witchcraft accusations and economic tension in pre-colonial old calabar

Witchcraft Accusations and Economic Tension in Pre-Colonial Old CalabarAuthor(s): A. J. H. LathamSource: The Journal of African History, Vol. 13, No. 2 (1972), pp. 249-260Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/180854 .

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Journal of African History, xiii, 2 (I972), pp. 249-260 249

Printed in Great Britain

WITCHCRAFT ACCUSATIONS AND ECONOMIC TENSION IN PRE-COLONIAL OLD CALABAR

BY A. J. H. LATHAM

DURING the course of a study of the economic and social history of Old Calabar, it became apparent to the author that witchcraft accusations played an important role in Efik society of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However there was no clue in the sources as to what the social function of these witchcraft accusations was, and it therefore seemed sensible to refer to analyses of witchcraft in twentieth-century African societies. The relevant anthropological studies proved indeed to offer insight into the way in which witchcraft and witchcraft accusations may have operated in Old Calabar in pre-colonial times. This article has been written in the belief that this somewhat unusual approach will be of interest and value to other historians of pre-colonial African societies.

I

M. G. Marwick has suggested that witchcraft accusations can be seen as indices of social tension, and as vehicles of social change, so that the tensions and conflicts in a society may be gauged by the frequency of such accusations in particular social relationships.' Elsewhere he argues that in Africa, witchcraft and sorcery attacks only occur between persons linked by close social bonds, but whose relationship is strained.2 These ideas are of great benefit to understanding Efik witchcraft accusations in the pre- colonial period, and it will be the thesis of this paper that in Old Calabar witchcraft accusations were a way of relieving tensions which arose from the repressed conflict between those who owed their status to the traditional lineage system, and those who owed their status to their wealth as merchants in the overseas trade. At the highest political level these same tensions manifested themselves in succession disputes, and were also relieved by witchcraft accusations, which eliminated candidates from the contest.

II

As an extension of Evans-Pritchard's work on the Azande, Marwick has been at pains to distinguish between sorcerers, who consciously attack people with their magic, and witches, who are unconscious of the evil effects of the magic which emanates involuntarily from them.3 This

1 M. G. Marwick, Witchcraft and Sorcery (Penguin I970), I7. 2 Ibid. 28o, cit. M. G. Marwick, 'Witchcraft as a Social Strain Gauge', Australian

J7ournal of Science, 26 (I964), 263-8. 3 M. G. Marwick, Sorcery in its Social Setting (Manchester University Press, I965), 8i.



250 A. J. H. LATHAM

distinction will not be drawn in the following discussion, as there appears to have been no very clear separation in Efik minds between witchcraft and sorcery, both going under the term ifot. In Efik belief, ifot could cause sickness or death, so that if someone fell ill, an abia ebok or medical doctor was consulted to cure the sickness. If the patient did not recover or died, an abia idiong or witch doctor was consulted to divine the origin of the evil influence. Whoever was accused either by the witch doctor, or indeed anyone else, of using ifot against the patient, was made to drink the poison ordeal, called esere, made up of Calabar beans (Physostigma Venenosum)4 ground up and mixed in water. Those who vomited the draught lived and were considered innocent, but those who did not, died, and were believed guilty. Although in I850 the use of the ordeal was put under the authority of the Ekpe secret society, which controlled judicial matters, to prevent its being invoked too often,5 there does not appear to have been any manipula- tion of its effects, which were considered to be totally unprejudiced.6 These beliefs continue to the present day, although no longer practised openly.

