Eri’s children moved away from the town of Nri and founded other communities, but Nri remained a religious centre for the Igbo, and the people of Nri retained the ritual functions which Chukwo had granted to Eri.
ONOJO OBONI OF IDDAH
Iddah lies close to the Niger, where peoples were influenced by the city of Benin and its practices of warfare. As a consequence – in defence or in imitation – central authority and military power had more importance there than in some of the communities lying further east.
Abatama of Ogurugu was a hunter who travelled in the bush. He spent some time with a woman named Ebuli before leaving her. Onojo Oboni was born of that union, but in his childhood people mocked him because he had no father. His surname, Oboni, refers to his illegitimacy. He was a giant of a man, and had besides six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. He eventually left his home and went to find his father, who immediately bowed down before him. He settled at Ati-Idah, perhaps because of a dispute with his half-brothers, and became a raider. He peopled the area of Ogurugu with his captives.
It is said that at one time he heard a strange noise from within the river, and so he had his servants pour a thousand pots of palm oil over the waters, to quieten them and allow him to look below. He was then able to fetch from the waters a seat made from a log of wood. The seat had covers, and after Onojo looked under them, it is said he could no longer recognize people properly. But this is said favourably, to indicate that his judgements were just and not swayed by acquaintance. It is also said that after hearing unfavourable divinations from one source, he sacrificed his own son in divination, because he did not believe the son would lie to his father. After his time, the Atah, or king, of Iddah would on his accession send a sacrifice to the shrine of Onoja-Aboli (Onojo, son of Ebuli) to ensure a just and successful reign.
Onojo’s wars were so successful that there was no one to oppose him, and so he determined to make war on the people of the heavens. He had his servants build a great tower of packed earth, to allow him to rise to the sky. But the tower collapsed, and many people died. So then Onojo decided to make war on the deities of the earth. He ordered his servants to dig a great tunnel into the earth, and then he rode down into it, ordering the army to follow him. But they refused; instead, they filled up the pit and Onojo was buried there.
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THE KINGDOM OF THE NUPE: TSOEDE
The Nupe kingdom formed around the confluence of the Niger and Kaduna rivers, controlling a route between trading partners to the south and the Hausa states in the north; the main impetus may have been the trade from the south (the founder, Tsoede, came from there). The area is good for agriculture (millet and sorghum as well as yams). The people also practised crafts, and were particularly known for trade beads. This version is retold from different accounts collected in the first half of the twentieth century.
The son of the Atta (king) of Idah was hunting north in the territory of the Nupe, who at that time paid tribute to Idah. He encountered an attractive woman, the daughter of a chief, and lived with her for some time, until he heard that his father was dying and that if he wished to ensure his succession he should return home. As the woman was pregnant, he left her tokens to give to the child when it was born: an amulet and a ring. The woman gave birth to a son, and named him Tsoede (although among the Hausa he is more often known as Edegi).
When Tsoede was thirty years old, he was sent to Idah as a slave by the new chief, his uncle. His father had become Atta of Idah and was still living; he recognized his son by the amulet and the ring and so brought him into his household. Their relationship became particularly close after the king fell ill, and the diviners pronounced that he could only be cured by the fruit from a very tall oil-palm. The sons born to the Atta by his royal wives tried to climb the tree but failed. Tsoede then tried, and succeeded by his determination, pushing through the fronds at the top even when they cut his lip, until he seized the fruit and was able to bring it down. Thereafter he had the appearance of a harelipped man.
Despite the father’s fondness for the son, the Atta knew that Tsoede could never become king of Idah, and that after his death this love child would be in peril. So when he felt that his last days had come he summoned Tsoede and gave him rich gifts, and advised him to flee. These gifts included emblems of kingship: a great canoe, plated with bronze; the bronze trumpets known as kakati, drums, iron chains and fetters of great magical power.
