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Yoruba Armament

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Robert Smith
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Extract

A study of the weapons used by the armies is relevant to different aspects of Yoruba history, mainly military and political but also economic and even cultural. The article concerns those weapons which were in use before, as well as after, the general introduction of firearms into Yorubaland (which took place only between about 1820 and 1850). Oral and written tradition provides the background for the surviving weapons. Many of these weapons, or their ceremonial or symbolic counterparts, are preserved for ritual reasons by chiefs and societies.

Two main types of sword were in use among the Yoruba: the two-edged ida, reminiscent (although often only distantly) of European late-medieval swords, and the curved single-edged agedengbe. Various kinds of knives were also carried by warriors. Staff weapons consisted of the spear or lance, used by infantry and cavalry, and the throwing spear or javelin. The most important missile weapon was the bow; an example of a crossbow has also been found. The iron heads and barbs of spears and arrows conform to the main types found elsewhere in West Africa. A variety of percussion weapons (clubs) can be distinguished, in both wood and iron. The war standard provided a rallying point in battle. The arms, accoutrement and dress of the warrior can be reconstructed in some detail.

The evolution of these weapons was affected by the strategy and tactics of Yoruba warfare, the nature of the countryside (savanna and forest), the materials available, and imported prototypes. Most military equipment was of local manufacture, though European, North African and northern Nigerian influence can be detected.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 1967 , pp. 87 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1967

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References

1 University of Lagos.Google Scholar

2 Ajayi, J. F. Ade and Smith, Robert, Yoruba Warfare in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1964), especially part I, chapters 2, 3 and 4.Google Scholar

3 Dapper, Olfert, Description de l'Afrique (Amsterdam, 1686), refers only occasionally to the use of firearms by the natives of the Guinea coast (for example, on p. 283),Google Scholar whereas Bosman, William, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (London, 1705), writes of the ‘incredible quantities’ of muskets imported there by the Dutch, in the handling of which the people were ‘wonderfully dextrous’ (p. 184). The evidence suggests that the coastal people were long able to exercise a monopoly of firearms, and it is surprising that this did not lead to their domination of the interior.Google ScholarBut it is clear from Bowdich's account (Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, London, 1819) that the musket had become the main weapon of the Ashanti by the first decade of the nineteenth century.Google Scholar

4 Ajayi and Smith, 10–11, and passim for the later nineteenth-century evidence. The appendix consists of a report for the British government on the Egba army in 1861 by Capt. A. T. Jones of the Second West India Regiment.Google Scholar

5 These areas were Oyo, Ogbomoso, Ikoyi and the two villages of Isero and Ikonifin; the last two are some 10–12 miles north north-west of Iwo and lie under the Oba hills.Google Scholar

6 Fagg, William, Nigerian Images (London, 1963), illustrates a number of the Benin brass horsemen, for example in plates 20, 29, 30 and 31.Google ScholarSee also Pitt-Rivers, , Antique Works of Art from Benin (London, 1900),CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Forman, W. B. and Dark, P., Benin Art (London, 1959).Google Scholar

7 Ifa divination brasses occasionally portray horsemen with spears; there is at least one example, said to be Egba, in the Lagos Museum, The University of Ife museum has a small brass statue of a mounted warrior, bought in Abeokuta, but it is of a decadent tourist style and recent origin. The Lagos Museum has a miniature ivory carving of a horseman described as ‘from Ilesha though probably made at Owo’. It is only 4 in. in height. The horse carries no saddle or stirrups, only a cloth, but has an elaborate head harness.Google Scholar

8 Such wooden carvings are known as ere and usually portray an actual warrior, being made during the man's lifetime in order to represent him after death. The carving would be kept in his house with his divination tray or bowl (opon Ifa or ajere Ifa) near his personal deity (ile on). Until a few years ago, for example, such a figure was preserved in the house of the Olukotun, an Iwo chief. It was known as Ajawole (a nickname) or Ere Sanmalofa (‘the image of Sanmalofa’) in memory of a warrior of the last century. Sometimes the divination bowl itself is supported by carved figures showing a warrior and his entourage. An example from Eruwa, near Iseyin, in the collection of Mr Andr Nitecki (no. 106) consists of a mounted chief surrounded by two soldiers, one carrying a huge sword and the other a Dane gun, a drummer, and a woman with a child on her back.Google Scholar

