Efik Traders of Old Calabar

Containing the Diary of Antera Duke together with an Ethnographic Sketch and Notes and an Essay on the Political Organization of Old Calabar

Daryll Forde

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138586383
• eBook ISBN: 9780429996436
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Originally published in 1956 this book contains extracts of the 18th century diary of an Efik chief and documents the activities of slave-traders, the rituals of the Egbo society and many details of domestic life of among the Efik. This volume includes an English translation to the diary which was originally written in Pidgin..

THE POLITICAL ORGANIZATION OF OLD CALABAR

G. I. Jones

THE extracts from Antera Duke’s diary which have been preserved give a tantalizingly brief account of life in Old Calabar at the end of the eighteenth century. But they throw considerable light on several features of the political situation described in the narratives of European travellers half a century later, when Old Calabar and Bonny were the two major ports of the Oil Rivers region, now part of the Rivers and Calabar Provinces of Nigeria.

In the period immediately preceding the establishment of the British Protectorate, roughly between 1830 and 1875, the basic features of the social structure of these Oil Rivers ports, in particular their organization into semi-autonomous corporate lineages, were much the same. Their environment and economic life were very similar, and they were all equally involved in intensive commercial intercourse with European merchant shipping, trading first in slaves and then in palm-oil. But their history during this period presents striking contrasts. In Bonny and New Calabar it was a period of constant warfare, and particularly internal strife, which culminated in the establishment in 1870 of a rival port, Opobo, by the defeated faction in Bonny and in the dismemberment in 1882 of New Calabar. In Old Calabar, on the other hand, there were no serious faction fights and no wars. But the handling of the large slave element in the population produced cleavages between slave and free which eventually resulted in the movement of ‘plantation’ slaves called the Blood Men. In Bonny and New Calabar slaves were completely absorbed and rose to the highest positions, one of them, Jaja,¹ being the leader of the faction which founded Opobo. European observers were equally shocked by the barbarities they encountered in all the Oil Rivers ports, but at Bonny it was the cannibal feasts following successful warfare that horrified them, while at Old Calabar it was the human sacrifices which accompanied the obsequies of leading men.

Historical documents and modern ethnographic data on Bonny and New Calabar are too meagre to provide any close analysis of their social organization, but enough material survives in respect of Old Calabar to present a fairly clear picture of the political system and to justify an attempt to determine the main factors affecting its very distinctive development. The most important accounts dating from the nineteenth century are those of the Reverend Hope Masterton Waddell and the Reverend Hugh Goldie of the Scottish Presbyterian Mission. These and other contemporary accounts are supported by the fairly recent descriptions in unpublished administrative reports on the tribal organization of the Ibibio. More detailed studies of particular political systems in the Bende division made by the writer were also found to be relevant in filling gaps and in elucidating some of the ambiguities in the contemporary records.

Outstanding events in the history of Old Calabar from 1788-1884 are listed in Table I (p. 118).

THE INDIGENOUS SOCIAL SYSTEM AND ITS MODIFICATION

At an early date the Efik came into contact with European vessels visiting the Cross River estuary and, during the eighteenth century, established a monopoly of the overseas trade on this river, which became complete by the subjugation, about 1800 or a little later, of the small Ibibio fishing community of Salt Town near Tom Shott Point.

The first accounts to give reasonably detailed information on the Efik date from the early nineteenth century and show that they consisted of three groups of settlements: firstly, those at the head of the estuary called Iboku by the Efik and Old Calabar by the Europeans; secondly, a small group of settlements about ten miles up the Calabar River called Adiabo by the Efik and Guinea Company by the Europeans; and thirdly, the two villages of Ikonetu and Ikot Offiong on the Cross River called Mbiabo or Ekrikok by the Efik and Hickory Cock or Curcock by the Europeans.¹ Efik tradition, however, divides the tribe into two sections, Iboku forming one, Adiabo and Mbiabo being grouped together as the other. Oceangoing vessels were able to sail up the Cross River estuary and find a satisfactory deep water anchorage where the river which the Europeans called Old Calabar River flowed into it.² By the beginning of the nineteenth century Old Calabar had become, after Bonny, the foremost Oil Rivers port and by far the largest and most powerful segment of the tribe, with Mbiabo and Adiabo as its satellites. It had consisted originally of one settlement or a cluster of settlements near the present site of Creek Town. Later other settlements were founded (see above, p. 4) one of which, called Duke Town after its head, Duke Ephraim (Effiom), had, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, become the dominant settlement, a position which it has retained up to the present as the modern town and port of Calabar. The population of Duke Town was estimated by the Landers in 1830 as 6,000 people, which may be compared to Crow’s estimate of 3,000 for Bonny a decade earlier. Hutchinson, writing in 1858, estimated Duke Town (‘Atarpah’) as being two miles in circumference with a population of ‘at least 4,000’. This excluded the Henshaw ward, ‘a small village having not more than about 120 inhabitants’, and ‘a quarter mile to the seaward of Duke Town’, Qua Town with ‘only about 100 inhabitants’, and Old Town for which he gives no figures. He describes Creek Town (‘Ekuritunko’) as not more than a mile and a half in circumference with a population of about 3,000 inhabitants.¹

