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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.
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.
On the confines of the Yoruba country existed a beautiful village which had hitherto escaped the ravages of the relentless slave-hunting foe. It was situated on the banks of a rapid stream, which gave freshness to the air, and fertility to the neighbouring plantations.
Then he fawned on me for a ten-cent piece. Later he took it upon himself to pity the natives of India. "Heathens," he called them this woolly one, whose race has been the butt of every comedy on the native stage since the beginning. And I turned and saw by the head upon his shoulders that he was a Yoruba man, if there be any truth in ethnological castes.
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.
Out of them in days without date flowed the beginnings of Egypt; among them rose, later, centers of culture at Ghana, Melle, and Timbuktu. Kingdoms and empires flourished in Songhay and Zymbabwe, and art and industry in Yoruba and Benin.
Hence, when the natives wish to signify that the sovereign reigns, they say, "He has eaten the king." A custom of the same sort is still practised at Ibadan, a large town in the interior of Lagos, West Africa. When the king dies his head is cut off and sent to his nominal suzerain, the Alafin of Oyo, the paramount king of Yoruba land; but his heart is eaten by his successor.
Sometimes a bold individual rebels against the established custom and successfully introduces a new era: thus in Yoruba, under an old custom, when a king died his eldest son was obliged to commit suicide; this custom was set at defiance by a certain Adelu in 1860, and has not since been observed. All the influences that tend to broaden thought go to displace taboo.
AH three centers, however, are connected with the Niger, and the group nearest the coast that is, the Yoruba cities has the greatest numbers of towns, the most developed architectural styles, and the oldest institutions. The Yoruba cities are not only different from the Sudanese in population, but in their social relations.
We need not assume that the cultural change was sudden or absolute. Ancient Yoruba had the cruelty of a semi-civilized land, but it was not dominant or tyrannical. Modern Benin and Dahomey showed traces of skill, culture, and industry along with inexplicable cruelty and bloodthirstiness. But it was the slave trade that turned the balance and set these lands backward.
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