Tsoede then fled from Idah in the canoe, and as soon as his father the Atta died, his stepbrothers pursued him. But he eluded them in the creeks along the Niger, and then made his way north and returned to Nku, his mother’s town. He sank his bronze canoe into the waters, and began to make war. First, he seized power in Nku, and then proceeded to conquer the neighbouring towns. Two men who had helped him in his flight he made ministers; the servants who paddled the canoe became chiefs of towns around his capital and were given the right to show and bear iron chains like those that had been given to Tsoede.
Tsoede also brought to this land the arts and crafts which he had learned during his long stay in Idah. He introduced blacksmithing and canoe-building, as well as other forms of power. It is also said that he brought the custom of human sacrifice, and that his first victim was the uncle who had sent him to Idah as a slave. Most of all, however, Tsoede brought the art of war to his people, and in later years his capital was known as the city of horses, because there were so many mounted warriors at his call. He died after many years of reign while on an expedition of pillage.
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THE JUKUN KINGDOM OF THE KOROROFA
The Kororofa peoples live along the upper Benue river, midway between the Niger and the kingdoms near Lake Chad; their traditions show an interaction with the Kanuri of Bornu to the north. The Jukun were the royal clan; the kingdom itself seems to have shifted capitals over time, and Wukari was the last royal city. These accounts are retold from the works of a colonial administrator.
THE SON OF AMA
The Jukun believe in a creative divinity with two aspects: one celestial and male, known as Chido, and the other earthly and female, known as Ama. They may be a couple; they may be a twofold entity; identification depends upon the context. It is Chido who sends rain; it is Ama who causes the crops to grow. It was Ama who created people. She brought them, along with certain animals, from the spirit world. But at first they were not fashioned as they are today: the woman’s vagina was placed under her arm. Ama rearranged the organs of the man and the woman so they would fit together. Ama also brought forth the animals and spirits that now populate the world.
Among these spirits is Aki, death, who in the earliest times travelled on foot across the earth, wrestling those he met. If anyone could overthrow Aki, that person would live. But he once had a conversation with an ant who told him that he would do better if he avoided direct confrontation; ants do their work unseen, beneath the ground, and their presence is known only when their tunnels cause walls and houses to collapse. Aki took the ant’s advice and now does not attack a person openly. He kills from within.
There is a story of Adi-bu-ma, a son of Ama, which perhaps shows a different side of her character and explains why evil and witchcraft exist in the world. There was a woman in the earliest times, and she ate all her young. She swallowed everything she encountered. But one child she swallowed caused her problems. After she had swallowed him, a lump appeared on her thigh, and a voice came from within her body, asking her to cut the skin and make an opening. She did so, and a boy leaped out, fully armed with bow and arrows and hunting equipment. She named him ‘Adi-bu-ma’ which means ‘child of Ama’, and tried immediately to devour him. But he avoided her and told her to wait, that he would provide her with something better, since after all he was very small just then.
He went out hunting and brought tremendous quantities of game to his mother, and she devoured all of it and asked for more. He was the dish she particularly wanted; she would eat whatever game he brought – dui
ker, gazelle, bush-pig, hartebeest, buffalo – and then ask him to come and be eaten, and each time he would put her off. But he quickly grew into an adult, and his mother then told him that he had grown up and it was time for him to be eaten. Then he brought her an especially large quantity of game, enough to keep her eating for days, and slipped away from their hut.
He travelled for several days, until he thought he had gone far enough, and then he made use of the hunter’s magic which he had brought with him into the world. He took an egg from the hunter’s bag and broke it, and the egg immediately became a walled town with inhabitants and their domestic animals. The people of the town made him their king, and he settled in the royal palace with many wives and servants to help him. He told the people to clear fields around the town and he gave them crops to plant from his bag.
