metta (the name means ‘three landing
places’) on the lagoon, but the uncertainties of life on the main¬
land (perhaps due already to the ambitions of Benin in this
area) led them to seek greater safety across the channel on the
small island now called Iddo, whence they spread farther to the
adjacent larger island - some five by one and a half miles - which
is Lagos and which lies by the entrance into the lagoon from the
sea. The islanders were at first subject to a ruler known as the
Olofin, on whose death the land was divided among the ten
eldest of his thirty-two sons, these ten chiefs being the ances¬
tors of the Idejo, ‘owners of the land’, better known today as the
White Cap Chiefs of Lagos. The senior of these, Aromire, had
his farm at Isale Eko (meaning ‘under’ or in modern use,
‘downtown’ Lagos). The present afin of Lagos is situated on this
site and is called Iga Idunganran, ‘the pepper palace’, a re¬
collection in the Lagos-Awori dialect of the pepper bushes on
Aromire’s farm.
A series of attacks had now been launched against Lagos by
the armies of Benin. At first these were repulsed under the
leadership of the Olofin. After the Olofin’s death, however, the
Bini succeeded in establishing themselves on Iddo island under
Aseru, one of their warriors. The impression given by Lagos
tradition is that this was achieved by peaceful infiltration rather
than by conquest; perhaps the Lagosians, seeing themselves
outflanked by the advance of the Bini along the coast to their
west, lost hope of being able to prolong their resistance. Accord¬
ing to Egharevba,®® Oba Orhogba of Benin, campaigning in per¬
son, made a war-camp on Lagos island which he used as a base
for extending his control over the area. Some time later the
Oba appointed a ruler for Lagos to represent the interest of
Benin and to forward tribute there. The man chosen is named
in both Lagos and Benin tradition as Asipa. The Lagos account
is that the Bini warrior Aseru died while campaigning on the
mainland near by and that Asipa, an Iseri chief and (like
Ogunfunminire and the Olofin before him) of the Ife royalty,
carried his body home to Benin, thereby gaining such favour
with the Oba that he was sent back to Lagos as its king.
Egharevba describes Asipa (‘Esikpa’ in his account, but the
name is clearly the same) as a grandson of the Oba of Benin,
and adds that after his death his remains and those of his suc¬
cessors were taken for burial to Benin, a claim which is con¬
firmed in Lagos tradition. Asipa founded a new dynasty which
continued to rule Lagos, using the title either of Ologun (con-
tracted from Oloriogun, ‘warrior’) or of Eleko, and the present
Oba of Lagos - the modern use of the general word for king as
the title is reminiscent of Benin - is his twentieth successor and
descendant on the throne. The dynasty’s dependence on Benin
was emphasized by the appointment of another chief, the Eletu
Odibo - still one of the Akarigbere, or kingmakers, of Lagos -
who alone had the right to crown the oba and who in early
times probably maintained close connection with Benin. Mean¬
while, the senior descendant of the Olofin, the Oloto, maintained
a nominal independence as ruler of the northern corner of Iddo
island and as first among the Idejo.
The period usually assigned to the assertion of Benin’s
authority over Lagos is the sixteenth century, and Hodgkin
associates it with the use by the Bini of firearms obtained from
their European trade.‘^° This may be too early a dating. New¬
bury distinguishes between the coming of Benin emissaries and
settlers ‘towards the end of the sixteenth century’ and the
appointment of Asipa as the first Ologun ‘at the turn of the
seventeenth centuryBut Bini tradition firmly allots Asipa’s
appointment to the reign at Benin of Oba Orhogba, which
Bradbury agrees with Egharevba in placing in the latter part
of the sixteenth century."*^ It certainly seems more probable
that the dynasty was established at the beginning of Benin’s
ascendancy rather than a century or more later. Here, however,
the king-list of Lagos presents a difficulty. Adele, who died in or
about 1836 (after being deposed and later restored), appears as
only the sixth oba. Thus if Egharevba and Bradbury were right,
and if the list were complete, the average length of reign would
be between thirty-three and forty years, which is too long to be
credible. But it is possible, even likely, that the names of some
oba have been forgotten, particularly of those early ones whose
bodies were taken to Benin for burial. The problem remains,
and until new evidence is forthcoming no more definite con¬
clusion can be reached than that Benin had established its
ascendancy in Lagos and had founded a dynasty there at some
period before 1700,^® and that the first, and perhaps also the
second, of these developments may have taken place as early as
the last part of the sixteenth century.
Communications between Benin and Lagos must have been
maintained either through the southern territory of Ijebu or^
more probably, by waterway. Mahin, giving access to the
lagoon at its eastern end, had been conquered by Benin at
about the same time that Lagos was brought under control, and
tradition records that Oba Ehengbuda met his death while on
his way by canoe to visit Lagos.^^ Meanwhile Lagos was becom¬
ing prominent in the slave trade. It is said to have been Oba
Akinsemoyin, fourth ruler at Lagos after Asipa, who invited
Portuguese slave-dealers to his town, and that in his reign his
Portuguese friends presented him with tiles for roofing his
palace, the Iga. As Lagos grew richer, the annual tribute
rendered to Benin presumably increased and became an im¬
portant source of revenue for the latter kingdom. This tribute
was paid until about 1830, and Egharevba writes that an official
was sent to claim it as late as 1845 during the civil war at
Lagos between Akintoye and Kosoko, the two rival claimants
to the throne.*^ Their wealth may well have encouraged the
rulers to assert their independence, and according to Dalzel,
‘The powerful King of Lagos’ took part with the Dahomeans in
an attack on Badagry in 1784, an operation from which Benin
could hardly have derived benefit.
A few years before the establishment of British influence in
Lagos in 1851, there was estimated to be a population of some
25,000-30,000 in the town,^® occupying the western half of the
island, Isale Eko. In addition to Lagos and Iddo, the mainland
at Ebute Metta was accounted part of the kingdom, as was also
an undefined stretch of coast-line between Badagry and Lekki
with its mainly Ijebu population. The stage was set for the
transformation of this miniature but thriving trading state into
a centre of administration and communications and the capital
of a large and populous modern nation.
PART II
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VII' The Traditions Heviewed
The acceptance of oral tradition as a form of evidence commits

the historian to an attempt to answer questions which neither
concern nor would greatly interest the guardians of tradition
itself - the rulers and their officials, the drummers, the praise
singers, the local patriots. These questions arise from the
historian’s need to establish a coherent narrative which, how¬
ever isolated the people concerned, must at some point link up
with events elsewhere, and then to interpret that narrative
according to his usual criteria. In a reconstruction of the past
of the Yoruba, which up to about the middle of the nineteenth
century must be largely from their traditions, and before 1700
almost wholly so, many such questions present themselves, and
for every question a host of difficulties. A prospect of detailed
work, kingdom by kingdom, opens up, but at this stage the
questions may be resolved into two broad groups, each of
fundamental importance. The first concerns the interpretation
of the traditional accounts of the origins of the Yoruba polity,
and the second the fixing of the main developments and events
in early Yoruba history into, first, a chronological sequence and
then into a temporal framework which can be related to, or at
least put alongside, the history of other peoples.
In the traditions of origin which are summarized in the pre¬
ceding chapters of this book, discrepancies and contradictions
abound, and even when supernatural elements are left out of
account, credibility is constantly strained. In this the guardians
of tradition find no difficulty; their duty, and often their pas¬
sion, is to maintain orthodoxy. The historian must approach
tradition otherwise, treating it always with reverence but never
97
with credulity. Yet, despite scepticism, as these legends from

many different kingdoms and towns are examined, compared,
and then assessed as a whole, one factor stands out, adding sub¬
stance and weight to their acceptance as historical evidence:
the resemblances between these different accounts of origin,
especially between those of the major kingdoms, all harking
back to He Ife and to the hero-figures of Oduduwa and his
progeny. The repetition of the story becomes tedious, but such
repetition creates its own confidence. Against this pattern local
differences and difficulties, irritating as they are to the tidy-
minded, contribute to the growing conviction that the legends
do in their way show how the different kingdoms and kingships
originated, since they make it clear that so far as the central
narrative is concerned no ‘Authorized Version’ has evolved.
This body of legend, then, suggests, perhaps as strongly as
such evidence can, that there came to He Ife a leader and a
group of people who established there a political authority of
an enduring kind, that there was a subsequent emigration from
Ife of the founders, with their followers, of a number of king¬
doms, and that there continued to be reference back to Ife as
the centre of authority and legitimacy by the scattered ‘child¬
ren of Oduduwa’, including both those who had formed and
those in process of forming new states and towns. The two first
questions which arise from these assumptions ask whence came
this dominant group, the house of Oduduwa as they may be
called, and then who were the people whom they found already
living in the land.
Numerous answers have been proposed to both these,^ and
the subject is still an open and a controversial one. But two
points are relevant, equally to each question, and may point to
a single answer. The first is that, as noted in Chapter I, hnguis-
tic evidence seems to show that by the time they began to form
the states with which this book is concerned, the Yoruba had
occupied more or less their present habitat for several hundred
or even thousands of years. Secondly, the traditions relate that
THE TRADITIONS REVIEWED 99
as the emigrants from Ife spread over the land they almost
everywhere encoimtered earlier settlers (‘the aborigines’, as
they are sometimes termed)^ who were often hostile (not un¬
reasonably, since they had a prior claim to the land) but who
apparently neither were unfamiliar nor spoke an unknown
tongue. It appears likely, therefore, that the Oduduwa cycle
describes not a conquest from outside but a process of state-
formation from within a people in which the leaders belonged
to a dominant but probably not alien lineage.®
Another problem concerns the legend of the dispersal of
Oranyan and the other founding princes. Is it feasible that such
an emigration in all directions took place at one time, as tradi¬
tion alleges, or at any rate within the lifetime of the leader who
had established his throne at Ife? Here, again, the persistence
over a wide area of a narrative in which the essential elements
remain recognizably the same argues that an actual event is
represented and its memory preserved, and that indeed there
was a concerted movement of the younger generation of a
vigorous hne, a movement which continued a process begun a
generation (or perhaps two generations) before at Ife. There
is nothing inherently unlikely in this. An analogy with
the Normans, as regards their settlements in France, in
England, or in Southern Italy, is not far-fetched. In any case
there seems no ground for preferring the suggestion of a recent
writer that the legend of Oduduwa represents a migration to
Ife by a people coming from the Benue valley, while that of
Oranyan refers to a conquest of Ife and its dependencies by a
different people, arriving apparently centuries later, from the
Middle Niger.'* It is difficult to find anything in tradition or any
substantial evidence from secondary sources (such as differ¬
ences in dialect or social organization) to support any part of
such speculation - that there were two migrations, that they
were widely separated in time, that they were made up of
differing peoples, that they came from different directions and
from a great distance. Nor does there seem any justification for
H
loo KINGDOMS OF THE YORUBA
regarding the names of Oduduwa, Oranyan, and other heroes

as representing not individuals but groups of persons.® Every
movement has its leaders, and it is their names which are
usually recollected.
Yet if the broad outline of the legend of a dispersal of princes
from Ife is accepted as a possible explanation of the foundation
of a number of the Yoruba states, this cannot explain the origin
of all the kingdoms, even though most of them claim to derive
their crowns from Ife. The criteria necessary to satisfy a claim
to have originated from the early and deliberate sending forth
of the founders - from Itajero, as the Ife account has it - seem
to be, first, a specific tradition to that effect, especially if the
kingdom’s own tradition is supported by a similar tradition at
Ife or in other kingdoms; secondly, a king-list of sufficient
length, that is, with about thirty-five names or more, and last, a
recognized position of seniority among the other kingdoms of
Ife origin. Such criteria would seem to be satisfied most nearly
in the cases of Oyo, Ijebu Ode, Ketu, Ondo, and Ijesa, and also
for the second dynasty of the Edo kingdom of Benin, while the
claims of Sabe, Ake, Akure, Ado Ekiti, and Owo, though less
strongly supported by tradition, cannot be set aside. This is not
to deny, however, that other rulers obtained their crowns from
Ife, since, whatever the origin of the Oni’s own kingship - and
the Oyo legend about Adimu seems somewhat suspect - Ife re¬
mained the source of legitimacy to which aspiring rulers would
look for the sanctioning of their kingship. Biobaku suggests
how this might have happened: ‘The Yoruba dotted the tropi¬
cal forest belt with towns and hamlets. A bold hunter usually
led the way and when a suitable site was struck, he founded a
town. He might go back to Ile-Ife for the symbol of authority,
which was a beaded crown.’®
As to what gave these founders of the first states their power
to attain leadership and to accomplish a political revolution of
enduring importance among the Yoruba, tradition is silent.
They may have been associated with some technical innovation.
for example, yam cultivation or iron-working or a new weapon
- perhaps the bow - or they may have learnt through external
contact and unusual receptivity those ideas of strong govern¬
ment and divine kingship which have been termed the ‘Sudanic
state’. More prosaically, they may have been successful traders,
men of wealth and initiative, who came to dominate a race of
poor farmers. The possibilities are many, and there are no clear
pointers. The simplest explanation seems the most likely: that
a family arose (like the house of Hauteville) in which at least
two or three generations were exceptionally gifted by nature
as warriors and as politicians, and whose ambition made them
leaders of their fellow men and founders of states.
Turning to the problem of chronology, the difficulties are at
first sight somewhat less, since much has been asserted about
the dating of reigns. A closer examination proves disconcerting.
The early written references to the Yoruba by European
travellers are meagre, and with regard to dating are parti¬
cularly unhelpful; this is the position up to the end of the
seventeenth century, and it is not until the nineteenth century
that satisfactory accounts begin to appear. The traditions are
related in an almost timeless vacuum. Occasionally indications
are given about the lapse of time, usually concerning the length
of a reign, but these are inherently unreliable. There are no
dates and no recognizable references to datable events elsewhere.
Archaeology has so far thrown little light upon this primary
problem for the historian. As seen in Chapter II, excavations at
He Ife have produced no significant datable evidence.* The in¬
vestigations at Oyo ile in 1956-7 yielded at their earliest levels
pottery impressed with maize cobs, an American plant which
could hardly have reached Africa before 1500, which at first
suggests that the city was founded not earlier than the sixteenth
century. But this conclusion would be unwarranted, since only
a very small part of the vast space within the town walls was
excavated during the short period - two months - which the
* But see the footnote to p. 31.
small expedition spent there; moreover, there is a possibility

that the present site is not that of the earhest foundation.^
Thus, until new evidence is uncovered, resort can only be had
again to tradition, bearing in mind that from this source no
more can be hoped than a tentative approximation to a time-
scale. In this situation it is the king-lists which promise the best
means of estabhshing a chronology. Unfortunately only about
a dozen among the many Usts which tradition must still pre¬
serve have been recorded - and time runs short as tradition is
submerged by modern preoccupations. But in a few kingdoms it
seems that the lists have been comprehensively and con¬
scientiously kept and may be treated with some confidence. In
other towns, however, the information available is confined to
the statement that the reigning oba follows a known number of
predecessors.
In some cases where king-lists were available, historians have
drawn on traditional accounts of the lengths of the different
reigns and then worked backwards to provide a chronology,
including a date of origin. This was done by Chief Ojo, the Bada
of Saki, in his histories of Oyo (in which, for example, he assigns
892 as the year of Oranyan’s death) and Saki, by Fr Ogimtuyi
in his history of Ado Ekiti (he claims that the second Ewi
reigned precisely from 1444 to 1471), and by Chief Asara for
Owo (where the first Olowo is described as having reigned ‘c.
1019’). These writers may have been influenced in this respect
by Chief Egharevba’s famous Short History of Benin, first pub¬
lished in 1934, in which dates are given for all the oba of the
kingdom from Oranyan, whose coming is said to have been
‘about A.D. 1170’; this list was compiled with the help of the
Esekhurhe, or priest of the royal ancestors.® The method seems
likely to be reasonably accurate for reigns within about the last
hundred years, but for earlier periods it cannot be accepted as
providing more than a rough indication of the time-scale, and
for the earliest times even this can hardly be claimed. At Oyo,
for example, it is said that Alafin Abipa was born twenty years
after the fall of Oyo lie, that Orompoto ruled for twenty years,
and that the return to Oyo from Igboho was accomplished in
the twentieth year of Abipa’s reign; each case can be taken as
signifying no more than ‘rather a long time’ or ‘towards the end
of the reign’.
Another approach consists in establishing an average length
of reign for a kingship over as long a period as possible and then
multiplying the number of known oba by the average to obtain
an approximation to the date of origin of the dynasty and other
events.^ For Oyo, an average of 11-8 years reign can be cal¬
culated, taking 1754, established as the probable date of the
accession of Alafin Labisi,^® as the starting-point and ignoring
the two interregna which are recollected in order to compensate
for the series of extremely short reigns during Gaha’s tyranny.
This suggests that Oyo was founded in the first part of the
fifteenth century, that the town was abandoned by Onigbogi in
the second quarter of the sixteenth century, that Igboho was
founded towards the end of the sixteenth century, and that
Oyo ile was re-occupied early in the seventeenth century after
an exile lasting some three-quarters of a century.^^ But at Ketu,
where the list of Alaketu, as recorded by Parrinder, contains
forty-nine names, four more than the list of Alafin of Oyo, the
average length of reign, calculated from that of Oje (c. 1748-
60), is 21-5 years and from Adegbede (1853-8) is 18-5 years; the
first average would give approximate dates of a.d. 931 for the
emigration from lie Ife and 974 for the foundation of Ketu
under Ede, while the second yields 1085 and 1101. This con¬
flicts with the conclusion above that the tradition of the send¬
ing forth from Ife of some six or more founding princes at one
time, or over a short period, represents an historical event.
Clearly, the averaging method cannot be accepted as giving
more than the broadest approximation; experiments carried
out with lists of rulers whose completeness is unquestioned, for
example, the sovereigns of England, illustrate the range of
possible inaccuracy.^2 In the case of Oyo, moreover, there
seems to have been a change in the method of succession, from

primogeniture in early times, which would tend to produce long
reigns, to a combination of the hereditary and elective systems,
which would produce greater stability but shorter reigns. Again,
in the older Yoruba kingships it seems likely that the lists are
incomplete. In Oyo it is said that the names of many early
Alafin who died away from the capital and were not buried in
the Bara, or royal mausoleum, were deliberately omitted from
any enumeration - as apparently happened with Oluodo, who
according to some accounts succeeded Obalokun and was
drowned in the Niger while being pursued by the Nupe. Indeed,
it is claimed at Oyo that there have been in all some seventy
Alafin, which is twenty-three more than those usually enumer¬
ated and would give by averaging a founding date of about
1170. A similar statement about unrecorded oba is made in
connection with the king-lists at Ilesa and Ado Ekiti, and
doubtless elsewhere. But the Ketu list seems to have been kept
with unusual care and commands more confidence, though the
average length of reign seems by comparison with some other
African lists to be rather long.^^ Two main possibilities present
themselves: first, to accept that Oyo is a state of more recent
origin than Ketu, which would accord with the description in
some versions of the legend of Oyo as the junior kingdom
(though the reason here is that it was founded by Oduduwa’s
youngest son or grandson) and that the migration of princes
from Ife took place over a period of several centuries, which is
inherently improbable and would seriously conflict with tradi¬
tion about the dispersal; the second approach would be to
average the averages and to postulate a founding date of about
1300 for Oyo, Ketu, and the other senior kingdoms where the
names of thirty-five or more rulers (to follow the criteria sug¬
gested above) are recollected. The second alternative seems at
present to provide the best working basis for a chronology, and
the founding date of c. 1300 is supported by examination of one
further king-list, that of neighbouring Benin.
The Benin list is relevant to a discussion of Yoruba chrono¬
logy, since not only is the dynasty held, in both Benin and
Yoruba tradition, to stem from Oduduwa, but there has also
been considerable contact between Benin and its Yoruba neigh¬
bours and, as has been seen, a number of events in the history
of the latter are assigned in Benin to the reigns of particular
Oba. Fortunately, the list of Oba of Benin appears to have been
preserved with singular care. Unfortunately, on the other hand,
the fifteenth-century Portuguese visitors to the capital did not
include in their accounts the names of the Oba with whom they
dealt, so that the first identifiable name from written record is
that of Osifo, the personal name of Obanosa, mentioned by
Landolphe, who came to the throne only about 1804.
The list of Oba of Benin, in the versions collected by Roupell
(in 1898), Talbot, and Egharevba, has provided the basis for a
study of Benin chronology by R. E. Bradbury,^^ who, working
backwards and adducing local traditions and some information
from non-Benin sources, establishes approximate dating for the
Oba back to the late fifteenth century. His conclusion about the
earlier period is that if the strong tradition in Benin that
Ozolua was ruler at the time of the Portuguese visit in 1485 is
correct, and if he is correctly enumerated as the fifteenth Oba,
then ‘it appears likely that the dynasty began not later than
about 1300’; Egharevba’s claim that it began about 1200 must
on his own evidence ‘be regarded as too early. But for this
period nothing is certain.’^® This conclusion is reached without
reference to the averaging method, but it is worth noting that
taking 1735, the probable date of accession of Oba Eresoyan, as
the starting-point, a high average length of reign of 24-7 years
is reached; this would give a date of c. 1050 for the beginning of
the dynasty and of about 1390 for the accession of Ozolua, both
of which seem, in the light of the other evidence, much too
early. This discrepancy may be due to the change from brother-
to-brother succession to primogeniture in the Benin kingship,
which took place possibly as late as 1700. As explained above.
primogeniture tends to produce a longer average reign, so that

extropolation backwards can be expected to produce a result
which is too earlyd® But Bradbury has also shown that
Egharevba’s assignment of the Oba from Bwuare to Orhogba
to part of the fifteenth and most of the sixteenth centuries is
probably accurate, and this in turn enables approximate dates
to be affixed to a number of events in Yoruba history.
To sum up, the evidence derived from the king-lists leads to
the tentative conclusion that the major kingdoms of the
Yoruba, and also the second dynasty of Benin, were founded
around the beginning of the fourteenth century, perhaps in the
course of a generation or perhaps during a period of sustained
political vigour at Ife lasting for a hundred years or more on
either side of 1300. Until the eighteenth century no firm dates
can be given, but the exile of the Alafin of Oyo at Igboho can
be provisionally assigned to the sixteenth century and the re¬
turn to Oyo ile, followed by the expansion of the kingdom, to
the first part of the seventeenth century. A comparison of the
traditions of Benin with those of the Yoruba suggest that at the
turn of the fifteenth century Benin was engaged in wars with
the eastern Yoruba kingdoms, and also with Ijebu, and that
from the mid- or late-sixteenth-century Benin was extending
her authority in a south-westerly direction along the coast and
founded a politically subservient dynasty at Lagos during this
period.
VIII' An Oba and his People'
Two closely associated institutions dominated the political life

of the Yoruba in pre-colonial times; the king and the town.
Nearly all Yoruba were (and are) townspeople in the sense that
they belonged to a town, even though they might spend most
of the year on farms up to 20 miles distant (and perhaps nearer
to another town than to the parent one).^ This was a feature
which, apparently for centuries, distinguished them from most
other African peoples. Their towns were many and populous,
and at the centre of each (with one or two relatively recent
exceptions) dwelt an oba in his afin or palace, a building of
some pretensions with its gabled entrance and external veranda,
usually facing on the main market-place.
The settlement of the oba provides the most probable ex¬
planation of this Yoruba propensity for town dwelling and the
willingness of many of them to live up to several miles from
their farms. The oba’s office and person were sacred; he was the
priest and protector of his people, and they naturally wished
to live in his shadow. Considerations of defence supplied another
motive, for though most Yoruba towns do not seem specifically
sited for defensive purposes, all settlements of any importance
were walled and surrounded by a protective zone of thick bush.
The town was also the centre of commerce, where markets were
regularly held, usually every four days,^ and tolls paid to the
oba. Finally may be cited that intangible but real factor,
national character; the Yoruba are a social and gregarious
people, and these qualities can best be satisfied in an urban life.
But transcending the town and its oba was the kingdom or
state, and it could be maintained that the most imposing
107
political achievement of the Yoruba in pre-colonial times was in

organizing themselves into substantial units of government well
adapted in size to their resources. Among these states Ife enjoyed
seniority and prestige. Its ruler, the Oni, commanded respect not
so much as the ruler of one of the Yoruba group of kingdoms,
since Ife is not remembered as having attained political or
military importance, but as the king of a town which was re¬
garded as the cradle of the race and whence the rulers and lead¬
ing elements in the populations of most of the other kingdoms
traced their origins. According to Akinjogbin, the traditions of
relationship between the kingdoms and of the seniority of Ife
amounted to a system of government to which he gives the
Yoruba word for family, ehi. He claims that under this ebi
system the Oni exercised a constitutional and divinely sanc¬
tioned control over the other kingdoms, expressed especially in
his influence over the consecration of their rulers. The sending
of the sword of state and the divination calabashes {igba iwa)
from Ife to a new Alafin provides some support for this in the
case of Oyo.^ Nevertheless, the individual traditions and
histories of all the kingdoms, and of Oyo in particular, refute
this theory, and indeed it seems that the Oni’s own state was
politically subordinate to its stronger neighbours in at least two
periods of its history - to the Oyo empire and later to the short¬
lived Ibadan empire. Under the stable conditions of the colonial
regime the Oni of Ife did attempt to assert a superiority over
the other oba, and on one occasion he was rebuffed, when he
told the chiefs of Ekiti on his visit to Ado in 1936, T am on the
throne as the father and you are on thrones as sons’; to this the
Deji of Akure, in the names of his brother oba, replied that as
the Oni was on the throne of his father, so also were all the Ekiti
oba on the thrones of their own fathers.® In like manner the pre¬
tensions of the Alafin to seniority were resisted by the other
Yoruba kings whenever their political power allowed this
independence, and it is remarkable that even where Oyo
extended military and economic control over adjacent states.
AN OBA AND HIS PEOPLE 109
this was exercised indirectly through resident officials accred¬
ited to the rulers of the respective towns. No case seems to be
recollected where an oba, much less a royal family, was dis¬
possessed by either an Alafin or an Oni (though on one occasion,
as related on page 79 above, an Alafin seems to have inter¬
vened to impose a new Awujale at Ijebu Ode).
Each of the Yoruba states was thus a sovereign entity,
though related by tradition and sentiment to Ife and the other
states of the Ife family (much like the ties between the seven
Hausa Bakwai of northern Nigeria). The kingdom had a recog¬
nized centre in its capital town where the leading oba resided,
surrounded by his chiefs, officials, and priests. This leading oba
was the wearer of a beaded crown, bestowed on his ancestor,
according to legend, from Ife, and his town was defined as ilu
alade, ‘crowned town’ or capital. Subordinate towns were
classified as ilu ereko (literally, ‘towns on the fringe of the farm¬
land’), which in turn ranged from the ilu oloja (a market town
with an oba not entitled to a beaded crown) to the ileto (village),
abule (hamlet), and ago or aba (camp, settlement); village heads
were known in Oyo as Bale, a title which has now spread to
most kingdoms. In some cases a kingdom contained more than
one crowned oba and ilu alade; as a result of regrouping during
the nineteenth-century wars, two towns, Abeokuta and
Sagamu, each had a number of crowned oba reigning in their
different quarters. The titles of the oba usually derived from
their towns, as in the case of the Olowo (‘the lord of Owo’) and
many others. There are some notable exceptions to this, such as
the Alafin and the Awujale, where other circumstances explain
the title. The practice of forming titles from the name of a town
or village has spread in recent years, and former Bale, such as
the Olubadan of Ibadan and many lesser rulers, have assumed
territorial designations.®
In addition to its recognized centre, there were also recog¬
nized boundaries to the Yoruba kingdom. These were appar¬
ently sometimes demarcated by earthworks, of which the
Eredo of Ijebu Ode is the most conspicuous, but in any case

the allegiance of every town was known, though hable to
change with the fortunes of the kingdom, and there were clear,
and strongly held, opinions about the extent of its farmland
and forest. Certain obligations were laid on the subordinate
towns by the government of a kingdom; for example, G. J. A.
Ojo has identified the towns within the Owp kingdoms from
which service was required in maintaining and repairing the
ruler’s palace, the Afin Olowo.’ In size the kingdom varied con¬
siderably, from Oyo, covering over 10,000 square miles, to the
miniature states of Ekiti, where, for example, the Ewi of Ado
ruled over only some seventeen small towns or villages. The
larger kingdoms were subdivided into provinces. In addition,
there were city-states, such as Badagry and the Egbado towns.
In Oyo, which seems to have been the most centralized in
government as well as the greatest in extent, there were four
provinces: the Ekun Osi, or ‘left-hand district’ (that is, east of
the Ogun) surrounding the capital; the Ekun Otun, the ‘right-
hand district’ (west of the Ogun); Ibolo, and Epo. In each
there were a dozen or more lesser oba ruling over the
more important towns with their internally autonomous sub¬
kingdoms; in the Ekun Osi, for example, the leading oba
was the Onikoyi of Ikoyi. These rulers were required to visit
the Alafin during the annual Bere festival, when they presented
him with thatching grass (here) for his palace.® The large Ijebu
and Egba kingdoms consisted of distinct but associated sub¬
kingdoms, among which two of the crowned oba, the Awujale
and the Alake, were respectively pre-eminent. This quasi-
federahsm seems to reflect the historical development of these
two kingdoms, each of which has traditions of several separate
migrations into their areas.
The Yoruba oba is usually described as a sacred or divine
king.® His coronation and installation were performed with
solemn and lengthy rites which set him apart. He lived a life
thereafter of ordered ceremonial, secluded in his palace, subject
AN OBA AND HIS PEOPLE Ill
to many ritual restraints and approached only with infinite
respect and by designated persons of the Court. He rarely
appeared in public, and then always robed and, in the case of
the great oba, wearing a beaded crown whose fringe hid his face.
He was not only the head of the town and kingdom but their
personification, reincarnating also all his ancestors back to the
origin of the dynasty, and he was titular head of all religious
cults in the kingdom. This sacred aspect of Yoruba kingship
did not lead to the oba’s becoming an autocrat but rather the
reverse. Not only was he bound by rules and precedents in his
personal life but these also required him to submit all business
to councils of chiefs and officers, and only after consultation
and deliberation by these bodies could a policy be decided upon
and proclaimed in the oba*s name. Every oba had at least one
council of chiefs who formed a powerful, usually hereditary,
cabinet, and in most kingdoms there were lesser councils for the
regulation of the different aspects of government. Thus the oba
was at least as much fettered by constitutional procedure as a
ruler in a modern democracy. Moreover, the chieftancies were
hereditary within the ‘descent group’ or extended families
which made up the population of the town. Thus the chiefs
were representatives of their family groups as well as being
officials of the king and kingdom. It was these restraints which
most sharply distinguished the Yoruba kingdom from the
authoritarian monarchies of, for example, Benin and Dahomey,
and from those based on conquest, like the Fulani emirates
of northern Nigeria.
There is a tradition that the kingship at Oyo originally des¬
cended by primogeniture in the male line, and this may have been
the case in other kingdoms of the Yoruba. But at some period,
apparently in the seventeenth century, the patrilineal hereditary
system was modified at Oyo so that the choice of Alafin was
exercised by the Oyo Mesi among a number of candidates from
the royal house. This system was followed in most of the kingdoms
and towns, with the notable exceptions of Egba Alake and Oke
Ona, where all freemen were theoretically qualified to be chosen