III

True to Marwick's suggestion that in Africa witchcraft and sorcery attacks only occur between people linked by close social ties, an analysis of the recorded cases of Efik witchcraft in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries does reveal that there were close ties between attacker and victim.7 In the sixteen known cases of ordinary witchcraft, listed in Table i, five are too poorly recorded to decide the relationship between the victim and the witch or sorcerer. But in the eleven remaining cases, four involve wives accused of attacking their husbands, three involve brothers attacking brothers, another three involve aunts, uncles and nephews and nieces either as attackers or victims, and two more involve brother-in-law against sister-in-law or the reverse. There was one case of sister against sister, and one of a mother attacking her son. No cases involve accusations made by or against total strangers. So in general it appears that relationship by blood or marriage was a bond between accused sorcerer or witch, and the victim. This bears out G. I. Jones's observation in a recent study of witchcraft in the eastern areas of Nigeria, that the Efik believe agnates and women married into the lineage most likely to be guilty of witchcraft.8

4F. E. Camps, Gradwood's Legal Medicine, 2nd ed (Williams and Wilkins, London, I 968), 686.

5 H. M. Waddell, Twenty-Nine Years in the West Indies and Central Africa (London, I 863), 480.

6 Ibid. 279, 547-8. Rev. Hugh Goldie, Calabar and its Mission (Edinburgh and London, I890), 34-5.

7D. Simmons, 'An Ethnographic Sketch of the Efik People', in D. Forde (ed.), Efik Traders of Old Calabar (Oxford University Press, I956), 2I-2. E. U. Aye, Old Calabar Through the Centuries (Hope Waddell Press, Calabar, I967), 78-83.

8 G. I. Jones, 'A Boundary to Accusations', in M. Douglas (Ed.), Witchcraft Con- fessions and Accusations (Tavistock, London, 1970), 325-6.



WITCHCRAFT ACCUSATIONS AND ECONOMIC TENSION 251

Table i. Ordinary Witchcraft Accusations

Sorcerer Victim Accuser Year Source I . ? ? ? 1787 p. , Oa

2. brother brother sorcerer I846 pp. 282-4b

3. sister sister brother I849 pp. 220-Il

4. 2 wives husband victim I850 pp. 248-9c

5. 2 middle brothers elder brother/ younger I85I PP. 480-ib and wife husband brother

6. mother son victim I853 pp. 278-9c 7. nephew and uncle abia-idiong c. I846-54 pp.36-7d

2 nieces 8. old man and boy abia-idiong I854 pp. 339_40e

son and daughter 9. ? ? sorcerer I855 P. 338c

I0. ? ? sorcerer I855 P. 338c ii. uncle and aunt nephew/ ? i855 pP. 341-2C

and great aunt great nephew IZ. brother and brother/ ? I856 pp.341-2,354C

sister and aunt nephew/ and sister-in-law brother-in-law

13. 4 wives husband ? i874 pp. 525-7c 14. wife husband husband's brother ? pp. 36-7d I5. brother-in-law sister-in-law townsfolk ? pp. 36-77d i6. ? ? ? ? p.37d

a Duke, Antera, Extracts from the original text of the diary of Antera Duke, in D. Forde (Ed.) Efik Traders of Old Calabar, Oxford University Press, 1956.

b H. M. Waddell, Twenty-Nine Years in the West Indies and Central Africa, London, I863.

c W. Marwick, William and Louisa Anderson, Edinburgh, 1897. d Rev. Hugh Goldie, Calabar and its Mission, Edinburgh and London, 1890.

As it was the accusation of using ifot which was so crucial in the view of the fatal poison ordeal, the relationship between accuser and accused is obviously significant, and an analysis of the same sixteen cases shows that for the most part accusers and accused were bound by the same social ties as attacker and victim, except in the cases where the accusation was made by an abia-idiong. In five of the cases the relationship is not clear, and in two the accuser was an abia-idiong. But in three cases the sorcerer himself volunteered to take the ordeal in an attempt to prove his innocence, and in two the victim personally made the accusation before his death. In another three cases it was the victim's brother who made the accusations. In one case the accusations seem to have been made by unspecified 'townsfolk'. In other words, except for abia-idiongs, it was mainly those who were likely to be accused of witchcraft who were also likely to make accusations.

