Ethnicity and the Slave Trade: "Lucumi" and "Nago" as Ethnonyms in West AfricaAuthor(s): Robin LawReviewed work(s):Source: History in Africa, Vol. 24 (1997), pp. 205-219Published by: African Studies AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3172026 .Accessed: 19/07/2012 19:56

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ETHNICITY AND THE SLAVE TRADE: "LUCUMI" AND "NAGO" AS ETHNONYMS IN

WEST AFRICA'

Robin Law University of Stirling and York University, Ontario

Ethnicity was evidently critical for the operation of the Atlantic slave trade, on both the African and the European sides of the trade. For Africans, given the general convention against enslaving fellow citizens,2 ethnic identities served to define a category of "others" who were legitimately enslavable. For African Muslims this function was performed by religion, though here too, it is noteworthy that the classic discussion of this issue, by the Timbuktu scholar Ahmad Baba in 1615, approaches it mainly in terms of ethnicity, through classification of West African peoples as Muslim or pagan.3 Europeans, for their part, regularly distinguished different ethnicities among the slaves they purchased, and American markets developed preferences for slaves of particular ethnic origins.4 This raises interesting (but as yet little researched) questions about the ways in which African and European definitions of African ethnicity may have interacted. Both Africans and Europeans, for example, commonly employed, as a means of distinguishing among African ethnicities, the facial and bodily scarifications ("tribal marks") characteristic of different communities-a topic on which there is detailed information in European sources back at least into the seventeenth century, which might well form the basis for a historical study of ethnic identities.

In this context as in others, of course, ethnicity should be seen, not as a constant, but as fluid and subject to constant redefinition. The lately fashionable debate on "the invention of tribes" in Africa concentrated on the impact of European colonialism in the twentieth century, rather than on that of the Atlantic slave trade earlier-no doubt because it was addressed primarily to Southern, Central and Eastern rather than Western Africa.5 Yet it is clear that African ethnicities were subject to transformations through the process of displacement across the Atlantic;6 and conversely, that new ethnic identities constructed in the diaspora could be fed back into the homeland through the repatriation of ex-slaves to Africa.7 A case in point, discussed in this paper, is that of the Yoruba.

The important role played by Yoruba in the Atlantic slave trade, both as victims of the trade and as sellers of slaves, is well established.' However, the actual term "Yoruba" occurs very seldom in the original documentary records (as opposed to the secondary historiography) of the slave trade. This is because, as is generally agreed, the peoples who now refer to themselves as

History in Africa 24 (1997), 205-219.

206 ROBIN LAW

"Yoruba" were not so called before the nineteenth century. According to the conventional view, moreover, these peoples did not call themselves by any other collective name either--and by implication, it is doubtful whether earlier they had any consciousness of forming any sort of national or ethnic unit.

It is generally supposed that consciousness of Yoruba ethnicity first emerged in the diaspora, and more specifically in Sierra Leone, where slaves liberated by the British navy from illegal slave-ships, including many Yoruba, were settled after 1808. Originally, Yoruba-speakers in Sierra Leone were called "Aku," derived from the commonest form of Yoruba greeting, e ku; the usage was established by the 1820s.9 Alternatively, however, they became known as "Yoruba," a usage established by the 1840s, and popularized by the linguistic studies of the Yoruba missionary-scholar Samuel Crowther (beginning with his A Vocabulary of the Yoruba Language in 1843). From Sierra Leone the usage was fed back into the Yoruba homeland through the return of ex-slaves there, from 1838 onwards, and through the establishment of the Church Missionary Society's "Yoruba Mission" (including Crowther as a prominent member) from 1843.10

The name "Yoruba" was not a neologism, being attested in West African Arabic-language sources as early as the seventeenth century: the earliest instance so far traced being, in fact, in the work of Ahmad Baba cited above, in which the Yoruba figure among the non-Muslim peoples whom it was permissible to enslave. It is generally acknowledged, however, to be, not a strictly indigenous term, but an external coinage, being a name used by the Hausa (and, by derivation, other northern peoples). Consistently with its northern origin, the term "Yoruba" does not occur in contemporary European sources, until Europeans began to penetrate into the interior of West Africa, and thus to adopt northern usage, in the nineteenth century." What seem to be versions of the name "Yoruba" ("Yruba," "Uraba," "Euroba," etc.) already occur among recorded ethnicities of slaves in the British West Indies in the second decade of the nineteenth century; but since the colonies concerned (Trinidad in 1813, Berbice in 1819) at the time had much larger numbers of slaves of Hausa origin, this is probably also a reflection of Hausa usage.12 It is normally supposed that in origin the term "Yoruba" referred to one specific Yoruba state or sub-section, Oyo, rather than to the wider ethnic/linguistic group to which Oyo belonged; its extension to refer to the wider group being presumptively an innovation of nineteenth-century missionaries.'3

The conventional view that the Yoruba lacked any sense of common ethnicity before the nineteenth century has, however, been challenged by Adediran (1984).14 Among other arguments, Adediran cites the fact that prior to the introduction of the general ethnonyms "Aku" and "Yoruba," at least two other terms are known to have been applied to the Yoruba in general- namely, "Lucumi" and "Nago." These terms are best attested, as terms for the Yoruba ethnic group, in the diaspora, in the Americas, but Adediran argues that diaspora usage must have been based on conventions already current in the Yoruba homeland.