as oba by divinationd® The royal family in most cases divided
into two or more branches occupying different compounds in
the town (and the usual practice in the present day is for the
branches to take turns in presenting candidates to the leading
chiefs as king-makers on each vacancy). With one or two
exceptions (for example, the reputedly Borgu dynasties of Saki
and Kisi), the royal lines claim descent from the founders of the
town who were of the same Yoruba stock as their followers.
There is thus no trace of a ruling caste in these kingships, such
as obtains in the Hausa and Nupe states since the establishment
of the Fulani dynasties in the nineteenth century. The royal
wives were usually chosen from local women, and at Oyo new
members of the Oyo Mesi were required to present a daughter in
marriage to the Alafin. Oyo tradition, however, records an
occasional marriage alliance with a neighbouring dynasty;
Sango’s mother is said to have been given in marriage to
Oranyan by her father, the King of Nupe; Ofinran was the
offspring of a Borgu woman, and in 1729 the King of Dahomey
bestowed ‘one of his Handsomest Daughters’ on the Alafin.
Many considerations determined the king-makers’ choice of
an oba, but a guiding principle was to select a ruler who would
respect and conform to the constitutional conventions of the
kingdom. This would usually be a man neither youthful nor
elderly, and in certain circumstances the king-makers deliber¬
ately avoided a candidate whose presence or personality seemed
too commanding; at Ado Ekiti in 1910, for example, a prince
was rejected because he was so tall he would have looked down
on his subjects.^2 The rules governing the succession varied
from kingdom to kingdom. At Oyo there was a custom, broken
on the death of Atiba in 1859, that the Alafin’s eldest son, the
Aremo, who was associated with his father in the government,
should take his life on his father’s death. In Ijebu and Owo it
was held that no prince was eligible for the throne unless he had
been born to a reigning oba. In early times it was not neces-
sarily a male who was chosen as ruler, and the traditions of
Oyo, Sabe, Ondo, and Ilesa record the reigns of female oba.
Despite the limitations on his power, the oba was no cipher or
faineant. In the first place, the sacredness of his office was
neither empty nor nominal: he was really regarded by his people
as a divinity with whose well-being their own condition was
bound up. Then he was almost always the richest man in the
town, since all tolls at gates and markets were paid to him, as
well as various other forms of tribute. He was also the source
of honour, able to bestow (usually within certain families), and
in some cases to withdraw, titles and chieftaincies. With the
chiefs he controlled the use of all land belonging to the town.
Though legislative and judicial matters were discussed and
decided by his councils, all laws were promulgated in his name,
and he was the supreme arbiter in appeals. Military power was
not in his hands, since the army was controlled by the war
chiefs, but he alone could authorize a campaign; he also had at
his disposal a personal bodyguard of household officers and
slaves. Thus, if relations with other parties in the town or king¬
dom were strained the oba had many means of exerting his in¬
fluence, though intrigue rather than a display of force was his
usual weapon. For their part the chiefs could assert themselves
against the oba by boycotting the palace, but an attempt to
govern for long without his participation would be considered
detrimental to the welfare of the town. In extreme cases of
disagreement or the collapse of a policy the chiefs could con¬
trive the deposition of an oba or even require his suicide. In
general, however, ‘a delicate balance of power’ (in Lloyd’s
words) was achieved, and all parties in the state were usually
at pains to maintain this.
The organization of the Alafin’s household as re-created at
New Oyo by Atiba is described in detail by Johnson.^^ It is
clear that the life led by the inhabitants of the palace at Oyo was
as elaborately ceremonious as that at Versailles or Schon-
brunn, and based similarly on a hierarchy of office and honour;
it has been stigmatized by Morton-Williams as ‘over-elaborate

and anachronistic’, and certainly it no longer reflected the true
power of the king and his ministers at New Oyo. After the long
rites of his coronation and installation, the Alafin disappeared
into the seclusion of the palace and thereafter appeared in pub¬
lic only on the annual Ifa, Orun, and Bere festivals, when,
crowned and robed, he took his place in the throne room
{aganju) or on its gabled veranda {kgbi aganju). Apart from
this, he rarely left the palace officially, although on moonlight
nights he was permitted by custom to take an evening stroll
incognito. Within the palace he was attended by numerous,
carefully graded officials: his master of the horse, chaplains,
musicians, drummers, and others, amounting to several hun¬
dreds. In addition, there were two bodies of officials of parti¬
cular importance. The first were the eunuchs, called iwefa or
‘lordlings of the palace’ in Johnson’s agreeable translation. The
three principal iwefa bore high titles and represented the Alafin
in various ways: the first, the Ona Efa (‘eunuch of the centre’)
personated the Alafin in judicial processes; the second, the
Otun Efa (‘eunuch of the right’), in religious ceremonies,
especially the Sango rites, and the third, the Osi Efa (‘eunuch of
the left’), in administrative and military functions. Secondly, a
grade lower than the iwefa were the sixty-eight tonsured ilari
(‘scar heads’), royal slaves, each of whom bore a title alluding to
some attribute or intention of the oba (for example, the gba
ko se tan, ‘the king is not ready’). Members of this corps pro¬
vided the royal bodyguard, and others journeyed roimd the
kingdom supervising the government. Almost equally powerful
were the ladies of the palace, led by the iya gba or official mother
of the Alafin (his real mother having been invited to ‘go to
sleep’ and ‘decently buried’ on her son’s accession) and includ¬
ing numerous wives {ayaba, ‘the queens’), officials, priestesses,
and a group of female ilari. Apart from all these palace
residents, certain members of the royal family held official
positions at court. These included the Aremo, the three
AN 9BA AND HIS PEOPLE 115
relatives designated as the ‘fathers of the king’, and his six
‘brothers’.
Though the Court of Oyo, the most powerful and highly-
organized kingdom, was probably the most elaborate, descrip¬
tions of the households of other oba suggest that it was repeated
on a smaller scale, and with local differences in titles and duties,
in the capitals of the other kingdoms and, on a still diminishing
scale, in the subordinate towns everywhere. A visitor to any
Yoruba ruler today, even in a small town or village, is at once
aware of the courtly and privileged atmosphere which sur¬
rounds these kings.
The royal Court formed but one of the three pillars of govern¬
ment at Qyo, the two others being the corporation of major
chiefs known as the Oyo Mesi and the Ogboni society.^* The
Oyo Mesi consisted of seven chiefs or councillors, all holding
titles hereditary in their famihes. Of these the leader was the
Basorun, whose power and influence, according to Johnson,
were ‘commonly greater than those of the others put together’.
His position derived from his role as principal king-maker and
as interpreter through annual divination of the Alafin’s per¬
sonal orun, or spirit, as well as from his command of the army
of the capital. Johnson writes that, ‘There were times in the
history of the nation when the Basprims were more powerful
than the Alafin himself’, and the example of Gaha at once
comes to mind. The Ogboni, which was devoted to the cult of
the earth, was by no means peculiar to Oyo, being prominent in
most of the other kingdoms, especially among the Egba, where
it constituted the leading civil authorityin Ijebu the same
society was known as Osugbo. In aU these places it was charged
with both judicial and pohtical functions. At Oyo it played a
‘mediating role’ between the palace oflicials and the Oyo Mesi,
and is described by Morton-WiUiams as second to the 0y9 Mesi
in its ‘capacity to sanction the king’s rule’. Members of the
latter attended its meetings, held within the palace, though
they had no priestly oflice. Its transactions were reported to the
I
Alafin, who took no part in its deliberations or decisions, by a

woman member. Its priests played an important part in the
installation ceremonies of a new Alafin, ensuring the trans¬
mission to him of the powers of his ancestors.^® In addition to
the Ogboni, other cult organizations, usually of lesser import¬
ance, existed in all towns and kingdoms; at Oyo the Egungun,
a masked association led by the Alapini, a member of the Oyo
Mesi, had a share in government by virtue of its function of re¬
calling the ancestors. Overlapping and parallel with all these
bodies were associations of chiefs concerned with particular
aspects of government and daily life, especially the conduct of
war, of trade, and of hunting. Among the Egba the leading
chiefs were members of the Ogboni; the Parakoyi were the
trade chiefs, while the hunters, who in war acted as scouts for
the main army, were grouped together as the Ode. Under
Lisabi a fourth order was created in the towns, the Olorogun,
leaders of the militia or war chiefs.Biobaku writes that the
first three organizations ‘corresponded very much to the divi¬
sion of life into youth, middle age and old age’.^® In the Ijebu
kingdom there were three main councils, occasionally over¬
lapping in membership. The highest, the Ilamuren, consisting of
the great magnates and officials under the presidency of the
Olisa, discharged legislative, executive, and judicial functions
relating to the whole kingdom. Next came the Osugbo under
the Oliwo, mainly concerned with the maintenance of order and
the dispensing of justice, and then the Pampa, composed of the
younger men and overseeing administration and warfare.
Whereas there was only one Ilamuren, that of the Awujale’s
capital, Osugbo and Pampa councils on the lines of those in
Ijebu Ode existed in all the other major towns.
The government of a Yoruba kingdom and its capital thus
presents a complex and somewhat confusing picture, mainly
because of the fusion of political, judicial, and religious con¬

cepts and the division of responsibilities. Even in so small a
kingdom as Ikerre (in Ekiti), for example, the Government
AN QBA AND HIS PEOPLE 117
exhibited this Byzantine quality; there were two groups of lead¬
ing chiefs, each divided into three grades, and four main coun¬
cils: the lyare Mefa, or inner council, meeting daily; the Ajo
lyare, meeting every eight days to discuss town alfairs; the
Ajagun, or war council, and the Ajo Ilu, or general council of the
town, held four times yearlyYet in practice all seems to have
worked smoothly enough in these delicately balanced govern¬
ments, except when some external pressure or crisis intervened
to overthrow the slow and deliberate processes of the constitu¬
tion. Naturally each kingdom developed different mechanisms
for dealing with its individual problems, so that it would be
futile to postulate any ‘model’ constitution for a Yoruba king¬
dom. On the other hand, with the notable exceptions of the new
states of the nineteenth century, the main features of govern¬
ment - the town, the sacred oba at its centre, the hierarchy of
hereditary chiefs and priests with their jealously guarded
responsibilities - remained constant.
This form of government was not confined to the capital, but
was repeated throughout the kingdom, every town forming a
microcosm of the central government. The place of the crowned
oba was taken by a lesser ruler, generally entitled to wear only
a simple crown or coronet (called akoro in Oyo) or a cap of office.
Usually these rulers were chosen like the greater oba by king¬
makers from royal houses and presented for approval to the oba
of the kingdom, while in some cases the latter nominated the
provincial rulers. In the Ijesa kingdom the majority of the
provincial rulers were cadets of the royal family of the capital,
and an Owa of Ilesa was required to have served as a Loja in
the provinces before becoming eligible for his throne. In most
kingdoms the leading oba exercised the right to promote his
imcrowned subordinates by conferring simple crowns and other
insignia on them and their descendants. Like the office of the
oba, that of village head or bale was hereditary, as indeed were
nearly all chieftainces in town or country.
Finally, turning from the oba and his court and nobles, the
oba’s people^® must be considered. From the sociologist’s point

of view, the most important feature of Yoruba society was its
organization into patrilineal ‘descent groups’ or ‘extended
families’ of which the royal lineage was one. These consisted
of persons who claimed descent from a common ancestor,
usually living together in one quarter of a town and
often numbering over a thousand. Despite its hierarchical
character, Yoruba society was in practice surprisingly demo¬
cratic. Distinctions of rank and wealth were offset by the
obligations and benefits of the family and by common owner¬
ship of the land; opportunities to acquire high office and wealth
were many, and no freeman was without a protector among the
chiefs of his town. Then, just as all Yoruba were townspeople
in the sense of either living in or having close ties with some
parent town, so all were farmers, having a share in the family
land and taking a part in its cultivation. But for many, farming
was only a part-time or seasonal occupation, and a variety of
crafts and trades were practised in the towns and countryside.
Among the most prominent crafts were weaving and the working
of iron, while some important crafts, such as pottery making
and cloth dyeing, were reserved for women. The followers of these
occupations often came from one family or group of families
and compounds, and were bound together in guilds under the
protection of their own deities and chiefs. In addition to these
guilds, the population was grouped into associations {^he) of
different kinds; in some places, notably Bkiti, these were ‘age-
sets’, associations of those born within a certain period to whom
appropriate duties and public works were assigned by the town
authorities, but elsewhere, for example at Oyo, the age-set
system either never existed or was long ago replaced by asso¬
ciations of a social or professional kind.î In this society women
played an important role, engaging in trade and crafts and
admitted to a share in the conduct of government and religion.
Apart from the free subjects of the oba, every kingdom con¬
tained an unfree population.22 A distinction must first be made
between slavery and the system known as iwofa, which was
practised among the Yoruba. In the latter a person could
voluntarily pawn either himself or a relative (usually a child)
as security for debt or to raise capital for trading or other pur¬
poses. This was a temporary measure which was discharged
after the agreed services had been rendered to the creditor by
the debtor. True slavery also existed, apparently on a large
scale. The slaves were usually employed as farm labourers or
servants in households and as bodyguards to the chiefs. Though
they were liable to be used as sacrifices by their masters, they
seem otherwise to have been well treated. They were allowed to
own property and to cultivate their own plots of land. The
children of slaves remained the property of their parents’
master, but the child of a freeman and a slave was free. It was
possible for a slave to emancipate himself if he succeeded in
accumulating enough property to satisfy his master. The ranks
of the slaves were recruited from debtors, criminals, and (pro¬
bably the major source) prisoners of war. Thus they were of
mixed origin, some being native to the kingdom, others Yoruba
from elsewhere, and others non-Yoruba. Unfortunately there is
little evidence to determine either the proportion of the popula¬
tion which was unfree or the proportion of slaves who were of
foreign origin. To Clapperton and the Landers the establish¬
ment of the regimes of Afonja and the Fulani at Ilorin was
repeatedly described as a revolt of the Alafin’s Hausa slaves,^®
which suggests that in the Oyo kingdom the alien slave popu¬
lation had increased to a dangerous extent.
IX' War
The reviewer of a recent history of Dahomey complained that

Vhistoire-bataille played too large a part in the workd This
suggests that the critic had thought little about the nature
either of man or of his history. War is the most decisive act of
policy undertaken by any nation. Moreover, among the Yoruba
kingdoms, and most West African states, campaigns were so
frequent as to be a normal, though seasonal, activity. Political
and military history are so closely connected in the area and
period covered by this book as to be almost synonymous.
Wars, campaigns, and battles are of first importance, both
in themselves and in their consequences. It is therefore
pertinent to consider how they were fought, though until
the latter part of the nineteenth century the evidence is
fragmentary.^
The leadership of the armies of the different states and towns
belonged to the chiefs who bore military titles. The Oyo system
seems to have been the most highly developed, and as well as
being reproduced in the provincial towns of that kingdom, it
became the pattern for Ibadan and other states in the nine¬
teenth century. The Alafin, like other oba, rarely took the field
himself, and on Atiba’s accession it was decided that in future
he should never do so. The commander of the army of the capi¬
tal, and so the senior general, was the Basorun, who was also
the Alafin’s first minister. The field command was exercised by
a series of war chiefs of whom the leader was the Baloguu
(‘war lord’ or ‘war father’). Separate ranks or titles were con¬
ferred on the leaders of the vanguard (made up of youthful
warriors), the cavalry, and the older chiefs, who accompanied
120
WAR 121
the army as advisers and looked after the camp and baggage.
Apart from these ofl&cers, there was also the corps (Telite, known
as the Bso, a body of seventy noble captains usually resident in
the capital, ranking next to the Oyo Mesi. In later times one of
the Eso was appointed as Are Ona Kakamfo (usually abbre¬
viated to Kakamfo or Are) or generalissimo. The Kakamfo was
given wide powers to carry out specific military operations. He
established an independent base near the frontiers of the king¬
dom and was not usually allowed to visit the capital.^ Finally,
among the important changes in Yoruba warfare during the
nineteenth century was the emergence of a class of professional
military leaders or war lords, of whom Ogedengbe of Ilesa and
the chiefs of Ibadan are examples. Such men owed their posi¬
tions to their soldierly qualities rather than to birth, and their
restless ambition was a contributory factor to the prolongation
of the wars.*
Military service was theoretically obligatory on all able-
bodied freemen. The households of the chiefs, with their
numerous slaves and bodyguards, formed the nucleus of the
army, and in the nineteenth century, when the new profes¬
sional warriors maintained large numbers of ‘war boys’, this
element grew in importance, especially in Ibadan, until it
resembled a standing army. Apart from these, an army was
normally raised on a short-term basis from those who responded
to the call to arms for each campaign and enrolled with their
weapons in the ranks of the particular chief to whom each owed
allegiance. The army of the capital provided the main army of
the kingdom, but every town had some sort of force, and con¬
tingents from these towns were absorbed into the army of the
kingdom where conditions allowed; in the Ibadan empire, and
probably in other kingdoms too, quotas of troops, food, and
ammunition were required from the provincial towns. The size
of the Yoruba armies must have varied considerably according
to the resources of the kingdom and the situation. Snelgrave
writes of an Oyo army sent against Dahomey in the early
eighteenth century as consisting of ‘many Thousands’ of

horsemen,^ and Norris writes:
The Dahomans, to give an idea of the strength of an Eyoe

army, assert, that when they go to war, the general spreads
the hide of a buffaloe before the door of his tent, and pitches
a spear in the ground, on each side of it; between which the
soldiers march, until the multitude, which pass over the hide,
have worn a hole through it; as soon as this happens, he
presumes that his forces are numerous enough to take the
field.®
According to Clapperton, in 1826:
The military force of Oyo consists of the caboceers [chiefs]

and their own immediate retainers, which, allowing one
hundred and fifty to each, will not give such immense armies
as we have sometimes heard stated; that of Yoruba is per¬
haps as numerous as any of the kingdoms of Africa.^
On the other hand, Jones, the author of a professional report on

the Egba army in 1861, emphasized that the chiefs’ warrior
retainers formed only a small proportion of the Egba forces
when that state engaged in full-scale war; the majority were
‘Farmers or engaged in peaceful occupation’ who either enlisted
voluntarily or, in time of crisis, were conscripted. He estimated
that in the battle which he witnessed at Ijaye on 23 May 1861
‘17,000 men engaged in mortal combat’ - of whom ‘the killed on
both sides, as ascertained by spies were five and the wounded
under fifty!’®
Bosman writes that the (presumably) Oyo army which
attacked AUada in 1698 was a wholly cavalry force.® Snelgrave
and Dalzefi® confirm that the Oyo armies sent to the
south-west in the first part of the eighteenth century were
cavalry, though the passage quoted above from Norris suggests
the occasional inclusion of infantry. It seems reasonable
WAR 123
to conclude that the predominance of Oyo over its neigh¬
bours, and also the exceptional extent of the kingdom, were
based upon the possession of a skilled cavalry. The capital
and most of the kingdom lay within the savannah, where
cavalry could move with ease and speed. Horses could be better
maintained here than in the tsetse-ridden forests of the south,
and though breeding was unprofitable, because of the combin¬
ation of the long gestation period of the horse with some danger
even in the savannah from tsetse, remounts of good quality
could be readily obtained from the north and north-east, a
position which was to change in the troubles of the late eight¬
eenth century.
In the other Yoruba kingdoms, situated mainly or wholly
within the forest belt, it is doubtful whether a cavalry arm
was developed to any extent, despite the adoption of cavalry
ranks and titles by the Ibadan and Abeokutans in the nine¬
teenth century. These armies must therefore have been almost
wholly composed of infantry, though, as nineteenth-century
observers noted, chiefs and their immediate followers (the latter
acting as scouts and messengers) were mounted. The majority
of the horses in the south were small and usually of poor quahty,
though Jones observed of the Egba horses that they were
‘numerous and hardy’.
Before the general introduction of firearms into Yoruba war¬
fare the primary armament of the soldiers consisted of swords,
throwing spears or lances, javelins, and bows and arrows, in¬
cluding cross-bows, and these all continued to be used as sup¬
plementary to firearms up to the end of the nineteenth-century
wars.^2 Infantry and cavalry weapons do not seem to have been
differentiated; the spear and the lance were apparently the
same weapon, and in the eighteenth century the Oyo horsemen
were sometimes armed with bows as well as the more usual
swords and lances.^® Swords were of two main types: the heav¬
ier, singlc-bladed and eccentrically curved agedengbe, and the
ida, usually double-bladed and either with an elongated leaf-
shaped blade or approximating to European or Near Eastern

types. Other varieties of swords and knives were also used, such
as the short jomo, the tanmogayi (sabre), ada, ogho or ele (cut¬
lass), and obe (dagger). With the exception of the obe, all these
were designed primarily for cutting rather than for thrusting or
stabbing. Spears and arrows all carried iron heads, often
barbed. In addition to these primary weapons, clubs of different
types, in both iron and wood, throwing knives, fighting brace¬
lets, and slings were used as secondary armament, though pro¬
bably only by foot-soldiers. Apart from that small proportion of
the swords and knives which had steel blades, all these weapons
were of local manufacture.
Firearms were not brought into general use in the Yoruba
armies until around the 1840s, considerably later than in some
other Guinea states.^^ Yet the Ekiti had encountered firearms
probably as early as the sixteenth century, when Benin soldiers,
armed with guns, supported the Ikerre in a war against the
Ado.^® Again, in the early eighteenth century an Oyo cavalry
force lost an engagement to Dahomean infantry armed with
guns, the noise of the firing so alarming the Oyo horses that
their riders could not bring them to charge the enemy.^® Unlike
the older weapons, firearms could not be manufactured locally,
but it is surprising that the Oyo did not earlier obtain supplies
from their non-African partners in the Atlantic slave trade. It
is significant that the first use of firearms on any considerable
scale by a Yoruba army was in the 1820s, when the Ijebu, noted
for their trading contacts on the lagoon, equipped their soldiers
with guns in the Owu war, while about this time the Oyo,
according to Lander, were procuring ‘Quantities of muskets’
from the east, though they were of little use as ‘the people . . .
do not know how to handle them with effect’ and sometimes
carried them into battle without powder or ball.^^ As late as the
Battle of Osogbo, about 1840, firearms played little part, but by
the time of the Ijaye war, opening in 1860, the musket had be¬
come the primary weapon of the Yoruba infantry. These
WAR 125
muskets were primitive flintlocks firing skot.^® They were
known as Dane guns, from the major source of import. Breech¬
loading rifles, firing cartridges, were introduced by the Egba
during this war, and these modern precision weapons assumed
great importance during the Sixteen Years’ War.^®
The dress and accoutrement of the Yoruba warrior can be re¬
constructed in some detail, at least so far as nineteenth-century
use is concerned. Though Jones refers to the Egba foot-soldiers
at Ijaye as wearing distinctive striped war jackets,^® there does
not seem to have been any concept of uniform; friend could
usually be distinguished from foe at close quarters by his facial
marks. Most soldiers doubtless wore the padded jackets, sewn
over with cowries and charms, known as gheri or lenku and still
used by hunters, and their leaders would have worn more
elaborate versions of these wth such additions as the wabi, or
war-apron. Except for the tradition that Alafin Ofinran’s
Basorun wore a coat of iron {ewu inn), and the preservation of
a probably imported coat of chain mail in the palace at Owo,
there seems no trace of any use of metal armour by the Yoruba.
Horse trappings and equipment probably varied according to
the status of the rider. Both ‘English’ and Oriental saddles were
in use, the latter with high pommel and cantle. Bits and stirrups
were often cast in brass and handsomely decorated with
geometrical patterns; surviving metal stirrups are all of the
curved Arab type.^^
Most towns were encircled by ‘walls’. These were usually
mounds or ramparts of banked-up earth, though occasionally
free-standing mud walls were built; exceptionally, low dry-stone
walls were constructed in hill country, where this material was
abundant.^^ Though these served to mark the boundaries
between the town and its outer farmland, they seem to have
been primarily designed as fixed defences, and there are several
accounts of their construction or repair in time of danger and of
fighting along them. Often there was a double circuit of walls,
enabling an army to be drawn up in the intervening space of one
or two hundred yards, and sometimes - as at Oyo ile and

Igboho - there were even three walls. The walls were of two
main types: a mound up to about twenty feet in height and cor¬
respondingly broad, and a low breastwork only about four feet
high. Both were provided with outer ditches planted with
thorns and converted into a partial moat by the rains, beyond
which there was usually a zone of dense bush for further pro¬
tection. Gates and gatehouses were inserted at intervals; in
some cases these were elaborate structures with angled entries
and free-standing walls with slits for bowmen. Presumably the
tops of the higher walls were flattened to allow movement along
them; occasionally the lower walls were protected against
erosion by a sloping roof of thatch, and elsewhere were in¬
creased in height by the addition of a bamboo palisade. In the
nineteenth-century wars the Egba and Egbado erected wooden
watch towers along their walls, though more often sentries were
posted in high trees at the edge of the town or camp. At Ijaye
Jones noted that most of the chiefs used ‘reconnoitring glasses
or telescopes’ for observation of the enemy.^s
Several European observers of the ‘interior wars’ of the
Yoruba in the nineteenth century have dismissed them as mere
slave raids and as conducted in a desultory and haphazard way,
without strategy and with little attempt at tactics. But as has
been demonstrated elsewhere,^! the issues of these wars were
primarily political, concerning, as in most wars in the world’s
history, questions of power, and this seems equally to apply to
the earlier wars described in the flrst part of this book. Nor
were strategic concepts lacking. The encirclement of the Oyo
empire by Ojigi’s army, for example, was an enterprise on a
grand scale (if the tradition is accepted) while the withdrawal of
the nineteenth century into the forests and Alafln Atiba’s sub¬
sequent redisposition of responsibilities to Ibadan and Ijaye
suggest an appreciation of the military and political situation at
the level of strategy. Yet it is also true that war was often under¬
taken, at least before the nineteenth century, mainly as an
WAR 127
annual or bi-annual exercise. Johnson writes: ‘In early times
expeditions were sent out every other year by the Alafin of Oyo
to distant countries chiefly among the Popos. War was then for
spoils and to keep their hands in . . .’25 The dry season was
chosen for such campaigns, and Snelgrave was told by the
Dahomeans that the Oyo were obliged to retire at the beginning
of the rains for want of forage (a rather unconvincing story).2®
Warfare was imdertaken by the Yoruba with deUberation.