9 Footsoldiers or hunters occasionally appear in Yoruba wood carvings, for example on the ritual stool of Balogun Ibikunle of Ibadan and in such groups as those mentioned in footnote 8. They are also depicted in the brass plaques of Benin art. Miniature brass figures surviving from the Benin War Game (a palace board game) cannot be distinguished as infantry or cavalry.Google Scholar

10 This carving is in the writer's possession and was bought from an Ibadan dealer.Google Scholar

11 Carvings of warriors are now being produced commercially by modern craftsmen; though their design and workmanship are sometimes excellent, they cannot be treated as historical evidence.Google Scholar

12 Rev. Johnson, Samuel, The History of the Yorubas (C.M.S., 1921, 1957 reprint), 131–7.Google Scholar

13 See Smith, Robert, ‘The Alafin in exile: a study of the Igboho period in Oyo history’, Journal of African History, vi (1965), 67–8, 72 n. 41, and 76. The Yoruba imported their best horses from Hausaland and Bornu, and tradition suggests that the trade was conducted through markets in Nupe. Other horses came from or through Borgu. Little information is obtainable about local breeding; in the south the effects of the tsetse fly combined with the long gestation period of II months would make this unprofitable.Google Scholar

14 Bivar, A. D. H., Nigerian Panoply: Arms and Armour of the Northern Region (Department of Antiquities, Nigeria, 1964), examines in detail the state swords of Katsina, Daura and Argungu.Google Scholar

15 Ajayi and Smith, 16, 134.Google Scholar

16 This sword is in the writer's collection and was acquired from an Ibadan trader. Information about its style and probable place of manufacture was given by Mr Denis Williams.Google Scholar

17 But see Wannem, R. L., L'Art ancien du Métal au Bas-Congo, plates xxxiv and xxxvi, for state swords of this type, probably of local manufacture but European inspiration. English sword rapiers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries also had quillons curving awa from each other.Google Scholar

18 Dapper has an engraving on p. 311 of the army of Benin, in which one soldier in the foreground wears a sword of this general type.Google Scholar

19 Johnson refers on p. 132 to ‘a short sword called jomo and ogbo, a kind of heavy cutlass used chiefly by the common people’. The word ogbo is also used to describe iron club or mace (see under ‘Clubs’ below).Google Scholar

20 Johnson, 45.Google Scholar See also Akinjogbin, I. A., ‘The prelude to the Yoruba civil wars of the nineteenth century’, Odu I, no. 2 (1965), 32. The sword is also known as Ida ajase (‘sword of victory’) or ida Ajasa, Ajasa being an alternative name for Oranyan. Mr Denis Williams has described to the writer a ceremonial sword preserved at Orin in Ekiti which is apparently of ancient workmanship and is held traditionally to have been brought from Ile-Ife. Its double-edged iron blade is some i in. in length.Google Scholar

21 According to Dapper, imports of couteaux de matelot were common on the West Coast of Africa wherever the Dutch were trading in the late seventeenth century.Google Scholar

22 For examples of the spear as insignia of chieftancy in Eastern Nigeria, see Sieber, R., ‘The insignia of the Igala chief of Eteh’, Man (05–06 1965), no. 65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 The National Museum in Copenhagen has seven West African iron spear-heads, acquired at some time in the seventeenth century on the Guinea coast, which illustrate all the main types; three are barbed and three non-barbed (G.b. 15, 18, 19, 25, 26, 27, 28).Google Scholar