"LUCUMI" AND "NAGO" AS ETHNONYMS IN WEST AFRICA 207

II

The term "Lucumi" is best known as a term used in Cuba for slaves of Yoruba origin." The dominant form of Afro-Cuban religion, generally called

santerfa or la regla de ocha, is associated with the Lucumi, and is clearly derived from Yoruba religion.16 Since the main exportation of African (including Yoruba) slaves into Cuba occurred relatively late in the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, it has sometimes been supposed that the use of the term "Lucumi" is a recent (nineteenth-century) development.17 But in fact, "Lucumi" slaves are documented in Cuba, albeit in small numbers, as far back as the beginning of the eighteenth century.'8 Moreover, the term was used not only in Cuba, but very generally in Spanish colonies in America, and elsewhere it certainly existed even earlier. The earliest instance of the term so far traced is a record of two slaves described as "Lucume" on an estate on Hispaniola (Santo Domingo) in 1547.19 As "Lucumi" the ethnonym occurs in Colombia and Peru from the first decade of the seventeenth century,20 and it is also known in Mexico.21 In published sources it first appears (as "Lucumies") in the account of the Spanish missionary Alonso de Sandoval, engaged in evangelizing African slaves in Colombia, published originally in 1627.22

In the diaspora the term "Lucumi" was certainly used as a generic label to include all (or at least many) Yoruba-speaking groups. In Cuba, the pioneering study of slave ethnicities by Fernando Ortiz (1916) named among the sub-groups of the Lucumis: the Egbado ("Egguado"), the Oyo ("Eyo"), and the Ijesa ("Iechas").23 There is, however, the complication that the "Lucumi" as defined in Cuba also included some non-Yoruba groups. Ortiz thus included as Lucumi the Tapa ("Tacua"), the Yoruba name for the Nupe, their immediate neighbors to the northeast. And he also observed that some people regarded the Araras, i.e., speakers of Aja-Ewe languages from the Dahomey area to the west, as "a sort of Lucumis." The later analysis of Lachatafier6 (1939) unequivocally includes the Arara as a "sub-group" of the Lucumi.24 A recent study lists over 130 names of Lucumi sub-groups (though many of these are merely variant spellings), which include not only the Tapa but also the Bariba (in Africa, the neighbors of the Yoruba to the northwest) and the Ibo, and seemingly even the Asante ("Chante") and Hausa ("Aguza," etc.) -though, curiously, not the Arara.25

It would seem that non-Yoruba groups originally distinct from the Lucumi have become absorbed into them during recent times. However, the inclusion of non-Yorubas among the Lucumi is not an exclusively recent phenomenon, but had its origins in the time of the slave trade, since Sandoval in the seventeenth century already included the Bariba ("Barbas") among the Lucumi.26 The inclusion of the non-Yoruba Nupe and Bariba may suggest that the term "Lucumi" was used with a geographical rather than a strictly linguistic reference; or alternatively, Yoruba may have served as a lingua franca for neighboring groups in West Africa, who were therefore linguistically assimilated in the Americas.

208 ROBIN LAW

The actual term "Lucumi" is commonly supposed to derive from a Yoruba greeting oluku mi, "my friend!," which seems to be a specifically eastern Yoruba (Ijesa) dialect form-and indeed, this hypothesized derivation has been made the basis for inferences about the regional provenance of Yoruba slaves imported into Cuba.27 As such, it would be a classical type of external coinage, comparable to the later term "Aku," which like the latter would more probably have arisen in the diaspora than in Africa.28 It must be stressed, however, that this etymology is purely speculative, and indeed seems not to be current in Cuba itself. Its plausibility is also undermined by the fact that, as will be shown hereafter, variants of the term "Lucumi" were current in Africa itself, as well as in the Americas.

The term "Nago" is best-known as a term for Yoruba-speakers in Brazil, especially through their involvement in the Bahia slave uprising of 1835, which drew its support predominantly from the Nago.29 As in Cuba, the predominant elements in the Afro-Brazilian religion, called candomble, are clearly Yoruba in origin.30 The term "Nago" was also used in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (modem Haiti).3' Although the "voodoo" religion of Haiti is mainly derived from that of the Aja-Ewe peoples, it also incorporates a distinct Nago "nation" of deities.32 The term is also attested in British West Indian colonies,33 and in Louisiana in the 1770s/1780s.34 In Brazil at least, it was explicitly used as a generic term, including various Yoruba-speaking groups: the pioneering study of slave ethnicities in Brazil by Nina Rodrigues (1906), for example, noted that the Nago in Brazil included slaves from Oyo, Ijesa, Egba, Lagos, Ketu, Ibadan, Ijebu ("Yebu"), and Ilorin.35 Although the published literature does not explicitly discuss the date at which the term "Nago" became current in the diaspora, I have found no references earlier than the eighteenth century.

The terms "Lucumi" and "Nago" are not entirely mutually exclusive in their American distribution. Both terms, "Lucumi" and "Nago," occur together, for example, in a census of slaves in Colombia in 1759, though without any indication of what distinction, if any, was made between them; the term "Nago" (in the form "Anago") also occurs in Cuba, though there considered merely as a sub-group of the Lucumi.36

The existence of not one but two general ethnonyms for the Yoruba in the Americas is noteworthy, but the basis of the distinction has apparently not hitherto attracted explanation or comment. The most obvious distinction in usage was evidently among different European languages--"Lucumi" being used in Spanish-speaking colonies and "Nago" mainly by the Portuguese, French, and English. But it may be suggested that there seems also to be a chronological distinction: "Lucumi" being essentially a term used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (though surviving in Cuba into the nineteenth), with "Nago" replacing it in the eighteenth century.

It might be that some light may be thrown on this issue by looking at the sources of slaves in West Africa, since (as Adediran suggested) diaspora terminology cannot have been wholly disconnected from West African usage. Both "Lucumi" and "Nago" were not purely diasporic terms, since both were

"LUCUMI" AND "NAGO" AS ETHNONYMS IN WEST AFRICA 209

in use in West Africa as well as in the Americas-and sufficiently early to make it unlikely that they were merely fed back into Africa from the Americas.37 The present paper therefore seeks to clarify the meanings of the terms "Lucumi" and "Nago" and the significance of the apparent shift from the former to the latter, by looking at West African usage as reflected in contemporary European accounts of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

IH

In recent times, the term "Lucumi" does not appear to have been used of Yoruba-speakers in West Africa, with one possible (but so far poorly documented) exception: namely, a small eastern Yoruba group which is reported to call itself "Onukumi," which certainly looks like a variant of "Lucumi."38 Although it does not seem likely that this group, which was not only small but remote from the main routes of supply for the Atlantic slave trade, could have been the origin of the use of the term in the Americas, it is conceivable that it represents a survival of a usage formerly more widespread in West Africa.