Only after lengthy discussion in the councils of the kingdom,
exhortatory speeches to the troops, and sacriflces to the war
standard did the army move out to the vicinity of the enemy.
The next step was the formation of a camp. In the nineteenth-
century wars, which were often prolonged from year to year,
these camps were of such extent and elaboration as to resemble
small towns. Walls (of the breastwork type) and an outer ditch
were built, and within these the living-quarters of the troops
were constructed of mud or branches and thatched with grass,
and farms were planted with maize, cassava, and other crops.27
A large part of the military operations in the nineteenth century
consisted in skirmishes around these comfortable camps and in
the maintenance of sieges, with only occasional clashes in the
open and assaults along the walls of a town or camp.
The character of the flghting in the fleld was largely deter¬
mined by the contrasting nature of the country. In the open
savannah cavahy was predominant,28 while in the forests of the
south - as the Fulani learnt - horses were hindered in their
movement and decimated by disease.29 When battle was joined
it usually took the form of isolated skirmishes, tactics being
conflned after the initial deployment to the use of reserve
troops. Commanders were, however, able to exercise some
control over their men by beating-out orders and information
on their war-drums, which could also be used for deceiving the
enemy. The introduction of firearms led to a decrease in close
flghting, though it did not otherwise greatly affect methods of
warfare. Descriptions of the fighting at Ijaye agree that the
respective armies engaged in a series of short advances and

retreats, each line of infantry discharging its weapons and then
retiring to the rear to reload.^® No concepts of covering fire or of
fire and movement by even the smallest formation seem to have
developed. This is understandable when the only firearms in use
were the inaccurate and short-range flintlock muskets, but
these tactics — if they can be so called - persisted even after
rifles had become available from the 1860s onwards. Despite
the high price of the rifles, there were considerable numbers
in use by both sides in the later stages of the Kiriji war,
though they continued to be used by individual marksmen
rather than as a mass weapon, and were accordingly less
effective than would be expected. In the fighting between the
Ibadan and the Ilorin farther north, firearms played little part,
even down to the final skirmishes on the Otin in the 1890s. This
last phase of the wars, indeed, resembled the sometimes unreal
warfare of Rennaissance Italy, and at Ilobu in one of the last
actions a battle was opened in Ariosto-style by a single combat
between two champion lancers from the respective armies.^^
Almost all reports about Yoruba warfare concern fighting on
land. But naval battles must have occurred on the lagoon,
where the Ijebu and Lagos peoples, and probably also the
Egba and Egbado, maintained fleets of war canoes. There is a
glimpse of this form of warfare in the eighteenth century when
Dalzel, describing operations against Badagry by the Daho-
mean army, assisted by Oyo and Lagos, writes that the Oba of
Lagos sent thirty-two large canoes up the western lagoon in
order to cut Badagry’s communications, and took many
prisoners in the course of this action.Finally, though West
African warfare apparently followed its conservative pattern
for many centuries, human ingenuity could always play a part.
On one occasion in the early eighteenth century, for example,
an Oyo cavalry force invading Dahomey was baited with
brandy and then attacked while they slept off their drunken¬
ness.®^ Again, in 1825 the Fulani, according to a story told to
WAR 129
Clapperton, mounted an aerial incendiary attack against a
group of Yoruba villages near Oyo ile. Clapperton writes:
Algi consists of three walled villages, and before it was burnt

down had been of considerable size: they pointed out a rock
close to the south side of the town, from whence the Fellatas
[Fulani] flew the pigeons to set fire to it. The mode of doing
it was, by making combustibles fast to the tails of the birds,
which, on being left loose from the hand, immediately flew
to the tops of the thatched houses, while the Fellatas kept up
a sharp fire of arrows, to prevent the inhabitants extinguish¬
ing the flames.^^
Evidence about the casualties inflicted in Yoruba warfare is

contradictory.^^ It seems likely that the scornful references by
Burton and Jones to casualties almost derisorily low in com¬
parison with the numbers involved in the nineteenth-century
battles cannot be considered as applying to all the major
engagements. The reports of missionary observers at Ijaye and
Abeokuta show that on occasion the numbers of killed and
wounded were high; this applied particularly to engagements
with the fierce Dahomeans. The fate of captives varied accord¬
ing to circumstances: the most unfortunate were executed on
the battlefield, the most fortunate were released or redeemed,
while the majority were sold into slavery. As to the general
effects of the wars, it seems likely that both in the nineteenth
century and earlier economic and social dislocation was confined
to the towns which were the main protagonists, and that the
lives of the country people continued to follow the old patterns.
Nevertheless, these wars cannot be dismissed as mere slave
raids nor as, in Trevor-Roper’s picturesque phrase, ‘the un¬
rewarding g37Tations of barbarous tribes’. They concerned
real issues of politics and power, and in their consequences for
the men and women of the Yoruba kingdoms they were momen¬
tous.
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PART III
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X' The Decline and Fall of Old Oyp
On 23 January 1826 Captain Hugh Clapperton, R.N., accom¬

panied by his servant Richard Lander, an English merchant
from the Benin River, Mr Houtson, and a small party of
Africans, reached Oyo ile after travelling for forty-seven days, at
first by canoe and then by horse and on foot, from Badagry up
the road which was the main artery of the trade of the Oyo
kingdomJ Lander was destined to return down the road to
Badagry at the end of 1827 after Clapperton’s death, taking
only thirty days on this occasion,^ and then travelled up it
again with his brother John in 1830 on the journey from which
he returned by sailing down the Niger to the sea, settling the
long controversy about the course of the river. Although
Clapperton and his companions may not have been the first
Europeans to visit Oyo, having been preceded, according to
Adams,^ by a French officer from a slave ship, their accounts^
provide the first known descriptions of the interior of Yoruba-
land.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of these journeys is the com¬
parative ease and security with which they were accomplished.
The diseases prevalent in West Africa took their toll, and
before Oyo was reached Clapperton’s colleagues. Captain
Pearce and Dr Morrison, as well as the sailor Dawson, had
died, but this was no reflection on political conditions along
the road. Everywhere peace and order seemed to prevail.
Escorts, carriers, and horses were available throughout with¬
out great difficulty, and the travellers and their goods went
forward in safety. At ‘Jannah’ (Ijana in Egbado) Clapperton
writes:
133
I cannot omit bearing testimony to the singular and perhaps

unprecedented fact, that we have already travelled sixty
miles in eight days, with a numerous and heavy baggage,
and about ten different relays of carriers, without losing so
much as the value of a shilling pubhc or private; a circum¬
stance evincing not only somewhat more than common
honesty in the inhabitants, but a degree of subordination
and regular government which could not have been sup¬
posed to exist amongst a people hitherto considered bar¬
barians.®
Lander described the road near ‘Chaadoo’ (about a day’s

journey south-west of Saki) as ‘not at all inferior to a drive
round a gentleman’s park in England’.® The towns were busy,
populous, and prosperous: in Ijana, for example, cloth and
earthenware were manufactured and the market was supplied
with many commodities, while the number of inhabitants of the
‘large, double-waUed town’ of Kusu was reckoned to be at least
twenty thousand.^ The farms were planted with many different
crops, and the people owned horses, asses, and mules and ‘a
great abundance of sheep and goats’.® From Oyo down to the
coast the country still seemed firmly under the control of the
Alafin. The kingdom, according to Clapperton, extended in the
south to ‘Puka’ (Ipokia, a few miles inland from Badagry
across the River Yewa), Lagos, and Whydah, and was bounded
in other directions by Ketu, Borgu, ‘Accoura, a province of
Benin’ (presumably Akure), and Ijebu. But the Alafin’s claim
that ‘Badagry, Alladah, and Dahomey’ belonged to him was a
nostalgic recollection of the past tributary relationships rather
than a description of the contemporary situation, since all
three had by this time escaped from their allegiance to Oyo.®
The capital of this still large state was built ‘on the sloping
side and round the base of a small range of granite hills which,
as it were, forms the citadel of the town’, and was of imposing
size.
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF OLD OYO 135
A belt of thick wood runs round the walls, which are built of
clay and about twenty feet high, and surrounded by a dry
ditch. There are ten gates in the walls, which are about
fifteen miles in circumference, of an oval shape, about four
miles in diameter one way, and six miles the other, the south
end leaning against the rocky hills, and forming an inacces¬
sible barrier in that quarter.
From the north gate to the palace was an hour’s ride, or about
five miles, much of the intervening ground being ‘open and
cultivated’. Within the town seven different markets were held
every morning, selling a great variety of foodstuffs, animals,
cloth, and apparently also slaves. Of the palace, Clapperton
writes that it occupied about a square mile and was built of clay
with thatched roofs, ‘similar to those nearer the coast’, and pre¬
sumably the other compounds in the town were built in this
way. He admired the decoration which he saw apphed to the
houses: ‘The people of Katunga are fond of ornamenting their
doors, and the posts which support their verandahs, with carv¬
ings; and they also have statues or figures of men and women,
standing in their court yards.Lander was deeply impressed
by the principal ‘fetish hut’ with its many carved figures, and
noted that there were fifty other such shrines in the capital.
Most of these statues were presumably carved in wood, but
these and other passages, together with a small number of
objects associated with the town, suggest that there may also
have been a tradition at Oyo of sculpture in bronze, stone, and
terra-cotta, and there was evidently an Oyo art as distinct in
style as the arts of Ife and other towns of Yorubaland.^^
But despite all the evidence afforded to Clapperton and the
Landers, both on their journey from the coast and in the
capital, that the people of Oyo enjoyed good ‘mild’ government
and a prosperous economy, there were disquieting reports and
signs that all was far from well in the kingdom. In the first
place there had occurred the serious ‘rebellion of the Hausa
slaves against the king of Yarriba’, as it was described to

Clapperton at Saki/^ which led to the establishment at Ilorin,
only some twenty miles to the south-east of Oyo, of a base for
the advance of the Fulani-led jihad of the recently founded
empires of Sokoto and Gwandu. But the Fulani did not com¬
prise the only danger with which the Oyo - and indeed, the
Yoruba as a whole - were now faced. In addition, a number of
the rulers of other large towns within the kingdom followed the
example of Ilorin in asserting their independence, and then,
after successfully defying the Alafin, fell to quarrelling among
themselves. Even more serious, a general state of war involving
almost the whole of Yorubaland was approaching, usually re¬
ferred to, rather misleadingly, as the ‘civil’ or ‘inter-tribal’ wars.
This was precipitated by a war which broke out in the south
between the Owu and a coalition of the Ife and Ijebu, but
fundamentally it was a consequence of the decline in the power
of Oyo which, as has been seen, set in towards the end of the
reign of Alafin Abiodun in the late eighteenth century. The
security and economy of the kingdom were breaking down;
already Borgu bandits and slave-raiders infested the roads of
northern Oyo,^^ and soon armies were marching and counter¬
marching about the country, leaving in their wake desolation
and confusion.
To explain the collapse of this ancient kingdom, once the
most powerful of the Guinea states, requires, as in most pro¬
blems of this kind, a balancing of internal against external
factors and an awareness of the danger of confusing cause and
effect. I. A. Akinjogbin has recently suggested that two im¬
portant internal developments were mainly responsible.^® The
first was a decrease in the efficiency of the army in Abiodun’s
time, which he ascribes to its deliberate weakening by the
Alafin in order to undermine the power of the military chiefs
and their families. But such a course seems inherently unlikely,
and there is no evidence for it; as pointed out above (p. 48), it
was in fact the support of the army leaders which had enabled
the Alafin to overthrow Basorun Gaha. Nevertheless, the
effectiveness of the army clearly declined considerably during
the eighteenth century; expansionist wars were no longer
undertaken and important provinces or tributaries escaped
from control. A factor which does seem to have played an
important part either in causing this decline or in accelerating
it was the difficulty which the Oyo must have encountered in
obtaining suitable mounts for their famous cavalry after
the Nupe had asserted their independence; the best horses
were obtained from the north, and breeding was rarely pos¬
sible south of the Niger. The second main cause suggested by
Akinjogbin is the dependence of Oyo upon the slave trade,
which, he claims, tends to weaken any exporting country, since
it drives out other economic activity and saps the productivity
of labour. Certainly this trade was attended by grave dangers,
arising not so much from the determinist reasons just given
(though they may have operated to some extent) as from the
rivalry and jealousy which it excited among Oyo’s neighbours,
from the shift of economic interest and wealth from the north
of the kingdom to the extreme south-west, remote from the
capital, and from difficulties, probably also an actual decline, in
the trade after its ‘abolition’ by the British in 1807. The Oyo
seem also to have been less successful than their southern
neighbours, the Ijebu, in obtaining firearms and gunpowder
in return for their slaves; having httle or no direct contact with
the Europeans - since the trade at the coast was dominated by
the middlemen there - they possibly failed to realize in time the
importance of such weapons when used on a large scale.
To these reasons others may be added. It appears that there
had developed a dangerous build-up in the foreign and unfree
population of the kingdom, largely from the jiartly Moslem area
to the north; as Clapperton found, the Hausa language was
understood throughout his journey from Badagry. To the
Alafin and his subjects, events at Ilorin were explicable initially
as a rebellion of the Hausa slaves. Another factor, less tangible
but not less important than the rest, was a decline of impetus
and morale at the centre of government, remarked upon by
Lander on his visit to Oyo in 1830. Such a decline is sympto¬
matic of a malaise to which any ancient polity is prone, but was
aggravated at Oyo by the ambitions and disloyalty of the
great men of the kingdom, and it is in this connection that
the usurpation of power by Gaha in the mid-eighteenth century
may be seen as initiating the decline of Oyo. Morton-Williams
has suggested, furthermore, that the chiefs of the capital, who
should have been the natural upholders of the Alafin’s govern¬
ment, resented the methods adopted for the administration of
the new territories acquired by Abipdun for the protection of
the south-western trade route. This administration was kept in
the hands of the palace officials, upsetting the constitutional
balance of power between the king and his magnates and giving
rise to internal rivalries. After Abiodun’s reign the Alafin was
unable to rely on the loyalty either of his home army or of the
armies of his provincial rulers.^®
In addition to the operation of these internal factors, grave
dangers from without were also threatening the Oyo and, indeed,
the whole Yoruba people. In the latter part of the eighteenth
century the successful wars waged by the Borgu, Nupe, and
Egba against the Alafin had undermined the empire. Then in
the first years of the nineteenth century the reforming move¬
ment of the Fulani preacher, Usman dan Fodio, swept through
Hausaland, transforming the peaceful Moslem farmers there
into a holy army bent on carrying the Koran to the sea. Islam
had already penetrated among the Yoruba, and thus the Fulani
found co-religionists and sympathizers as they rode south.The
subversion and capture of Ilorin by the jihad threatened to cut
off Oyo ile, already exposed to attack by the nearby Borgu and
Nupe, from the major part of the kingdom, and when the
Landers reached the city in 1830 its situation must have re¬
sembled that of Byzantium in the fifteenth century. Finally,
under Ghezo their warrior king, the Dahomeans not only threw
off their allegiance to Oyo but also began a determined drive
eastwards across southern Yorubaland.
The complex events in the half-century (or perhaps rather

less) which elapsed between the death of Abiodun and the
abandonment of Oyo ile, covering the reigns of six Alafin and
one interregnum in the kingship, are described in detail by
Johnsond® Yet even for this relatively recent period, much of
the history of which has been preserved, there is great difficulty
in estabhshing a clear narrative. Not only are the dates of the
main events unknown but even their sequence cannot be deter¬
mined with confidence.
Abiodun’s successor was Awole Arogangan, a man whom
Johnson describes as ‘too weak and mild for the times’. One of
his first acts was to order out his army against the town of
Apomu in Ife territory in order to satisfy a personal quarrel
which he had had with its ruler in the days when, before
ascending the throne, he was trading up and down the country.
Fearful of the consequences, the Bale of Apomu fled to the
court of the Oni at Ife, where he later took his own hfe. Awole
now abandoned the chastisement of Apomu and ordered his
army to march instead against the strong town of Iwere.^® But
now he was faced by a revolt of his leading chiefs. Akinjogbin’s
explanation of this revolt is that in threatening war on an Ife
town, the Alafin had flouted the constitution of the land and
rendered illegitimate not only his own authority but that of his
successors.Whether this is so or not - and in the absence of
support in tradition it remains no more than a suggestion based
on a theory of the relationship between Ife and the other
Yoruba states which is not generally accepted - the army lead¬
ers, who included the Basorun and the Owata (a leading Eso)
from the capital and the Onikoyi and the Kakamfo with the
troops from the provinces, during the course of a half-hearted
siege of Iwere conceived and carried out a plot against their
king. After murdering the palace officials who had accompanied

them the mutineers marched back to Oyo. For some weeks they
camped irresolutely outside the walls, until at length they sent
to the Alafin an empty, covered calabash as an indication of his
rejection. Awole pronounced a solemn curse on the traitors,
shooting arrows to the north, south, and west to signify the
directions in which they would be carried into slavery, and then
obeyed custom by taking poison.
The decline of the kingdom now became precipitate. An Oyo
song reflects the times:
Laiye Abiodun I’afi igba won 'wo In Abiodun’s day we

weighed our money in
calabashes,
Laiye Awole I’adi adikale In Awole’s reign we
packed up and fled.
As was the practice at Oyo, the Basorun took charge of the

affairs of the kingdom on the Alafin’s death, and the tradition
has already been cited above (pp. 84-5) that it was during tliis
short regency of Basorun Asamu that the revolt of the Egba
under Lisabi took place. When Adebo was eventually chosen as
successor to Awole the new Alafin proved to have little author¬
ity, and now even towns within the metropolitan area of Oyo
were falling away from their allegiance. The assertion of inde¬
pendence by Afonja the Kakamfo at Ilorin was especially
menacing. In the midst of these troubles Adebo died after a
reign of only a few months, to be followed as Alafin by Maku. A
deputation was sent from the capital to inform the Kakamfo
that ‘the New Moon has appeared’, meaning that a new king
had ascended the throne; Afonja rephed arrogantly, ‘Let that
New Moon speedily set.’ After leading a disastrous military
expedition the unhappy Maku was required to take his life
within three months of his accession. There followed an inter¬
regnum of unknown length until Majotu, who is usually
identified with the elderly Alafin who entertained Clapperton
THE DECLINE AND FALL OP OLD OYO 141
at Oyo in 1826 and Lander in 1827 and 1830, was chosen as
king.21
Afonja, whose actions contributed so largely to the Yoruba
catastrophe, was a nephew of Alafin Awole and ruler of Ilorin,
which his great-grandfather Laderin had built up into one of the
most important towns in the Oyo kingdom his praise-name,
Vaiya Voko, describes him as ‘the brave warrior with the spear’.
From Awole he obtained the office of Kakamfo, generalissimo
of the kingdom and foremost of the Eso. Even before Awole’s
death he seems to have aspired to the throne itself,^^ despite the
fact that he was only connected to the royal house through his
mother, and he was a leading member of the conspiracy which
led to Awole’s enforced suicide. During the brief reign of Adebo,
Afonja proclaimed his independence of Oyo, as did the Bale of
Gbogun and the rulers of other towns in the north of the king¬
dom. But he now took steps which were to prove disastrous
both to himself and to his country: he enlisted into his army
the numerous Hausa slaves who were employed (as ‘barbers,
rope-makers and cowherds’, Johnson says) in the surrounding
towns, protecting them against their masters and, according to
the account of a contemporary observer in Yorubaland, Ali
Eisami of Bornu, who had himself been brought to Oyo as a
slave, giving them their freedom.He also invited to Ilorin a
Fulani preacher from Sokoto, Sahil, usually called Alimi (‘the
learned’), whose sons were destined to be leaders in the south¬
ward drive of the jihad. With this alien help he succeeded in
beating oif determined attacks made on him by Oj o Agunbam-
baru, a son of Gaha, who was acting nominally in the cause of
the Alafin. It is significant that Ojo, like Afonja, relied largely
on soldiers from outside the kingdom, having recruited his army
among the dreaded warriors of Borgu.
‘Afonja was now the sole power in the kingdom; the King
and the capital were left to manage their own affairs by them¬
selves,’ Johnson writes^^ - the king at this time being, pre¬
sumably, Alafin Majotu. But the disloyal Kakamfo was
encompassing his own doom. He had offended by his arrogance,

and doubtless alarmed by his ambition, the rulers of the neigh¬
bouring towns, and even his friend and ally, Solagberu, a lead¬
ing Yoruba Moslem, whom he had established with his follow¬
ers at Oke Suna on the outskirts of Ilorin. At last, realizing the
precariousness of his position, isolated from his natural allies
and dependent upon his Hausa troops, the Jama’a (‘disciples’),
he attempted to reconcile himself with the Onikoyi and other
chiefs. Hearing this, the Jama’a rose against him; according to
an Ilorin account their leader was Alimi’s eldest son, and suc¬
cessor as Iman of the Moslems there, Abdussalami. He was
besieged in his compound and deserted by some of his guards;
Solagberu refused his plea for help. But he fought on until ‘He
fell indeed like a hero. So covered was he with darts that his
body was supported in an erect position upon the shafts of
spears and arrows showered upon him’.^®
Ilorin now passed under the control of the Fulani leaders,
and Abdussalami was recognized by the Sultan of Sokoto as an
Emir within the Fulani empire (and flattered by his Yoruba
subjects as oha digi aiye, ‘king, mirror of the world’).But the
overthrow of Afonja had at last roused some of the Oyo to a
sense of their peril. The new Kakamfo, Toyeje of Ogbomoso,
made a first attempt to dislodge the Fulani from the base which
they had acquired through his predecessor’s treachery, but was
defeated in a bloody engagement at Ogele, where the Fulani
cavalry was aided by Solagberu with his Yoruba Moslems.
Again the Oyo rallied, this time obtaining help from the ruler of
the Nupe at Rabba across the Niger, but again they were
defeated in the ‘locust fruit’ {mugba mugba) war, when this
was the only food to be found by the troops on the now
desolate farms. Yet, despite the growing danger, the Oyo chiefs,
no longer restrained by the power of the Alafin, began again to
quarrel among themselves. A coalition was formed against the
Onikoyi in which Solagberu joined. The Onikoyi thereupon
sent a message to Ilorin affirming his adherence to the Emir.
Abdussalami, doubtless rejoicing that the Oyo were playing
into his hands in this way, sent his army against the allies and
routed them at Pamo. Solagberu fled back to Oke Suna, but his
turn soon came and, his religion notwithstanding, he met the
same fate as Afonja.
Meanwhile a serious war had also broken out in the south of
the Yoruba country.^® It arose out of the kidnapping of Oyo
subjects by the Ife for sale at their market in Apomu. The
Onikoyi and Toyeje of Ogbomoso, hearing of this and acting
probably during the interregnum in the kingship, asked the
Olowu, always a loyal upholder of Oyo interests in the south, to
take punitive measures against a number of towns in Ife ter¬
ritory. Johnson lists thirteen towns which were chastised by
the Owu in obedience to this order, including Apomu, Ikire,
and Gbangan. The Oni of Ife in retaliation sent an army against
the Owu, but this was routed at Saflrin, near the confluence of
the Qsun and Oba rivers. Soon after this victory the Owu be¬
came involved with a more powerful enemy. The new quarrel
grew out of a fracas between Owu and Ijebu traders in the
market at Apomu, which led the Owu to destroy the town
there. The Ijebu now made common cause with the Ife. In the
ensuing war the Owu, armed only with their traditional wea¬
pons, were unable to check the advance of the Ijebu, who had
obtained firearms from the European traders on the coast,
with whom their kingdom had long been in contact. A lengthy
siege of the town of Owu, with its strong walls, now began,
during which the allies were reinforced by some neighbouring
Egba and also by refugees from Oyo towns already overrun by
the Fulani. The superior arms and numbers of the allies, aided
by famine inside the walls, could not prevail against the obstin¬
ate Owu until at length the Olowu himself opened one of the
gates and made good his escape. His town was entered and
completely destroyed by the enemy, who forbade that it
should ever be rebuilt - an interdict which was obeyed until
recent times.
The collapse of Owu and the ending of the war released into
the south of Yorubaland many Oyo soldiers. Since their own
towns and villages had been conquered or destroyed by the
Fulani, these men could no longer return to their farms; thus
they came to look on war as their profession and found their
reward in captives who could be traded as slaves. A number of
these ‘war boys’ (pmp ogun) now moved under Ijebu patronage
to Ipara, where they were employed in subjugating some of the
Remo towns in the name of the Awujale and in raiding the
adjacent Egba districts.^® The situation grew more serious
when this army of freebooters, reinforced by some Ife chiefs
with their followers, were involved in a dispute between the
Egba Oke Ona and the Egba Gbagura provinces. Taking sides
with the former, they overran the northern parts of the Egba
forest, burning and laying waste, until finally they settled on the
abandoned site of Ibadan. This was one of the few Gbagura towns
which had escaped destruction and, as its name implies [eba
gdan, ‘near the grassland’), it lay just within the sheltering
Egba forest. Here a great military camp was formed in which
the numerous Oyo refugees came together with contingents
imder Ife, Ijebu, and Egba leaders.
While the kingdoms of the south were being plunged by these
events into a general state of warfare, Oyo was fast breaking up.
The rulers of the subordinate towns, their obedience to the
Alafin forgotten and the example of Afonja’s fate ignored,
quarrelled and leagued among themselves, while the Fulani
cavalry scoured the country. One of many similar episodes
which must have occurred at this lawless time, and which con¬
trast with Clapperton’s experience of peaceful conditions on
the Badagry road, was the overrmining in March 1821 of the
small town of Osogun in Ibarapa (south-western Oyo) by a
mixed band of Oyo Muslims and Fulani. A vivid account of this
was given by Samuel Crowther, who, as a boy of about 15, was
taken captive there and sold into slavery.^®
The end of Oyo ile was approaching. Johnson describes
Majotu’s successor, Alafin Amodo, as ‘virtually King of the
capital only’,and relates that during his reign the Ilorin suc¬
ceeded in entering the town after a siege) however, having
plundered its treasures (including some ‘Oyo beauties’) and
forced the citizens to profess Islam, they withdrew without
taking captives; a rather mysterious episode. But even now the
leaders of those Oyo towns which maintained their independ¬
ence of the Fulani were unable to sink their differences and
forget their ambitions in the common cause. When at length the
Alafin succeeded in raising an army and leading it against
Ilorin any chance of victory was ruined by the treachery of
Edun, the ruler of Gbogun, and the Oyo were routed at Kanla.
The Fulani followed up this success by intervening in the dis¬
puted succession to the kingship at Ikoyi, installing their own
candidate and bringing the town under their control, and then
by making war on the important town of Gbogun, which fell to
them after a desperate resistance.
A number of the kingdom’s war leaders had meanwhile with¬
drawn southwards towards the forests under the Kakamfo
Ojo Amepo. The wisdom of this move was shown by the defeat
of the expedition sent into Ijesa territory by the Fulani, whose
cavalry found itself unable to operate in the close country
there and suffered severe losses in the Pole war. For a time the
Ilorin encamped at Ago Oja, the town later to be renamed
Oyo, in order to keep up pressure against these remnants of the
Alafin’s forces, but eventually the Oyo succeeded in disengaging
and securing a base at Ijaye, a deserted Gbagura town, where
leadership was assumed by Kurunmi, the Balogun of the
abandoned town of Esiele.
Oyo ile was now isolated, and in the midst of these troubles
Alafin Amodu died, worn out by anxiety. Oluewu, the new oba,
was required by Shitta, who had succeeded his brother Abdus-
salami as Emir, to visit him in Ilorin. On this occasion the Alafin
was treated with honour, but when he received an invitation to
pay a second visit during which he would be asked to profess
Islam by ‘tapping the Koran’ he declined and preferred to risk

calling on the Borgu for help. Oyo ile was now besieged by the
Ilorin, who were joined by Lanloke, the renegade ruler of
Ogodo, a Yoruba town on the Niger east of Oyo ile, where in
more prosperous times much trade had been done between the
Oyo and the Nupe.^^ The highest of the kingdom’s officers, the
Basorun and the Asipa, had already entered into communica¬
tion with the Fulani, but they were put to death, and the Alafin
and his Borgu allies, aided by a providential storm, succeeded
in repeUing the enemy. Realizing that the capture of Oyo, a
city of formidable size and strength, still presented many
difficulties, Shitta now turned upon Gbodo, probably the last of
the towns in the north-east of the kingdom which had not
acknowledged Fulani rule.
Once again the Alafin had to rely on his Borgu allies, but on
this occasion the forces of the old kingdom secured a real vic¬
tory in the field against their enemy. The Ilprin army outside
Gbodo had been joined by a number of Oyo chiefs, including
even Atiba, a son of Alafin Abiodun - though to his credit
(Johnson thinks) his men were only firing blanks! Now the
besiegers were attacked from the rear and put to so precipitate
a flight that many were driven into the River Ogun and
drowned. Though the victory had been achieved with outside
help, and has been attributed to the skill in archery of the
Borgu,23 the Battle of Gbodo demonstrated that the forces of
the jihad were not invincible, even against a divided foe.
The Borgu leader is known in Yoruba accounts as the
Eleduwe and seems likely to have been ruler of Nikki or pos¬
sibly Kaiama.^^ This brave prince now encouraged the Alafin to
follow up his success at Gbodo by an attack on Ilorin itself.
Oluewu agreed, and determined to raise as large an army as pos¬
sible from those parts of the kingdom not yet overrun by the
Fulani. A number of leading chiefs, including Atiba from Ago
Oja, Kurunmi of Ijaye, and the Okere of Saki, rallied to the
camp which Oluewu and the Eleduwe formed at Otefan, about
ten miles west of Ogbomoso. Numbers there grew so large that
the Emir of Ilorin sent in alarm to Sokoto for help, and was re¬
inforced by the Nupe of Raba (where the Fulani had by now
established their ascendancy). The combined forces of Ilorin
and the Nupe then attacked the Otefan camp, but the defend¬
ers, inspired by the example of the Eleduwe, drove them back.
This victory was a costly one, but it nevertheless encouraged
Oluyole of Ibadan and other Yoruba leaders to join the Alafin.®^
But as the army passed slowly on to Ogbomoso, and thence,
after some indecisions, towards Ilorin, the usual rivalries and
disaffection broke out, complicated by jealousy of the Borgu,
who were contributing so much towards the war, and by fear
that if the campaign were successful the Alafin would turn
next on his over-mighty subjects. Before Ilorin was reached a
conspiracy had been made among the chiefs to desert the Alafin
and his ally, and a message was sent to tell the enemy of this.
Thus, when the army took the field only Oluyole, who had not
been party to the plot, attacked vigorously, while Atiba and
the Timi of Ede, firing no shot, retired before the enemy and
opened a way for them to surround the two kings. The Eleduwe
fought desperately, but at last was slain and executed; his
defeat was a disaster from which Nikki and Kaiama took many
years to recover.^® The fate of the Alafin Oluewu is less certain;
by some he is believed to have fallen in the battle, but according
to Johnson, he was taken captive to Ilorin and there put to
death.®^
The defeat at Ilorin sealed the fate of Oyo ile. Already the
city was being pressed by the rapacious Lanloke of Ogodo, and
by this time it is probable that many of the citizens had left
their homes to seek greater security in the south; from the time
of Awole they had been ‘packing up to flee’, and on his visit
there in 1830 Lander had remarked on the emptiness and
desolation of the streets. Men still remained to hold the walls
against Lanloke’s attacks, but when news came of the disaster
at Ilorin all those left in the city decided upon immediate flight.
L
Some escaped to Kisi, others to Igboho, some even to Ilorin,

and their descendants may be traced in these and other towns
of Yorubaland.3® But to the Fulani the city was now of little
importance and, ironically, it was not they but Lanloke and his
marauders who, learning of its abandonment, entered the un¬
defended gates and pillaged what remained of its riches: an
epitome of the treachery and tragic opportunism which marked
and in large measure accounted for the swift decline and fall of
Oyo ile, ‘Katunga, the great metropolis’.
The narrative above is based on Johnson’s History. The

attempt to construct a chronology of the period which follows
is based on indications about dating given by Johnson and on
other sources, including a chronology drawn up by 1. A.
Akinjogbin.=5® The only absolute dates in this account are those
of the situation as recorded by Clapperton and Lander in their
journeys, though information collected by the Yoruba mis¬
sionary Crowther at Egga on the Niger in 1841 and the evidence
of Ali Eisami of Bornu are also valuable.^°
Clapperton refers several times to the troubles in the Oyo
kingdom. At ‘Assula’, twenty-six days from Badagry, he found
that the inhabitants had newly dug a ditch round the town 'on
account of the existing war’ — almost certainly meaning events
at Ilorin - and three days later he wrote that, ‘A war is now
carrying on only a few hours’ ride from us; not a national but a
slaving war. At Saki and ‘Enkoosoo’ he learnt that his
journey was being interpreted as a mission to make peace
between the Alafin and his Hausa slaves. The Hausa
have been in rebellion these two years, and possess a large

town only two days’ journey from Katunga [Oyo], called
Lori [Ilorin]. The Youribanis are evidently afraid of them;
they say they have a great number of horses, and have been
joined by many Fellatahs [Fulanij.-i^
Both from the wording and the context, these remarks seem to
describe the overthrow of Afonja and the establishment of
Ilorin as an outpost of the jihad, and the information from
‘Enkoosoo’ enables this to be dated at about 1824. At Oyo the
Alafin ‘feelingly deplored the civil war occasioned by his
father’s death’ and said that he had ‘sent to his friend the King
of Benin for troops to assist him’; he reminded Clapperton of
the ruined towns on the Badagry road, all ‘destroyed and
burned by my rebellious Hausa slaves, and their friends, the
Fellatahs’.^^ This is best explicable as a reference to the mutiny
of Afonja and the other leaders at the end of Awole’s reign, the
interregnum, and Afonja’s assertion of independence and its
aftermath. Unfortunately, tradition has not recorded Majotu’s
parentage; it seems probable that he was a son of Awole,
though in any case he might speak of his predecessor as his
‘father’. When Lander was in Oyo in 1830 the signs of trouble
had multiplied: ‘. . . the wandering and ambitious Falatah has
penetrated into the very heart of this country . . . with little, if
any, opposition’. Lander adds that the discontented slaves of
the kingdom had been flocking to ‘Alorie [Ilorin] as far back as
forty years’.^^ Presumably this again refers to Afonja’s rebel¬
lion and subsequent defiance of Oyo, rather than to the more
recent establishment of Ilorin as a Fulani base. Even so, this
seems a considerable over-estimate, since according to Ali
Eisami, the period can hardly have exceeded fourteen or fifteen
years.^^ Early in the 1840s Crowther made inquiries about
events in Oyo. His most important information, so far as a
chronology is concerned, was that Awole reigned for seven
years and Adebo and Maku for only about three months each,
and that the interregnum at Oyo lasted for five years. He also
implies that the Battle of Gbodo was fought in 1834 and that at
Osogbo in 1838/9.^®
Crowther’s statement about the interregnum raises consider¬
able difficulty. A date has been suggested for Abiodun’s death
of c. 1810, yielding a five-year interregnum between c. 1818 and
c. 1823, which would be consistent with the tradition that