Unfortunately the motives imputed to the accused, or which might have motivated the accusers, are not clear, and beyond the obvious assumption that some kind of tension between the parties lay behind the supposed attacks and accusations, one is in the dark in terms of hard evidence. Nor is it possible to show when witchcraft accusations became an important element in Efik society, as there is no evidence prior to 1787. They may



252 A. J. H. LATHAM

have become increasingly common after this date, but this cannot be proven from the available evidence. That there appear to be more cases in the middle of the nineteenth century than earlier is simply because there were more outside observers then. All that can be said is that witchcraft accusations appear to have been prevalent in Old Calabar at all recorded times up to the abolition of the poison ordeal.

IV

So much for ordinary Efik witchcraft accusations. But it is at the highest political level that Efik witchcraft accusations take on their most fascinating role. An analysis of accusations recorded at the death of certain Efik Kings or Obongs (Table 2) shows that, as in ordinary accusations, wives and blood relations or agnates were most commonly accused of witchcraft. Of the seven cases, five involve agnates, three wives, one involves a head slave and another a 'male companion'. These two latter may have been related by marriage, or even blood, but in any case they were in close relationship to the victim. The outstanding differences between these cases and the ordinary cases previously discussed, is that sometimes large numbers of wives and agnates were involved, and that the distance in relationship between the victim and the agnates who were believed to have attacked him, was more distant than in ordinary cases. In general the blood and marriage bond still remained, but the blood relationship might be several generations removed.

As in the case of the ordinary accusations, the accusers fell into the same categories as the attackers and victims. Three cases involved agnates, two cases involved accusations by the victim, and there was one case each con- cerning counter-accusations between parties, an abia-idiong, and farm slaves. In one remaining case the accuser is not defined.

What then were the issues which may have been behind these accusations at political level? Cases 5 and 7 took place at Creek Town. In the first, Eyo III died in i862 and his farm slaves accused his uncle of sorcery, whilst the king's half-sister accused his only full sister. Both of the accused died.9 In the other case, King Eyo VI fell sick, and one of his companions called Basi was accused of causing the sickness. He fled to the mission for protection, and, failing to get him, the King put one of Basi's wives to death.10 In both cases it seems likely that the tensions behind the accusations were concerned with the succession, although the details are not clear enough to state this with absolute certainty.

But the Duke Town cases are much more explicit. There were four leading political positions in Efik society, the Ndem priesthood, or priesthood of the tutelary deity Ndem Efik; the Obongships or kingships of Creek Town and Duke Town; and the Eyambaship, or headship of the secret

9 Goldie, Calabar, 209-13. 10 Ibid. 233-5.




society Ekpe. Of these the Ndem priesthood has always descended in one lineage group, the Cobhams, according to the Efik collateral descent system, by which brother succeeds brother in order of seniority, and then their sons in order of seniority. There are no recorded cases of sorcery

Table 2. Political Witchcraft Accusations

Sorcerer Victim Accuser Year Source i. Agnate Agnate victim's sister I787 p. IIIa 2. many wives and many husband/agnate agnate I834 pp. 279,

agnates 497b

and p- I59d

3. headslave master ? I849 pp. 2I2-I3c

4. wives and family husband/ counter- I852 pp. 257-63C women and mother, son/ accusations PP. 496-8b and agnates agnate

5. uncle and sister nephew/ sister and farm i86I pp. 650-Ib brother slaves pp. 209-I13d

6. agnates and wife agnate/ victim I871 pp. 486-9zC husband

7. male companion and male companion abia idiong and i871 pp. 233-5d male companion's wife victim

a Duke, Extracts. b Waddell, Twenty-Nine Years. c Marwick, Andersons. d Goldie, Calbbar.