European sources of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries do, in fact, demonstrate that variants of the name "Lucumi" were applied to a community or communities elsewhere in the Yoruba area. With reference to West Africa, it may be noted that the name usually appears in variants of New World type, as "Lucamee," etc. But it is noteworthy that it also appears sometimes with a prefix, analogous to the form "Onukumi" just noted: the mid-seventeenth century account of the Dutchman Dapper, for example, offers the variants "Alkomij," "Ulkuma," and "Ulkami."39

"Lucumi" was never visited by any European, but was known only by hearsay as a place in the interior: an English account of 1723 thus refers explicitly to "Lucamee, where no white men ever were."40 It was known mainly through Allada and Whydah, to the southwest, but clearly also through Benin to the southeast--Sandoval, for example, alludes to the fact that "Lucumies" were employed in the palace administration of the Benin kingdom.41

"Lucumi" was conceived sometimes as a "nation," but more commonly as a place (a "country" and sometimes a "kingdom"). Whether a population or a region, it was explicitly conceived as having a distinctive linguistic identity, its language serving as a lingua franca outside its homeland. A French missionary on the island of Sdo Tome in 1640, reporting on the prospects of missionary enterprise in Benin and neighboring areas, noted as one of the advantages that "their language is easy, it is called the Licomin language and is universal in those parts." Likewise, the Dutchman Dapper in the mid- seventeenth century notes of Allada that "[t]heir own mother tongue is not esteemed by them, and they seldom speak it; but mostly in that land they regard the Alkomijsh as a noble language."42

210 ROBIN LAW

"Lucumi" was known primarily as a source of commodities brought for sale to the European traders at the coast. Most obviously, it appears as a source of slaves sent for sale through Allada (and later Whydah). Best known, the Dutch geographer Dapper in the mid-seventeenth century states that "many slaves" were brought from "the kingdom of Ulkami or Ulkuma" for sale to Europeans through Allada; Dapper also alludes to salt being traded from Allada to "Ulkuma," presumably in exchange for these slaves.43 The role of "Lucumi" as a source of slaves is also confirmed by two later sources of the 1720s. The French trader Des Marchais in 1725 says that Whydah imported from the interior slaves of the "Loucomy" nation. And the English trader William Snelgrave in 1727, noting the disruption of the delivery of slaves to the coast by the recent Dahomian conquest of Allada and Whydah, nevertheless added that Jakin, formerly the port of Allada, was still able to import slaves from "Lucamee.""44

Second, "Lucumi" was known as a source of cloth, which was purchased by Europeans from Allada and Whydah for resale on the Gold Coast. A French account of 1688 notes that the cloths purchased by Europeans at Whydah came from "the kingdom of Concomi," which is probably a miscopying of "Loucomi."45 The English factory at Whydah in 1723 likewise reported that "Whydah cloths are made at Lucamee."46 After the Dahomian conquest of Whydah, the King of Dahomey in 1753 sent cloths from the "Locomin" country as a gift to the Viceroy of Brazil.47

More surprisingly, "Lucumi" is attested as a source of corn purchased by Europeans for the provisioning of slave ships. The Dutch factory at Offra, then the principal coastal port of Allada, noted in 1680 that corn came there from "Alkomij," and a French account of 1728 noted that maize was brought for sale at Jakin from "Loucoumy."48 A further commodity which apparently came from Lucumi was gum: a Dutch account of 1718 noted that gum on sale in Whydah market came from "Laconie," which is probably an error for "Lacomie."49

Information about "Lucumi" other than its role as a source of commodities is exiguous. Spanish missionaries visiting Allada in 1660 included "Lucumi" in a list of countries which had formerly been tributary to Allada, but were now independent; and some sort of claim to authority over Allada is also suggested by the fact that the king of Allada in 1670 described himself as "king of Ardres [Allada] and Alguemy," of which the latter is presumably a variant of "Lucumi."so More interesting is a statement in an anonymous French account of Whydah in the early eighteenth century, referring to diviners called locally "boucots [buko]," that these were "nearly all strangers and come from the country called Laucommis." This clearly relates to the priests of Fa (Ifa), acknowledged in recent tradition to be a cult of Yoruba origin."s The same account says that the founders of the Whydah kingdom came from "the kingdom of Laucommis"-in contradiction to more recently recorded tradition, which claims that these founders came from Tado to the west.52

"LUCUMI" AND "NAGO" AS ETHNONYMS IN WEST AFRICA 211

Indications of the location of "Lucumi" are generally vague--in the interior between Allada to the west and Benin to the east. Snelgrave in 1727 places it more precisely northeast of Jakin, and protected from Dahomian attacks "by means of a large river."53

Although "Lucumi" has commonly been believed (by myself among others) to refer to Oyo, which was probably already the most powerful of the Yoruba states in the seventeenth century, this now seems to me doubtful. No European source explicitly equates the two: the French trader Barbot in the early eighteenth century, although often cited as so doing, in fact merely juxtaposes the two names (referring to "the Oyeo and Ulkami")--and in any case, he derived these two names from two separate earlier sources which he conflated, rather than from his own experience.4 Two sources in the 1720s which refer to both "Lucumi" and Oyo-Des Marchais and Snelgrave--do so in separate passages, without making any connection between the two. It may also be noted that one account in 1728 of an Oyo invasion of Dahomey, speaks of an alliance against Dahomey of "three kings of the interior ... called Ayo Brabo [the King of Oyo], Acambu [Akwamu] and Ahcomi," of which the last is surely a variant or miscopying of "Alcomi" or "Lucumi"--if not merely a confusion, this evidently suggests that Oyo and "Lucumi" were in fact distinct.55