Majotu ascended the throne as an elderly man and was the
Alafin whom Lander names as Mansolah. But Akinjogbin has
adduced evidence from which it appears that Abiodun died as
early as 1789.^^ This, taken in conjunction with traditions
about the short reigns of his first three successors, leads to the
conclusion that either Majotu’s reign was of unexpected length
or that the interregnum lasted for much longer than five years,
perhaps even up to twenty-five years as Akinjogbin sug¬
gests.^® Meanwhile, Crowther’s information, combined with
Johnson’s narrative, places the Battle of Ilorin and the sub¬
sequent abandonment of Oyo ile in or about 1835.
As regards the chronology of the war in the south, the dif¬
ficulties are even greater. The Owu war was fought in two
phases: first, the Ife-Owu war, and secondly, after an interval
of about five years during which the shattered Ife army took
shelter at Adunbieye in Iwo territory, a combined Ijebu-Ife
attack on Owu, which culminated in the fall of that town after a
five-year siege, followed by an extension of the war to the Egba
forest.^® There is evidence that Kesi and Ikereku, both Egba
towns, were destroyed in about 1823 and 1826 respectively, ap¬
parently in this war, and it therefore appears that the first phase
of the war must have opened about 1813 and Owu have fallen
about 1823.®® There are two obstacles to this dating. First, accord¬
ing to Johnson, it was Toyeje of Ogbomoso, who, as Kakamfo
and acting with the Onikoyi, ordered the Owu to punish the Ife
slave-traders.Toyeje was Afonja’s successor as Kakamfo, pre¬
sumably appointed by Alafin Majotu - though a little later the
Onikoyi, usurping the Alafin’s functions, appointed a rival or
anti-Kakamfo, Bdun of Gbogun - so that this would seem to
place the opening of the war after Afonja’s death in or about
1824, which then throws out the dating of the Egba war. In the
absence of other evidence, however, it seems reasonable to sup¬
pose that Afonja’s rebellion led the Alafin (or, if it happened
during the interregnum, the Oyo Mesi) to replace him during his
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF OLD QYO 151
lifetime. Secondly, if the dates suggested above are correct it is
somewhat surprising that Clapperton and Lander apparently
heard nothing of the southern war and its depredations
during their journeys to Oyo ile. But sufficient explanation
of this may be found, in that their route took them well to
the west of the area in which the war was fought and also of
the Egba forest in which the subsequent operations were
conducted.
Suggested Chronology {sources in brackets)
1789 Death of Alafin Abiodun (Akinjogbin (1965))

c. 1790 Accession of Alafin Awole
c. 1797 Mutiny of Afonja and other chiefs at Iwere;
Awole’s suicide after reign of seven years
(Crowther)
Egba revolt under Lisabi during short regency
of Basorun Asamu (Bada of Saki)
c. 1798-c. 1799 Short reigns of Alafin Adebo and Maku (with
the usual interregnum under the Basorun’s
regency)
c. 1800-???? Interregnum (Crowther, five years; Akinjogbin
(1966a), up to twenty-five years)
Accession of elderly Alafin Majotu (‘Man-
solah’?)
c. 1813 Opening of Owu war, the first phase
c. 1813-c. 1818 Ife army at Adunbieye (Johnson)
1816-7 Afonja asserts independence at Ilorin and
recruits slaves (Ali Eisami)
c. 1818 Opening of second phase of Owu war
c. 1823 Fall of Owu, after a siege of about five years
(Johnson)
c. 1824 Hausa-Fulani coup at Ilorin (Clapperton);
Afonja killed
Abdussalami becomes Emir of Ilqrin
1826 Glapperton and Lander visit Oyo

Overrunning of Egba Gbagura by Oyo free¬
booters (Irving; Biobaku)
1827 Lander returns through Oyp
c. 1829 Foundation of Ibadan
1830 Lander’s last visit to Oyo
c. 1830 Foundation of Abeokuta (Biobaku)
Occupation of Ijaye by Kurunmi
Amodo succeeds Majotu as Alafin
Shitta succeeds Abdussalami as Emir of Ilorin
c. 1833 Oluewu succeeds Amodo as Alafin
c. 1834 Battle of Gbodo (Crowther)
c. 1835 Battle of Ilorin; Oluewu killed (or taken cap¬
tive and executed in Ilorin?); Oyo ile aban¬
doned
c. 1836 Election of Atiba as Alafin; Ago Oja renamed
Qyo
1838/9 Battle of Osogbo (Crowther)
The ruin of Oyo was of tragic moment for the whole Yoruba
country, involving the other kingdoms as well as Oyo itself. The
sequence of events had been complex. First, the rulers of the
populous and prosperous towns of Oyo, especially those in the
vicinity of the capital, took advantage of the weakening of the
Alafin’s government to assert their independence, and then fell
to prosecuting against their king and among themselves a civil
war from which only the enemies of the kingdom could profit.
Then the warriors of the Fulani jihad established their strong
base at Ilorin, south of the Niger and in the heart of the king¬
dom. Finally, the ancient state of Oyo had collapsed, ending, it
seemed, all possibility of unity among the Yoruba in the face of
dangers from without: the Fulani on the north, the Dahomcans
on the west, and, as the nineteenth century wore on, the
British on the coast. The history of these years is a terrible one;
the tale of the repeated treachery of the Alafin’s chiefs is almost
beyond bearing, and the breakdown of morale apprehended by
Lander on his last visit to the doomed capital was the decisive
factor among all those making for the downfall of the king¬
dom.
The ruin was complete. The empire had long since fallen
away; the tributary Nupe and Borgu and the Egba provinces
had all thrown off their allegiance to Oyo some half-century ago,
and by 1826 a town only a few miles from the capital had pas¬
sed under the control of the ruler of Kaiama.^^ The Dahomeans
under their warrior king Ghezo (?1818-58) repudiated the tri¬
bute which they had rendered to the Alafin since 1730 (a step
which Akinjogbin considers was taken between 1821 and 1825,
and which in any case probably preceded the fall of Oyo). Now,
too, the dependence on Oyo of other parts of Yorubaland
ceased. Owu, Oyo’s loyal vassal in the south, had been razed
to the ground by the allied Ijebu and Ife, while in Egbado, that
once-prosperous area through which ran Oyo’s trade route to
the sea, the local rulers rose against each other until their
country became a battlefield for Ijebu, Egba, and Dahomean
invaders. To the north, the Fulani had occupied or overrun
most of the Yoruba Proper, and their cavalry continued to raid
in all directions. But the forests of the south proved as great an
obstacle to their progress as the regrouped remnants of the
Yoruba armies. Thus it was southwards, towards these forests,
that many of the inhabitants of northern Oyo fied for shelter.^^
The towns in this area became ilu asala, ‘towns of refuge’, ex¬
panding their sites and their farmlands to accommodate the
newcomers. One of these was Osogbo in the Ijesa kingdom,
where the influence of refugees was so great as to give it the
character and allegiance of an Oyo town. The site of its rival
and neighbour, Ede, was moved south across the Osun River
for greater security. New towns were also founded, of which an
interesting example is Modakeke, established for the Oyo by the
154 KINGDOMS OF THE YOBUBA
Oni of Ife alongside his own town in order to end the hostility
between his own subjects and the refugees. Of these new towns,
three were to rank above all others and to emerge as successors
to the greatness of Oyo, dominating much of Yorubaland with¬
in and beyond the old kingdom as well as the refounded capital
of the Alafin at New Oyo; these were Ibadan, Aboekuta, and
Ijaye.
XI' The Wars and the New States
The Yoruba country had now been plunged into a state of war¬
fare which lasted almost continuously until the imposition of
peace by the British in 1893.^ But this was a time not merely of
conflict but of political, social, and economic change, partly en¬
gendered by the wars and partly by the opening of the country
to European influence on a large scale and in different forms.
New states arose out of the wreckage of Oyo, and older states,
previously overshadowed by Oyo, asserted their independence.
Firearms, first the primitive muskets and finally modern rifles,
played an increasing part in the wars. Fighting became for
many a profession, among both the leaders and their followers
the marauding ‘war boys’, a factor which contributed to the
prolongation and spread of the wars. European slave traders,
dealing through African middlemen, were gradually replaced by
(or transformed into) the buyers of palm oil and other produce
of the interior. Christian missionaries blazed a trail inland,
establishing themselves first at Badagry and then at Abeokuta,
Lagos, and Ijaye, setting up a chain of stations designed to
reach into the Moslem north. The way had been prepared both
for their religious doctrines and for the new-style education
which they brought, by the Christian recaptives (former slaves
liberated by the ships of the British anti-slavery patrol and
taken to Freetown) and their descendants, who from 1839
onwards were returning to their homeland.
One result of these changes and in particular of the coming of
the Europeans, is the great increase in the amount of material,
especially written material, which is available for the writing
of history. The missionaries and traders were keen observers of
165
the political and economic scene, and the archives of the mis¬
sionary societies and trading houses yield much information;
the missionaries, indeed, though often identifying themselves
too zealously for objectivity with the interests of the town
where their station was situated, wrote reports to their super¬
iors which were sometimes almost on the level of diplomatic
despatches. With the opening of a British consular post at Lagos
in 1851, followed by the Sardinian consulate in 1856, and then
in 1861 the establishment of the colonial administration, pro¬
fessional observation began, and statistics of trade, health, and
similar matters make their appearance. For the Yoruba them¬
selves, Christianity and literacy went together, and local
histories, biographies, and collections of family papers begin to
throw light on events. The first newspaper, the fortnightly Iwe-
Irohin (in Yoruba, but from 1860 with an English supplement)
was produced by the C.M.S. in Abeokuta in 1859, and in 1863 a
locally produced newspaper, the Anglo-African, appeared in
Lagos. The missionaries also led the way in the study of the
Yoruba language and its reduction to writing.
Although the activities of the Europeans were to have ever
more important consequences, in a history of the Yoruba
states in this period the warfare which plagued the country for
almost a century demands first attention. Its origins lay in the
breakdown of Oyo and in the holy war of the Fulani, but these
issues were largely settled by 1840, when new political group¬
ings had emerged and the southward thrust from Ilorin had
been held. Why, then, was Yorubaland destined to suffer a
fiu-ther half-century of war? The explanation seems to lie in two
main factors, one economic and the other political: the first,
the demand for slaves, which could always be met most readily
from captives taken in war; the second, and much the more
important, the struggle for power among the states, both new
and old, which were attempting to fill the vacuum left by the
collajise of Oyo.
It was a tragic paradox that the success achieved in the first
THE WARS AND THE NEW STATES 157
part of the nineteenth century for the Abolitionists’ policy of
encouraging ‘legitimate trade’, mainly in the products of the
oil-palm which grows wild in southern Nigeria, led to a greatly
increased demand for domestic slaves as carriers between the
markets and the coast. Burton drew the attention of the 1865
British Parliamentary Select Committee on Africa to this un¬
expected result of the humanitarian policy,^ and since then the
Yoruba wars of this century have usually been dismissed as
slaving expeditions to feed the markets of Lagos and Dahomey.®
Certainly many, probably a majority, of those taken captive in
these wars must have been sent to the slave markets,^ and a
number of the fifty or so ‘wars’ which Johnson describes in the
period were probably little more than slave raids.® Neverthe¬
less, there were other, and still more profound, issues in the
wars, and slave raiding and trading were as much a consequence
as a cause of the long unsettlement.®
‘Politics cannot be divorced from power,’ E. H. Carr has
written,^ and these West African wars illustrate this maxim no
less clearly than the fevered interlude in Europe between the
two German wars. The issues between the Yoruba states in the
nineteenth century were complex and shifting, but all con¬
cerned questions about power; first, which among them was to
succeed to the hegemony of Oyo? Then, when Ibadan had
established its ascendancy, though by too narrow a margin for
stability, how was the threat to the independence of the rest to
be countered? And again, but a question all too often lost to
sight among local rivalries, whose was the responsibility of with¬
standing the triple threat to all from the Fulani at Ilorin, the
Dahomeans on the western borders, and the British at Lagos?
Each of the new states represented in one way or another a

break with the traditional Yoruba concepts of government.
Thus Ibadan retained throughout the century the character¬
istics of a military foundation; secure at home on its high ridge
158 KINGD6MS OF THE YORUBA
of hills, surrounded by forest and ever sending its armies to the

field, it was nicknamed idi ibon, ‘the butt of a gun’. The
Government was vested in separate lines of chiefs, civil and
military, whose titles were not hereditary but bestowed for
service, generally military service, to the town. The leading
chief was known as the Bale, the title used by the rulers of the
minor towns and villages of the Oyo kingdom and illustrating
here the nominal subordination of Ibadan to the Alafin. He
attained his office by promotion through both the civil and
military grades of chieftaincy.®
In its earliest days Ibadan had been a composite town, con¬
taining Ife, Ijebu, and Egba as well as Oyo refugees, and leader¬
ship devolved at first on Maye, an Ife chief. Within a short time,
however, the Oyo rose against Maye and drove him and his
followers from the town. This led to a series of short, sharp
wars, but with the help of their kinsman Kurunmi of Ijaye the
Oyo succeeded in establishing their supremacy. Under their
great leader Oluyole (who received from the Alafin the high
title of Basorun, which had been held at Oyo by Yamba, his
grandfather), Ibadan emerged as a leading power in the land.®
Its military importance soon began to be matched by its rising
commercial importance as a market and collecting point for
palm oil from the surrounding region.
The foundation of Abeokuta was made when a group of
Egba led by Sodeke of Iporo (known by his military title as the
Seriki) left Ibadan, where they had become unwelcome, and
joined a small party of Egba hunters whom they found living
under an outcrop of rock near the east bank of the Ogun, then
on the edge of Egbado country. This took place about 1830,
and during the next twenty years there must have been a steady
movement into the new settlement of other Egba from towns
destroyed or abandoned in all parts of the forest. Unlike
Ibadan, Abeokuta did not grow into a single community but
consisted of a federation based on the three former provinces,
with the Owu, many of whom were allowed to settle here, as a
fourth section. Again in contrast to Ibadan, Abeokuta had a
plenitude of oba, although, as had been the custom (of all but
the Gbagura) in the days when the Egba were scattered through
the forest, election was not confined to candidates from specific
royal houses. The office of Alake, the leading oba, had been
vacant since the death of Okikilu in the Agbaje war, but in 1854
Townsend, the Anghcan missionary in the town, persuaded the
chiefs to elect a successor.^® The move did not have the expected
result of strengthening the central government, as the Alake
continued to be strictly bound by the constitutional rules of
former times, and Burton described Abeokuta at this time as ‘a
weak constitutional monarchy, blighted by the checks and
limits which were intended to prevent its luxuriance’.The
real rulers of the town and its dependencies were the war chiefs,
the Ologun, overshadowing the Ogboni, who had been the
highest authority in the former provinces.^2 ^ number of
military titles of Oyo origin were now adopted among the
Ologun. These referred to the Egba as a whole, instead of to the
individual component towns of Abeokuta, and thus to some
extent offset the federahsm which was a weakness in the new
state.
Ijaye, the third in the triumvirate of new states, followed a
different pattern of government from either Ibadan or Abeo¬
kuta, yet equally exemphfied a departure from Yoruba tradi¬
tion. Here the warrior Kurunmi, who obtained from the Alafin
the title of Are Ona Kakamfo, established on the site of a
former Egba Gbagura town (whose inhabitants were now
settled in Abeokuta) an autocracy in which ‘He was king, judge,
general, entertainer, sometimes also executioner’.^^ Not only did
the town itself grow and prosper but the iron rule of the Are
was exercised over a kingdom stretching northwards through
the upper Ogim almost to Saki, though it was circumscribed in
the south and south-west by Ibadan and Abeokuta, which were
also extending their influence over the surrounding country¬
side.
The foundation of these three new states preceded by a few

years the final abandonment of the old capital of Oyo; indeed,
the leaders of Ibadan and Ijaye, Oluyole and Kurunmi, were
present on the fatal field of Ilorin, and their support (in return
for the titles of Basorun and Are Ona Kakamfo respectively)
contributed to the choice of Atiba as successor to Alafin
Oluewu. Before the coronation members of the Oyo Mesi who
had taken shelter in the strong northern towns of Kisi and
Igboho sent messengers to urge the new Alafin to return to Oyo
ile, but Atiba was determined to establish his capital in his
adopted town of Ago Oja (‘the camp of Oja’, a refugee chief
from Oyo), in the south of the old kingdom and on the edge of
the Bgba forest. Here Oyo was refounded, and a conscious
attempt was made to re-create the glories of the old capital and
to preserve the rituals of its kingship. Atiba transported the
inhabitants of neighbouring towns and villages to swell the
population; he revived the former offices and titles of the Court
and Government; a double wall was built around the town, and
in the centre, incorporating the palace of Oja, the former ruler,
rose a new Afin, covering a large area and constructed on the
plan of the Afin at Oyo ile, while the compounds of the Aremo
and the great officers of the Oyo Mesi radiated round the royal
demesne. About a mile from the palace a new Bara, or royal
mausoleum, was built between the inner and outer town walls.
It is sometimes said that Atiba re-interred here the body of
Oluewu, his predecessor, but it is unlikely that this was in fact
recovered from the Fulani.^^
The building of the new capital was accompanied by the
enunciation of a new administrative and military policy. Under
this the kingdom was formally redivided into two ‘provinces’,
apart from the capital; the first, Ibadan, was charged with the
protection of the north and north-east of the kingdom, and
whenever possible was to extend its boundaries in the direction
of Ijesa and Ekiti, while Ijaye, the second province, was to
watch the west and to attempt to reassert the rule of the Oyo
over Sabe and the coast. By this system of palatinates (to use
Biobaku’s term), the Ibadan would be principally concerned
with the threat from the Fulani and the Ijaye with that from
Dahomey, while for the future the Alafin was no longer to take
the field in war, but should confine himself to religious and
political leadership. Oyo itself retained under its control a
small area between the two provinces, and a number of towns
in the north, such as Kisi and Igboho, were to be directly
subject to the Alafin. These decisions preserved the formal pre¬
eminence of the Alafin among the Oyo, whose territory now
extended southwards into the former Gbagura, offsetting to
some extent the loss of Ilorin. At the same time it took account
of the reality of the situation by allotting the major respon¬
sibilities to the new military towns; indeed, Johnson describes
the arrangements as a compact . . . arrived at between the
Alafin and his principal chiefs’.
Already the actions of Gbodo and Otefan had shown that the
warriors of Ilorin were not invincible. The relief of Osogbo and
the defeat there of a large army under Ali, the Hausa Balogun,
in 1838/9 was an event of even greater importance.^® It demon¬
strated the unsuitability to forest warfare of the Fulani
cavalry and vindicated the Yoruba withdrawal to the south.
The redisposition of the resources of the shattered kingdom by
Atiba and his supporters had proved a success, and the Ibadan,
triumphantly fulfilling the role assigned to them, emerged as a
symbol of hope, offering a prospect of restored security and
stability in the land. But this decisive check to the southward
drive of the Ilorin by no means meant the end of the internal
wars; indeed, by abating the external pressure from one direc¬
tion it tended to sharpen local issues, and from now on ‘the
Fulani were less a common enemy than a convenient ally to one
or other side’.^^
Thus the victory at Osogbo was not followed by any
concerted attempt to win back the lost north-eastern lands of

the Oyo kingdom. Instead, the Ibadan were drawn by the ambi¬
tion of their leader, Oluyole the Basorun, into the Batedo war
against their co-palatinate Ijaye. This was concluded after two
years by a truce arranged by the Alafin. Then an appeal for
help from the leading Ekiti town of Otun (on the former
Benin-Oyo border), which was engaged in a feud with Efon
Alaye, opened up prospects of further expansion for the restless
Ibadan. They responded by sending a large army under
Balogun Oderinlo, the victor of Osogbo, while the Alaye sought
help from Ilorin. In the ensuing battle the Ilorin not only failed
to raise the Ibadan siege of Otun but were again soundly
defeated in the field.^® The extension of Ibadan influence over
the Ekiti country continued to be contested by the Ilorin until
in 1854 an Ibadan army under Balogun Ibikunle won a victory
so decisive that the whole of Ekiti soon passed under their
control.^®
In this way began the building-up of the ‘Ibadan empire’, a
tract of country which at its greatest extent, after the absorp¬
tion of a large part of former Ijaye territory, stretched from
Ekiti westwards for some 200 miles, with a north-to-south
depth varying from forty to eighty miles.ô It consisted of
towns and their districts which were either conquered in the
endemic warfare of these years, like Ilesa and Akoko, or which
voluntarily accepted Ibadan’s protection, like Iwo and Ede,
thereby virtually recognizing that it was the Ibadan and their
chiefs who were the true successors of Oyo ile rather than the
Alafin at New Oyo. This empire was loosely administered by a
system of ajele based on that of Oyo. But whereas the Oyo
ajele had been supervised by the ilari, those touring represent¬
atives of the Alafin of the old kingdom, the subject towns of
Ibadan were instead allotted to the care of one of the chiefs in
the capital (called babakekere, ‘the little father’), who drew a
revenue in taxes and tolls from his town or group of towns and
represented its interests at Ibadan, while the ajele (who was not
necessarily a man of Ibadan or Oyo) conversely represented
Ibadan in the town.^^
But tbougb the rapid creation of the Ibadan empire had been
achieved in part by the voluntary adhesion of weaker towns
and afforded stability and protection to a wide area, it also
exacerbated the internal rivalries of the Yoruba. At this time
power in the south-west of the country was divided between the
new states: Ibadan and Ijaye, the heirs of the mihtary and
administrative traditions of the old Oyo kingdom, and the re¬
constituted and concentrated Egba state at Abeokuta. Despite
the careful dispositions of Alafin Atiba, it soon became clear
that the situation hardly allowed room for the co-existence of
three such close and ambitious neighbours. As early as 1832, the
Egba at Abeokuta had almost suffered extinction when they
were attacked by the Ijebu in alliance with the Ibadan (who
were only able to contribute a small contingent to this cam¬
paign). They had been saved by Oba Adele of Lagos, who had
recently regained his throne with Egba help and who now sent
firearms and gunpowder up the Ogun River and himself led
troops to reinforce the Egba on the banks of the Owiwi. Three
years later the Egba inflicted a decisive defeat on the Ibadan
(who were alhed this time with the Ijaye) in the Arakonga war,
and thus established Abeokuta as a leading power in the land.
Yet in the event it was Ijaye which seemed to offer the major
obstacle to Ibadan expansion, and this factor underlies the
Ijaye war of 1860-5, which dominates the history of this
period.22
The outbreak of war between Ibadan and Ijaye followed
some twenty years of tension between the two towns, and had
been preceded by the Batedo war. In 1859 occurred the death
of Alafin Atiba, ‘the revolutionary prince turned conservative
king’ as Ajayi calls him.^^ In his place his son, the Aremo Adelu,
was elected to the throne, a breach with tradition in which all
acquiesced except for Kurunmi of Ijaye, who protested that
Adelu should have followed his father to the grave. Relations
M
164 KINGDOMS OF THE YQRUBA
between Kurunmi and the new Alafin worsened when Adelu

tried to reassert Oyo rule over the country west of the upper
Ogun which had been annexed by Ijaye, and turned for support
in this to Ibadan. The first phase of the ensuing war in 1860
consisted of a series of engagements in the wooded country
between Ijaye and Ibadan, followed by the almost two-year-
long siege of Ijaye. Soon after the opening of the siege a strong
army was sent from Abeokuta to aid the hard-pressed Ijaye.
This resulted in the now aged and ailing Are becoming virtually
the prisoner of his allies, and his death in mid-1861 only em¬
phasized the true character of the war as essentially a contest
between the Ibadan and the Egba. Finally, in March 1862,
after many privations had been suffered by its citizens, Ijaye
was abandoned by the Egba army and then by the Ijaye them¬
selves, most of whom succeeded in reaching Abeokuta. But
this was not the end of the war, and in the next phase the
Ibadan had to face a coalition between their former allies and
trading partners, the Ijebu, and the Egba. While the Ibadan
secured their command of the upper Ogun, the allies occupied
bases in the recalcitrant and pro-Ibadan Remo province of
Ijebu, and here the last battles of the war were fought. At last
peace was concluded in August 1864 through the mediation of
Alafin Adelu.
The Ijaye war confirmed the position of Ibadan as the leading
power in Yorubaland, and at the same time seemed to demon¬
strate that this new power was not only, or even primarily, con¬
cerned with the defence of the Oyo and other Yoruba against
their external enemies and with weaker towns against the
strong, but was animated by the restless ambition characteris¬
tic of a military state. The Egba and Ijebu, equally anxious to
profit from the troubled situation, were alerted to the danger
© *
and Oyo, too, strengthened by the addition of former Ijaye ter¬

ritory in the upper Ogun (except for Ibarapa, which Ibadan had
kept), began to draw apart from its over-mighty vassal. Mean¬
while, one of the issues which had come to the fore in the war
but had been ignored in the peace settlement assumed first
importance for all parties; this was the control of the ‘roads’ or
tracks along which trade flowed in the interior of the country
and between the interior and the coast (especially the harbour
at Lagos). As states bordering on the lagoon, both the Ijebu
and the Egba of Abeokuta occupied key positions, while for the
inland states, especially the Ibadan and other Oyo Yoruba, free
movement on the roads and between the markets was vital,
both for the provision of food and for the import of guns, am¬
munition, and gunpowder (purchased now by the sale of local
produce rather than by slaves). So far as war material was con¬
cerned, the importance of communications had increased
greatly with the use of firearms, which became widespread
about 1840; this factor had been demonstrated in the Owiwi
war and again, rather ludicrously, on the Arakonga when the
Ibadan, running out of gunpowder, were reduced to pelting the
Egba with gourds gathered on the battlefield.^^
The struggle for power between the Yoruba states, together

with the ever-present menace of the Pulani at Ilorin, constitu¬
ted a situation which was complicated and worsened by the
aggression of the western neighbours of the Yoruba, the dreaded
Dahomeans under their kings Ghezo (?1818-58) and Glele
(1859-89). After their final refusal of the annual tribute to Oyo,
apparently during the 1820s, the Dahomeans carried out several
major expeditions and innumerable raids into the Egba and
Egbado countries, and though it was Ijaye which had been
designated by Alafin Atiba as guardian of the west, in the event
it was Abeokuta which bore the brunt of the Dahomean attacks
and was the involuntary shield of the whole Yoruba against
the western danger.
The pursuit of war was one of the principal characteristics of
the Dahomey kingdom from its beginnings.^® Campaigns were
undertaken every dry season, a main objective being the taking
of captives, most of whom were then either sold to slave traders

