Yoruba

“ The Yoruba themselves have traditions of an Oriental origin. They are divided into many tribes, among the best known being the Oyo = Yoruba proper, the Egba, Jebu, Ife, and Ibadan. They are sometimes called by the French Nago, and are known to the Sierra Leonis, many of whom are of Yoruba descent, as Aku. A considerable proportion of the American negroes are also said to be of Yoruba origin. For a long period the Yoruba were raided by the Dahomeyans and other coast tribes, to sell as slaves to the white traders. They are both an urban and agricultural people. ”

“ The men in the hut finally concluded that only the Yoruba could be relied upon. When the day of war comes, you only trust your own blood, your own gods.
After the moon had disappeared, he’d cast the cowries, praying Ogun would presage the defeat of the branco. The men required an omen. ”

“ Inhabitants.—The population is estimated at 1,750,000. The Yoruba people, a Negro race divided into many tribes, form the majority of the inhabitants. Notwithstanding their political feuds and their proved capacity as fighting men, the Yoruba are distinguished above all the surrounding races for their generally peaceful disposition, industry, friendliness, courtesy and hospitality towards strangers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The voice of Shango was telling them that the Yoruba must join with the other men of Africa if they would not all die as slaves. Otherwise they and their children and their children's children for twenty generations would be as cattle to the branco. Even so, he would not yet countenance the spilling of innocent blood. Not until Yoruba blood had been spilled. They must not kill those among the branco who had done them no hurt. Only those who would deny their manhood.
Suddenly she turned and glared directly at Atiba. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He could not understand why the branco slaves who worked alongside the Yoruba allowed themselves to be fed on boiled corn mush. A natural bounty lay within arm's reach.
The Orisa, those forces in nature that work closest with man, were still present on the island. He could sense them, waiting in the wood of the trees. This ravished place had once been a great forest, like the one north of Ife, and it could be again. If the hand of the Ingles was taken from it, and the spirit of the Orisa, its rightful protectors, freed once more. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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) ”

“ The Yoruba country is the greatest agricultural centre in West Africa. For home consumption the Yoruba grow yams, maize and millet, the chief articles of food, cassava, sweet potatoes, sesame and beans. Model farms have been established for experimental culture and for the tuition of the natives. A palatable wine is obtained from the Raphia vinifera and native beers are also brewed. Imported spirits are largely consumed. There are no manufactures on a large scale save the making of “country cloths” (from cotton grown, spun and woven in the country) and mats. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Atiba eased his own pace slightly, as though to signify deference.
"A Yoruba may set fires in the forest, to drive out a cowardly foe. It is all part of war. But we do not fire his compounds, the compounds that shelter his women."
"The curing house where sugar is kept is not the compound of the branco's women." Atiba quickened his stride again, to reassert his leadership, and to prevent the other men from hearing Tahajo's censure, however misguided. "It's a part of his fields. Together they nourish him, like palm oil and salt. Together they must be destroyed." ”

“ The savage rulers of Dahomey and Lagos now became notorious for the barbarities they inflicted on the unoffending tribes in their neighbourhood. The Yoruba country was the chief scene of their hunting expeditions. Towns and villages were attacked and burned; the able-bodied men and young women and children were carried off into slavery; the aged were ruthlessly murdered, fields and plantations were laid waste, and a howling wilderness was left behind. ”

“ This remarkable man had once been captured by the slave-traders, but had escaped, and was the first to suggest the cave as a place of safety. Throughout Sierra Leone, Abeokuta, and the Yoruba country generally the best-known man in connection with the African civilization, is Mr. Samuel Crowther, a native, and who, in the Yoruba language, was called Adgai. He was embarked as a slave on board a slaver at Badagry, in 1822. ”

“ Serina glanced back, now speaking English. "I see you are an Ingles who bothers to try and understand other peoples. One of the few I've ever met. Felicitacao, senhor, my compliments. Yes, that is one of the ways, and the most sacred to a Yoruba. It's called the divination of the sixteen cowrie shells. A Yoruba diviner foretells the will of the gods from how the shells lie in a tray after it has been shaken—by how many lie with the slotted side up. It's the way the gods talk to him."
"Who are these gods they speak to?" Katherine found herself challenged by the mulatto's haughtiness. ”

“ The whole face of the country extending through the Aku region or Yoruba, as it is laid down on the large missionary map of Africa, is most beautifully diversified with plains, hills, dales, mountains, and valleys, interlined with numerous streams, some of which are merely temporary or great drains; whilst the greater part are perennial, and more or less irrigating the whole year, supplying well the numerous stocks of cattle and horses with which that country is so well everywhere provided. The climate is most delightful. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Palm-oil, timber, rubber, yams and shea-butter are the chief articles of trade. An official newspaper is published in the Yoruba and English languages. Abeokuta is the headquarters of the Yoruba branch of the Church Missionary Societyi and British and American, missionaries have met with some success in their civilizing work. In their schools about 2000 children are educated. The completion in 1899 of a railway from Lagos helped not only to develop trade but to strengthen generally the influence of the white man. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the province of Lagos, which forms part of Southern Nigeria, the Ijebu tribe of the Yoruba race is divided into two branches, which are known respectively as the Ijebu Ode and the Ijebu Remon. The Ode branch of the tribe is ruled by a chief who bears the title of Awujale and is surrounded by a great deal of mystery. ”

“ This brief description of the three most important centres of Yoruba life will serve to show how varied and haphazard are the forms which British policy takes in the Western Province. I fear that much trouble lies ahead if steps are not adopted to evolve something more closely approximating to statecraft in handling the problems of the country. ”

“ 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. ”