That "Lucumi" was not Oyo seems also to be suggested by most of the more precise indications of its location. Only one source seems to suggest that a location in the interior to the north of Allada/Whydah: Des Marchais in the 1720s, who notes that traders from Whydah purchased "Loucomy" slaves in Dahomey to the north.56

More generally, however, other accounts state or imply that "Lucumi" was approached, not overland but by the coastal lagoon to the east of Whydah. Dapper in the mid-seventeenth century noted salt was brought to the market of Ba (Apa?) on the lagoon east of Allada was "conveyed in canoes in great quantities from Jojo [unidentified, but nearby to the west] and from there [i.e. Ba] to Ulkuma;" and in a second passage that salt was as taken from Allada in canoes by the people of "Kuramo," i.e., Lagos.57 If it is legitimate to associate these two passages together, the implication is evidently that the salt was taken from Allada to "Lucumi" via Lagos. The gum on sale in Whydah in 1718 was likewise said to have come from the direction of Benin to the east, "from Rio Lagos and Laconie." And even more explicitly, the maize from "Lucumi" being sold at Jakin in 1728 was brought by canoe along the "river," i.e., the coastal lagoon. The operations of pirates on the lagoon in that year interrupted the supply, causing the price of maize at Jakin to rise.58

Note also the evidence of Joseph de Naxara, a Spanish missionary who visited Allada in 1660, describing a form of trial by ordeal practiced there, in which suspected criminals were made to swim across the lagoon near the coast, and which he says was also practised in "Lucumi," as well as in Whydah ("Iura"), Hula ("Fulao"--here probably referring to Glehue, the port of Whydah) and Benin-which may be held to imply that "Lucumi" was also situated on the coastal lagoon.59

212 ROBIN LAW

These indications might be interpreted to suggest that "Lucumi" was specifically Ijebu, which is known from other European sources of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a source of both slaves and cloth supplied for sale to the Europeans at the coast.60 Against this, it may be noted that "Lucumi" and Ijebu are distinguished by several sources, including Sandoval and Dapper, and the French missionary of 1640-although that might conceivably result from their combining material from different sources, which referred to the same place under different names.61

Very possibly, however, "Lucumi" was a state or group of states inland from Ijebu. The reference in the anonymous French account of Whydah to "Lucumi" as the homeland of the Fa divination priests might be argued to point specifically to Ife, which is acknowledged in the Dahomey area to be the cradle of this cult. Although archeological evidence would seem to suggest that Ife's period of prosperity was over long before the period of European references to the importance of "Lucumi" (in ca.1640-1725), our ignorance of Ife (and southern Yoruba) history may be held to leave this open at least as a possible interpretation.

IV

In contrast to the case of "Lucumi," the term "Nago" is well-known in Africa in recent times, being commonly used by the Fon of Dahomey to the west as a generic term for Yoruba-speakers. It has been suggested (and often repeated) that it is a Fon coinage, originating in an insulting nickname given by them to their Yoruba neighbors.62 However, it appears that, in the form "Anago," it is also used as a self-appellation by one small Yoruba group, in the Ipokia/Itakete area to the southwest.63 It seems a logical inference that the latter is the origin of the term, which was generalized by their non-Yoruba neighbors to include other Yoruba groups: the omission of the initial syllable, abbreviating "Anago" to "Nago","is characteristic of Yoruba loanwords into Fon (as also with "Fa" from "Ifa"). However, the seductive assumption that the use of the term "Nago" as a generic term for Yorubas in the diaspora is derived from Fon usage64 is doubtful, since (as will be seen hereafter) its use with this general reference is not clearly documented in West Africa before the second half of the nineteenth century when, indeed, it might very well represent a feedback of Brazilian usage. In European sources of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it may be noted, the term occurs both in the New-World and the Fon form "Nago," and in the presumptively original Yoruba form "Anago"-and in one source "Inago."65

In sources relating to West Africa, the name "Nago" first appears in the Des Marchais account of 1725, among the nationalities of slaves sold through Whydah; another French source of 1750, describing the trade of Whydah after its conquest by Dahomey, also includes the name (in the form "Nagots") in a similar list.66 Two later French accounts, in 1780 and 1789, refer to "Nago" slaves as sold at Porto-Novo, outside Dahomian jurisdiction to the east, and a Portuguese record of 1807 speaks of "Nago" sold through Lagos, further east

"LUCUMI" AND "NAGO" AS ETHNONYMS IN WEST AFRICA 213

again.67 The French account of 1750 notes that the Portuguese traders at

Whydah did not buy the "Nago," and this prejudice is corroborated by the Portuguese source of 1807, which describes them as "of the worst sort" of slaves. But the French evidently valued them differently, the French source of 1780 describing them as "the most appreciated in the colonies."

In some accounts the Nago appear as sellers of slaves into the Atlantic trade. Dalzel's History of Dahomy thus refers to the "Nagoes," together with the Mahis (the immediate northeastern neighbours of Dahomey), as "inland merchants" who brought slaves for sale through Dahomey, until the monopolistic practices of the kings of Dahomey diverted the trade to Porto- Novo to the east.68 Likewise the English trader Robertson, in the 1800s refers to "Anagoo traders" coming to Badagry and Lagos-though, since he also refers to Bussa ("Boussa") as "the capital of Anagoo," there is evidently some confusion in his account with the Bariba of Borgu.69

More commonly, however, the Nago appear as the sold rather than the sellers, and more particularly as the victims of Dahomian slave raids. The Director of the French fort at Whydah in the 1760s, Pruneau de Pommegorge, thus observes that "it is the Mailleys [Mahi] and Nagots who are ceaselessly stolen and sold in our establishments.""7 In detail, during 1788-89 the Dahomians were reported to have mounted three campaigns which attacked, in succession, "the country of the Nagots," "a small country of the Nagots," and "the Nagots," in an attempt to gather captives for sale into the Atlantic trade.71 However, it does not seem that "Nago" were sold exclusively by the Dahomians; those sold through Porto-Novo and Lagos in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were presumably brought there from Oyo, which was at this period the principal supplier of slaves to these eastern ports. The "Nago" slaves sold by Oyo may perhaps have been purchased ultimately from Dahomey, but it seems very likely that some at least of them were captives taken in Oyo's own wars.