24 Bosman in his general account of Negro warfare on the Guinea coast in the seventeenth century (letter xi) writes of there being two kinds of assagai or spear in use; the first, smaller kind were ‘cast as Darts’, and the second, which were used in place of a sabre, had iron points ‘like a Pike’ (p. 186).Google Scholar

25 Both Bosman and Dapper mention the practice in Guinea of poisoning weapons. Bosman, however, after saying that the people of ‘Awinee’ usually poison their arrows, adds: ‘on the coast that pernicious custom is not practised, nor do they so much as know what poison is’ (p. 186). This generalization seems hardly acceptable. At the beginning of the sixteenth century Pacheco wrote of the use of poisoned arrows by the people of the coast of Sierra Leone (Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, book I, xxxiii).Google Scholar

26 The main informants about spears and javelins were the Onikoyi of Ikoyi, a ruler who ranked next to the Alafin in the Oyo kingdom, and hia chiefs, and the Asero of Isero, whose people were once noted as makers of these and other weapons.Google ScholarMore information is available about the spear types of northern Nigeria; see, for example, Kirk-Greene, A. H. M., ‘A note on some spears from Bornu, Northern Nigeria’, Man (11 1963), no. 220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Ajayi and Smith, 16, 134. As late as 1917 bows and arrows were used to attack the British Resident from Oyo and his party during the riots at Iseyin. They were also used, according to the press, by the residents of Mushin near Lagos in January 1966 in repelling political thugs.Google Scholar

28 Clapperton, in his account of his journey from Kuka to Sokoto fl 1824 (Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa, by Denham, and Clapperton, , London, 1826), describes the Kano army and its weapons under the entry for 1 February 1824.Google ScholarBarth, H., Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa, 1849–1855 (London, 1857) writes in volume IV (231–2) that he was surprised to meet an archer on horseback on the banks of the Komadugu river in Bornu. He adds, ‘an archer on horseback is an unheard- of thing not only in Bornu, but in almost all Negroland, except with the Fulbe; but even amongst them it is rare’. Mounted bowmen were known in Europe and the Near East, for example among the light cavalry of the Crusader Kingdom and, in the sixteenth century, the English Yeomen of the Guard.Google Scholar

29 See Baumann, H. and Westermann, D., Les Peuples et les Civilisations de I'Afrique (Paris, 1957), passim.Google Scholar

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31 Collections of bows and arrows were examined in the Afin Shoun (the palace of the Shoun, a local ruler) at Ogbomoso and at Ikonifin. A bow and four arrows of differing types were purchased in Ibadan in February 1966 for the University of Ife Museum.Google Scholar

32 Hand-slings, perhaps the earliest and simplest of missile weapons, were used by English troops under the Black Prince in Spain as late as 1367, and by the Huguenots (who were short of powder) at Sancerre in 1572.Google Scholar

33 The self-bow, crossbow and arrows at Ikonifin are in the keeping of Mr Ajayi Olubade, but permission to see them must be sought from the Onifin.Google Scholar

34 This was the method of discharging the crossbow which obtained in medieval Europe (where it was usually regarded, because of the slow rate of fire, as a weapon of static defence).Google Scholar

35 The crossbow was known in Benin as is shown by a bronze figure of a Portuguese crossbowman in the British Museum (illustrated in Fagg as plate 42, and in Forman and Dark as plate 48). The crossbowman carries at his waist what appears to be an iron ratchet (known in English as a rack, a crick or a gaffle) for spanning the bow.Google Scholar

36 See note 19.Google Scholar

37 At Aye Ekiti, for example, the Oloja will commission a messenger by giving him his iron ogbo.Google Scholar

38 One informant who supplied information about fighting bracelets said that he had seen them in shrines at Iwo and Ijebu-Ode. Such bracelets were also known to the chiefs at Ikoyi. An example of an iron fighting bracelet from Kano province (Hausa) is displayed at the Premier's Office in Kaduna, as is also a Bornu throwing stick. For an illustration of a throwing knife from Adamawa, see Baumann, 326.Google Scholar