for export, bringing in large revenues for the monarchy, or re¬
tained by their captors as domestic slaves. Yet even for the
Dahomeans, warfare cannot be explained as simply undertaken
for the supply of the slave market. It was that and much more.
Having been the essential element in the building-up of this
West African Prussia, warfare remained equally a central factor
in the maintenance of its pohtical structure and its religion. It
provided, for example, the human sacrifices to the ancestors on
which the continuation of the kingdom’s prosperity was held to
depend.^® Expeditions were mounted in all directions from
Abomey, but it was against the Yoruba, and in particular the
Egba, that the two great warrior kings mainly directed their
aggressions. One major reason for this specific hostihty between
the Dahomeans and the Egba was their rivalry for control over
the Egbado territory lying between them. Dahomey already
exercised control over the slave trade from Whydah and Porto
Novo, and was always anxious to block the Egba policy of open¬
ing a route from Abeokuta via Ado to the coast at Badagry.
The first major clash between the Egba and the Dahomeans
seems to have taken place in 1844. Two years earher the Egba had
annexed the Awori town of Otta and had then continued their
westward expansion by besieging Ado, inland from Badagry.
During this long siege (1842-53) a Dahomean army led by Ghezo,
and including, it is said, a contingent of women soldiers (the
first record of these redoubtable Amazons^^), marched to the
help of Ado, a town which they regarded as subject to their ally
the King of Porto Novo. On this occasion they were defeated in
the field by the Egba and driven off with great loss. Ghezo him¬
self had a narrow escape from capture, leaving his state um¬
brella, stool, and war charms in the hands of the Egba. Then in
1851, perhaps in revenge for this humiliation, a strong and
determined attack was launched on Abeokuta itself. But after a
fierce battle along the walls (in which the European mission¬
aries in the town played some part), the Dahomeans were forced
to retreat.^® A few years later they succeeded in bringing about
an anti-Egba coalition in which they were joined by Ijaye,
Ibadan, Ijebu, and the exiled King Kosoko of Lagos (now
installed at Epe in Ijebu territory); this, however, proved
abortive, partly as a result of the intervention of Consul
Campbell at Lagos, to whom the Egba had sent an urgent
appeal. Ghezo died in 1858, but this did not abate the Daho-
mean threat to the Yoruba. After attacks on Isaga and Ibara
in 1862 and 1863 respectively, another large-scale and deter¬
mined assault was made on Abeokuta in 1864. Again the walls
were held and the enemy driven back. On this occasion, unlike
that of 1851, the Dahomean army suffered far heavier losses
than the Egba and was unable to make an orderly retreat. But
the hope that after this failure the Dahomeans would desist
from their attacks was unfulfilled and their armies continued to
raid westwards up to the end of the century. In 1873 and 1874,
for example, they encamped outside Abeokuta, pillaging nearby
towns and villages.^® They also sent expeditions against
Okeodan in Egbado and, farther north, against Ketu and Sabe.
Ketu was captured in 1883 during the absence on campaign of
its army, and was attacked again in 1886. On the second occa¬
sion it was destroyed and abandoned, though in 1893 the
refugees were able to return to the site and rebuild their town.®*’
Thus the Yoruba of the far west passed first under Dahomean
and then French rule. Meanwhile the upper Ogun and Ibarapa
country continued to undergo Dahomean raids down to the
1890s.
While northern and western Yorubaland contended with the
invasions of the Fulani and the Dahomeans, the kingdoms of
the east were suffering from a renewal of Benin’s westward ex¬
pansion. This apparently began in the early years of the nine¬
teenth century during the reign of Oba Obanosa. First, part of
the Owo kingdom was once again brought under obedience to
Benin. Then, in the reign of Oba Osemwede of Benin, Akure
was reconquered and Ekiti overrun. The Benin forces for a time
established a base at Otun, and a new Deji of Akure was ap¬

pointed ‘to watch over the interests of Benin in the Ekiti
country’.®^ About this time the Ado waged an unsuccessful war
against the Bini and the Ikerre (the traditional allies of Benin
in Ekiti), which resulted in the abandonment for some years
of their town and the diminution of the Ewi’s territory. Soon
after mid-century the brief resurgence of Benin’s military power
came to a halt, and much of Ekiti was then subjected to Ibadan.
Yet, according to Egharevba, the Ekiti paid tribute to Benin
up to the British occupation of the area in 1897, while pay¬
ments from Lagos were maintained until about mid-century.
Even after the establishment of the British administration, the
authority of Benin was respected in eastern Yorubaland, and
as late as the reign at Benin of Eweka II (1914-33) the chiefs of
Ondo looked to that Oba for his ruling in land and succession
disputes.
The collapse of Oyo ile was followed within twenty years by

the establishment of the British consular regime in Lagos, over¬
shadowing the monarchy there, and within a further ten years
by the annexation of the town as a crown colony. Already the
importance of this island kingdom was becoming apparent. The
first half of the nineteenth century had seen the steady growth
of its slave market. Captain Adams noted the existence of the
trade there at the turn of the century, but it does not seem to
have reached large proportions until the decay of Porto Novo,
which followed the first Angio-Portuguese anti-slave-trade
treaty of 1810, and the increase in the supply of slaves due to
the interior wars. The population was becoming more mixed;
apart from the original Awori and the Portuguese and Brazilian
slave dealers (white and creole), from the 1830s there had been
a flow of immigrants, or ‘repatriates’, from the former slaves in
Sierra Leone, Brazil, and Cuba. The education and background
of the Sierra Leonians, or Saro as they were called, and the
Brazilians or Amaro, enabled them to play a prominent part
as middlemen between the British administration and the tradi¬
tional authorities, especially at Lagos and Abeokuta. Mean¬
while, at the head of the town the Oba of the line established by
Benin still ruled. By now there was probably no attempt by
Benin to impose its authority in Lagos, even though the tradi¬
tional tribute continued to be paid. The power of the Oba may
in consequence have somewhat increased, but he was always
subject to the constitutional restraints characteristic of the
Yoruba kingdoms (and also of Benin), and especially to the in¬
fluence of the chief known as the Eletu Odibo. During the
1830s troubles broke out over the kingship which led to the
deposition and subsequent reinstatement of Oba Adele and
then to a feud between the party supporting first Oba Oluwole
and then his successor Akitoye, to which the Eletu adhered, and
that of Akitoye’s nephew Kosoko, an ambitious young prince
and claimant to the throne, who was the son and brother of
previous Oba.^^
It was this dynastic dispute which provided the occasion for
the British intervention in Lagos of 1851. Kosoko, after being
forced into exile, had engaged in the slave trade at Porto Novo
and Whydah, where he gained the support of the Portuguese
and Brazilian merchants. In 1845 he was allowed by the mild
and kindly Akitoye to return to Lagos, and within a few months
he succeeded in replacing his uncle on the throne. Akitoye took
refuge at Badagry, where he became the protege of the mis¬
sionaries and repatriates in the town. Soon his partisans were
urging the British that they should restore Akitoye and thereby
wipe out the notorious slave market at Lagos. Samuel Crowther
was sent to London to point out also that ‘if Lagos were under
its lawful chief ... an immense extent of country, abounding
with cotton . . . would be thrown open to commerce’.^^ The
British Government hesitated, and the naval commander in
West Africa advised caution. But their Consul for the Bights of
Benin and Biafra, who had been appointed to this post in 1849
as its first holder, was John Beecroft, determined equally to

stamp out the slave trade and to extend British influence in his
area,®^ and he did not scruple to commit the home authorities.
Kosoko had already refused to sign an anti-slave-trade treaty
with the British, and after a second refusal Beecroft decided
on a show of force. In November 1851 the Consul entered Lagos
lagoon with a naval escort, but after a sharp exchange of fire
the party was repulsed. The attack was renewed in greater force
at Christmastide a month later, and on 28 December. Akitoye
landed in the town with his British and other supporters and
resumed his throne. On New Year’s Day 1852 he signed a treaty
with the British representatives in which he agreed to abolish
the slave trade and expel the slave traders, to trade freely with
British subjects, and to protect the missionaries.
The British assertion that they bombarded and brought
Lagos under control in 1851 in order to put an end to the slave
trade there has in recent years been questioned.Ajayi, for
example, has written;
The anxiety of Britain to intervene in Lagos was not just the

philanthropic desire to destroy the slave trading activities of
the Portuguese and Brazilians there, but also the economic
desire to control the trade of Lagos from which they [sic] had
hitherto been excluded and from where they hoped to ex¬
ploit the resources of the vast country stretching to and
beyond the Niger.®®
Explanation in history is rarely simple, and in this case the

interests and ambitions of traders, missionaries, and govern¬
ment agents who were pressing for action against Kosoko had
become inextricably mixed, and after agreeing that selfish
motives alternated and mingled with altruistic ones, it seems
impossible to determine which were uppermost. The soundness
of the doctrine that ‘legitimate trade’ must be encouraged as a
substitute for the export of slaves had been demonstrated on
this coast, even though it had unexpectedly increased the
domestic demand. Incontestably, an immediate result of the
action taken in 1851 was the abatement of the export of slaves.
The establishment of the British Consulate was quickly fol¬
lowed by the arrival in the town of the palm-oil factors and the
Christian missionaries.^^ The British, in their several mani¬
festations as protagonists of commerce, Christianity, and sound
government, had now become a part of Yoruba country, and
their presence at Lagos was a portent of even greater moment
than that of the Fulani at Ilorin.
The consular period in Lagos lasted only ten years, and was
almost covered by the career there of Consul Benjamin Camp¬
bell, who was appointed in 1853 and died at his post in 1859.
The policies and preoccupations of the British administration
up to 1893 quickly became apparent: the development of
legitimate trade, in palm produce above all else, with its con¬
sequential emphasis on the opening of the interior and the
maintenance of free and secure movement on the roads, aims
and interests which, for rather different reasons, were shared by
the Ibadan; the ending of the war in the interior, a purpose
which for a time in the post-consular period seemed to the
British administrators best able to be achieved by supporting
the extension of Ibadan’s influence, which in turn involved a
clash with the missionary party at Abeokuta; and in general
the spread of European ideas of ethics and conduct. But for this
programme the consular regime could not provide adequate
means. The end of Campbell’s life saw the trade routes closing
all round as the Ijaye war drew near, and a revival of the slave
trade at Porto Novo and Whydah. The trade of Lagos declined
sharply, and it was in these circumstances that Palmerston, the
British Prime Minister, acceded to the promptings of his
Government’s agents on the coast and gave permission for the
annexation of the town in 1861: an acquisition which was re¬
garded as a ‘deadly gift from the Foreign Office’ by the officials
at the Colonial Office, who rightly anticipated that, like the
other West African possessions, it would require the support of
a Parliamentary grant-in-aid.^® In August 1861, under the guns

of H.M.S. Prometheus anchored in the lagoon, Oba Dosumu
agreed to cede his kingdom to the British. Sir Richard Burton
(the recently appointed Consul for the Bights) sardonically
described the scene as the Union Jack was hoisted, the guns of
the Prometheus fired a salute, a choir of missionary boys sang a
hymn, and forty-four officials and traders sat down to dine on
the quarter-deck of the warship.®®
The new Governor, Freeman, arrived with instructions from
the Colonial Office to restrict his activities to defence of the
local inhabitants and to putting down the slave trade. But the
colony was from its beginning involved in the politics of
the interior, since the only means of defraying the co.st of its
administration was by the imposition of customs duties, a
device with which West Africans were familiar, but which in
Lagos proved to require the control of commerce with the
hinterland by extending the boundaries east and west along the
coast. The full development of the commerce of the colony
depended moreover on the opening of the roads through the
interior to direct trade, as opposed to that through the
markets set up for external trading by the middlemen states of
Egba and Ijebu; in this, the interests of Lagos were soon seen
to coincide with those of Ibadan. Thus, despite attempts to
apply the brake by the Colonial Office in London, bewildered by
events yet approving the financial principle, Freeman and his
successors continued to intervene in the wars of the Yoruba
and to enlarge the area subject to their administration.^®
There now appeared on the scene the eager and evangelical
Captain Glover. His first appointment at Lagos was as harbour
master, but on two occasions during Freeman’s leaves he acted
as Governor, and in 1866, when the colony was placed under the
Governor of the West African Settlements in Sierra Leone, he
became Administrator.^^ He had taken part in the Niger
expedition of 1857 and after the wreck of the Day spring near
Jebba had made three journeys overland between the Niger and
Lagos, passing through Ilorin and Abeokuta. Already he had
been fired by his experiences with the ambition to gain control
for Britain of both the Niger highway and the port of Lagos,
and despite the opposition of Government and public opinion
in England - expressed, in particular, by the recommendations
of the 1865 Select Committee - he bent all his great energies to
realizing these aims. As early as 1863 the area under British
control was enlarged by the addition of the old trading settle¬
ments of Palma and Lekki; these lay on the coast to the east of
the colony in territory claimed by the Ijebu and were ‘ceded’ by
the now-tamed Kosoko, who had been allowed by the Awujale
to take refuge nearby at Epe as a sort of tenant ruler. Glover
now succeeded in checking a threatened expansion by the
French from their short-lived protectorate at Porto Novo and
signed treaties with local rulers which brought Ado, Ipokia,
Okeodan, and Badagry on the west under Lagos, a move which
he followed by a boundary agreement with the French admiral.
Meanwhile, towards the end of 1864 when the Ijaye war was in
its final stages, the Egba and Ijebu blocked the tracks linking
Ibadan with Lagos and Egba forces laid siege to Ikorodu in
Ijebu Kemo, the important market town at the northern corner
of the lagoon which was allied to Ibadan. Finally repudiating
the policy of favouring Abeokuta, long urged by an influential
section of the missionaries, Glover fell on the Egba at Ikorodu
in March 1865 with troops from the West India Regiment and
his recently formed Hausa Constabulary, firing rockets and
shells, and drove them off in disorder.
Thereafter Glover continued to press for the opening of the
roads. This was a policy which especially alarmed the Egba,
who in 1867, in order to prevent merchants from by-passing
their town, set up a customs post at Iseri on the River Ogun
near its exit to the lagoon. Glover, suspicious of this attempt to
extend Egba influence almost as far south as the Lagos main¬
land, established constables at posts on the roads as far as
Otta and up the Ogun to Iseri, and he announced that Ebute
Metta was Lagos territory. His action was resented at Abeokuta

and was followed by the rising against Europeans in the town
known as if ole, ‘housebreaking’, and their subsequent ex¬
pulsion. In 1871 Glover tried to achieve the opening of the roads
for direct trade by calling a conference in Lagos to which came
representatives from Oyo, Ijebu, Ibadan, and at a later stage
also from Haro, Ijo, Ketu, and even Benin. But neither the
Egba nor the Ijebu (still firmly in alliance) would co-operate,
and these efforts came to nothing. From his home government
Glover continued to receive little support and frequent opposi¬
tion, and in 1872, on the reversal of his policies by the Governor-
in-Chief, Pope-Hennessy, he was recalled. As a contemporary
noted, he had been in advance of his time - but only by a few
years, for within two decades his policy was vindicated by the
actions taken by his successors at Lagos with the approval of
Whitehall.
XII' On the Threshold of Nigeria
The last quarter of the nineteenth century saw the end of the
sovereignty of the Yoruba states and the beginning of their
elimination as political units. In 1892-3 all were brought under
British control as a protectorate administered with the colony
of Lagos, with the exception of the Egba at Abeokuta, who were
allowed to maintain an anomalous semi-independence until
1914. In 1906 the colony and protectorate were amalgamated
with the Niger Coast (formerly Oil Rivers) Protectorate and in
1914 with the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria. The colonial
government, advancing from the system of informal rule
typified by the consuls, extended its influence by its apparatus
of TravelHng Commissioners and later by Residents and
District Officers posted to the major towns, a system which to
some extent kept alive, and after the introduction of Lugardian
indirect rule into Yorubaland from 1914 even strengthened, the
identities of the kingdoms. Political independence had been
lost, but in the longer term more important than the establish¬
ment of this alien rule was the absorption of all the Yoruba,
Oyo, Ijebu, Egba, and the rest into a wider grouping, that of
Nigeria.
Before all this was achieved, the last quarter-century of
independent Yorubaland witnessed profound changes of many
kinds. In politics and warfare Ibadan’s predominance, which
had offered one solution to the problems posed by the decline
of Oyo and the external threats, was rejected and its short-lived
empire broken up. There was a resurgence of vitality in some of
the ancient kingdoms, especially Ijebu, and the much-divided
Ekiti drew together in a military confederation against Ibadan.
175
These were variations on old themes, but there were changes,

and portents of changes, of a deeper nature. Missionaries of
various churches - Anglican, Roman Catholic, and the Pro¬
testant sects - and of many lands, European and American,
were penetrating the kingdoms and everywhere challenging old
ways of life and thought, and wherever the missionaries went,
new educational systems were introduced. Traders both fol¬
lowed and preceded the missionaries, and the work and in¬
fluence of the two were more often complementary than
antagonistic. In Lagos a new kind of society was being created,
based on the westernized Yoruba and other West Africans, who
were emancipated not only from slavery but also from former
ties with their towns and families. Against this background took
place the political movement of Europe into Africa known as
the Partition of Africa - or, when the fifteen years or so of
heightened activity after 1884 are considered, as the Scramble
- momentous not so much because of the establishment of the
colonial regimes, which nearly all proved to be ephemeral, as
for the new nation states which were created after the European
pattern.^
It is possible that the comparative richness and accessibility
of the archives of the missionary societies has led to some exag¬
geration of the role which they played in the life of Yorubaland
during this period. Their direct influence on events was often
less than they realized or hoped; at Abeokuta, for example,
Townsend, the Anglican agent, was constantly disappointed in
his ambitions to convert the town into a peace-loving, Christian
polity. Nevertheless, the missionaries were the most powerful
vehicles of change, first, because they were identified in the
minds of the Yoruba with the material power of the British
settlement at Lagos, and secondly, because of the educational
and economic programme which they were determined to
implement as the pre-condition, according to their theory, of
the Christianization of the land and which met with a growing
and enthusiastic response from those they taught. Unlike the
ON THE THRESHOLD OP NIGERIA 177
leaders of the Moslem jihad, they could not - or would not -
compromise with existing conditions and institutions. Wherever
they went, a pro-missionary party sprang up around them,
dedicated not so much to their dogmatic and moral teaching -
the Bgba, for example, remained keen slave traders almost to
the end of the century, despite their numerous Christians - as
to exploiting their political and economic support. This in turn
was usually soon followed by the development of a party
hostile to the missionaries, equally animated by political and
economic motives. To a great extent, supjiort for the missions
was based on the early Western-educated Africans, the Saro
or repatriates from Sierra Leone living in Lagos, Abeokuta, and
(in much smaller numbers) elsewhere, but such men were also
found in the ranks of the anti-missionaries. Among the latter a
prominent example was G. W. Johnson, the Secretary of the
Egba United Board of Management which was established as
the government at Abeokuta during the regency following the
death of Alake Okukenu.
The relations of the missionaries with the British adminis¬
tration varied. All missionaries continued to demand that
British protection should be extended to them wherever they
went, and m order to further their aims - religious, educational,
and political - welcomed and encouraged the establishment of
British rule. Thus in many ways they prepared the way for the
extension of the protectorate over the whole of the Yoruba
country; one writer has contended that the work of the mis¬
sionaries was the primary factor in bringing about this exten¬
sion by peaceful and gradual means.^ There were many oc¬
casions when the missionaries strongly disapproved of the
actions of the British administrators at Lagos, and especially of
the restless and ambitious Governor Glover. Nevertheless, the
interdependence of missionaries and officials was so strong, and
so clear to all concerned, that it could not be broken by such
disagreements. During the major and protracted war which
broke out in 1877 it was to the missionaries, and to the British
power behind them, that many among the distracted Yoruba

looked for intervention and help amid their intractable rival¬
ries.
The Sixteen Years’ War (1877-93) between Ibadan and a

grand coalition of other Yoruba states, allied from 1879 with the
Ilorin, was on a larger scale than any of the previous wars and
lasted for a longer time.® Essentially it arose from the wide¬
spread hostility engendered by the Ibadan, who had not only
succeeded to much of the central and southern territories of the
old Oyo kingdom, including a large part of the former territory
of Kurunmi of Ijaye, but had also brought the Ekiti and Ijesa
under their rule. More immediately, it concerned the issue of the
freedom of the roads along which food and other supplies moved
to the towns and Ibadan’s need for access to the coast, where
guns and powder could be obtained. The outbreak of war in
1877 was occasioned by the Egba, who, resentful of an Ibadan
expedition through their country to collect a consignment of
gunpowder bought by the Alafin from Porto Novo, barred the
roads to Ibadan traders. The Ibadan opened hostilities in a
desultory manner by raids on Egba farms, but the war was soon
extended as the Ijebu joined in a coalition with the Egba. Next,
the Ekiti and their northern neighbours, the Ila, rose in revolt,
murdering the Ibadan ajele in their towns, a move which
brought the Ilorin, always interested in this eastern area of
Yorubaland, to join in the war against Ibadan.
The extension of the war to the north-east was in part a con¬
sequence of the development of an eastern route from the coast
to Ibadan which had been advocated by Governor Glover in
1872 in order to avoid Egba and Ijebu territory. This route had
two southern termini: the western one at Atijere at the eastern
end of the lagoon, and the other at Aboto on the creeks in
Mahin country. From these it ran northwards to Ondo, whence
it was known as the Ondo Road and where at Glover’s sug-
gestion the Church Missionary Society established a mission
station in 1875. From Ondo the road continued to the Ife town
of Oke Igbo, where it divided, one branch running westwards
to Ibadan and the other north to Ilesa."* The road at first served
its purpose in enabling military and other supplies to reach
Ibadan without interference from the Egba and the Ijebu, but
it soon became a focus of dissension. In particular, the Ijesa
at its northern end, who had been brought back to obedience
by Ibadan after a rebellion in 1870 under their war leader,
Ogedengbe, were determined to regain their independence. A
group of educated repatriates formed an Ijesa Association
which, though it began in 1876 as a Christian prayer group,
was soon directing its activities to stirring up resistance to
Ibadan, both in their own state and among the neighbouring
Ekiti. They strongly supported the maintenance of the Ondo
Road, since it linked them with Lagos and allowed them to
import firearms and ammunition into their area. This was of
special importance at this time when the southern Yoruba
were replacing their muzzle-loading muskets by modern breech¬
loading rifles and securing thereby a marked superiority in
armament over the Ibadan.®
The first major engagement of the war took place in 1878 at
Ikirun, north of Ilesa, where the Ibadan attacked and drove off
in disorder strong armies from Ilorin, Ekiti, Ila, and Ijesa
encamped north of the town.® But Ibadan’s victory in this
action - known as the Jalumi or ‘rush into the water’ war from
the drowning of many of the fleeing Ilorin in the nearby River
Otin - was singularly indecisive. The Ijebu declined Ibadan’s
offer of alliance with them, and the Egba continued to bar the
roads through their territory to the coast, while the Ekiti and
Ijesa strengthened their alliance, the former grouping them¬
selves into the military confederation called the Ekiti Parapo,
whose armies were placed under the command of Ogedengbe of
Ilesa. Soon the Ibadan were fighting on three main fronts:
around their own town and to the south and west against the
N
Egba and the, Ijebu; in the north against the Ilorin, who were
besieging their allies the Offa, and in the north-east against the
Ekiti and Ijesa on the battlefield among the hills and rocks near
Oke Mesi (north of Ilesa) known as Kiriji (a word derived ono-
matopaeically from the report of the firearms).
Fighting continued at Kiriji for over a decade. Meanwhile, in
or about 1882, a new front against Ibadan was opened up by
Ife. Relations between the Ife and the Oyo refugees resettled
at the contiguous town of Modakeke had never been easy, and
at some period, probably about 1850, had degenerated into
active hostilities during the course of which Ife had been
abandoned by its inhabitants. About 1854, however, the
Ibadan persuaded the Ife to return to their former homes.It
seems that from this time until the 1880s the ancient town and
kingdom of Ife were within the Ibadan empire, though appar¬
ently no ajele was posted to the capital, probably from defer¬
ence to its prestige and since in any case there was one resident
in nearby Modakeke.® During the Sixteen Years’ War the Ife
were required to contribute a contingent of troops to the Ibadan
forces at Kiriji. But they grew ever more restive under Ibadan
rule, and were especially resentful of the imposition on them
through Ibadan influence of an unpopular Oni. In 1882 these
troubles came to a head, and again the Ife expressed their
hostility to the Ibadan and other Oyo Yoruba by attacking
their neighbours at Modakeke, and again He Ife was destroyed.
But now the Ijesa and Ijebu sent troops to their aid, while
their own soldiers under the war chiefs decamped from Kiriji
and returned to help in the siege of Modakeke. Johnson writes:
‘Thus stood the Ibadan lion at bay facing five fronts, with
ammunition spent, yet flinching from none, at Ofa, at Kiriji, at
Modakeke, and against the Egbas as well as the Ijebus at
home.’®
Despite Ibadan’s difficulties, the war was now approaching
stalemate, and war-weariness was widespread. Many Yoruba,
and especially the educated, looked to British intervention to
ON THE THRESHOLD OF NIGERIA 181
bring the fighting to an end. But at this time vigorous action
could hardly be expected from the Lagos administration..
Between 1874 and 1886 the Government of the colony was-
incorporated with that of the Gold Coast, an arrangement whicht
inhibited a forward policy; Lagos, moreover, was only just
beginning to pay its way and to justify its maintenance.^®
Not until pressure was applied by trading interests, for
example, did the local Administrator take steps to foil the
cession of Mahin beach to the Germans in 1885 by the Amapetu.
In this situation it fell to the missionaries to explore the pro¬
spects for peace, a task to which they were suited, since not
only did they themselves regard a settlement as a matter of
urgency in the interests of Christianity but also their reputa¬
tion stood high with the chiefs and people of the country. A
series of meetings was held in Lagos at the end of 1882, appar¬
ently on the initiative of the veteran Anglican missionary at
Ibadan, David Hinderer, to which came representatives from
the main kingdoms. This led to the sending of a Lagos mission
to Ijebu Ode, where it was found that though Awujale Fidipote
wished to continue the war against Ibadan, a strong party in
the kingdom was in favour of peace and the resumption of
trade. The upshot was the deposition of the Awujale and the
gradual return of peace and trade between Ijebu and Ibadan,
the latter being now enabled to obtain from the Ijebu, at high
prices, enough new rifles and cartridges to hold their positions
at Kiriji.
These efforts for peace brought about what Johnson calls
a ‘rift in the clouds’, but on the main fronts fighting continued.
In January 1884 the Reverend J. B. Wood, an influential mis¬
sionary at Abeokuta, succeeded in visiting the opposing camps
at Kiriji, but he failed to persuade the combatants to accept
terms. Hostilities dragged on there, as also at Modakeke and
Offa. Then, in January 1886, the Colony of Lagos was detached
from the Gold Coast and again became self-administering.
Almost at once Governor Moloney dispatched two delegations
into the interior to reopen peace negotiations. Both delega¬

tions were headed by Yoruba clergymen of the Church Mis¬
sionary Society, the first, to the Ibadan camp, being led by the
Reverend Samuel Johnson, the historian, and the second, to
the Ekiti and their allies, by the Reverend Charles Phillips of
Ondo (later Assistant Bishop of Western Equatorial Africa).
A cease-fire was arranged by the delegates, first at Kiriji
and then at Mqdakeke, and a peace treaty was signed at Lagos
in June 1886. By this treaty Ibadan recognized the indepen¬
dence of the members of the Ekiti Parapo, and it was provided
that the Oyo town of Modakeke, whose contiguity to Ife had
long been a source of trouble, should be broken up and rebuilt
on Ibadan territory between the Osun and Oba rivers; by
implication the treaty also severed the formal dependence of
Ibadan on Oyo.î Special Commissioners were named, this time
two olficials of the Lagos administration, who proceeded to
Kiriji and supervised the firing and evacuation of the war
camps there at the end of September. They went next to the
Modakeke battlefield. Here, although the cease-fire was in
operation, they failed to persuade either the Modakeke to
comply with the Lagos treaty by quitting their homes or the
Ife to leave their camp and return to their town. Nevertheless,
fighting was not resumed there.
The wars in Yorubaland had now been brought to an end and
peace restored, even though precariously, with an important
exception; the contest between Ibadan and Ilqrin still con¬
tinued, centring on the siege by the Ilorin of Offa, once their
vassal town and now Ibadan’s ally in the north. The Ilorin,
commanded by Karara, the fierce and intransigent Balogun
of the Gambari (general of the Hausa population of Ilorin),
had rejected the peace proposals brought to them by Phillips
and had no part in the Lagos treaty, though they did agree
to carry on negotiations with the Ibadan. But during the next
year (1887) the latter, wearied of hostilities and nervous about
the isolated position of their army at Offa, withdrew from the
besieged town, after rescuing its ruler, the Oloffa, and returned
to their base at Ikirun. Karara now entered Qffa, which for
so long and so obstinately had resisted him. Its remaining
chiefs came at his summons to do homage, and while they lay
prostrate before him at the palace gate he gave the order for
them all to be slaughtered on the spot. Yet the fall of Offa did
not end the war, and desultory fighting continued between the
Ibadan at Ikirun and the Ilorin encamped at Yanayo for a
further six years.
Ibadan’s attempt to assume the mantle of Oyo had now
decisively failed. This was mainly due, Mrs Awe has written,
to its lack of a traditional heritage’ and its consequent in¬
ability to command the loyalty of the former Oyo towns,but
it was bound up too with the difficulties arising from the control
of the roads by its enemies, and especially in obtaining the
newer types of firearms. Meanwhile the Egba, who since
1879 had taken little part in the war, were spht by a religious
dissension reminiscent of the Franza-Ingleza troubles in
Uganda. One party, which included most of the chiefs, sup¬
ported the extension of French influence in the town, for which
the way had been prepared by the Roman Catholic mission¬
aries who had been working in Abeokuta since 1880, while a
‘Protestant’ party, led by Wood, the Anglican missionary,
looked to Lagos for protection. In 1888 a young French trader
named Viard, who claimed to represent the French Govern¬
ment, obtained a treaty from the chiefs of Haro, the leading
Egbado town, and then moved on to Abeokuta, where again he
persuaded the chiefs to enter into a treaty; under this, Abeo¬
kuta was to become a French protectorate, and in return the
French would build a railway from Porto Novo via Haro and
would recognize domestic slavery. Wood and his party im¬
mediately raised the alarm. The Colonial Office in London
realized that this French penetration threatened the main
source of Lagos trade, and the issue was taken up with the
French Government through diplomatic channels. In 1889 the
British and French Governments signed a treaty settling what

