Yoruba people

“ No man who owned a preto slave would be left alive. With all the powerful branco slaveholders dead, the drums proclaimed, the white indentures would rise up and join with the Yoruba. Together they would seize the island.
Oh Shango, please. She gripped the sides of the thin mattress. Make him understand. No white will aid them. To the branco the proud Yoruba warriors are merely more preto, black and despised. Make him understand it will be the end of his dream. To rise up now will mean the slaughter of his people. ”

“ If ever a people exhibited unanswerable evidence of indigenous civilization, it is the west-coast Africans. Undoubtedly they adapted much that came to them, utilized new ideas, and grew from contact. But their art and culture is Negro through and through.
Yoruba forms one of the three city groups of West Africa; another is around Timbuktu, and a third in the Hausa states. The Timbuktu cities have from five to fifteen hundred towns, while the Yoruba cities have one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants and more. ”

“ She realized now that the Yoruba were still too few, too powerless to revolt. She wanted to tell him to forget his gods, his fool's dream of rebellion and freedom.
He glanced back at her and laughed. "But our gods, our Orisa, are already here, because our people are here." He looked away, his eyes hidden in the dark, and waited for a roll of thunder to die away. The wind dropped suddenly, for an instant, and there was silence except for the drumbeat of rain. "Our gods live inside us, passed down from generation to generation. ”

“ Then came those dreadful wars, carried on by the more powerful and cruel chiefs, for the purpose of making slaves to sell to the white traders, who carried them away to toil in the plantations of North and South America and Cuba, and the prosperity of the once happy people of Yoruba was brought to an end. ”

“ Even more—for all her fine Ingles clothes and her soft bed she was ten times more slave than he would ever be. How to make her understand that?
"You only become a slave when you give up the ways of your people. Even if your father was a branco, you were born of a Yoruba woman. You still can be Yoruba. And then you will be something, have something." The powerful hands that had carried her to this remote hilltop were now toying idly with the grass. "You are not the property of a branco unless you consent to be. To be a slave you must first submit, give him your spirit. ”

“ In a few minutes we were provided with as fine a supper as we ever enjoyed in Africa.
Ijaye is one of the largest of the Yoruba towns, containing not less than eighty thousand inhabitants. It is ruled by Kumi, entitled Arey, a man, intelligent, active, haughty, cruel, ambitious, stubborn and despotic, yet an excellent ruler, if we judge from the decorum of his people and the respect which they show him. By the people of the surrounding towns he is much hated, and will not be permitted to maintain his position longer than they can help. ”

“ Cultivation.—The Yoruba race are industrious cultivators, and show considerably more ambition than most of the other West African peoples. The country in which they live is particularly adapted to farming, and the climatic conditions are suitable for the cultivation of cotton and fibrous plants, in addition to the various grain crops. In some parts cocoa, rubber, and kola are being cultivated, but these are not so suitable under the prevailing conditions as they would be within the wet zone—the Western Province, which these people inhabit, being entirely within the dry region. ”

“ I ought to say that it is customary for the living to send the dead out ahead of the army, to bear the brunt in the first attack.
Ancestor-esteem you will find at its highest pitch in West Africa under the school of Fetish that rules the Tshi and Ewe peoples. Ellis gives you a full description of it for Ashanti and Dahomey. [18] The next district going down coast is the Yoruba one; but Yoruba has been so long under the influence of Mahometanism that its Fetish, judging from Ellis’s statement in his Yoruba Speaking People, is deeply tinged with it. ”

“ The native inhabitants of Lagos and the surrounding country, with the exception of the Porto Novans, who are pagans, are Mohammedans, belonging principally to the Yoruba tribe, which appears to be an offshoot of the Houssa race. They are a quiet, orderly, and industrious people, and form a pleasing contrast to the idle and insolent, so-called Christians, of Sierra Leone, and the lazy tribes of the Gold Coast. ”