Apart from their role in the slave trade, little concrete is reported of the "Nago." On one occasion, however, in 1784, "Nago" appears (again alongside Mahi) as an "inland country" from which "auxiliaries" were recruited for a Dahomian campaign, against Badagry on the coast.72 The relationship of the newer term "Nago" to the older "Lucumi" is not made clear. The only source which uses both terms, Des Marchais in the 1720s, mentions them in separate passages, with no connection made between them.

It is doubtful whether in any of these West African instances, the term "Nago" was used, as in the Americas, generically to refer to the Yoruba as a whole. Certainly, "Nago" was not, in normal West African usage, identical with (or inclusive of) Oyo, since the two are regularly distinguished. Des Marchais in the 1720s, for example, listed the Oyo ("Ayois") and "Nago" separately among the nationalities of slaves exported through Whydah, and distinguished the characteristic "tribal" marks by which they could be recognized. The distinction is also regularly made in later sources: Robertson, for example, says that the "Anagoos" (as well as the Mahis) were subject to Oyo ("Eyeoo"), and obliged to supply military forces for its wars, while

214 ROBIN LAW

another (anonymous) early nineteenth-century source describes the "Nagos" (together with the Mahis) as situated on the trade route between Oyo and Lagos ."73

As to the more precise location of "Nago," in one passage relating to the Dahomian siege of Badagry in 1784, Dalzel reports that provisions for the besieging army were supplied by "Kossu, a Nago chief, belonging to Eyeo [Oyo]." If he was able to supply food, he must have been situated close to Badagry, and presumably in the coastal zone; so this reference, at least, may be to the Anago "proper" of the Ipokia area.74

More commonly, however, the detailed evidence suggests a location interior (north of) of Dahomey -consistently with the recurrent linking of the "Nago" with the Mahi. The two Dahomian campaigns against the "Nagots" in 1788, for example, seem to be identical with those recorded by Dalzel as against a town he called "Croo-too-hoon-too," reportedly northwest of Dahomey, though this is not readily identifiable, whereas that in 1789 was clearly the same as that recorded by Dalzel as against Ketu ("Ketoo"), northeast of Dahomey.75

John Duncan, the first European explorer to travel in the interior immediately north and northeast of Dahomey, in 1845, applies the name "Anagoo" to Dassa and Savalou, communities situated to the north of the Mahi.76 Of these, Dassa was Yoruba-speaking and Savalou, although non- Yoruba (Aja-Ewe), was founded (in the seventeenth century) in what had earlier been Yoruba territory.77 Duncan also refers to a "king of Anagoo" who fought alongside the Oyo against Dahomey at the battle of Paouignan in 1823, and other evidence suggests that this relates to Sabe, northeast of the Mahi country.71 The British naval officer Frederick Forbes, who visited Dahomey in 1849-50, likewise understood "the Anagoo provinces" to be located "on the north" of Dahomey, and implicitly distinguished them from other Yoruba states, such as Oyo and Abeokuta.79 In local usage, as reported in European sources of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, "Nago" clearly meant specifically the western Yoruba.

The process whereby the name "Nago" became generalized, to apply to the Yoruba as a whole, has yet to be traced in detail. An account recorded from a slave of Yoruba (Ijebu) origin in 1839 uses what seems to be a variant of the name, "Inongo," as a term for the "great nation" which includes Oyo. But since this was recorded outside West Africa (in Paris), and the informant had been a slave in Brazil, this probably reflects Brazilian rather than local West African usage.s0 In West Africa itself the earliest suggestion of a wider application of the name which I have traced is from 1851, when a French visitor to Dahomey described the inhabitants of Abeokuta as of the "nation" of the "Nagots."8' By this time, however, there had been a substantial settlement of Brazilians, including ex-slaves, in the coastal towns of Dahomey and neighboring areas, where they had acquired considerable commercial and political importance.82 It therefore seems quite possible that the generic use of the term "Nago" represents a feedback into West Africa of Brazilian usage. The subsequent consolidation of this usage in francophone (including French

"LUCUMI" AND "NAGO" AS ETHNONYMS IN WEST AFRICA 215

colonial) discourse probably reflects the close relations which existed between locally-settled Brazilians and the French Catholic mission established at Whydah in Dahomey from the 1860s.83

V

The term "Lucumi" was thus current in West Africa during the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, but virtually disappeared after the 1720s; the use of the term in Cuba in the nineteenth century must represent a survival of this usage within the diaspora rather than deriving directly from Africa. "Nago," on the other hand, appeared for the first time in the 1720s, and remained common thereafter. Neither term is unambiguously documented in West Africa as a generic term for all Yoruba-speakers before the mid- nineteenth century, and their general application in the diaspora therefore seems to reflect transformations in ethnic identities consequent on the displacement of slaves across the Atlantic rather than continuity from West African usage, the generic use of the term "Nago" in West Africa in recent times probably reflecting a feedback of Brazilian usage.