was to be Nigeria’s western frontier on a line well to the west
of Abeokuta and Haro. Against the background of these events
Governor Moloney hastily concluded a treaty (in July 1888)
with Oyo by which the Alafin agreed to cede no territory with¬
out the consent ol the Lagos Government/^ and he made re¬
newed attempts to bring the Ilorin war to an end. After
Moloney’s departure in 1891 the Acting Governor, Denton,
hoisted the British flag in Haro and other parts of Egbadoland.
His object was to divert the Egbado trade towards Lagos and
away from Porto Novo, but the annexation incurred the indig¬
nation of the Egba, who retahated as usual by closing the roads
and the River Ogun.
The Anglo-French clash of interests in Abeokuta was one
facet of the Scramble for Africa. The Berlin Conference of
1884-5 is conveniently, but rather misleadingly, held to have
partitioned Africa; in fact, the famous provision in its Final Act
that international recognition of territorial acquisitions in
Africa must be preceded by an effective occupation of the area
concerned was specifically confined in its application to the
coastal districts, most of which had already been brought under
control by the European powers, and left the boundaries
between the spheres of influence of the powers in the interior
undefined. Thus it was fortunate for the British, and in the long
run for the Yoruba, that Viard’s treaty with Abeokuta in 1888
so stirred the Protestant party there that, as a result of their
pressure, the British Government exerted themselves in time to
secure an agreement with the French under which most of the
Yoruba country fell to the east of the demarcation line - though
the Ketu, Sabe, and other western Yoruba were left to be
incorporated eventually into the French colony of Dahomey,
and are still separated by an international frontier from the
Yoruba in Nigeria. But the treaty had done nothing to clarify
the position in the area east of the line and within the British
sphere. Only in 1891, when the scholarly Moloney was replaced
as Governor at Lagos by Carter, was a vigorous forward policy
undertaken, and it was not until Chamberlain came to the
Colonial Office in 1895 that the old informal system of rule was
abandoned.
When Carter arrived in Lagos in September 1891 three major
obstacles remained to the extension of British rule within the
limits determined by agreement among the European powers;
the Ilorin-Ibadan war in the north and the recalcitrance of the
Egba and the Ijebu in the south, which all hindered free move¬
ment and the flow of trade between Lagos and the interior.
Carter dealt first with the problem presented by the deter¬
minedly independent Ijebu. Denton had already visited the
Awujale and had been ill received. Carter now demanded an
apology for the insult to the Acting Governor, and at a meeting
in Lagos towards the end of 1891 he secured both this and a
‘treaty’ under which the Ijebu promised to open the roads
through their country to all. The validity of this treaty was
somewhat doubtful, since the members of the Awujale’s dele¬
gation, pleading illiteracy, refused to sign it, though they
allowed its signature on their behalf by two Ijebu residents of
Lagos. In any case, its terms were soon broken when the
Awujale picked a quarrel with Ibadan, demanding the execu¬
tion of two missionaries there (one a Yoruba and the other
English) whom he accused of having brought Europeans and
their goods into his territory without permission, and threaten¬
ing to close the roads. Carter now received permission by tele¬
graph from the Colonial Secretary to take coercive action, and
in May 1892 he sent a military expedition against the Ijebu. The
force was under the command of Colonel Scott of the Gold
Coast Constabulary and consisted of some 450 men from the
West India Regiment, the Lagos and Gold Coast Hausa, and a
contingent of Ibadan warriors, with eleven British Officers.
They sailed down the lagoon in a small flotilla and landed at
Epe, whence after two days’ preparation they marched on
Ijebu Ode. The Ijebu, who had expected the landing at Itoiki
nearer their capital, were taken by surprise, but they resisted

the advance with determination in the thick forest through
which the Lagos force was making its way. A particularly
fierce engagement was fought at the crossing of the Yemoji
River, but after two and a half hours’ fighting there the in¬
vaders, with their rockets, Maxim gun, and three seven-
pounders, prevailed over the Ijebu with their Sniders, and seven
days after setting out from Lagos they entered the Ijebu
capital. After a further ten days the main force withdrew,
leaving behind a detachment of the Lagos Constabulary under
a British officer.
Carter’s decision to attack the Ijebu rather than the Egba,
who had caused the greater inconvenience in closing the in¬
terior roads, has been attributed in a recent study to the
influence of the Anglican and Protestant missionaries, who had
met with continuous rebuffs in their attempts to extend their
missions to Ijebu from the Awujale and his chiefs, strong con¬
servatives intent on maintaining the traditional isolation of
their state.^® The missionaries were right in their assessment of
the potential importance of Ijebu to their cause. After 1892, as
Ayandele shows, Ijebu supplanted Abeokuta as the leading
centre of missionary activity among the Yoruba.^®
Politically and economically, the Ijebu expedition trans¬
formed the whole situation in the interior. Not only was the
northern shore of the lagoon now brought under British control
but, as Johnson writes, ‘a shock of surprise and alarm’ was felt
throughout the land.i'^ The Egba (unaware that the Colonial
Office in London were demurring at proposals from the War
Office that operations should next be mounted against them)
reopened the Ogun to the traders’ canoes and barges and in¬
vited the Governor to visit Abeokuta. Encouraged by these
developments. Carter set out at the beginning of 1893 on his trek
through Yorubaland, accompanied by a posse of local soldiers.^®
He went first to Abeokuta, where he signed a treaty of trade
and friendship with the Egba. But the chiefs there successfully
resisted proposals for posting a Resident to their town and for
cessions of land for a railway linking Lagos with Ibadan, and
also obtained the inclusion in the treaty of a clause guarantee¬
ing their independence. From Abeokuta Carter continued to
Oyo, where he again made a treaty, here less favourable to the
local authorities, and thence to Ilorin, where he interviewed
the Emir. Turning south, the Governor had a series of meetings
near the Otin River with the leaders of the opposing war camps
of the Ilorin and the Ibadan, at which he succeeded in obtaining
O
their recognition of the Awere stream (near Erin, between

Ikirun and Offa) as the boundary between the territories of the
two towns and their agreement to the breaking-up of the camps.
By the end of March the Ibadan army had returned to its
town. Carter followed in its wake to Ibadan, where he was dis¬
appointed in his hopes of obtaining a treaty providing for the
posting there of a Resident. He then returned to Lagos, to
receive the plaudits of the merchants for his successful pacifi¬
cation of so wide an area. A few months later, in August 1893,
the Ibadan chiefs reopened negotiations with the Governor and,
after assurances that no interference with their government
was intended, agreed to a treaty with the British. Under this
their town was recognized as the administrative centre of the
larger part of the old Oyo kingdom and the chiefs now agreed to
provide land for the construction of a railway and to accept a
British Resident.^®
Thus ended the Sixteen Years’ War, and also the history of
the Yoruba states as independent political units. There re¬
mained the two problems of Ilorin and of French infiltration
into an area which, although still undemarcated, clearly
belonged under the Anglo-French agreements to the Lagos
hinterland. Despite Carter’s visit and the Emir’s protestations
of friendship, the Ilorin continued to harass the countryside,
and in 1894 Captain Bower, the Travelling Commissioner (and
later Resident) at Ibadan, established a camp on the River
Otin a little north of Ikirun in order to protect the area and to
demarcate the boundary between Ilorin and Ibadan. But still

the Ilorin were hostile, treating Bower roughly on a visit he
paid to their town and launching attacks during his absence in
1896 on the camp at Odo Otin. Ilorin now fell within the ter¬
ritory of the Koyal Niger Company, the chartered trading com¬
pany which preceded the establishment of the Protectorate of
Northern Nigeria. Carter sent many protests to London about
the Company’s supine attitude over the Ilorin situation, but
until they were pressed by the Colonial Office to take action the
Company showed little interest in asserting its rule in this part
of the huge area assigned to them. At last, in January 1897,
Goldie, the Governor of the Company, led out his troops from
Lokoja. Having first conquered Bida, the Nupe capital, he con¬
tinued to Ilorin. After overcoming a brief resistance the troops
entered the ruins of the city, which they had shelled and set on
fire. The Emir signed a treaty, agreeing to accept a frontier
with Lagos ‘as the Company shall decide’. Even now the Com¬
pany did not have the resources to bring about proper control
of the area, but for the future the Lagos Government was able
to complain about the behaviour of the Ilorin not to the Com¬
pany alone but more effectively to the West African Frontier
Force. This had been established in 1897 under Lugard in order
to check the French, one of whose expeditions from Dahomey
in January 1897 had for a time even occupied Kisi in the
extreme north of Yorubaland.^®
The settling of the Ilorin-Lagos boundary resulted in a large
number of Yoruba in the north-east corner of the old Oyo
kingdom and also most of the Igbomina and Kabba peoples to
the north of the Ijesa and Ekiti coming under the rule of the
Royal Niger Company and being included, from 1900, in the
Protectorate of Northern Nigeria. In independent Nigeria they
constituted a sort of irredenta in the Northern Region (at least
from the point of view of the Western Region), but since the
administrative rearrangements of May 1967 they have belonged
to the West Central State with its capital at Ilorin.
In 1893 the inhabitants of the Yoruba states stood on the
threshold of a wider polity and wider loyalties were offered
them. Though the ending of the Sixteen Years’ War, in shatter¬
ing Ibadan’s attempt to impose its own form of unity on the
country, had restored for a few years the independence of the
eastern kingdoms, this independence lost its meaning in the new
situation created by the peace which British rule brought about.
Shielded by foreign arms and power from the incursions of the
Dahomeans (whose capital was occupied by the French in this
same year) and the Fulani, and forbidden to engage in their
own internecine wars, the Yoruba were free to discover their
cultural unity within the new poUtical unity imposed upon
them, and in a few years were invited to share in an even wider
identification as Nigerians fellow-citizens, with the Hausa,
Kanuri, Ibo, Ijo, Edo, and the rest of Nigeria’s many different
peoples. Within a half-century this was to engender among the
educated a sense of belonging to a nation, the most populous
and one of the most important in Africa. It also led to the
assertion, within this wider context, of the linguistic, cultural,
and pohtical ties which give unity to the Yoruba of the different
kingdoms, the diverse ‘children of Oduduwa’. Time must show
which of these concepts, the national and the tribal, unhappily
often in rivalry, will prevail.
The British peace was paid for by a loss of political inde¬
pendence which lasted for sixty-four years. But in the history
of the Yoruba kingdoms the colonial period, and the longer
period covered by European penetration, are but a fraction,
though an important one. The dangers and uncertainties of the
present can be explained only by a study of the past which both
takes account of the rapid changes of the last hundred years
and goes beyond them to the earlier centuries when these king¬
doms flourished as the political framework within which the
ancestors of the Western Nigerians of today lived their fives
from generation to generation.
Notes
CHAPTER I
1. P. 65.
2. WRiGLEY (1960), p. 199. Thurston Shaw’s recent discovery of a
Stone Age habitation site near Akure has establislied the anti¬
quity of settlement in the Yoruba forest.
3. OLIVER and fage, p. 109. In the West Sudan, according to E.
W. Bovill (p. 127, n. 1), cowries ‘have been in continuous use as a
currency . . . since the eleventh century, and probably much
longer’.
4. See the discussion in OMER-COOPER (1964), especially pp. 105-8.
5. BOVILL, p. 119. John II of Portugal was allowed by the Pope in
1481 to style himself ‘Lord ol Guinea’.
6. Information from Denis Williams.
7. P. no.
8. KENYO, Chapters 1-3.
9. For an introduction to the oral history of the Yoruba and its
problems, see biobaku (1956).
10. This version of the myth may well qualify as the type of ‘Author¬
ized Version’ whose very coherence and wide acceptance are
somewhat suspect; see p. xi above.
11. These legends are given, according to an Oyp version, in Johnson,
Chapters I and II. But the Ife account of the Creation is that a
‘priest’ named Ojuma threw down earth which was spread by a
fowl (aderemi, p. 3; ademakinwa, p. 14), while idowu (p.
19) records a tradition that it was Orisa-nla who wrought the
earth.
12. Such views were first propagated by Leo Frobenius, who early in
the twentieth century drew attention to the art of Ife.
13. For example, by omer-cooper (1964), p. 104.
14. Johnson briefly discusses the possibility of an Egyptian origin
(pp. 6-7), but it is most fully developed and argued b}^ J. Olumide
Lucas (1948).
15. R. w. WESTCOTT, review of Lucas in JAH, II, 2 (1961), pp.
311-15, and also ‘Did the Yoruba Come from Egypt’, Odu, 4
190
NOTES 191
(n.d.); THURSTAN SHAW, Archaeology and Nigeria (1964), pp.
20, 23-^.
16. For example by Thurstan Shaw and G. Connah.
17. Blood-group maps of Africa are given, with important reserva¬
tions, by J. p. GARLiCK (1962), pp. 297-300.
18. Pp. 269-70.
19. LEWIS (1966), pp. 402-5.
CHAPTER II
1. The words He Ify have been translated as ‘the spreading (of

earth.’ But idowu (p. 20) writes that Ife means ‘that which is
wide’ and the prefix He (or suffix, as in Oyp ile and many other
place-names) signifies ‘original home’. Both versions could refer
here to the creation of the world at Ife.
2. For exceptions to this, especially the interesting case of Oba, a
small town near Akure, see H. B E i E R in Odu, 3 (n.d.) and idowu,
15-17.
3. For example, see burns, p. 25. r. e. dennett, in Nigerian
Studies (London, 1910), p. 19, describes the Oni as being ‘in much
the same position as the Archbishop of Canterbury in England’.
4. AKINJOGBIN (1965), p. 32. For a discussion of this view, see pp.
110-11 below.
5. Editor, .TEAS, 2 (1902-03), pp. 312-15. See also the Appendix
below. According to a chief at Ijebu Ode in February 1968 it is
unthinkable that the Awujale should have left his palace for this
reason.
6. See especially the article by the present (1967) Oni of Ife, Sir
Adesoji Aderemi, and also J. A. ademakinwa, passim, idowu
(pp. 23-7) gives an account of these myths which differs in several
respects. For example, he writes that Oduduwa was preceded
from heaven by Oreluere, whom he later found living in Ife as
leader of ‘a community of aboriginal people’.
7. ADEMAKINWA, Part II, p. 34. WILLETT (1967), pp. 210-11, n.
114, even suggests that the Ibo, who are sometimes called Igbo,
retain the name of the original population of Southern Nigeria’.
8. BEiER (1956b); Stevens.
9. The present Oni (aderemi, 1937) writes that the first Oba of
Benin from the Ife dynasty was Eweka, son of Oranyan and
grandson of Oduduwa. This agrees with Benin tradition as
related by Egharevba, pp. 6-9. Johnson (p. 7), however, describes
this first Oba as the third son of Oduduwa, without giving his
name.
10. WALSH.
11. BEIER, Odu, 3; AKINJOGBIN (1967).
12. JOHNSON, pp. 11, 24—5. This is supported by similar traditions in
Ketu (Parrinder (1956), p. 12, quoting Crowther) and Ij^bu Ode
(OL9TUFORE, February 1968).
13. KENYO, p. 9.
14. Personal communication from Mr J. A. Ademakinwa, March
1967. See also akinjogbin (1967).
15. Esmeralda de Situ Orbis, quoted by hodgkin, p. 94.
16. Quoted by HODGKIN, p. 96.
17. Pp. 25-8. Ryder mentions that ‘west’ and ‘east’ to the Bini
meant respectively ‘seaward’ - where the sun sets - and ‘inland’.
But it is unliliely that De Barros would use ‘east’ in this way.
18. ABIMBOLA, p. 21; GEORGE, p. 28; RYDER, pp. 36-7.
19. WILLETT (1967), p. 103.
20. WILLETT (1960), p. 244; willett (1967), p. 108.
21. G. J. A. OFO (1966b), pp. 61, 90, 91.
22. ADEREMI, p. 4.
23. There is a mystery about this head, since in 1950 it was dis¬
covered to be a copy made by modem methods, willett
(1960b) asserts (p. 238, n. 34) that the substitution must have
taken place between 1910 and 1934 when the head was brought
into the palace.
24. WILLETT (1967), passim.
25. WILLETT (1960b). An interesting comparison is made by John
Crook in ‘Ife Portraits and Roman Portraits’, Ibadan, 17 (1963).
26. WILLETT (1958), p. 33.
27. FAGG and willett (1960), p. 21. When Oliver Myers of the
University of Ife excavated the Obameri shrine in the town in
1965 he found a number of terra-cottas of the classical period
which had apparently been buried on this site only some hundred
years previously.
29. willett (1960b), p. 233; ryder, p. 30.
30. WILLETT (1967), pp. 22-3, 28-9, Plates 32, 33.
31. WILLETT (1967), pp. 64-6; willett (1960b), pp. 239-40.
32. See willett (1967), Chapters XIII and XIV, and williams
(1965).
33. WILLETT (1967), Plate 8 and pp. 51, 169, 172.
34. WILLETT (1967), pp. 154-5. williams (1967b), pp. 27-8. The
Ife casters prepared their cores and moulds with an admixture of
NOTES 193
charcoal, whereas the Benin and also other non-Ife Yoruba
casters added dung.
35. WILLETT (1967), pp. 20-1, 26-8, and Plate 2; also see willett
(1966).
36. WILLETT (1967), pp. 50, 58, 68-9.
37. WILLETT (1967), pp. 130-1.
38. WILLETT (1967), pp. 132, 149-51.
39. WILLIAMS (1967), pp. 11-13.
CHAPTER III
1. For the traditions and history of Qyp, see Johnson, passim. The
name ‘Katunga’ possibly derives from the Hausa katanga for a
compound wall or the Nupe tanga for a hamlet. For a recent visit
to the site of Oyo ile and a summary of information about it, see
Robert Smith and Denis Williams (1966). Frank Willet (1960)
has described his archaeological investigations there in 1956-7.
He concludes that the site traditionally known as Oyo ile is the
same as the Oyp visited by Clapperton and the Landers in the
first part of the nineteenth century, despite a slip in Clapperton’s
account of its longitude.
2. P. 60.
3. Letter XX, pp. 397-8.
4. See the discussion of chronology in Chapter 7 below.
5. For this period, see Robert smith (1965), pp. 57-77.
6. Ibid. p. 62.
7. Loc. cit. where it is suggested that Gbere should be identified
with Gbereburu, a remote hamlet twelve miles to the north of the
Mosi.
8. Notes in the files of the Yoruba Historical Research Scheme
(Oyp/l).
9. and J. lander, pp. 78-9. The American Baptist missionary
R.
W. H. Clarke gives an interesting account of his visit to Igboho in
1855 in his Travels and Explorations.
10. EGHAREVBA, p. 32; WEIR, Akure Intelligence Report (1934);
BRADBURY, p. 276.
11. JOHNSON, p. 168, assigns the appointment of this official, called
the Onisare, to the reign of Obalokun, which immediately fol¬
lowed that of Abipa who brought back the Oyo from Igboho.
MORTON-wiLLiAMS (1964a), p. 38, places it much later, m the
reign of Abiodun in the late eighteenth century.

12. JOHNSON, p. 169.

13. AKINJOGBIN (1966), p. 451, citing bosman, p. 396 and
BARBOT, p. 352.
14. NEWBURY, pp. 3-6; BERTHO, pp. 121-32. For the history of
Dahomey, see argyle, chapters I-III.
15. DALZEL, p. 59; akinjogbin (1963), pp. 562-3.
16. PARRiNDER (1956), p. 28; argyle, p. 25; norris, quoted by
HODGKIN, p. 169.
17. P. 174.
18. p. 173 and, for Awole’s suicide, p. 192. See also
JOHNSON,
pp. 12-13, and norris, quoted by hodgkin, p. 167.
DALZEL,
20. MORTON-wiLLiAMS (1964a), pp. 29, 40.
21. Ibid., pp. 30-31.
22. Pp. 38-9, and see note 11 above.
23. JOHNSON, p. 168. See also Clapperton’s description, pp. 135—8,
of the market at ‘Koolfo’.
24. ADAMS, pp. 221-2.
25. P. 178 and pp. 178-85 for the whole career of Gaha. Akinjogbin
(1966b), p. 4.54), n. 4, adduces documentary evidence for dating
Gaha’s advent to power as 1754.
26. AKINJOGBIN (1966), pp. 453-5.
27. WILLIAM MUTTER to African Committee, 27 May 1764 (T
70/31), quoted by akinjogbin (1966), p. 455.
28. Quoted by hodgkin, p. 167.
29. DALZEL, p. 157; akinjogbin (1966), 4.55.
30. ‘Ajase’ is the Yoruba and Adja name for Porto Novo, and if
Oyabi was stationed here his task was presumably to protect the
coastal interests of the kingdom. R. C. C. Law suggests, however,
tliat the Kakamfo was more likely to have been at Ajase in the
Igbomina district, south-east of Ilorin.
31. The second version is quoted by akinjogbin (1966) from a. l.
hbthersett, Iwe Kika Ekerin, pp. 63^. The date of the over¬
throw oi Gaha by Abiodun is established from Dalzel (quoted bv

hodgkin, p. 170), who refers to Gaha as ‘Ochenoo, the prime
minister’ (a garbled form of Osgrun, an alternative title for
Basgrun).
32. P. 183.
33. dalzel, p. 196.
34. AKINJOGBIN (1966), p. 458.
35. AKINJOGBIN (1965), p. 30.
36. DALZEL, p. 229.
NOTES 195
CHAPTER IV
1. FORDE, pp. 34-7.
2. Pp. 20-2.
3. KENYO, Chapter 5; Johnson, pp. 23-4; olajubu.
4. KENYO, pp. 74-5; other accounts name Ibokun as the first
settlement.
5. KENYO, p. 74 lists thirty-seven previous Qwa; an anonymous
article in the Daily Times (Lagos) listed thirty-nine, but main¬
tained that the present Owa was the forty-eighth to occupy the
throne.
6. P. 21.
7. KENYO, pp. 38, 65.
8. JOHNSON, p. 156, places the founding both of Ed? and Osogbo
in the reign of Alafin Kori, one of the pre-Igboho rulers. The

present Timi of Ede is accounted the twenty-sixth on the throne,
whereas only fifteen rulers are recollected as having reigned at
Osogbo, though six predecessors of Olarooye, the founder, are
said to have reigned at Ipole. See olugttnna, pp. 12-21, and
BEIR (1960).
9. P. 25.
10. P. 168.
11. KENYO, pp. 77-82; egharevba, p. 33.
12. P. 38.
13. JOHNSON, p. 23; ojo {Culture), pp. 125 (map), 126-9.
14. Pp. 14, 180. The kingship of Ado is examined also by Lloyd
(1960).
15. BRADBURY. Egharevba does not mention Ado under this reign,
but writes that Ewuare ‘fought against and captured 201 towns
and villages in Ekiti, Ikare, Kukuruku, Eka and the Ibo country
on this side of the river Niger’ (p. 14).
16. In his article in Odu (n.d.) the Ogoga writes, ‘Ikerre was the only
town in Ekiti Division which conquered almost every town,
village and hamlet in Ekiti, and itself was never conquered.’ It
sold its captives as slaves and did not trouble to make territorial
annexations. Its successes were due to the weapons which were
provided by Benin.
17. The following account of Akm? is based on Arifalo, supplemented
by Egharevba and Ogimtuyi. The name ‘Akure’ has been said to
signify ‘the land of two rivers’, although there is only one river
which encircles the town. Another explanation is that it refers to
the breaking (re) of the beads (akum) worn by the founding gba,
o
Asodeboyede, as he made his way through the bush. This illus¬

trates the difficulties which arise in the interpretation of Yoruba
place-names. A reliable and systematic study of the subject is
much needed.
18. Chapters III and IV.
19. EGHAREVBA, p. 33, asserts that the Deji’s title means ‘the
leopard killer’. Johnson, p. 22, lists the Akure title as Ajan-
panda.
20. ARIFALO, p. 22.
21. EGHAREVBA, p. 16.

22. EGHAREVBA, p. 32.
23. EGHAREVBA, p. 45-7.
24. D. WILLIAMS (1967a), p. 15.
25. For the history of Idanre, see Akindoju and Olagundoye, also
BRIDGES and the anonymous article in Nigeria Magazine, 46.
26. P. 60.
27. ojo (1966b), pp. 23-4, 64-6.
28. In addition, see the article on the Igogo festival in Nigeria
Magazine, 77 (1963); this is based on information from the Olowo
and a manuscript by Chief J. D. Akeredolu.
29. P. 15.
30. P. 24.
31. EGHAREVBA, pp. 33-4; ASARA, p. 10.
32. WILLETT (1967), pp. 180-1.
33. P. 37.
34. P. 25.
35. BEiR (1956), ‘passim.
36. KENYO, p. 49.
CHAPTER V
1. PARRiNDER (1947), p. 122; FORDE, pp. 42-7 and map.

2. PARRINDER (1947), pp. 125-6; forde, pp. 42-4; cornevin,
p. 56. In addition to the town of the Ijesa, there is at least one
other Ilesa in Yorubaland, that lying on the Dahomean frontier
north of Saki.
3. NEWBURY, pp. 7-10; PARRINDER (1947), p. 124.,
4. CORNEVIN, pp. 48-9, 89.
5. PARRINDER (1956), p. 12 andpussfui. Parrinder makes much use

of the work of Dunglas and Moulero.
6. PARRINDER (1956) spells this name ‘Sho-ipashan’ (see his dis¬
cussion on page 11).
NOTES 197
7. PAERiNDER (1956) writes that Sopasan was buried at Oke Oyan
(which he spells ‘Oke-Awyan’) and Owe at Aro in the Ogun
shrine there.
8. PARRINDER (1956), pp. 16-17.
9. See PARRINDER (1956), pp. 21-2, 76-7, and ajayi and smith,
p. 27 and Plan 1.
10. ojo (1966a), p. 53.

11. ARGYLE, Chapter II, especially p. 24; parrinder (1956), pp.
31-5.
12. PARRINDER (1956), p. 12.
13. MOULERO, passim, cornevin, pp. 51-6, based on Couchard,
Dunglas, and Moulero; also see J. o. george, pp. 23-4.
14. PARRINDER (1947), p. 126: fordE, p. 42 and map; cornevin,
pp. 156-8, based on Palau-Marti.
CHAPTER VI
1. P. 59.
2. Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, quoted by hodgkin, p. 92.
3. Quoted by hodgkin, p. 173.
4. Described by lloyd (1961).
5. Pp. 171-2.
6. LLOYD (1959), p. 20, and lloyd (1961), p. 7.
7. OGUNBA (1965).
8. OGUNKOYA, p. 54.
9. OGUNBA (1964).
10. See LLOYD (1957).
11. Recorded by the Bada of Saki in an account of Oyo history in the
files of the Yoruba Historical Research Scheme.
12. Pp. 174, 179.
13. P. 24.
14. P. 311.
15. LLOYD (1960b), p. 60. This is presumably based on Snelgrave’s
reference (pp. 148-9) to an attack by the Dahomeans on the
‘Yahoo’, who lived ‘far inland’ and retreated ‘among then-
mountains and woods’. It is conceivable that the ‘Yahoo’ were
Ijebu, but Dalzel (pp. xvii, 59) thought that they were the
people of Mahin.
16. P. 136. Kulfo is forty miles south-west of Kontagora.
17. Pp. 18-19.
18. AJISAFE, Chapter 6; Biobaku, Chapter I and map, p. 129.
19. P. 3!
20. Pp. 17-18.