“ These men, he told himself, are among the finest warriors of Ife. Tonight the branco will learn how a Yoruba fights for his people. "The west wind is freshening now and it will carry the flames to the other fields, those in the direction of the rising moon. Next we will fire the curing house, where the branco keeps the sweet salt we have made for him with our own hands. Then we will burn his mill house. . . ."
Obewole cast a nervous glance at Atiba. "The mill house shelters the great machine made of the sacred iron of Ogun. ”

“ They were indeed ‘as active as monkeys and as clever as cats.’ On the return journey we tied putties on their knees to save them in case of a slip, and felt much happier.
Aiede is a straggling, rather dilapidated Yoruba town; it looked pretty, as there is any amount of vegetation, bright sunshine and cool shade, but [20] the prevailing smells are atrocious, and the people most unattractive. They are Yorubas, but appear to be exceptionally lazy and idle, ignorant and fetish-ridden. ”

“ In all these parts of Negroland, the customs of which are in every respect so different from those of Yóruba and the neighbouring countries, the market (in Kúkawa and Maseña, as well as in Kanó, Sókoto, and even in Timbúktu) is always most frequented and most busy in the hottest hours of the day, notwithstanding the great fatigue which all the people, and particularly the strangers, have to undergo. ”

“ The power of the Yoruba obbas, or hereditary'- kings, is limited by usage, while each town has its semi-independent chief, appointed by the sovereign, and enjoying royal prerogatives. Chiefs and governors alike are assisted by councils of the notables, and on great emergencies the whole people are occasionally sum- moned to a general national assembly. ”

“ The merchants in the interior tried to close the trade routes, but the local chiefs refused to help them. By some means the traders secured the Oku ban on their side. The Yoruba natives resisted it.
“By Jove! both they and the factors at Lagos were glad enough to come to heel when every ounce of stuff was diverted into French Dahomey. There was no overt act or threat. Oku methods are too clever for that. The authorities were powerless. Hunger coerced the natives, and financial loss brought the people on the coast to terms. ”

“ It would seem, indeed, as if the whole of the Yoruba territory were bidding the missionary welcome, and encouraging him onward in the work of its evangelization. [35] The Gospel, it is true, still meets with opposition; but the chiefs, mostly, are friendly and send their children to the schools. Open persecution is no longer permitted; and, but for the continual apprehension of another attack from Dahomey, the missionaries would seem to be secured against farther interruptions.
But while the missions are prosperous at Abbeokuta, far different have been the results at Badagry. ”

“ Incidentally, it may be well to mark that Northern Nigeria has not evolved powerful pagan organisms comparable with those of Yoruba and Benin in the south. The basis of the social system is the village community. A number of village communities form the tribal community. The partly hereditary, partly elective rule of the tribal community constitutes, with the Executive, the Government of the entire community. The ruler himself is the “Governor,” against whose actions the people can appeal to native law and custom. For the welfare of that community the ruler is guardian. ”

“ He returned to the San Fiorenzo, and piloted her as he had the Clyde, when her own pilot refused to take charge.
Story 4—Chapter 1. Orlo and Era: a Tale of the African Slave-Trade.
There exists an extensive district on the west coast of Africa, about forty miles to the north of the far-famed river Niger, known as the Yoruba country. Sixty years ago it was one of the most thickly populated and flourishing parts of equatorial Africa, the inhabitants having also attained to a considerable amount of civilisation, and made fair progress in many industrial arts. ”

“ Ogginn, a white ox and a holy cave in the Caucasus, viii. 313 n. 1
Ogom, a fetish doctor of Nigeria, not allowed to quit his house, iii. 124
Ogre whose soul was in a bird, story of the, xi. 98 sq.
Ogres in stories of the external soul, xi. 100 sqq.
Ogress whose life was in a spinning-wheel, xi. 100
Ogun, war-god of the Yorubas, viii. 149 sq.
Oho-harahi, “Great Purification,” a Japanese ceremony performed on the last day of the year, ix. 213, 213 n. 1
Oijo, the Alafin of, paramount king of Yoruba-land, iv. 203
Oil not to be touched by people at home in absence of hunters, i. ”