Beyond this, the evidence suggests that, in their West African origins, "Lucumi" and "Nago" were not merely alternative names for the same entity, but had different geographical

references--references to "Lucumi" relating

primarily to southern Yorubaland, which exported its slaves and other commodities through the Lagos lagoon, and references to "Nago" to western Yorubaland, which supplied slaves mainly through Dahomey, more commonly as victims of Dahomian raids than as voluntary traders. The substitution of "Nago" for "Lucumi" in diasporic usage in the eighteenth century thus seems to have reflected shifts in trading patterns: more specifically, a shift in the principal source of supply of Yoruba slaves to the coast-away from southern and towards western Yorubaland. The shift roughly coincided with the rise of Dahomey, of which it was presumably in some measure a consequence, the disruption of existing trade routes by which slaves were brought to the coast by the Dahomian conquest of Allada and Whydah being very well documented.84 But a connection might also be posited with the rise of Oyo power within Yorubaland, which may also have tended to shift the main source of supply for the Atlantic slave trade towards the northwest.

Notes

1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Conference of the African Studies Association, San Francisco, November 1996. My thanks to Christine Ayorinde for her assistance in identifying material on "Lucumi" in Cuba.

2. For early documentation of which, see the incident in 1682, when Abora and Kormantin, both members of the Fante confederacy, were at war, but it was noted that captives taken in the fighting were not available for export, because "they dare not sell them for they are all of one country." Bodleian Library, Oxford: Rawlinson C746, Richard Thelwall, Anomabu, 9 August 1682.

216 ROBIN LAW

3. Bernard Barbour and Michelle Jacobs, "The Mi"raj: a Legal Treatise on Slavery by Ahmad Baba" in John Ralph Willis, ed., Slaves and Muslim Society in Africa (2 vols.: London, 1985), 1:125-59.

4. Again, for an early example, see the complaint from Barbados to the Royal African Company in West Africa that a cargo of slaves "by you styled Gold Coast Negroes, we here found not to be so, but of several nations and languages, as Alampo [Adangme], the worst of Negroes, Papas [Popo] and some of unknown parts, and few right Gold Coast Negroes among them, which are here presently now discerned by every planter or inhabitant of this island from any other sort of Negroes." Rawlinson C746, Edwyn Steed and Stephen Gascoigne, Barbados, 12 May 1686.

5. E.g. Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tribalism in Zimbabwe (Gwelo, 1985); Leroy Vail, ed., The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa (London, 1989).

6. Paul E. Lovejoy, "The African Diaspora: Revisionist Interpretations of Ethnicity, Culture and Religion Under Slavery," The World History of Slavery, Abolition, and Emancipation, 2 (1997).

7. J. Lorand Matory, "Return, 'Race,' and Religion in a Transatlantic Yoruba Nation," paper presented at the Annual Conference of the African Studies Association, San Francisco, November 1996.

8. Robin Law, "The Atlantic Slave Trade in Yoruba Historiography" in Toyin Falola, ed., Yoruba Historiography (Madison, 1991), 123-34; Paul E. Lovejoy and David Richardson, "The Yoruba Factor in the Atlantic Slave Trade," paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Canadian Association of African Studies, Montreal, May 1996.

9. Adam Jones, "Recaptive Nations: Evidence Concerning the Demographic Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade in the Early 19th Century," Slavery and Abolition, 11 (1990), 42-57.

10. See further Robin Law, "Local Amateur Scholarship in the Construction of Yoruba Ethnicity, 1880-1914," in Louise de la Gorgondiere, Kenneth King, and Sarah Vaughan, eds., Ethnicity in Africa: Roots, Meanings and Interpretations (Edinburgh, 1996), 55-90. Use of the term "Yoruba" as a general ethnonym also spread to Trinidad in the West Indies, through the recruitment of indentured laborers from Sierra Leone in 1841-67: Maureen Warner-Lewis, Trinidad Yoruba: From Mother Tongue to Memory (Tuscaloosa, 1996).

11. The earliest unambiguous instance being T. Edward Bowdich, A Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (London, 1819), 208-09, based on information collected from Muslim residents in Kumase in 1817. A possible earlier instance is a reference to "Giorback," perhaps a misreading of "Giorbah," as a place on the Atlantic coast, in information collected in Tunis in 1789: "Report of Robert Traill," in Robin Hallett, ed., Records of the African Association, 1788- 1831 (London, 1964), 83.

12. B.W. Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807-1834 (Baltimore, 1984), 442-58.

13. But for some suggestion that the term may have been used in a wider sense in local West African usage earlier, cf. Robin Law, "'Central and Eastern Wangara:' an Indigenous West African Perception of the Political and Economic Geography of the Slave Coast, as Recorded by Joseph Dupuis at Kumasi, 1820," HA, 22 (1995), 281-305.

14. 'Biodun Adediran, "Yoruba Ethnic Groups or a Yoruba Ethnic Group? A Review of the Problem of Ethnic Identification," Africa: Revista do Centro do Estudos Africanos de USP, 7 (1984), 57-70.

15. For a recent study see Rafael L. L6pez Vald6s, "Notas para el estudio etnohist6rico de los esclavos Lucumi de Cuba" in LAzara Men6ndez, ed., Estudios Afro-Cubanos: Selecci6n de Lecturas (4 vols.: Havana, 1990), 2:312-47.

16. For recent studies see Miguel Barnet, Cultos afrocubanos: La regla de ocha, La regla de palo monte (Havana, 1995); George Brandon, Santeria from Africa to the New World (Bloomington, 1993).

17. William Bascom, "Yoruba Acculturation in Cuba," in Pierre Verger, Les afro- amiricains (Dakar, 1952).

18. "Lucumi" are not represented in a sample of Cuban slaves in 1511-1640, but constituted 5% of a sample in 1693-1714: L6pez Vald6s, "Notas," 317, 319.

"LUCUMI" AND "NAGO" AS ETHNONYMS IN WEST AFRICA 217

19. John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World 1400-1680 (Cambridge, 1992), 112, 198.

20. David Pavy, "The Provenience of Colombia Negroes," Journal of Negro History, 52 (1967), 35-58; Frederick P. Bowser, The African Slave in Colonial Peru 1524-1650 (Stanford, 1974), 40-43.