21. PAEBINDER (1956), p. 12.
22. P. 8.
23. AJISAFE, p. 14.
24. BIOBAKU, p. 9; AKINJOGBIN (1966), p. 458.
25. Short History of 1 lor in, p. 13. For the evidence on which 1796 is
preferred to the Bada’s dating of Lisabi’s revolt to 1810, see
Chapter 10.
26. P. 10.
27. AJISAFE, pp. 45-9.
28. P. 206.
29. This section is partly based on Z. A. Egbeola’s unpublished
MS.
30. MORTON-WILLIAMS (1964a), pp. 30-1, 40-2.
31. JOHNSON, pp. 226-7; lander (1832), p. 62
32. P. 226.
33. NEWBURY, pp. 30-2 and Figure 2.
34. See verger (1959) for examples of the use of the name.
35. HODGKIN, p. 93.
36. HODGKIN, p. 173.
37. Quoted by verger (1959), p. 346.
38. BURNS, pp. 33-4, mainly based on J. B. Wood; Losi.
39. P. 30.
40. Pp. 25-6.
41. P. 46.
42. EGHAREVBA, pp. 30-1; BRADBURY, p. 285.
43. See morton-williams (1964a), p. 30.
44. EGHAREVBA, p. 34. I have not been able to find the River
Aghan, where the Oba met his death, on any map.
45. EGHAREVBA, pp. 47-8; BURNS, pp. 35, 38. TALBOT (Vol. I, p.
68) claims that tribute was paid to Benin until Lagos became a
British colony in 1861.
46. The estimate was made by Freeman, the Wesleyan missionary,
about 1844 and is quoted by newbury, p. 56, n. 1.
CHAPTER VII
1. For the origin of the Yoruba, see, for example, biob aku (1955);
for speculation about the aborigines, see beier {Odu, 3).
2. References to settlers who had preceded the emigrants from Ife
may be found in the descriptions of the legends of foundation at
Ado, Ekiti, Akur?, Ij?bu, Ileâ, Ketu, Ondo, Qwp, 0y<?, and
NOTES 199
Sabe; there is also the account at If? of the Igbo whom Oduduwa
found living there.
3. The word ‘lineage’ is not used here in the technical sense of
anthropology.
4. LLOYD (1960).
5. For example, willett (1967), p. 125.
6. BIOBAKTJ (1957), p. 2.
7. WILLETT (1960).
8. The Esekhurhe had the tasks of memorizing the dynastic list and
of performing sacrifices to every previous Oba during the annual
Ugigun rites; see bradbury (1959), p.p. 267-8.
9. For general observations on the use of king-lists for the measure¬
ment of time, see mccall. Chapter 8.
10. AKINJOGBIN (1966), p. 454.
11. It has been suggested (for example, by crowder, pp. 60-1) that
the conquest of Qyo by the Nupe was achieved during the time of
Tsoede, the semi-legendary founder of the Nupe kingdom, which
now has its capital at Bida. Tsoede is usually held to have
flourished during the middle or latter part of the sixteenth
century, so that this affords some support for the dating of the
abandonment of Oyp he by Onigbogi. See Robert smith
(1965), p. 74, n. 50.
12. Taking the accessions of James I (1603), George III (1760), and
William IV (1830) as starting-points and the accession of H. M.
Queen Elizabeth II (1952) as terminal point, average lengths of
reign of 21-8, 24, and 20-3 years are obtained, giving dates for the
establishment of the Norman kings in England (1066) of 1102,
1016, and 1161.
13. Average lengths of reign for the Nupe, Zamfara, and Bakuba
work out at 13, 12-3, and 15-6 respectively.
14. BRADBURY (1959) also obtained his own version of the list from
the current holder of the office of Esekhurhe.
15. BRADBURY, p. 285.
16. These difficulties in the averaging method were pointed out by
R. C. C. Law in a private communication.
CHAPTER VIII
1. The institutions of the Yoruba kingdoms are described in this

chapter in the past tense, since this is an historical work, and the
traditional system of government has in any case been largely
superseded. Nevertheless, much survives, though iii attenuated

form.
2. GODDARD, poasm.
3. HILL, p. 302.
4. The term (hi refers to the living family, excluding ancestors. For
the ‘system’, see Akinjogbin (1966b), p. 451. Akinjogbin (1965)
describes the sending of the sword from Ife as ‘The most important
ceremony at the coronation of any Alafin’, a view which is not
held at Oyo. Other oba, for example the Awujale of Ijebu, have
state ‘swords of justice’, but none of these swords seem to have
any connection with Ife.
5. OGUNTUYI, p. 118.
6. See Ojo (1966a), pp. 126-9. The word ‘Bale’ {oba He, ‘head of the
land’) must be distinguished from ‘bale’ (gba ile, ‘head of the
house’).
7. OJO (1966b), pp. 63-6.
8. JOHNSON, pp. 68, 75-7; moeton-williams (1967), p. 40.
9. Much of this section derives from lloyd (1960a).
10. AJiSAFE, pp. 103-4. There is a royal family of Egba Gbagura.
11. JOHNSON, pp. 149, 159; snelgrave, p. 135.
12. OGUNTUYI, p. 91.
13. Pp. 40-69; morton-williams (1967), passim.
14. JOHNSON, pp. 70-72. See also morton-williams (1960) and
(1964b).
15. AJISAFE, pp. 27-8; biobaku (1956b).
16. morton-williams (1964b), p. 253; morton-williams
(1967), pp. 42, 53.
17. AJISAFE, pp. 27, 29-30.
18. BIOBAKU (1957), p. 6.

19. ADEGORIQLA, paSsim.
20. The word ‘people’ in Yoruba presents some difficulty. In the
sense of ‘all men’ it is omo araiije, ‘children of the world’. The
word ‘Yoruba’ for the whole linguistic group has been in use for
only about a century and is still not always understood m that
sense; historically it only applies to the inhabitants of the Oyp
kingdom. In the cases of the people of a kingdom and sub¬
kingdom (for example, Egba, Remo), the names connote the
inhabitants as well as the political and physical division. The
name of a town is also applied to its people, though they are more
usually described as its ‘children’ or ‘relatives’; for example, onio
Oyo, a man belonging to and born in Oyg, and ara Oyo, a man of
Oyp though not necessarily born there - the distmction between
NOTES 201
these is not, however, strictly observed. (Based on information
from Mr Wande Abimbpla.)
21. roRDE, pp. 10-27.
22. Little attention has been paid to this aspect of Yoruba society,
but see forde, pp. 26-7.
23. CLAPPBRTON, pp. 25, 28, 39; lander (1832), pp. 91-2.
CHAPTER IX
1. Review by Beatrice Olympio oIcornevin’s Histoire de Daho¬

mey in Etudes Dahomeenes, No. 2, June 1964.
2. Johnson deals with warfare at pp. 131-7; his account seems to
derive mainly from the Ibadan army in the nineteenth-century
rather than from Qyp in its heyday. See also ajayi and
SMITH, passim, for the nineteenth-century evidence.
3. See JOHNSON, pp. 73-5, 131-7, 169. Johnson (p. 75) lists Afpnja
of Ilprin as the sixth Kakamfo, yet ascribes the appointment of
the first to the reign of Alafin Ajagbo (pp. 74, 169); this implies
that the office was not in continuous existence, appomtments
being made only in times of emergency. Morton-Williams (1967),
p. 57, suggests that the office was created only in the early
eighteenth century. The etymology of the title is obscure.
4. AJAYI and smith, p. 65; ajayi (1965b), passim.
5. P. 56.
6. Pp. 11-16 (HODGKIN, p. 167).
7. P. 57.
8. ajayi and smith, pp. 133, 139.
9. Pp. 397-8.
10. SNELGRAVE, p. 56; DALZEL, pp. 12 f.
11. CLAPPERTON, p. 34; AJAYI and SMITH, pp. 15-16, 134-5.
12. See ROBERT smith (1967), passm.
13. SNELGRAVE, p. 56; LANDER, p. 80.
14. For example, the Ashanti and the Dahomeans were using guns
probably before the end of the seventeenth century, and the
latter even acquired a few cannon in the eighteenth century.
15. OGUNTUYI, pp. 27-8.
16. SNELGRAVE, p. 56.
17. LANDER (1830), ii, p. 222; Johnson, p. 208.
18. AJAYI and smith, pp. 17-21.
19. JOHNSON, pp. 357, 415.
20. AJAYI and smith, p. 134.
21. CLAPPEBTON, p. 2; LANDER, p. 69 : JOHNS ON, p. 160;ROBEET

SMITH, (1967), pp. 100-3.
22. For example, at Erin, near Iseyin (see smith (1964), p. 25) and
Oke Amo (see ojo (1966a), pp. 149-50). As regards the building
of these walls, Clapperton’s description of the work which he saw
going forward on the walls of Bussa in Borgu would probably
apply to Yoruba practice. He writes (p. 98): ‘Bands of male and
female slaves, accompanied by drums and flutes and singing in
chorus, were passing to and from the river with water, to mix the
clay they were buildmg with. Each great man has his part of the
wall to build, like the Jews when they built the walls of Jerusalem,
everyone opposite his own house.’
23. AJAYi and smith, pp. 23-8.
24. AJAYI and smitm, passim.
25. P. 131.
26. Pp. 121-2.
27. AJAYI and smith, pp. 27-8, 136-7. In the Kiriji war the
quarters in the Ibadan camp had mud walls and thatch roofs,
whereas the Ekiti Parapq at Oke Mesi constructed their quarters
ofbamboo and leaves; see JOHNSON, p. 552. For the Dahomean
camps, with their thatched quarters ‘resembling bee-hives’, see
SNELGRAVE, pp. 28-9.
28. SNELGRAVE, pp. 56, 121-2; JOHNSON, p. 263.

29. JOHNSON, p. 222; ajayi and smith, pp. 33-6.
30. ajayi and smith, pp. 138-9; stone. Chapter XVIII.

32. DALZBL, pp. 183-4. For the Ijebu war canoes, see Osifekunde in
CURTIN (1967), p. 287. clapperton (p. 2) notes that the
Yoruba mounted cannon in the prows of their canoes, as did the
warriors of the creeks farther east (thus taking advantage of an
excellent natural means of absorbing the recoil).
33. SNELGRAVE, pp. 57-8.
34. P. 62.
35. This paragraph is based on ajayi and smith, pp. 50-3, 127-8.
CHAPTER X
1. See ALLISON {Odu, 4), bascom (1960), and morton-

wiLLiAMS (1964a).
2. Clapperton was told at ‘Puka’ (Ipokia, near Badagry) that Oyo
was thirty days’ journey irom there (p. 4), information which
proved to be entirely reliable.
NOTES 203
3. Quoted by hodgkin, pp. 171-2. This report has never been
confirmed.
4. CLAPPERTON (1829); LANDER (1832).
5. CLAPPERTON, p. 13; HODGKIN, p. 223.
6. LANDER (1832), p. 76. ‘Chaadoo’ is unidentified and presumably
one of the numerous towns and villages which were abandoned m

the wars. It w'as about a day’s journey south-west of Saki.
7. CLAPPERTON, pp. 13-14, 26-7 (HODGKIN, p. 223); for Kusu see
(1965), p. 65.
also R. SMITH
8. LANDER (1832), pp. 61, 71.
9. CLAPPERTON, pp. 4, 39, 56.
10. CLAPPERTON, pp. 35-6, 48, 58-9.
11. LANDER (1830), pp. 197-9.
12. See R. SMITH and d. williams (1966), p. 60, n. 1 and also d.
WILLIAMS (1966); for Qyp pottery, see willett (1960a). It has
been suggested that the numerous stone figures at Esie, near
Ilprin, were brought from Oyo ile.
13. CLAPPERTON, pp. 24-5.
14. CLAPPERTON, p. 31; (1832), p. 80.

LANDER
15. AKINJOGBIN (1965), 27-9; (1966), p. 458.

pp.
16. MORTON-WILLIAMS (1967), pp. 36, 43.

17. BiOBAKD (1957), p. 13. Islam seems to have been introduced
into Yorbuland in the eighteenth century.

18. JOHNSON, pp. 188-268.
19. This is probably the village of Iwere about ten miles west of Oke
Iho in the hfil-country of the upper Ogun.
20. AKINJOGBIN (1965), pp. 34-5.
21. The identification is made in Johnson (p. 210). Lander confirms
that the same man was Alafin in 1830 as in 1826 and 1827 (p. 92).
AKINJOGBIN (1966) writes (p. 82) that ‘there is no basis at all
yet known, either in linguistics or in tradition, for equating

Majotu with “Manshola” ’ - the latter being the name given to the
ruler of Oyp by Lander, though he spells it ‘Mansolah’. Yet
Akinjogbin’s chronology, following these remarks, supports the
identification, which does seem to fit best with other known
facts. Chief Ojo, Bada of Saki, has suggested, however, that it
was either Ampdo, Majotu’s successor, or Oluewu who was on
the throne when Clapperton visited Oyo (Iwe Itan Qyo, pp. 77-8;
Short History of llorin, p. 297). clapperton (p. 49) writes that
Majotu’s predecessor had been ‘murdered by one of his own sons:
not the present king’. Johnson suggests (p. 87) that Abiodun was
poisoned by his Arpmo, and it would be possible for Majotu to
have been a younger son and successor of Abipdun were it not

for the intervening reign of Awole who seems more likely to have
been Majotu’s father. Majotu, according to Johnson (p. 216),
was remarkable for having died a natural death, as the result of
an influenza-type epidemic, which seems to rule out the identi¬
fication of Ampdo as ‘Mansolah’.
22. JOHNSON, pp. 199-200.
23. CROWTHER (1852), pp. iv-vii.
24. CURTIN (1967), p. 212.
26. JOHNSON, p. 199. MARTIN, pp. 20-27.
27. It is uncertain when and how the official recognition of the

Emirate took place - whether the flag, the symbol of recognition,
was bestowed first on Alimi or on Abdussalami, whether this was
bestowed by the ruler of Sokoto or of Gwandu, and in what vear
this took place. But it is clear that Ilprin belonged to the Gwandu,
or western, side of the Fulani empire. See hogben and kirk-
green e, pp. 122, 292, 294.
28. JOHNSON, pp. 206-12.
29. JOHNSON, p. 223: BIOBAKU (1957), pp. 13-14. See also the
narrative of the former slave Joseph Wright in curtin (1967),
pp. 317-33.
30. For Crowther’s narrative, see curtin (1967), pp. 289-316.
32. It is probable that it was from a horse-fair in this town that the
Qyp cavalry obtained thefr mounts; see r. smith (1967), p. 90,
11.13. The village marked on maps as ‘Ogudu’ on the Niger twenty
miles below Jebba may well be the same place.

33. JOHNSON, pp. 260-1. But the bad a of saki, pp. 22-3, ascribes
the victory to the warriors of Saki in combmatiou with the
Borgu.
34. The term may possibly be a Yoruba word for ‘king’; cf. ‘Elewe’.
The Borgu ruler who welcomed the exiled Alafin Onigbogi into his
country is also described as ‘Eleduwe’ (p. 41 above). For the con¬
nection with Nilvki, see h o g b e n and k i r k - G r e e n e, pp. 290,580.
35. JOHNSON, 262-3.
36. HOGBEN and kirk-greene, p. 580.

38. See R. smith (1965), pp. 64, n. 23 and 72.
39. See akinjogbin (1966a), p. 86, for his chronology. Asemmar on
Yoruba chronology in this period was held at the University of
Ibadan in 1965.
NOTES 205
40. SCHON and crowther (1842), pp. 317-18; crowther (1852),
Introductory Remarks.
42. CLAPPERTON, pp. 24-5, 28.
43. CLAPPERTON, pp. 39, 41.
44. LANDER (1832), pp. 87, 91-2.
45. LANDER (1832), p. 79, makes a much greater error in \vritmg

that ‘Bohoo’ (Igboho) ceased to be capital of Oyp only ‘about half
a century ago’, whereas the Alafin had returned from there two
ceirturies or more before 1830.
46. SCHON and crowther (1842), pp. 317-18; crowther (1852),
pp. V, vi.
47. Akinjogbin’s dating of Abiodun’s death as 1789 (akinjogbin

(1963a), p. 257, and akin.togbin (1965), p. 30) is based on a
reference in a French officer’s letter to the death of the ‘Roy des
Ailliots’. MORTON-WILLIAMS (1967), p. 66, adheres to 1810 as
the approximate date of the Alafin’s death and suggests that the
1789 reference may be to Abiodun’s Bebe or jubilee celebration.
48. AKINJOGBIN (1966a), p. 82.
49. JOHNSON, pp. 207, 209.
50. The date of the fall of Kesi derives from Thomas King, an Egba
member of the Church Missionary Society, and that of Ikereku
from the journal of the missionary Irving, in the Church Missionary
Intelligencer, ii, (1856), p. 70. Irving’s informant was a ‘Mr Barber,
native cate chist at Ibadan’. Barber had taken part in the siege of
Ikereku and remembered it as having occurred in the year before
he was liberated from slavery at Sierra Leone, which he knew to
bo 1827.
51. P. 206.
53. AKINJOGBIN (1966a), p. 84. See also argyle, p. 38.
54. See lloyd (1960c), p. 26. The main influx from the northern Oyp
was to a belt on the edge of the rain forest, lying between
Ogbompsp to the north and Ibadan to the south.
CHAPTER XI
1. See AJAYi and smith (1964), passim.

2. PP., 1865, QQ 2165-6.
3. For example, see burns, p. 27.
4. AJAYI and smith, pp. 51-2.
5. For examples, see Johnson, pp. 321-4, and biobakh (1957), p.

34.
6. The reaction against this explanation seems to be first found in
BIOBAKU (1957), pp. 94, 96.
7. The Twenty Years' Crisis 1919-1939, London, 1958, p. 97.
8. For the government of Ibadan, see Johnson, pp. 94, 636-67.
For the history of Ibadan, see akinyble, blgee, and awe
(1964, 1965).
9. JOHNSON, pp. 305-07; for Oluwple, see biobaku in dike (ed.).
10. AJiSAFE, pp. 48-9, 102; biobaku (1957), p. 52.
11. BURTON (1863), pp. 275-8 (hodgkin, p. 278).
12. BIOBAKU (1957), pp. 5-6, 21-2.
13. AJAYi and smith, p. 67. For Ijaye, see also stone, bowen,
and SMITH (1962).
14. JOHNSON, pp. 279-83; smith (1965); pp. 415-16 and 416, n. 3;
ojo (1966b); morton-williams (1967), p. 45.
15. P. 282.
16. There is a graphic description of the battle in Johnson, pp.
285-9. See also ajayi and smith. Part I, Chapter 5.
18. JOHNSON, pp. 294-6.
19. JOHNSON, pp. 317-21; awe (1964), pp. 48-50.

20. Compare maps 2 and 3.
21. AWE (1964), passim. See also d. j. may. For the Ekiti ajele, see
OGUNTUYI, pp. 46, 61.
22. For this war, see Johnson, pp. 331-54: biobaku (1957),
Chapter 6. ajayi and smith. Part I, Chapter 8, and Part II,
passim.
25. ARGYLE, passim, and especially Chapter 5.
26. ARGYLE, p. 82.
27. AJISAFE, p. 82, though argyle (p. 87) quotes Foa’s suggestion
that women were first used as soldiers only in 1851.
28. AJISAFE, pp. 96-7; ajayi and smith. Part I, Chapter 6.
29. JOHNSON, pp. 362-3; ajisafb, pp. 133-4.
30. JOHNSON, p. 455; parrinder (1956), chapters 8 and 9.
31. egharevba, pp. 44-7; oguntuyi, pp. 36^1.
32. For KOSQKO, see biobaku in dike (ed.), also the genealogical
table of the Lagos kings in burns, p. .301.
33. AJAYI (1961); see also burns and nbwbury for the British
in Lagos.
NOTES 207
34. See dik e (1966) for an account of Beecroft.
35. For references to earlier views and a re-examination, see ajayi
(1961).
36. AJAYI (1961), p. 97.
37. NEWBURY, Chapters III and IV.
38. ROBINSON and Gallagher, p. 36.
39. BURTON (1863b), pp. 212-13 and 216-17 (hodgkin, p. 281).
Burton was appointed to his post in March 1861, but did not sail
to take up appointment until the following August, so he was not
an eye-witness of this ceremony.
40. HARGREAVES (1963), pp. 58-61.
41. For Glover, see biobaku (1957), Chapter 7, and mcintyre,
'passim.
CHAPTER XII
1. For the missionary role in the creation of Nigeria, see cole man
(1958), Chapter 4, and ajayi (1965) and ayandele (1966),
passim. For the partition of West Africa, see robinson and
GALLAGHER (1961), especially Chapter XIII, and Har¬
greaves (1963). The latter includes the part played by the
European and other traders, which has otherwise been somewhat
neglected.
2. AYANDELE, p. 29.
3. For this war, see the detailed account in Johnson, Chapters
XXIII-XXXIV, and also awe (1965),passim, and ayandele.
Chapter, 2.
4. Governor Glover’s sketch map of the trade routes to the interior
from Lagos is reproduced in biobaku (1957) as map 4. For the
Ondo Road, also see ayandele, pp. 33-5. The southern end
of the road was the scene of fierce fighting with the ‘Biafrans’ in
August 1967.
5. JOHNSON, pp. 415-16.
6. JOHNSON, pp. 427-36; ajayi and smith. Part I, Chapter 8.
7. JOHNSON, pp. 232-3.
8. Personal communication from MRS b. awe.
9. P. 478.
10. ROBINSON and Gallagher, p. 387, n. 2.
11. For the text of the treaty, see Johnson, pp. 627-32.
12. AWE (1965), p. 230.
13. The use of the term ‘Protestant’ to include Anghcans seems
regrettably unavoidable in this context.
14. For the text of this treaty, see Johnson, pp. 574-6. Johnson
was himself a witness to both this and the 1886 peace treaty.
15. AYANDELE, pp. 54-68.
16. Pp. 68-9.
17. P. 623.
18. The Lagos Constabulary, often called the ‘Lagos Hausas’, who
provided this escort, descended from the force raised in 1863 by
Glover from the runaway slaves who had sought his protection in
Sierra Leone in 1858 and later that year accompanied him on his
return march from Lagos to Jebba. Probably not all those with
Glover were Hausa and of the forty ‘Hausa’ Constables who
accompanied Lugard in 1894—95, ten were in fact Yoruba
{Diaries, ed. perham and bull, Vol. 4, p. 96).
19. For the texts of these 1893 treaties with Abeokuta, Gyp, and
Ibadan, see Johnson, Appendix A.
20. For the subjugation of Ilprin and the aftermath, see flint.
Chapters 10, 11, and 13. The West African Frontier Force was
composed of units from Britain’s four West African colonies.
Appendix ■ Crowned Qba
The Oni of Ife visited Lagos in 1903 at the invitation of the Governor,
Sir William MacGregor, to give his ruling to the Governor and the
members of his Central Native Council (a body mainly representative
of Lagos and the Colony) on the complaint of the Akarigbo of Ijebu
Remo against the wearing of a crown by the Elepe, another ruler in
Ijebu Remo. Sitting with his back to the Council, the Oni stated that
only the following oba were entitled to the crowns with beaded
fringes which were conferred by his predecessors at Ife and which
usually denote membership of the house of Oduduwa):
1. Alake of Abeokuta
2. Olowu of Owu (Abeokuta)
3. Alafin of Oyo
4. Oba of Ado (Benin?)
5. Osemawe of Ondo
6. Awujale of Ijebu Ode
7. Alara of Ara (Ekiti)
8. Ajero of Ijero (Ekiti)
9. Orangun of Ila
10. Owa of Ilesa
11. Alaye of Efpn (Ekiti)
12. Olojudo of Iddo (Ekiti)
13. Olosi of Osi (Ekiti)
14. Ore of Otun (Ekiti)
15. Akarigbo of Ijebu Remo
16. Alaketu of Ketu
17. Elekole of Ikole (Ekiti)
18. OlpwQ of OwQ
19. Ewi of Ado (Ekiti)
20. Oloko (or Osile) of Oko (Abeokuta)
21. Alagura (or Agura) of Gbagvrra (Abeokuta)
The total of twenty-one titles in this list of 1903 compares with the
fortv-one claimants to Ife crowns in 1966, recorded on the map of
209
ilu alade in G. J. A. Ojo’s Yoruba Culture,^ which omits no. 4, the

‘Oba of Ado’. It is not clear which Ado was meant by the Qni as
the Ewi of Ado Ekiti is listed as no. 19, hut probably he was referring
to Benin. A notable omission is that of the Onisabe of Sabe, perhaps
because this kingdom was believed to he extinct. The order in the
list follows that given in the report of the meeting of the Council.®
1. P. 125.
2. Editor, JRAS, Vol. 2, No. VII (1903).
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Index
Abdussalami (Hausa form of Abd Agp Iwoye, 76