39 Baumann writes (p. 354), ‘Des cottes de mailles ont pénétré depuis le Soudanjusque chez les Yoroubas…’, but he cites no evidence for this. The writer has discovered no indication of any use of armour among the Yoruba.Google Scholar

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42 Captain Jones noted that at Ijaye in 1861 ‘the swordsmen were generally armed with a pistol as a supplementary weapon’ (Ajayi and Smith, 134). A good example of a Yoruba flintlock pistol, at least partly of local manufacture, is in the University of Ife Museum. It is 161/2 in. in length and has geometrical decoration on the butt.Google Scholar

43 Gberi are worn by hunters all over Yorubaland. A good example of the wabi is preserved in the Afin Shoun at Ogbomoso.Google Scholar

44 Three such saddles may be seen outside the office of the Alafin's secretary in the Aim Oyo. In his Journal of a Second Expedition (1829) Clapperton observed that the Yoruba war chief and attendants who visited him at Badagry in December 1825 were mounted on small horses of which ‘the saddle and ornaments were the same as those in Soudan and Bornou’ (p. 2).Google Scholar

45 The name for these decorative metal pieces is apparently igbamu or ikomu (‘nose band’) but a metal worker in Ibadan applied to them the word gumika (which is Hausa for a halter) and another informant suggested goto.Google Scholar

46 Clapperton (1826) writes (on 1 February 1824) that the stirrup irons of the Kano cavalry ‘are in the shape of a fire-shovel, turned up at the sides, and so sharp as to render spurs superfluous’. Barth writes (volume 11, 46) of the Katsina cavalry in 1851 that ‘The stirrups formed a very peculiar kind of medium between the large unwieldy stirrups of the modern Arab and the small ones of Tawarek and Europeans, the sole of the stirrup being long, but turned down at both ends, while it is so narrow that the rider can only thrust the naked foot into it. I could not understand the principle upon which this kind of stirrup is made, It appeared to me a most absurd specimen of workmanship.’ He appends a sketch.Google Scholar

47 According to tradition the first Yoruba blacksmith was Ajibowu, who made edan (Ogboni figures) in brass, whereas they had previously been made from palm-stalks. Another tradition, at Ife, names the first blacksmith as Ladin. See Williams, Denis, ‘The iconology of the Yoruba Edan Ogboni’, Africa, XXXIV (1964), 152.Google Scholar

48 Johnson, 119–20, writes of iron smelting and smithing among the Yoruba. See also Denis Williams, ‘Sacred iron figurines of the Yoruba’ (in the Press).Google Scholar

49 See Mauny, R., ‘A possible source of copper for the oldest brass heads of Ife’, Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 2, no. 3 (1962), 393–5.Google Scholar

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51 See Williams, Denis (1964), 152.Google Scholar

52 Nadel, S. F. in A Black Byzantium (Oxford, 1942) writes that the blades of the swords and daggers which he saw in Bida, the Nupe capital, were ‘old, mostly of German or Austrian manufacture, and have been traded for centuries to Nigeria and Nupe, across the desert from North Africa’ (270, note 1). If such blades reached Nupe they doubtless reached also their Yoruba neighbours across the Niger.Google Scholar

53 Wannyn, 60–1.Google Scholar

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55 The writer's principal informants were: the Alafin of Oyo and the Aremo (Chief S. Gbadegesin); the Onikoyi of Ikoyi and his chiefs; at Ogbomoso, the late Shoun and the Onpetu; the Asero of Isero and his household; at Ikonifin, the Onifin, Mr Akande and Mr Ajayi Olubode; the Asundunrin of Isundunrin; Mr David Adenji of Iwo. Students of the History Department of the University of Ife provided help, especially in interpretation. A colleague, Mr Ade Fajana, read the manuscript and made suggestions and corrections. At all stages the writer profited from the advice, criticisms and suggestions of Mr Denis Williams, who also drew the figures. He expresses his best thanks to the above and to his other informants.Google Scholar