21. G. Aguirre Beltrin, "Tribal Origins of Slaves in Mexico," Journal of Negro History, 31 (1946), 322-24. L6pez Vald6s, "Notas," 344n1, also cites instances from Puerto Rico and Venezuela; in the latter in the form "Lucumino," which evidently incorporates the Aja-Ewe suffix -nu, "people of."

22. Alonso de Sandoval, Naturaleza, policia sagrada i profana, costumbres i ritos, disciplina i catecismo evangelico de todos Etiopes (Seville, 1627); republished, under the title De instaurando Aethiopum salute (1647); cited here from the modern edition, ed. Enriqueta Vila Vilar, Un tratado sobre la esclavitud (Madrid, 1987). References to "Lucumies" can be found at 65, 69, 123, 125, 139-41,413, 441.

23. Fernando Ortiz, Los negros esclavos (Havana, 1987), 41-56. Other Lucumi sub- groups named by Ortiz, which are not readily identifiable, are "Engiiei" and "Epa."

24. R6mulo Lachatefier6, "Tipos 6tnicos que concurrieron en la amalgama cubana," in El sistema religioso de los Afrocubanos(Havana, 1992), 166-67.

25. L6pez Vald6s, "Notas," 339-43. 26. Sandoval, Tratado, 141 ("Lucumies Barbas"). The only other Lucumi sub-group

named are the "Lucumies Chabas," perhaps the Sabe, a western Yoruba group. It may be noted here that some writers, including myself, have earlier interpreted Sandoval as saying that the Lucumi included people speaking mutually unintelligible languages. The passage cited (ibid., 140) actually says that through the use of pidgin Portuguese ("the language of Sdo Tom6") "...often the Ardas [Allada] and Caravalies [Calabar] can understand one another, and sometimes the Lucumies, although the latter [estos] tend to differ from one another, and are not understood [by each other], as they are from countries very far apart". I now think that "the latter" here refers to the Ardas, Caravalies, and Lucumies together, rather than the Lucumies alone; and the reference is therefore to linguistic differences between the Lucumi and other groups, rather than within the Lucumi.

27. Bascom. "Yoruba Acculturation;" Peter Morton-Williams, "The Oyo Yoruba and the Atlantic trade, 1670-1830," JHSN 3/1 (1964), 27.

28. A similar case is "Offoons," given by Sandoval, Tratado, 139, apparently as a generic term for Aja-Ewe speakers ("Popos," "Fulaos," "Ardas," etc.): evidently from the common greeting a fon [dagbe], "Have you woken [well]?"

29. Jodo Jos6 Reis, Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia (Baltimore, 1993), esp. 146-48.

30. See esp. Pierre Verger, Notes sur le culte des Orisha et Vodoun a Bahia, la Baie de Tous les Saintes au Brdsil, et a l'ancienne COte des Esclaves (Dakar, 1957).

31. David Geggus, "Sex Ratio, Age and Ethnicity in the Atlantic Slave Trade: Data from French Shipping and Plantation Records," JAH, 30 (1989), 23-44.

32. Alfred M6traux, Voodoo in Haiti (New York, 1972), 28, 86-87. 33. Bryan Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British West Indies (5th

ed., 5 vols.: London, 1819), 2:60, 88; cf. examples in Higman, Slave Populations, 442-58. 34. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, African Slaves in Colonial Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1992),

291-92. 35. Nina Rodrigues, Os africanos no Brasil (3rd ed., Sdo Paulo, 1945), 178. 36. Pavy, "Provenience," 41; L8pez Vald6s, "Notas," 340. The variant forms

"Anagonou," "Anaganu" in Cuba here again (cf. note 21 above) incororate the Aja-Ewe suffix -nu.

37. The occurrence of "Lucumi" as an ethnonym in West Africa was already noted by Ortiz, Negros esclavos, 51.

38. H.U. Beier, "Yoruba Enclave," Nigeria Magazine, 58 (1958), 238-51. 39. Olfert Dapper, Naukeurige Beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche Gewesten (Amsterdam,

1668), 491,492, 494.

218 ROBIN LAW

40. Public Record Office, London (hereafter, PRO); T70/7, Baldwin, Mabyn, and Barlow, Whydah, 9 August 1723.

41. Sandoval, Tratado, 126 (referring to "lucumies estrangeros"). 42. Ant6nio Brisio, Monumenta Missionaria Africana (1st series, 14 vols.: Lisbon, 1952-

85), 8: no.135: Colombin de Nantes, Sdo Tomd, 26 December 1640; Dapper, Naukeurige Beschrijvinge, 491.

43. Ibid., 491-92. 44. Chevalier des Marchais, "Journal du voiage de Guin6e et Cayenne" (Biblioth6que

Nationale, fonds franqais 24223), 129v; William Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea (London, 1734), 89.

45. Jean-Baptiste du Casse, "Relation du voyage de Guynde fait en 1687," in Paul Roussier, ed., L'dtablissement d'Issigny, 1687-1702 (Paris, 1935), 15.

46. PRO: T70/7, Baldwin, Mabyn, and Barlow, Whydah, 9 August 1723. 47. Theodosio Rodriguez da Costa, Whydah, 27 May 1753, cited in Pierre Verger, Trade

Relations Between the Bight of Benin and Bahia (Ibadan, 1976), 164. 48. Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague: TWIC.1024, J. Bruyningh, Offra, 14 March

1680; Archives Nationales, Paris (hereafter, AN): Dayrie, Jakin, 12 August 1728. 49. Albert van Dantzig, The Dutch and the Guinea Coast, 1674-1742: A Collection of

Documents from the General State Archive at The Hague (Accra, 1978), no. 234: Diary of Ph. Eytzen, Whydah, 3 May 1718.