TABLE 1

Main Events in Old Calabar History, 1788 to 1884

1788.	Duke Ephraim of Duke Town dies; 65 persons sacrificed at his funeral rites.
circa 1800.	Duke Ephraim becomes ‘the most powerful chief in Old Calabar’.
1820.	Eyo Honesty I of Creek Town dies; ‘over 200 slaves sacrificed at his funeral’.
1825.	Eyo II re-establishes fortunes of Creek Town.
1834.	Duke Ephraim dies; hundreds of slaves and others die at his funeral rites.
1834.	Eyamba V succeeds as king of Duke Town.
1835.	Eyo II crowns himself king of Creek Town.
1842.	Agreement between British Consul and Old Calabar chiefs to abolish the slave-trade.
1846.	Establishment of the Church of Scotland Mission in Creek Town and Duke Town.
1847.	Eyamba V dies; hundreds of slaves and others sacrificed at his funeral rites.
1849.	Archibong I recognized by supercargoes as king of Duke Town.
1850.	Egbo law made against human sacrifices.
1850–1.	Organization of Blood Men in Duke Town plantations.
1852.	Death of Archibong I. Blood Men come to town to prevent human sacrifices and to watch the purge of Duke and Eyamba factions by poison ordeal.
1852.	Supercargoes and Consul recognize Ephraim Duke as king of Duke Town.
1854.	Tom Robin, head of Old Town dies; sacrifices of slaves and wives at his funeral rites.
1855.	Consul adjudicates upon Old Town for breaking Egbo law. Mission suggests Egbo sanctions, supercargoes prefer naval action and Old Town destroyed by naval bombardment and landing party.
1858.	Eyo II dies; Blood Men come to Creek Town; no sacrifices or other deaths and they disperse.
1859.	Ephraim Duke dies; no disturbances and no sacrifices at his funeral.
1861.	Eyo III dies; Blood Men again come to Creek Town and cause death of four people on charges of sorcery and witchcraft.
1871.	Blood Men come to Duke Town on suspicion of Archibong II’s death. Supercargoes cause Archibong II to send them home under threat of a trade boycott.
1872.	Archibong II dies without incident. His brother succeeds him.
1875.	James Henshaw declares himself king of Henshaw Town. Duke Town attacks and forces him to sue through supercargoes for peace. Henshaw Town burnt down and status quo restored.
1884.	Treaty made between Great Britain and kings and chiefs of Old Calabar whereby British protectorate was established.

Social Structure

The structure of these Efik communities at the beginning and again at the end of the nineteenth century is shown in Table II. It is very probable, although not certain, that the divisions into primary and secondary segments were conceived in terms of agnatic as well as territorial distinctions. For the social structure of the Efik is not likely to have differed from that of other Ibibio tribes as known in more recent times, except that the local communities tended to be compact and not dispersed villages. As these settlements grew into towns, families came to range farther and farther afield over the arable hinterland of Greek Town and Duke Town in search of suitable farm-land. Men spent part of their time in the town, engaged in river trading and fishing, and part living on their farms or plantations where they had settled many of their slaves. This pattern of residence differs considerably from that of other Ibibio and also from that of Bonny and other Oil Rivers ports. In the latter the population originally confined their activities to fishing, being settled on swampy islands unsuitable for agriculture, and obtained their staple foodstuffs from the dry land agriculturists farther inland.

Like most Ibibio the Efik had no tribal head or council of elders. The several local communities were held together only by common customs and interests reinforced by common rituals. There was, for example, as among most Ibibio tribes, the cult of a tribal tutelary nature spirit, Ndem Efik.² Innumerable kinship and economic ties linked together particular individuals and households in the various local communities. Each of these was, however, virtually autonomous and itself consisted of a federation of territorially discrete, self-governing segments which were regarded as agnatic lineages. These subdivisions of a local community can be termed ‘wards’ in a territorial, and ‘maximal lineages’ in a kinship context. Contemporary and later accounts referred to them sometimes as ‘towns’ (a word also used, however, to designate the larger local communities), and in other contexts as ‘families’ or ‘houses’, terms also used for various subdivisions of the ward. For these wards or maximal lineages were themselves composed of segments (ward sections) corresponding to major lineages which were spatially as compact and distinct as the congestion of the ward or the town allowed. The ward sections in turn were subdivided, according to their size, either directly into a number of expanded families or household groups corresponding to minimal lineages, or first into a number of ward sub-sections (corresponding to minor lineages). That the genealogical ties among these minor, major and maximal lineages were putative rather than actual will be explained later.¹

The maximal lineage corresponding to each ward appears to have had a lineage head and a council of elders composed of the heads of its component major lineages and other householders of importance. But their authority was effective chiefly with respect to the external relations of the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction by Daryll Forde
• NOTE ON ORTHOGRAPHY
• An Ethnographic Sketch of the Efik people by D. Simmons
• The Diary of Antera Duke, being three years in the life of an Efik chief, 18th January 1785 to 31st January 1788, in a modern English version by A. W Wilkie and D. Simmons
• Notes on the Diary by D. Simmons
• The Original Text of the Diary by Antera Duke
• The Political Organization of Old Calabar by G. I. Jones
• Addendum by G. I Jones
• Bibliography
• Index