One day, when Adi-bu-ma had asked the people to come with him to work in the fields, his senior wife, who ruled the women in the palace, told him that she could not come, that she was sick. He excused her, but asked a small girl to watch over her and tell him what the wife did while the others were away. Eventually, he learned how his wife had left the village and gone off into the bush, where she met a woman. She bargained with this woman for spices and the ingredients of a special soup, and they agreed on the price. But when the woman from the bush produced the spices and began to measure out the quantities, the king’s wife was surprised how little she was getting for her price. As is the Jukun custom, she used her husband’s name as an exclamation, ‘Adi-bu-ma, indeed, those are small piles of spices! With what do you measure them?’ At that, the woman added more spice to each of the piles, saying, ‘We should not be in conflict. Perhaps I do not know the measures used in your city. Tell me where it is, and I will bring my wares to your market.’
The king’s wife led the stranger to the town, and as soon as they passed through the gate in the walls the woman from the bush seized the king’s wife and swallowed her up. Then she seized the little girl who was following them (although the king’s wife had not seen her) and swallowed her. She seized the guards at the gate and swallowed them up, and then she roamed through the town swallowing up every living thing that she encountered until the town was empty and lifeless. Only a chicken escaped her, and it scuttled around the huts and flapped up to the wall and then out onto the road. Down the road it went towards the fields where Adi-bu-ma and his people were working, and every now and then it fluttered up into a tree or a bush and clucked loudly, crying out ‘Adi-bu-ma, your mother has come! She has eaten your town!’
Adi-bu-ma heard the chicken and understood its message, and immediately sent his people off to gather roots and plants to be used in a special medicine. Meanwhile, the king and his warriors gathered their weapons and hastened to the city. The king had sixty spears, and he knew that his mother had sixty teeth that she could use as weapons. When they met, just inside the walls of the city, he called to her and reproached her for her voracity that left nothing alive around her. But she simply opened her mouth and gestured for him to come and be swallowed up like the others.
He hurled a spear at her; it missed. She plucked out one of her teeth and threw it at him. It too missed. So they traded missiles, teeth and spears, until almost all were gone: the king had one spear, the mother only one tooth remaining. Then the chicken, which had followed the king back into the town, clucked at him, and the king understood its message: he should not throw the spear, but only brandish it, and when his mother threw her last tooth he alone would have a weapon. So he brandished his spear and went through the motions of throwing it, but at the last moment he made the spear spin in his hand and then he held it behind his body. His mother threw her last tooth: it missed. Then he rushed against her and pierced her belly with the spear, and as though he had burst a dam everything she had devoured came pouring out of her belly: people, animals, everything.
But they were dead. They lay limp in piles on the ground. The king then called to his people and they brought the roots and plants that he had ordered. With these he made a magical water into which he placed the dead bodies that had burst from his mother’s belly. The bodies came back to life. The bodies that had been longest in the belly had their skins bleached to a pale white; those that had not spent so long had reddish skins, like the Fulani, and the latest arrivals had dark brown and black skins.
The little girl who had accompanied the wife told the king what had happened (but he had guessed most of it already: only his wife could have brought his mother to his town) and so he did not revive his senior wife. Instead, her body was burned, and the ashes from the fire were taken down to the river. But the wind carried some of the ashes away from the river, and where the ashes touched the ground calabashes grew up, along the path to the stream where the people got their drinking water. There was an enormous calabash at the centre of the patch, and it soon grew large enough to swallow up the women as they came to fetch water at the stream.
The king fed a goat with medicines and sent it against the calabash: although the goat butted it and pierced the shell with its horns, it could not destroy the calabash. So the king fed it more medicines, until the goat was able to break the calabash when it charged. And then again the king revived the people who had been swallowed up in the calabash and they burned the pieces. But some of the ashes escaped and touched people, and this is how witchcraft and sorcery came into the world.