50. Basilio de Zamora, "Cosmographia e Descripcion del Mundo" [1675] (Bibliotheca Piiblica del Estado, Toledo: Collecci6n de MSS Bornon-Lorenzo, 244), 27; "Suite du journal du Sieur Delb6e," in J. de Clodor6, ed., Relation de ce qui s"est passd dans les Isles et Terre-ferme de l'Amdrique, pendant la derniere guerre avec l'Angleterre, et depuis en execution du Traitt6 de Breda (Paris, 1671), 524.

51. "Relation du royaume de Judas en Guin6e" (Archives d'Outre-Mer, Aix-en- Provence: D^p6t des Fortifications des Colonies, C8tes d'Afrique, 104), 58. For the Fa cult in the Dahomey area, see Bernard Maupoil, La giomancie a l'ancienne COte des Esclaves (Paris, 1943).

52. "Relation du royaume de Judas," 28. 53. Snelgrave, New Account, 89. 54. John Barbot, Description of the Coast of North and South Guinea (London, 1732),

352. Barbot's references to "Lucumi" are copied from Dapper. 55. Francisco Pereyra Mendes, Whydah, 5 April 1728, quoted in Verger, Trade

Relations, 122. 56. Des Marchais, "Journal," 129v. 57. Dapper, Naukeurige Beschrijvinge, 491-92. 58. Van Dantzig, Dutch, no. 234: Diary of Ph. Eytzen, Whydah, 3 May 1718; AN:

C6/25, Dayrie, Jakin, 12 August 1728. 59. Joseph de Naxara, Espejo mistico en que el hombre interior se mira prdcticamente

illustrado (Madrid, 1672), 278. 60. Robin Law, "Early European Sources Relating to the Kingdom of Ijebu (1500-1800):

a Critical Survey," HA, 13 (1986), 237-67. 61. Dapper also notes explicitly that "Lucumi" "does not extend to the coast"

Naukeurige Beschrijvinge, 494. 62. E.G. Parrinder, "Yoruba-Speaking Peoples in Dahomey," Africa, 17 (1947), 122-29. 63. A.I. Asiwaju, Western Yorubaland under European Rule, 1889-1945 (London, 1976),

18-19. 64. Reis, Slave Rebellion, 154. 65. G.A. Robertson, Notes on Africa (London, 1819), 287, 296, both passages referring

to trade at Lagos; but elsewhere the same source uses the form "Anagoo." 66. Des Marchais, "Journal," 34v; AN: C6/25, Pruneau and Guestard, "M6moire pour

servir g l'intelligence du commerce de Juda," 18 March 1750. 67. AN: C6/27, Ollivier de Montagubre, Whydah, 30 December 1780; Pierre Labarthe,

Voyage i la COte de Guinie (Paris, 1803), 163; Governor of Bahia, 7 October 1807, quoted in Verger, Trade Relations, 235.

"LUCUMI" AND "NAGO" AS ETHNONYMS IN WEST AFRICA 219

68. Archibald Dalzel, The History of Dahomy (London, 1793), 214. 69. Robertson, Notes on Africa, 209; cf. ibid., 287, for traders from "Inago" at Lagos. 70. Pruneau de Pommegorge, Description de la Nigritie (Amsterdam, 1789), 236. 71. AN: C6/27,Gourg, Whydah, 16 July & 17 Nov. 1788, 28 Feb. 1789. 72. Dalzel, History, 182. 73. Robertson, Notes on Africa, 268; The Times, 18 May 1816. 74. Dalzel, History, 183. 75. Ibid., 199, 201-02. For the location of "Croo-too-hoon-too," cf. The map of

"Dahomy and its environs" by Robert Norris: ibid. frontispiece. 76. John Duncan, Travels in Western Africa (2 vols, London, 1847), volume 2. 77. J.A.M.A.R. Berg6, "etude sur le pays Mahi," Bulletin du Comitd d'ltudes

Historiques et Scientifiques de I'A.O.F., 11 (1928), 708-55. 78. Duncan, Travels, 2:41-12: for the identification with Sabe, cf. Robin Law, "The

Oyo-Dahomey wars, 1726-1823: a Military Analysis," in Toyin Falola and Robin Law, eds, Warfare and Diplomacy in Precolonial Nigeria (Madison, 1992), 9-25.

79. Frederick E. Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans (2 vols.: London, 1851), 1:20. But some of Forbes' terminology suggests confusion, notably his listing (as victims/enemies of Dahomey) of "Eyeo [Oyo], Attahpahm [Atakpame, a western Yoruba group], Yorihbah [Yoruba, meaning presumably again Oyo], Anagoo": ibid., i, 21. Note that Forbes implies that the name Yoruba ("Yorubah," "Yoribah") was in use in Dahomey (ibid., 2: 23, 166-67), which would be surprising at this date; but he may have owed the term to one of his interpreters, influenced by Sierra Leone usage.

80. M. d'Avezac-Magaya, Notice sur le pays et le peuple des Ydbous en Afrique (Paris, 1845), translated in P.C. Lloyd, "Osifekunde of Ijebu" in Philip D. Curtin, ed., Africa Remembered: Narratives by West Africans from the era of the Slave Trade (Madison, 1967), 245-46, 248.

81. Auguste Bouet, Report of 11 October 1851, in Jean-Claude Nardin, "La reprise des relations franco-dahom6ennes au XIXe sidcle: La mission d'Auguste Bouet a la cour d'Abomey (1851)," Cahiers

d'ltudes Africaines, 25 (1967), 97-98. 82. For which, see esp. Jerry Michael Turner, "Les Br6siliens: The impact of Former

Brazilian Slaves upon Dahomey" (PhD, Boston University, 1975). 83. Cf. the argument of Matory, "Return," on the use of the term "Gege" for speakers

of Aja-Ewe languages. 84. Cf. Robin Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, 1550-1750 (Oxford, 1991), 306.