involved in the succession to this office, which suggests that there was general agreement over the succession within the lineage, and that no tensions were involved. This was probably due to the relative insignificance of the office, which had been important when the Efik were itinerant fishermen, but had lost much of its influence when the Efik began to participate in the international economy as merchants.11 But, successions to the Obongshzip at Duke Town, and to the Eyambaship, sometimes involved numerous accusations of sorcery. These two offices were the most important Efik positions, the first giving considerable influence over matters con- cerning the community as a whole, including relations with foreigners, and hence the European trade; the second giving influence over internal judicial matters, and so over debt collection, distraint, and similar commercial proceedings. Sometimes these offices were held by one man, sometimes by different men.12 By the late eighteenth century two wards had emerged as the dominant political wards in Calabar, and competition for the two offices was essentially confined to them. These were Eyamba ward and Duke ward, whose political dominance was the consequence of their commercial success in the European trade, for they converted their profits into vast bodies of retainers.13 It was within and between these two wards that sorcery accusations played such an important part in succession disputes.

" A. J. H. Latham, 'Old Calabar I600-I89I: The Impact of the West upon a Trad- itional Society', Ph.D. thesis, I970 (University of Birmingham), so-I, 6I, 63.

12 Ibid. 53, 55-6, 6I-3- 13 Ibid. 47-8, 63-6.



254 A. J. H. LATHAM

Except for the cases 5 and 7 which have already been discussed, the rest all involve one or both of these two dominant wards. In case i, Obong Duke Ephraim (Epko Efiom) of Duke ward died. The following year, I787, his sister accused Coffee Duke, obviously an agnate but whose exact relationship is not known, of killing the Duke with sorcery. Coffee Duke fled to a ship in the river, and although he later returned, the outcome is unknown.14 In this case the tensions were clearly internal to Duke ward. But the later cases involved both Duke ward and Eyamba ward, and revealed tension between them.

In I834 Great Duke Ephraim (Efiom Edem) of Duke ward died, who was both Obong and Eyamba. About fifty people were accused of sorcery and took the ordeal, of whom more than forty died, all his wives being accused and many of his relations. The accusations were made by the leaders of Eyamba ward, and Mr Young of that ward even kept a log of the proceedings. The result of these accusations was that Duke ward was weakened, its strongest candidates eliminated, and the Eyamba candidate was successful in gaining the offices of Obong and Eyamba, as King Eyamba V.15 It seems reasonable to assume that the motivation behind the accusations was the desire for office. The Eyamba ward could use witchcraft accusations in this way, for both wards were descended from twin brothers, and therefore agnatically related, as can be seen from the Efik structural genealogy in Table 3. Thus the Eyamba ward utilized an available weapon of covert aggression to further their political ambitions.

To what extent witchcraft accusations were made on King Eyamba's death is unknown, although apparently at least one of his slaves took the ordeal.16 But in 1852 at the death of his successor, Archibong I, of Duke ward, accusations and the ordeal emerged as crucial weapons in the succession dispute. Archibong's mother, Obuma, charged three women of the family with ifot, and they all took the ordeal and died. Then she accused several of Archibong's wives, who also took the ordeal and died. She also offered the ward slaves at the farms a large sum to come and force the leaders of Eyamba ward to submit to the poison ordeal if challenged. In Duke Town market place both wards confronted each other, making accusations and counter-accusations, and taking the ordeal. Many died, until Mr Young, leader of Eyamba ward and its candidate for the succession, was accused. He managed to defer his ordeal until the next day, and during the night fled to a ship in the river, and thence to the safety of neighbouring Creek Town, where he was joined by his brother Antaro, who was next in line for the succession in Eyamba ward. The females of Eyamba ward fled to the Mission. Mr Young then challenged Obuma herself to the

14 Antera, Duke, 'Extracts from the Original Text of the Diary of Antera Duke', in Forde, Efik Traders, III, 22 Oct. 1787.

