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Bight of Biafra
As we proceed south along the coast of western Africa, we arrive at the region known as the "Bight of Biafra" ("bight" being an open bay at a coastal indentation) including southwest Nigeria and the Niger River delta. From this region almost one fourth (23%) of the ancestors of African Americans were captured and enslaved, including members of the Yoruba tribal groups described here by an African-born Ijebu and an African American making a "pilgrimage to my motherland." (The Yoruba groups include the Ijebu and the Egba.)
Osifekunde was an young Ijebu boy living in the Niger River delta when he was captured by members of a rival tribal group, the Ijo, about 1810, and sold into slavery. After twenty years in Brazil, he was able to get to France where an official of the Ethnological Society of Paris, Maurice Armand Pascal d'Avezac, interviewed him and later published an extensive compilation in the society's journal in 1845. The selections here include Osifekunde's descriptions of Ijebu cultural traditions, political structure, economic system, religious beliefs and practices, and music. (D'Avezac offered Osifekunde passage to his homeland, but Osifekunde disappeared in Le Havre, France.)
Next is a rare document—the account of a descendent of enslaved Africans travelling to his "motherland." Born in Jamaica of mixed parentage, Robert Campbell went to the Bight of Biafra in 1859 to research the area for possible resettlement of freed American slaves (see Theme IV: IDENTITY, #9, Emigration). Campbell gives detailed descriptions of Egba and other Yoruba groups from a perspective quite distinct from those in the European accounts in this section. Titling his account A Pilgrimage to My Motherland: An Account of a Journey among the Egbas and Yorubas of Central Africa in 1859-60, Campbell, who had achieved a position for himself teaching in a Philadelphia school for black youth, declares that "I have determined, with my wife and children, to go to Africa to live." (xx pages.)
Discussion questions
- Compare these accounts by an African American and an African (compiled and published by a European) with those written by Europeans. What are the most significant differences? Why?
- How does each account reflect each writer's purpose for his publication, i.e., d'Avezac and Campbell?
- In what ways does Campbell endorse African American colonization projects through his discussion of the Yoruba?
- If Campbell had returned to the United States with a Yoruba iya'lu dundun (as Thomas Bowditch had returned to England with Ashanti goldwork), would he have donated it to the Smithsonian Institution (created a decade earlier)? What else might he have done with the drum? Why?
- How would Martin Delany and Henry Highland Garnet, other proponents of African American settlements in Africa, have responded to Campbell's account? (Delany's account of his own trip of the same time includes no reference to African people of the time.)
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Framing Questions
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How did Africans live in freedom before enslavement? |
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How did Europeans and African Americans perceive African cultures? |
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What was the experience of capture and enslavement for those who became African Americans? |
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Printing
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Supplemental Sites
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Images:
- Engraving captioned "The Court of the King of Iddah" (detail), 1841, in present-day central Nigeria, in William Allen, A Narrative of the Expedition sent by Her Majesty's Government to the River Niger, in 1841, London: 1848, Vol. 1, p. 293.
- Engraving captioned "Fishing Boats of the Shary" (detail), 1820s, present-day Nigeria, south of Lake Chad, in Dixon Denham, Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa, in the Years 1822, 1823, and 1824, London: 1826, facing p. 229.
Both digital images from the online collection The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record, from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and University of Virginia Library. Permission pending.
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