KINGSHIP OF THE KOROROFA
It is said that the first capital of the Jukun kings was the town of Kundi. But kingship passed from the rulers of Kundi because of a disobedient son. The king had grown old and felt himself near death, and so summoned his son to learn the secrets of his kingship. But the son disregarded the call and went off, hunting or seeking pleasures. When the king was told his son had left without attending to him, he was angry and decided that this son would not be a worthy king. So instead, he called his grandson and revealed to him the secrets of kingship. He then told the young man to go to his father’s town, which was Kororofa, and establish his court there. When the disobedient son returned, his father scolded him and told him he would never be a king. But in consolation, the father appointed him the ritual master of the earth, responsible for ensuring the fertility of the soil and the growth of the crops.
A very similar story is also told to explain how kingship ended in Kororofa, and again how kingship passed from Kororofa to Wukari. An added detail is that the dying king enters a great tree, and that the brothers pursue each other.
The history of the Jukun kingdom is marked by warfare with the Kanuri of Bornu. But at one time, at least, their relations were peaceable. It is said that a Jukun king went out to war against Bornu, and the two armies met in battle. The king of Bornu, a Muslim, called on Allah for help against his enemy, and brought down a fire to earth which set the grasses blazing and surrounded the Jukun army. The soldiers were terrified by the flames and began to throw down their weapons in panic, seeking some path through the circle of fire. But their king reassured them, reminding them of his ritual authority, and used his powers to call down a heavy rain which extinguished the flames. His soldiers were heartened by this proof of his power and renewed their attack. The battle was inconclusive, and the kings realized they were too evenly matched. The Jukun king withdrew to his capital.
The king of Bornu later sent the Jukun king a reminder of the way in which he had called down the fire from heaven: a burning coal was laid on a bed of cotton and enclosed in a basket and delivered to the Jukun king. In return, the Jukun king sent to Bornu a sealed basket filled with water, reminding his peer that he possessed the power to call down the rains. As a result of this exchange, the two kingdoms made peace and exchanged ambassadors.
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THE BACHAMA AND BATA OF THE UPPER BENUE
The Bachama and Bata were groups closely related by language and culture living on either bank of the upper Benue river, close to the border between Nigeria and northern Cameroon. They were part of a large cluster of peoples li
ving just south of the area conquered by the Fulani during the nineteenth century, and may in some ways have been influenced by them; however, they also preserved their own traditional beliefs and practices. The groups were patrilineal, although with strong evidence of relatively recent matrilineal practices (that is, the importance of the uterine link and the mother’s brother); they were not united in larger political units. Subsistence was derived from a combination of agriculture (millet and sorghum), some livestock and hunting. The cult of Nzeanzo, common to the Bachama and the Bata, was essentially a rain cult associated with agricultural fertility. These accounts are retold from the work of a British colonial administrator published in 1931.
NZEANZO
Venin was the mother of the gods. She came from heaven, although it is not said when or how, and on earth she gave birth to five sons. Her brother was Wun, the god of death, and he also came down from the heavens and settled on earth.
Venin’s fifth child, Nzeanzo, gave her the most trouble in childbirth. He spoke to her repeatedly from the womb, giving her instructions and finally asking her if he could be born, although the full term of months had not yet been completed. ‘I cannot help you,’ his mother told him, ‘but if you can find some way for yourself you may try it.’
After she spoke, a huge lump formed on her thigh, swelling until it was the size of a small child; then the skin split and Nzeanzo emerged. From birth he could walk and talk, and he performed wonderful tasks.
For instance, he noticed how the flies bothered his mother and the other members of the household, and so he collected all the flies of all sorts: the little fruit flies, the middle-sized houseflies, the large biting flies, and enclosed them in a calabash which he stopped up securely. He left the calabash before his chamber, telling his older brothers that they should not open it while he went to bathe in the river. But they were scornful of their younger brother, and suspected that he had prepared something to eat or drink, so they opened the calabash. Out swarmed the flies, free to afflict people once more, and Nzeanzo never again tried to do away with them.
African Myths of Origin Page 30