15 Waddell, Twenzty-Nine Years, 279, 497. Goldie, Calabar, 159. 16Waddell, Twenty-Nine Years, 336-7. W. Marwick, William and Louisa Anderson

(Edinburghl, I 897), 212-13.




ordeal, in a letter, but her answer was to threaten to blow up the town with a keg of gunpowder if anyone raised the matter again. Although Mr Young had escaped with his life, his loss of prestige was such that the Duke ward candidate, Duke Ephraim (Ededem), became Obong.17 As in I834. witchcraft accusations had emerged as a weapon in a critical succession dispute. Such accusations were particularly appropriate in this succession, as Archibong, though of Duke ward, was also son-in-law and nephew of Eyamba V, and therefore closely related to the leaders of both wards.'8

Eyamba ward had been so weakened politically in this dispute that for nearly twenty years they did not contest a succession, and Duke Ephraim was followed by Archibong II, also of Duke ward, without bother. But by I87I a new generation of Eyamba leaders had come to maturity, at the same time as the Archibong section of Duke ward was beginning to seek to break away to form a new ward of their own. In that year Archibong II fell ill, and summoned a meeting of the elders of the town to discover who was killing him with witchcraft. He sent portions of his clothes to the Duke Town wards so that their abia-idiongs might find out who was causing the sickness. The abia-idiong of Eyamba ward indicated that the guilty person was one of the King's domestics, and the abia-idiong of Duke ward agreed. The King was furious to hear this, denying that it could be one of his people, and accused instead Queen Archibong and Ephraim Adam of Archibong section, Prince Duke of Duke ward, and Prince Eyamba of Eyamba ward, among others, of using ifot against him. He also summoned his farm slaves to town. However, he temporarily recovered, which prevented matters coming to a head.'9 These events must have stimulated the making of a political agreement behind the scenes, for when the King did die the following year, no accusations were made, and King Archibong III was elected with Prince James Eyamba as his chief adviser.20

In I878 the poison ordeal was abolished by Treaty with the British. The reasons for this from the Efik point of view are not known, but it may well have been due to the influence of Prince James Eyamba as chief adviser, for he was an able and active politician,22 and in any case opposed to the ordeal as a Christian, being an Elder of the Presbyterian Church and Superintendent of Sunday Schools.23 His political motives behind securing abolition would be to prevent the ordeal ever again being used against Eyamba ward as it had been in I852. The consequences of abolition were soon apparent. King Archibong III died in I879,24 the last of a generally accepted sequence of old men. There was no clearly recognized successor

17 Marwick, Andersons, 257-63. 18 Waddell, Twenty-Nine Years, 337. 19 Marwick, Andersons, 486-92, cit. Anderson's Journal, 29 May I871-15 June I871. 20 Ibid. 505, cit. Anderson, 28 Aug. I872, 507. 21 Agreement in Hopkins to Foreign Secretary, 6 Sept. I878, No. 33, FO 84/I508. 22 Latham, 'Old Calabar', 177, I84-6. 23 Marwick, Andersons, 577, cit. Anderson to Chisholm, 25 Mar. i88I. 24 Ibid. 567, cit. Anderson, 8 May I879.



256 A. J. H. LATHAM

in the next generation, and a three-cornered succession dispute broke out between Prince Eyamba, Prince Duke, and Prince Archibong. Such a situation in the past might have been solved by witchcraft accusations and the poison ordeal, but now other methods had to be resorted to. The Archibongs and the Dukes resorted to violence to achieve the Obongshzp, and intermittent civil war broke out, whilst Prince Eyamba pursued a skilful diplomatic campaign designed to win the support of the British. The outcome of the chaos, together with Prince Eyamba's supplication, was British annexation, although it was Prince Duke who eventually gained election.25

Thus it appears that at times of difficult succession disputes, the two leading Efik wards were prepared to use a common form of covert aggression to resolve the problem. By so doing they prevented a split in the community. Esther Goody has suggested that amongst the Gonja, witchcraft proceedings played a similar role, as a form of covert aggression between men of the same agnatic segment in competition for political office.26 There were however dangers implicit in resorting to witchcraft accusations in this way, for at Uwet, not far from Old Calabar, and in nearby Qua, two entire villages were decimated in orgies of counter-accusations of witchcraft.27 Fortunately at Calabar political compromise and acceptance of defeat avoided this problem.