“ The relation of the Supreme Deity to the lesser gods of polytheism is graphically put in the following passage, where an American missionary among the Yorubas describes the relation of Olorung, the Lord of Heaven, to his lesser deities (orisa) , among whom the chief are the androgynous Obatala, representing the reproductive power of nature, and Shango the Thunder-god. ‘The doctrine of idolatry prevalent in Yoruba appears to be derived by analogy from the form and customs of the civil government. There is but one king in the nation, and one God over the universe. ”

“ For a whole league we were in the region of "arimos," or outside farms, where villages, villas, and plantations, threaded by hot and sandy lanes with hedges of green euphorbia, showed the former prosperity of the country. Beyond it the land forms, as in Yoruba, lines of crescents bulging west or seaward, quartz and pebbles showing here and there an old true coast.
After a five hours' ride we reached Cavúa, the half-way house, where breakfast had been sent on; the habitations are wretched thatches, crowded with pigs and mosquitoes. ”

“ They arise partly from the character, at once progressive and unstable, of the Yorubas themselves, partly from the curious divergence in the political relations subsisting between his Majesty’s Government and the various sections of the old Yoruba confederation, partly from the influences working in favour of direct British rule which find favour in the Lagos Legislative Council, but mainly through neglect, disinclination to look a situation not without delicacy in the face, and the absence of any serious effort to map out a definite, consistent policy. ”

“ In the distance she could hear the low voice of Atiba, lecturing courage to his brave Yoruba warriors.
The preto fools.
She knew a woman would not be welcome, would be thought to "defile" their solemn council of war. Let them have their superstitions. This was the New World. Africa was finished for them. They weren't Yoruba warriors now. Here they were just more preto slaves, for all their posturing. Once more she was glad she had been raised a Portuguese, not a Yoruba woman bound to honor and revere whatever vain man she had been given to as wife. ”

“ To be white was to be powerful and free. She also would make certain her child was Christian. The Christian God was probably false, but in this world the Christians held everything. They owned the Yoruba. The Yoruba gods of her mother counted for nothing. Not here, not in the New World.
She smiled resignedly and thought once more of Atiba. He would have to learn that too, for all his strength and his pride, just as she had. He could call on Ogun to tell him the future, but that god would be somewhere out of hearing if he tried to war against the branco. She had seen it all before in Brazil. ”

“ The ruling chief must
always be taken from the members of one of two families, the succession in many cases passing from one to the other family alternately. Primogeniture is not necessarily considered.
Before the introduction of letters the Yoruba are said to have employed knotted strings for recording events. Their language, which has been reduced to writing and carefully studied, has penetrated as far E. as Kano in the Hausa country. The best known dialectic varieties are those of Egba, Jebu, Ondo, Ife, Illorin and Oyo (Yoruba proper, called also Nago) ”

“ She felt his hands touch her shift, and she reached gently to stop him.
Over the years in Brazil so many men had used her. She had been given to any white visitor at the plantation who wanted her: first it was Portuguese traders, ship captains, even priests. Then conquering Hollanders, officers of the Dutch forces who had taken Brazil. A hundred men, all born in Europe, all unbathed and rank, all white. She had sensed their branco contempt for her with anger and shame. To this black Yoruba, this strong, proud man of Africa, she would give herself freely and with love. ”

“ Similar customs are said to be still secretly practised every year by many tribes in the delta of the Niger in spite of the vigilance of the British Government. Among the Yoruba negroes of West Africa “the human victim chosen for sacrifice, and who may be either a freeborn or a slave, a person of noble or wealthy parentage, or one of humble birth, is, after he has been chosen and marked out for the purpose, called an Oluwo. He is always well fed and nourished and supplied with whatever he should desire during the period of his confinement. ”