al-Salam), Emir of Ilprin, 142-3. Agp Qja, later New Qyp, 145, 152, 160
145, 151 Agura, ruler of Egba Agura (Gbagura),
Abfokuta, 5gba capital, 72, 81-2, 109, 81-2
155-6, 158-74,176-7, 183-4,186-7 ‘Agusale’ river (Oûn?), 75
foundation of, 152, 154, 158 Ahori people (HoUi), 66, 70, 87
Dahomean attacks on, 166-7 Afro, 0?emawe, 64-5
ifolf riots at, 174 Alyetoro community, 64
British treaty with (1893), 186-7 Aiyetoro, Egbado, 87
Abfweila, Qni, 22 Aja, see Adja
abidagba (sons born to a reigning king), Ajagbo, Alafin, 42, 79
78, 112 Ajaka, Alafin, 33-4
Abipdun, Alafin, 48-50, 84, 87, 136, Ajaka (Ajibogun, Obokun), founder of
138-40, 146, 149, 151 Ijpsa kingdom, 52-5, 64
Abipa, Alafin, 38-9, 41, 102-3 Ajalprun, ruler of Ijpbu If?, 76
Abiri, near Ife, 27 Ajalake, Alake, 83
Abomey, capital of Dahomey, 4, 9, 43, Ajanlapa, Qyp warrior, 37
71 Ajanpanda, Ajapanda, see Deji
aborigines, 17-19, 33, 53, 57-9, 65, ba- Aja??, Igbomlna, 48
9, 72, 77-8, 98-9 Ajas? Ipo, see Porto Novo
Aboto, 178 Ajayi, J. F. A., 159, 163, 170
abgbaku (those who must die with an Ajero, ruler of Ijero, 56
Alafin), 88 Ajpbu, a founder of Ijpbu Ode, 77
Adams, Captain J., 75, 90-1, 133, 168 ajflf, Oyp and Ibadan official, 45, 50,
Adebp, Alafin, 140, 141, 149, 151 60, 84, 108-9, 162-3, 178, 180
Adegbede, Alaketu, 103 Ajiboyede (§opasan), Alafin, 37, 39
Adele, Qba of Lagos, 140, 163, 169 Aji?afp, A. K., 81
Adelu, Alafin, 163-4 Akanbi (son of Oduduwa?), 18
Ademakinwa, J. A., 20 Akarigbo, ruler in Ijpbu Kpmp (for-
Adimu, 19, 100 merely of Ofin), 16, 76
Adja people, 42 Ake, 82, 100
Adjinakou (Qyp chief?), 73 Akinjogbin, I. A., 47-9, 84, 108, 136,
Adjongou, $abe chief, 71 139, 148, 150-1, 153
Ado, Egbado, 46, 87, 108, 173 Akinsempyln, Qba of Lagos, 94
Egba siege of, 166 Akltoye, Qba of Lagos, 94, 169-70
Ado Ekitl, town and kingdom, 56-9, ako effigies at Qwp, 28
100, 112, 124, 168 Akoko, district and people, 54, 61-2
Adunbi^yf, near Iwo, If^ army at, 150-1 Akran, ruler at Badagry, 89
afin, see palaces Akurp, 65, 59-60, 100, 134, 167
Afpnja, Kakamfo, 119, 140-2, 149, 151 Alafin, ruler of Qyp, 15, 21, 32-50, 84
Africa, partition of, 176 108-10, 112
scramble for, 9, 176, 184 Alaiyemore, Qni, see Obalufon II
Agaja, king of Dahomey, 43, 70 Alalumon, hunter, 68
Aganju, Alafin, 34-6 Alake, ruler of Egba Alake, 82, 159
Agbadaye, ruler of Igbadaye, 53 Alaketu, ruler of Ketu, 68, 103
Agbaje war, 86, 159 Ali, Hausa Balogun of Ilprin, 161
Agbolaje, Alafin, 47, 79 All Eisami of Borgu, former slave 141
Ag?mo cult, 78 148-9, 161
218
INDEX 219
Aliml (SahU), 141 Badagry (Badagri), port and city-state,
Allada, see Ardra 18, 47, 49, 71, 87, 89, 94, 110, 128,
Amapetu, ruler of Mahin, 64, 81 133-4, 165, 166, 169, 173
Amaro, see BrazUians BaJp, village head, 117
Amazons, Dahomean women warriors, Balogun, war chief, 120
166 Bara, royal mausoleum at Qyp, 104,160
Amgdo, Alafin, 145, 152 Barros, J. de, 21-2
Amunisan, ruler in Ij^bu R^mp, 76 Bapprun, chief, 38, 44, 115, 120, 146
Amuniwaiye, Alafin, 47 Batpdo war, 162-3
Anago, 87 Beecroft, Consui J., 169-70
Ande, Alaketu, 69 Beni Hillal, 7
Anglo-African, The, Lagos newspaper, Beni SuUaim, 7
156 Benin (Edo), town and kingdom, 4, 18,
Anglo-French agreements (1889, 1890, 20-1, 41, 44, 46, 65, 68-9, 62-3,
1891), 184, 187 75, 92-4, 100, 104-6, 111, 124,
Anglo-Portuguese treaty (1810), 168 167-8, 174
Apomu, 139, 143 art and antiquities of, 21-2, 28-30
Arakpnga battle, 163, 165 Benin and Biafra, Bight of, British con¬
Ardra (Allada) kingdom, 35, 42, 43, 46, sulate of, 169-70
49, 122, 134 Benue valley, 99
Arp Qna Kakamfo, general {see also Bprp (thatching) festival at Qyp, 70,
Afpnja, Kimmml, Qyabi, and 110, 114
Toyeje), 121, 139 Berlin Conference (1884-5), 184
Arpmp, eldest son of Alafin, 45, 112, Bida, Nupe-Fulanl capital, 188
114, 160 Bini (Edo), people of Benin {see also
Arifalo, S. O., 59-60 Benin), 60-1, 79
Arisu, Ijpbu leader, 77 Biobaku, S. O., 82-5, 100, 152, 161
armies, Yoruba, see warfare Borgu (Ibariba), people and kingdoms,
Aro, 68 33-6, 39, 42, 60, 72, 84, 112, 134,
Aromlrp, 92 136, 138, 146-7, 153
Ashanti, kingdom and people, 4, 47, 71 Bornu emirate, 3, 5
Apamu, Basorun, 84, 138-9, 151 Bosman, W., 35, 122
Apara, Chief M. B., 62-3, 102 Bower, Captain R. L., 187-8
Aperu, Benin chief, 92 Bradbury, R. E., 93, 104-6
A?ipa, Qyp chief, 38, 92, 146 Brazilians, Brazilian influence, repat¬
Apodeboyê, ruler of Akurp, 59 riates (Amaro), 168-9
‘Assula’, 148 British contacts and influence, 3, 52, 89,
Ata, Ewi, 58 94, 162, 155, 157, 169-74, 176-7,
Atakpame, Togoland, 48 180-1
Atakunmasa, (?wa, 65 Burton, Sir R., 129, 157, 159, 172
Atiba, Alafin, 112, 120, 146-7, 152, Bussa, town, people, and kingdom of
160-1, 163, 165 Borgu, 36, 47
Atlfere, 178
‘Aunls' (Lagos), 90 camel, use of, in Sahara, 4
Aveiro, Joao Afonso de, ambassador of Campbell, Consul B., 167, 171
Portugal, 21 Carr, E. H., 157
Awamaro, Ewi, 67-8 Carter, Sir T. G., Governor of Lagos,
Awp, B., 183 185-8
Awprp stream, 187 cavalry. Gyp, 37, 39-40, 41, 46, 123-4,
Awolp Arogangan, Alafin, 50, 84, 139- 137
41, 147, 149, 151 elsewhere, 123, 145, 148, 153, 161
Awori people, 87, 89, 91, 168 ‘Chaadoo’, 134
Awujalp, ruler of Ijpbu Ode, 76-7, 109- Chamberlain, Joseph, 185
10, 173 Christian missionaries, 15, 155, 171,
ayaba (queens), 114 176-8
Ayandele, E. A., 186 Church Missionary Society (C.M.S.),
Aylbl, Alafin, 40, 45 156, 182
cite perdue, see lost wax casting
Baba Elegun Oyede, herald at Ketu, 68 Clapperton, Captain H., 80, 88, 119,
babakekere, Ibadan official, 162 122,129,133-6,140,144,148,161-2
colonial administration at Lagos, 156, enia orisa (people of the gods), 38
181, 184-7 ‘Enkoosoo’, 148
Colonial Office, London, 171-2, 183, Epo, Alaketu, 69
186 Eredo, earthwork, 79, 110
consular regime, Lagos, 168-72 Erlnja, 87
consulates, Lagos, British, 156, 171 Esekhurhe, Benin official, 102
Sardinian, 156 Eweka II, Oba of Benin, 168
cowries, as currency, 6, 88 Ewuare, Oba of Benin, 58, 104
Crowder, Michael, 4, 34 Eyeo, see Oyp he
crowns, conferring of, claims to, 109,
117 fil (family), system of government,
Crowther, Rev. S. A. later Bishop, 67, theory of, 108-9
144, 148-52 Edf, 35, 41, 55, 153, 162
Cuban repatriates, 168 Edun, chief of Gbogun, Kakamfo, 141,
145, 150
Dagburewe, ruler of Idowa, 76 Efon Alaye, 162
Dahomey, or Abomey, kingdom and Egba, people and kingdoms, 42, 60, 67,
people, 9, 43, 46, 49, 68, 70-1, 80, 72, 74, 76, 81-6, 115, 122, 138, 140,
85, 94, 111-12, 121, 128-9, 134, 143, 152, 164, 172-4, 178-86
138-9, 152, 161, 165-7 5gba Agura, Gbagura, people and
French colony of, 184, 188-9 kingdom, 81-2, 144, 152, 161
see also tribute Egba Alake, Agbeyin, people and
Dalzel, A., 49, 94, 122 kingdom, 82
Dassa (Idassa), people and kingdom, 66, Egba Aro society, 84
72-3 Egba forest, 81-6, 144, 150, 160
Dassa Zoumd, capital of Dassa, 66 ^gba Oke Ona, people and kingdom,
Dapper, 0., 80 82, 144
Dayspring, S.S., 172 Egba United Board of Management,
Deji, ruler of Akur?, 69-60, 108, 168 177
Denton, Captain G. C., Colonial Secre¬ Egbado, people and kingdoms, 42, 46,
tary and Acting Governor at Lagos, 81, 84, 87-8, 110, 153, 159, 166,
184-5 184
dispersal of princes from Iff, 17-18, 77, Ela Olorugbo, son of SIprf mi, 19
99-100 Elffenf, 62
divine kingship, see kingship, Yoruba Elfhin Odo, ruler of Ifonyin, 47, 70, 87
Elpkolf, ruler of Ikolp, 56-7
ElfPe, ruler in Ijpbu Rfmp, 76
Ebumawe, ruler of Agp Iwoye, 76 Elfsun, ruler of Ilpsun, 57
Ebute Metta, 81, 91, 94, 173-4 Epe, on Lagos lagoon, 80, 167, 173
Ede, Alaketu, 68, 103 ¥pe. near Ondo, 65
Edl festival, at Iff, 19 Erin, near Iklrun, 187
Edo, see Benin, Blni Esiele, 145
Egboro, the Qipypkoro, 33 ??o, Oyp warriors, 37, 39, 82, 121
Egharevba, J. U., 60, 62-4, 80, 92, 94, IJwi, ruler of Ado Ekiti, 56-7, 110, 168
102, 104, 106, 168 Ewusi, ruler in Ijfbu Rpmp, 76
Egungun society, 36, 39
Egunoju, Alafln, 36-7, 39 Fage, J. D., lx, 8
Egypt, theory of Yoruba migration Faepjoye, Awujalp (?), 79
from, 6, 12 Fidipotp, Afldipote (Demiyewo), Awu-
Ehengbuda, Oba of Benin, 41, 94 jalf, 181
Ekiti, people and kingdoms, 41, 51, 54- firearms, introduction and use of, 58-9,
61, 108, 110, 124, 160, 162, 167, 81, 124-5, 137, 155, 165, 179, 183
175, 178-90 Fon people of Dahomey, 66-7, 72
Ekiti Parapp (confederation), 56-7, Forde, D., 61
179 Foreign Office, London, 171
Eko, see Lagos fortifications, 69, 86, 125-6
Eleduwf, Borgu king, 146-7 Freeman, H. S., Governor of Lagos, 172
Eleko, see Oba of Lagos French in West Africa, 3, 89, 167, 173,
Eletu Odibo, Lagos chief, 169 183, 184, 187-9
Elfwi, see Ewi Frobenius, Leo, 24, 27, 31
INDEX 221
Fulani (Fellatah) (see also Haiisa- Ifp, He Ife, people and kingdom, 10-11,
Fulani, llprin, Sokoto, and 15-31, 74, 76, 136, 139, 144, 153,
Qwandu), 41, 67, 72, 111, 128-9, 180-2
136, 142-53 art and archaeology of, 9, 24-31
relationship with (;)yp and other king¬
Gaha, Basprun, 47-9, 84, 137, 138, 141 doms, 42, 61, 56-7, 59, 64, 66, 81,
Gbagnra, see Egba Agura 86, 88, 91, 97, 103-6, 108-9
Gbangan, 143 Ifpnyin kingdom, 46
Gbere, Gbereburu, 36 Igan, 87
Gbodo, battle of, 146, 149, 152, 161 Igbadaye, 53
Gbogiin, 141, 145 Igbein, 84-5
George, J. 0., 22 Igbetti, 41
Germans In West Africa, 3, 181 Igblra people, 55
Ghana, 5, 7 Igbo people, at Ife, 17-19
Ghezo, king of Dahomey, 73, 138, 153, Igboho, Oyp Igboho, 36-9, 40,103, 106,
165-6 148,'l60, 161
Glele, king of Dahomey, 165 Igbomina people, 51, 188
Glover, Captain J. H., Administrator of Igbo Odi, Ifp, 20
Lagos, 172-4, 177-8 Igbo Ogwata, 62
gold, trade in, 7 Igbo Ora, 68
Gold Coast administration, 181 Iga Idunganran, Lagos palace, 92, 94
Constabulary, 185 Igede, Ekiti, 58
Ihumbp, Egbado kingdom, 46, 87
Goldie, Sir G. T., 188
Gun people, 67, 87 Ijana, 42, 46, 88, 133-4
Ijasi, 77
Gwandu emirate, 136
Ijaye, 72, 81-2,145,152,154-5,159-74
war, 124-5, 163-5, 171, 173
Hamites, Hamitic theory, 12 Ijeun, 82, 86
Hausa people and kingdoms, Hausa- Ijpbu, people and kingdoms, 41, 74-81,
Fulani, 3, 5, 10, 32, 35-6, 88, 119, 86, 94, 100, 106, 112, 115, 124, 128,
141 134, 136, 144, 153, 165, 172, 174-5,
troops, see Lagos and Gold Coast 178-81
Constabularies British expedition to (1892), 185-6
Hmderer, Rev. D., 181 Ijpbu Ifp, 76
Hodgkin, T., 93 Ijpbu Igbo, 76
Holli, see Ahori Ijpbu Ode, 76-81, 109
‘Hooguanee’, 21 Ijpbu Remo, 76, 144, 164, 173
horses, see cavalry Ijpro, 56
Houtson, Mr, 133 Ij(f.?a, people and kingdom, 35, 41-2,
51-5, 74, 81, 100, 117, 145, 163,
Ibadan, 9, 81, 121, 152, 154, 157-74, 160, 178-87, 188
175, 178-89 Association, 179
British treaty ivith (1893), 187 Iken, Benin general, 63
conference of pba at (1939), 66 Ikereku, siege of, 150
‘empire’, 108, 121, 162-3 Ikfrrp, people and kingdom, 66, 68,
Ibara, 167 116-17, 124, 168
Ibarapa district, 84, 144, 164, 167 Ikire, 143
Ibariba, see Borgu Iklrun, 183, 187
Ibikunle, Balogun of Ibadan, 162 battle of (Jalumi war - 1878), 179
Idanre kingdom, 61 Ikglaje, 46, 187
Idassa, see Dassa Ikorodu, 80-1
Iddo, Egba, 82 siege of (1865), 173
Iddo island, Lagos, 91, 93-4 Ikoyi, 145
Idpjo, see White Cap chiefs Ikple, 56
Idena Gate, Ketu, 69 lia kingdom, 51, 178-9
Idofa, 68 Haje (Ipole Ijesa), 53
Idoko, Ijpbu, 78-9 Hamuren, Ijebu council, 116
Idoko people, Ondo, 65 Hare, 53
Idowa, near Ijpbu Ode, 76, 78 ilari, Qyp officials, 114
Ifa cult, verse, 36, 39, 52, 114 Haro, 46, 88, 174, 183-4
He see Ifij Kakamfo, see Arp Qna Kakamfo
Ilemure (Ibokun), 53 Kana, 43
Ile§a, capital of Ijesa-, 51-3, 113, 179 Kanla, battle of, 145
Ilfsun, people of Ado Ekiti, 57-8 Kano, 6
Ilobi, 87 Karara, Hausa Balogun of Ilprin, 182-3
llpwa, 53 Katunga, see Qyp lie
Ilprin, 10, 41, 119, 137, 141-8, 149, 151, Kenyo, E. A., 55
161, 178-9, 182-3, 187-8 Kesi, 82
battle of (c. 1835), 147, 150, 152, 160 Ketu, people, town and kingdom, 42,
British treaty with (1897), 188 45, 66-71, 73, 81, 87, 100, 103-4,
Ilugim, 82-3, 86 134, 167, 174, 184
Imfsi, 77 KUlbo forest, 71-2
Ipara, 144 kingdoms, formation of, in Guinea, 4-9
Ipokia (‘Puka’), 81, 87, 89, 134, 173 in the savannah, 4
Ire, 60-1 king-bsts, 10, 102-6
iron, iron working, 5-7, 12 kingmakers, 112
Irving, Dr, 152 kingship, Yoruba, 8, 12, 44-5, 107-17
l?aga, 167 Kirlji battlefield, 180-2
Isan, 66 Kisi, 41-2, 112, 148, 160-1, 188
Ise, 56 Kisra, legendary ancestor, 36
I?eri, 91, 173 Kogbaye, 38
Is^yin, 41 kola trade, 5-6, 85
Islam, 6, 30, 45, 146, 176 Kolfo (‘Koolfu’), market at, 80
introduction into Yorubaland, 138 Kori, Alafin, 35
Ita, ruler of Illemure, 53 Kospkp, Oba of Lagos (deposed), 94,
Itajero, IS, 77, 100 167, 169-70, 173
Itaji, 56 Kukuruku people, 55
Itolki, 185 Kuramo Waters, 90
Itoku, 84-6 Kurunmi, of Esiele and Ijaye, Are,
It?a, §a, western Yoruba people, 66 145-6, 159-60, 163-4, 178
Iwe Irokin newspaper, 166 Kupu, 36, 39, 134
iwffa (eunuchs at Qyp), 114 Kwa languages, 9
Iwemp, see Weme
Iwere, 139, 161 Labisi, Alafin, 47, 103
Iwo, 150, 162 Laderln of Ilprin, 141
Iwodp, 77 Ladipp, Duro, 38
i«'p/a (pawTiing of humans), 118-19 Lafogido, Ifp, 19
Iwoye, near Ketu, 71 Lagos (Eko), 9, 46, 49, 74, 89-94, 106,
lyase, Benin chief, 60 128, 134, 155-6, 165, 167-74, 176,
177, 181, 183-4, 187
Jagou Olofin, founder of Dassa, 72 Constabulary, 173, 185-6
Jalumi war, see Ikirun, battle of Lajuwa, bronze head of, 24, 26
Jam’a, the, 142 Lamurudu, ‘king of Mecca’, 11
Jayin, Alafin, 40 Lander, Richard and John, 39, 88-9,
Jebba, bronzes at, 28 119, 124, 133, 136, 138, 141, 147-9,
Glover at, 172 151-2
river crossing at, 34, 47 Landoiphe, 105
Jegun, ruler of Epp Ondo, 65 Lanloke of Ogodo, 146-8
Jiga, 46 Latoyo, Gbonka, 43
Johnson, G. W,, 177 legend, defined, xi
Johnson, Rev, S,, xii, 13, 34, 40, 41, 43, Lekki (Leke), 94, 173
47-8, 61, 53, 55, 64, 77, 79, 82, 86, ‘legitimate’ trade, 155, 157, 170
88, 113, 115, 141, 144-6, 146-8, ‘Licasagou’, 21
150-1, 161, 180, 181, 186 L4abl, Egba hero, 84-5, 140, 151
as Commissioner, 182 Lisa Labun, Ondo chief, 65
Jones, Captain A. T., 122, 126, 129 Lloyd, P. C., 113
Lokoja, 188
Kabba, 10, 62, 188 Lpja, Ijppa provincial rulers, 54, 117
Kaiama, town and kingdom ol Borgu, lost wax (cire jierdue) casting, 12, 21-2
146-7, 153 25-6, 28
INDEX 223
Lugard, F., ‘Lugardian’ principles, 15, Obanosa, Oba of Benin, 167
175, 188 Obatala, 17, 19
Obokun, see Ajaka of Ilesa
MacGregor, Sir W., Governer of Lagos, Oduduwa, Yoruba ancestor, 11, 13, 16-
16 19, 32. 52, 59, 67, 77, 83, 87, 97-
Mahi people, 72 100, 104
Mahin, people, kingdom, and lagoon, Oflnran, Alafln, 36, 39, 112
64, 80, 94, 178, 181 ‘Ogane’, 21
maize, introduction of into West Africa, Ogbomp?p, 42, 147
5, 23, 101 Ogbonl society (see also 0§ugbo), 44,
Majepgbe, Alafln, 48 115-16, 159
Majotu, Alafln (‘Mansolah’?), 140, 141, Ogbpn, Qya, Ifp, 27
145, 149-52 Ogborogan, see Obanta
Maku, Alafln, 140, 149, 151 Oge, Qwa, 53
Malaysian plants, introduction of into Ogedengbe, war-leader of Ijp?a, 121,
West Africa, 5 179
Mali, 5, 7 Ogele, battle of, 142
markets, 8, 107, 134 Ogodo, 146-7
May?, If? chief at Ibadan, 158 Ogoga, ruler of Ikprrp, 68
Mecca, 4, 9, 11-12, 33 Ogun, god of iron and war, 25, 60-1
Mediterranean influence in West Africa. Ogun river. Upper Ogun district, 32, 67,
7-8 71, 76, 81, 91, 146, 169, 163, 167,
Mpkp, 69 173, 184, 186
Meroe, possible influence of in West Ogundalumsi, son of Ogun, 61
Africa, 6 Ogunftmmlre, 91
military organization, see warfare Oguntuyi, Rev. A., 57, 102
missionaries, see Christian missionaries Oguola, Oba of Benin, 29
Mpdakpkp, 153, 180-2 Oil Rivers Protectorate, 175
Mpkplpki, 84 Oje, Alaketu, 103
Moloney, Sir C. A., Governor of Lagos, Ojigi, Alafln, 43, 47, 79
181, 184 Ojo Agunbambaru, 141
Mprpmi, 18-19 Ojo Amepo, Kakamfo, 145
Morrison, Dr, 133 Ojo, Chief O. S. see §aki, Bada of
Morton-WilUams, P., 46, 114-15, 138 Ojo, G. J. A., 110
Mosi river, 32, 34, 50 Ojodou, people in §abe, 72
Moiilero, Fr, 71-2 Ojoko, ruler of Kesi, 82-3
Mugba-mugba war, 142 Ojugbelu, Qlpwp, 62
myth, deflned, xi Oke Igbo, 179
Oke Imade, 62
Nago, Nagot, Anago (Yoruba), 66 Okeluse, 62
Newbury, C. W., 93 Oke Mpsi, 180
New Qyp (Agp d’Qyp, formerly Agp Okepdan, 167, 173
Qja), 154, 160, 162 Oke Ogim (Upper Ogim), see Ogun river
newspapers, early, in Yorubaland. 156 Oke Okile, Owa, 63
Niger Coast Protectorate, 175 Oke Ona, see Ugba Oke Ona
Niger-Congo languages, 13 Oke Qyan, near §aki, 68, 71
Niger river, 8, 10, 32, 42, 50, 99, 146, Okikilu, Alake, 86, 169
152, 172-3 Okiti Appgbo, 62
Nikki, town and kingdom of Borgu, 36, Oko, early Oyp settlement, 33
146-7 Okpara river, 72
Nile river, valley, 6-7, 9, 12 Okukpnu, Alake, 177
Nok culture, 28 Old (?yp, see Qyp Ue
Norris, R., 48, 122 Oliver, R., and Fage, J. D., 8
Northern Nigeria, Protectorate of, 175, Olode, 77
188 Olodumare (Creator), 17
Nupe (Tapa), 28, 32-5, 37, 39, 42, 50, Ologun, Olorogun (war chiefs), 155
80, 84, 88, 112, 138, 142, 153, 188 Ologun, ruler at Lagos, 92-3
Oloke, see Opile
Oba, ruler of Benin (see also Qba and Olokun, sea god, 24, 174
pba), 18, 55, 60, 92 Olokunsa, sea goddess, 74
Olowu, ruler of Owi, 82 Obakunrin, Ewi, 58
OlowTT, ruler of Owu IjQbu, 76 Obalokim, Alafln, 41, 47
Olu, ruler of Haro, 88 Obalufon I, Oni, 19
Oluaô, Alafin, 35 Obalufon II (Alaiyemore), Oni, 19
Olubadan (or Bal?) of Ibadan, 109 mask of, 24, 26
Oluewu, Alafln, 145-6, 152, 160 Qbameri, 17
Olu Iwa, Ij^bu founder, 76 Qbanta, Ijpbu founder, 77-8
Olukfrr?, former ruler of Ik^rr?, 58 pde (hunters), 116
Oluodo, Alafln, 104 Qderinlo, Balogun of Ibadan, 162
Oluppnnpkusuppnnp war, 58-9 Offa (Ofa), 180, 182-3
Oluwole, Oba of Lagos, 169 Qkprp, ruier of §aki, 146
Oluyple of Ibadan, 147, 158, 160, 162 Olpffa, ruler of Qffa, 183
Omaro, Olowg, 63 Olpfln, chief at Lagos, 92
Ondo, people, town, and kingdom, 51, Qlprun (aiso calied Olodumare), owner
63-4, 76, 100, 113, 168, 178-9 of the sky, 11, 16-18
Ondo Road, 178-9 Qlpta, ruler of Qta (Otta), 88
Ondo road site, Ifp, 27 Qlptp, chief of Iddo, Lagos, 93
Oni river, 76 Qlpwp, ruler of Owp, 62-3, 102, 109
Onldokun Leke, 87 Qlpypkoro, Range’s predecessor at Oyo,
Onigbogi, Alafin, 35-6, 39, 103 33
Onigun, ruler of Ilugun, 82 Qmpnide, wife of Oduduwa, 83
Onikp, ruler of Ikplaje, 70 Ona river, 82
Onikoyi, ruler of Ikoyi, 110,139,142-3, Oni, Onifp, ruler of Ifp, 5-6,19-20,28-9,
150 100, 108-9, 154, 180
OnUa, chief at Ile§a, 53 Opa Oranyan, monolith at Ifp, 25
Onim (Lagos), 90 Qra hiil (Oke Qra), Ifp, 17-18
Onire, ruler of Ire, 61 Qrangun, ruler of Ila (Igbomina), 51
Oni?arp, ruler of Ijana, 88 Oranyan (Oranmiyan), son of Oduduwa,
Onisile, Alafln, 47 founder of Qyp, 19, 32-3, 34, 99
oral tradition, ix-x, 97-101 Orpmpptp, Alafin, 37, 39, 103
Orhogba, Oba of Benin, 92, 106 OsUe (Oloko), ruler of Oko, 82
Orimoiusi, ruler of Ijpbu Igbo, 76 Otpfan camp, battle at, 146-7, 161
Orisa nla (Obatala), 17 Otin river, 128, 179, 187
Orito, Alakurp (or Deji), 60 camp on, 187-8
Orun festival at Qyp, 114 Otta (Ota), town and kingdom, 88-9,166
Osemwede, Oba of Benin, 167 Egba annexation of, 166
Osi pfa, official at Oyp, 38, 114 Otun, Ekiti town and kingdom, 42, 55,
Osifo, see Obanosa 162, 168
Oêmawe, ruler of Ondo, 51, 65 Owa, ruler of Idanre, 61
0?ogbo, 51, 54-5, 153 Owa, ruler of Ile§a, 52-3, 117
battle of (1838/9), 124, 149, 152, 161 Qwp, town and kingdom, 28, 54-5, 61-
Oôgun, 144 3, 100, 112, 167
0?ugbo society (see also Ogboni), 115-16 Oyabi, Kakamfo, 48
0?un river, district, 54, 75, 81, 86, 143, Oyan river, 68
153, 182 Qyp. Oyp ile. Old Qyp, Katunga, also
Owata, Oyp chief, 139 ‘Eyeo’, town and Wgdom (see also
Owe, Ketu leader, 67-8 Igboho and tribute), 10, 13, 15, 22,
owe (proverbs), x 30, 32-50, 53, 67, 70, 72, 74, 76, 79,
Owiwi river, battle at, 163, 165 80, 81, 83, 88, 100-4, 110, 112-13,
Owore, ruler of Otun, 56 133-56
Owu, people, town, and kingdom, 41,82, army of, 37, 39-40, 41, 45, 49-50, 80,
86, 153, 158-9 84, 120-3
war, 85, 124, 143-4, 150-1 British treaties (1888, 1893) with,
Owu Ipole, 77 184, 187
Owu Ijpbu, 76 decline and fall of, 135-54
Ozuola, Oba of Benin, 63-4, 80, 104 expansion of, 40-4
foundation of, 33
Qba, ruler of Lagos, 93, 169 trade of, 41, 45-7, 80, 87-8
pba, see kingship, Yoruba Qyp Mesi (council at Oyo), 40, 44, 115,
Qba river, 81, 143, 182 150, 160
INDEX 225
Pacheco, Duarte, see Pereira Snelgrave, W., 74, 80, 121-2
palaces, Yoruba (afin), 107, 110 society, Yoruba, 9, 30-1, 118-19
Palma (Orim^du), 173 Sokoto emirate and empire, 136, 141,
Palmerston, Lord, 171 147
palm-oil trade, merchants (see also Songhay empire, 5-7
‘legitimate trade’), 171 strategy' and tactics, see warfare
Pamp, battle of, 143 succession to kingship and chieftancy,
Pampa, Ijpbu council, 116 rules of, 40, 103-6, 111-12
Parakou, 71 Sudanic state, concept of, 6-7, 12, 101
Parakoyi, Egba trade chiefs, 116 Sungbo, 78
Parapp, see Ekiti Parapp
Parliamentary Select Committee, Bri¬ §a, see Itsa
tish (1865), 157, 173 §a, Alaketu, 69
Parrinder, G., 67-8, 103 ijabe, town, people, and kingdom, 66,68,
Partition of Africa, see Africa 71-2, 73, 100, 113, 167, 184
pavements, potsherd, 23 §agamu, capital of Ijebu Remo, 16, 76,
Pearce, Captain, 133 109
Pelu pelu assembly, Ekiti, 55 §aki, 36, 38, 41-2, 68, 112, 134, 136,
Pereira, Duarte Pacheco, 20-1, 75, 90 148, 159
Phillips, Rev. C., later Bishop, 182 Bada of (Chief O. S. Ojo), 36, 84, 102,
Pobe, Dahomey, 67 151
Polp war, 145 f5aniu. Gyp chief, 38
Pope-Hennessey, Governor, 174 §ango, Alafln and orisa (god), 33-4, 86,
Popo district, 18, 43, 79, 89 112
Porto Novo (Ajaê), 46, 49, 66-7, 90, §asa river, 76
166, 168, 169, 171, 173, 178, 183-4 §odeke the Seriki, 158
Portuguese in West Africa, 10, 75, 79, §olagberu, 142
89, 91, 94, 104, 168-9 §opasan, see Ajiboyede
primogeniture, see succession, rules of §opasan, founder of Ketu, 67
Prometheus, 172
Tada, bronzes at, 28
Eaba (Rabba), Nupe capital, 142, 147 Talbot, P. A., 105
refuge, towns of (ilu asala), 153 Tapa, see Nupe
repatriates (see also Brazilian, Cuban, Tegbesu, king of Dahomey, 43
and Sierra Leonian repatriates), Timbuktu, 6
155, 168-9 Timi, ruler of Edp, 35, 55, 147
Rpmp, see Ijpbu Rpmp Togo, Togoland, 18, 66
roads, opening and closing of, in the towns, Yoruba, 8-9, 56, 107
interior, 165, 171, 173, 178, 185 Townsend, Rev. II., 159, 176
Roupell, Captain, 105 Toyejp of Ogbompsp, Kakamfo, 142-3,
Royal Niger Company, 188 150
Ryder, A. F. C., 21-2 Trevor-Roper, H., 129
tribute, paid to Oyp, 42-3, 45, 55, 70,
Safirin, battle of, 143 83-4, 89, 134-5
Sahara, 4 Dahomean, to Oyp, 43, 153, 165
Sahil, see Alimi
Saloube, §abe leader, 71 Usman dan Fodio, 138
Saro, see Sierra Leonian repatriates
Scott, Colonel F. C., 185
Vansina, J., xi
Scramble for Africa, see Africa
Viard, French trader, 183-4
sea, Yoruba awareness of, 64, 74
Senegal river, 7, 9
Shitta, Emir of Ilprin, 145-6, 152 warfare (see also cavalry and fortifica¬
Sierra Leonian repatriates (Saro), 168-9, tions), 120-9
strategy and tactics, 126-9
177
Sixteen Years war (1877-93), 178-87, weapons, (see also firearms), 123-4
189 casualties, 129
slaves, slavery, slave trade, 45-7, 118- camps, 127
19, 124, 129, 135-6, 155, 157, 168, dress of soldiers, 125
171 lagoon, 128
Weme (Oum6), kingdom, 42-3, 49 Ya Panka, 68
river, 70, 72 yam cultivation, 5
West African Frontier Force, 188 Yanayo, Ilorin camp at, 183
White Cap chiefs (Idfjo), Lagos, 92 Yau Yamba, Basorun, 43, 158
Whydah (Ouldah, Hueda), port, 43, 46, Yempji river (near Imagbon), battle at,
71, 89, 134, 160, 169, 171 186
Willett, F., 22, 26-9, 31 Yewa river, 81, 87, 89, 134
Williams, D., 28, 30 Yeyeori, Qwa, 54
women rulers, 54-5, 65, 72-3, 113 Yoruba, as name, 10-11, 15
Wood, Rev. J. B., 181, 183 language, 9, 13
Wrlgley, C., 13 Yoruba Proper, see Qyp
Wunmonlje compound, Ife, 24 Yorubaland, area defined, 10, 74
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I The Yoruba and their Homeland 3

VII The Traditions Reviewed 97

X The Decline and Fall of Old Oyo 133

This map is intended to illustrate the political divisions of the Yoruba

This map is intended to illustrate the rearrangement of the Yoruba

in tradition, expressed and conserved in many ways. Their

with caution and reserve - as must all evidence - and that

abundance of their tradition, has led over the last half-century

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The political structure of West Africa in the twentieth century

The Yoruba in the south-west, and also their neighbours to

300-500, so that cultivation and population must have been

part, however, contact between these Europeans and the West

The Yoruba of West Africa are a numerous people with many

The homeland of the Yoruba - He Yoruba - stretches from the

politically through ancient constitutional devices.^ This con¬

Oduduwa, sent from heaven by the Creator Olodumare (called

of the Yoruba settlement may have been precipitated by the

the succession of their oba from Oduduwa the national hero,

To the East of this Kingdom of Beny, 100 leagues inland,

The second possible reference occurs in Da Asia by De Barros:

In these accounts, ‘Licasaguou’ has been identified with the

brass-casting at Benin from Ife, showing them to be based on

consequence of forgotten wars, perhaps arising from the restless

It is not the central position of Ife in the history of the

Yoruba art as a whole is subjected to study, links, both incono-

200, and thus there is a gap of a whole millennium between the

thirteenth or fourteenth century and that the stone and terra¬

In the remote north-eastern corner of the Western State of

for one day when demonstrating to his courtiers his power to

cavalry, which is suggested by the account of Orompoto’s re¬

The return of the Oyo to their old capital, now strengthened

trees at Otun in the savannah of northern Ekiti to demarcate

imperial conquest, the Oyo succeeded in imposing their

writes, the ‘sovereignty’ of Oyo over a vast area which, he adds,

At the centre of this formidable state of Guinea was its divine

of Alafin Ayibi.^® Another rule, apparently established during

swamps to Allada, and thence to the port of Whydah (or

Oyo’s great age of conquest covered the reigns of Ojigi and

Oyo had angered him). Akinjogbin concludes; ‘The only pos¬

The Ijesa have sometimes been grouped by writers about the

looked upon by tbeir neighbours as potential sacrificial victims

The ebon rider Okunrin dvdu ori esin,

Armed with his sword, Obokun led his followers to a place

A list has been preserved of the names of thirty-eight pre¬

Ikerre, was established by Benin, and in some towns there are

oba at the conference of Yoruba rulers held at Ibadan in 1939.

carried out propitiatory ceremonies as part of their installation

he preferred to use the shortened form of his new name, ‘Deji’,

the largest, its territory stretching from the Kabba country in

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