V

In his discussion of witchcraft on the Cross River, G. I. Jones suggests that witchcraft is associated with political and economic success,28 and this was true of Old Calabar, particularly as economic success was linked with political success in Efik society. But he also suggests that witchcraft is more likely to be found in societies whose economy is static or contracting, rather than expanding.29 However it is difficult to see how the latter generalization can be borne out by Efik experience during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Witchcraft accusations were prevalent in the 1780s, as they were from the 1830s to the 1870S. The gap in between the two periods is due to absence of evidence, not to proof that there were no accusations. It is reasonable to assume that witchcraft accusations, at ordinary levels at least, occurred throughout. Yet during these years the Efik economy was expanding, at first under the influence of the export trade in slaves, and then the trade in palm produce.30 Nor is there anything to suggest that in the severe recession of the early i86os witchcraft accusations became more common in either political or non- political situations.

25 Latham, 'Old Calabar', I82-90. 26 Goody, Esther, 'Legitimate and Illegitimate Aggression in a West African State', in

M. Douglas (Ed.) Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations (Tavistock, London, 1970), 222-4. 27 Waddell, Twenty-Nine Years, 459. Goldie, Calabar, 37.

28 Jones, 'Boundary to Accusations', 325. 29 Ibid. 329-3I. 30 Latham, 'Old Calabar', 23-37, 78-I14.




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258 A. J. H. LATHAM

Where however economic forces did play their part in creating tensions, was by upsetting the traditional structure of Efik society. Originally Old Calabar had been a society based upon lineages or agnatic descent groups in which status and authority were dependent upon seniority within the descent group. But this pattern of authority was upset as the Efik aban- doned their traditional occupation as fishermen to participate as merchants in the international economy. Those amongst them with business acumen became rich, and purchased slaves to help them in their business, thereby becoming masters of large groups of retainers. Several of the com- pound groups of such men broke away from their place in one of the two original Efik lineages to set up their own independent ward. The history of Efik structural development from the middle of the seventeenth century is of the emergence of such wards from the two original lineages, as is indicated by the Efik structural genealogy (Table 3). It was those wards, Eyamba ward, Duke ward and Eyo ward, which emerged as economically and politically most successful, whose agnatic position in the original descent groups was weakest, the first two descending through the female line, the last being untraceable. In the traditional descent group, their founders and leaders would have been of lowly status, but their wealth had enabled them to triumph over their weak position.3'

If this conflict between newly acquired trading wealth and traditional status was evident at ward and lineage level, it must have also been present to a lesser extent between ward members, and throughout society in general. It was perhaps these tensions which triggered off witchcraft accusations on many occasions. A similar situation has been recognized by Marwick amongst the Cewa, at a more recent date, where accusations are often made involving young men who go away to work, and return with wealth which they wish to keep rather than share with their relations in traditional manner. In essence there is tension between those of traditional status and those with the newly acquired status of wealth.32 In Efik society then, witchcraft accusations enabled such tensions to be relieved covertly, whilst not breaking the norm of non-aggression to close relations. At political level, although the tension was due to the ambitions of related wards for political office, it was the economic success of these wards which enabled them to contest the election in the first place. Moreover, much of the attraction of the offices lay in the economic advantages which they conferred.

VI

However, if Efik witchcraft accusations were to a large extent the consequence of the social and political tensions resulting from the conflict between the traditional status system and the new status of wealth, one must consider why there was not a similar incidence of witchcraft in the

31 Latham, 'Old Calabar', 47-8, 59, 63-76. 32 Marwick, Sorcery in its Social Setting, 289.




nearby states of Bonny and New Calabar, which also traded in the international economy, and in the same staples as Old Calabar. The available studies of these societies do not mention witchcraft as being significant, despite the intense political tensions which permeated them.33 The reason for this may be that in Bonny and New Calabar, unlike Old Calabar, the old descent groups had broken up to be replaced by the institution known as the canoe house. This was a warring and trading corporation created by the enterprise and wealth of the founder, who often was a slave.34 In Old Calabar, although wards owed their existence to the wealth and enterprise of their founders, they still acknowledged their connection with the original lineage of their founder, with the possible exception of Eyo ward. The descent groups had been modified, but they had not been replaced as they had at Bonny and New Calabar. It was the tensions between traditional status, and newly-created status, which had caused the overthrow of the descent groups and the triumph of the canoe house in the delta states. These tensions were still racking Efik society, and creating the need for a form of covert aggression. By contrast there was no need for covert aggression in Bonny and New Calabar, and aggression could be and was made plain, resulting in the open rivalry and violence which typified those states.35

VII

In conclusion then it can be said that amongst the Efik in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, witchcraft and sorcery accusations were a way of relieving social tensions amongst relatives by blood or marriage. Such accusations also proved a useful weapon in succession disputes for political office when the contenders were closely related. By these means the solidarity of the family, ward, or community was not broken, for the aggression was covert. When however the poison ordeal, the vital factor in witchcraft accusations, was abolished in I878, internecine war broke out between the three agnatically related groups who were in competition for the two leading political offices. The reason for the underlying tension in Efik society, which provoked witchcraft accusations both at ordinary and political level, was not that the Efik economy was contracting, for it was in fact expanding. Rather, it was that by participating in the overseas trade, men with business acumen became wealthy, and by purchasing slaves, powerful. Their new-found status contradicted their position in the traditional status system based on age and place in lineage. Yet in the neighbouring states of the Oil Rivers, where participation in the international economy was as great as at Old Calabar, witchcraft accusations were not prevalent. For there the traditional descent groups had already

33 Jones, Trading States, 55-7. R. Horton, 'From Fishing Village to City State: A Social History of New Calabar', in M. Douglas and P. M. Kaberry, Man in Africa (Tavistock, London, i969), 46-50.

34 Jones, Trading States, 55. 35 Horton, 'Fishing Village', 50-2, 55-7.



26o A. J. H. LATHAM

broken up to be replaced by the canoe house system based on the upward mobility of able businessmen, slave or free. Because the descent groups had broken up, there was no such great need for covert forms of aggression, such as witchcraft, and aggression was open, those states being constantly torn by violence and war.

SUMMARY

M. G. Marwick has suggested that witchcraft accusations show where the tensions lie in the societies in which they occur. He also intimates that in Africa witchcraft accusations only occur between persons in close social contact. These ideas are borne out by an analysis of the cases of Efik witchcraft for which there is evidence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There witchcraft accusations for the most part involved relations by blood or marriage. But although G. I. Jones has suggested that the underlying tensions which provoke witchcraft accusations in the eastern areas of Nigeria today arise from a contracting economic situation, this was not true of Old Calabar in those days; its economy was in fact expanding under the stimulus of overseas trade. It was expansion which caused the tension, as successful business men acquired wealth and slaves, and therefore status, which contradicted their position in the traditional status system, based on age and place in lineage rather than wealth. At the highest political level these tensions manifested themselves in election disputes, where witchcraft accusations were made against candidates, in order that they take the poison ordeal and be eliminated from the election. Yet in the neighbouring states of Bonny and New Calabar, witchcraft accusations were rare. This may have been because the old descent groups had broken up, to be replaced by canoe houses, warring and trading organizations which owed their origin to the enterprise of their founders who were often slaves. Because the tensions in these societies were between competing unrelated individuals, aggression did not need to be covert. Instead rivalries could be fought in the open, as they were, Bonny and New Calabar being racked by violence and warfare.



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