¹ This essay was originally presented at the Montreal African Studies Seminar at McGill University in Feb. 1973. It has benefited from suggestions made by Mrs Marion Johnson and A. G. Hopkins at the University of Birmingham, Martin Klein at the University of Toronto, Paul Lovejoy at York University, Patrick Manning and Enid Schildkrout at McGill, and Bertin Webster at Dalhousie.Google Scholar

² I have here used the term ‘slave’ only because of its familiarity and its currency in discussions of unfree labour in African societies. As I have suggested in the title, ‘captive’ is a more appropriate term, as it is principally the mode of recruitment which the West African ‘slave’ had in common with his brother in Cuba or Brazil.Google Scholar

³ A number of recent studies of the role of ‘slave’ labour in pre-colonial West Africa are to be found in Meillassoux, C. (ed.), The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (London, 1971).Google Scholar Perhaps the most thorough recent study of the question in the Nigerian area is that presented by Oroge, E. A. in his Ph.D thesis: ‘The Institution of Slavery in Yorubaland with Particular Reference to the Nineteenth Century’ (Birmingham, 1971).Google Scholar Martin Klein's unpublished essay ‘Slavery among the Wolof and Serer of Senegambia’ (1972) has also provided me with useful insights. Victor Low discusses slavery in northeastern Nigeria in his recent book, Three Nigerian Emirates (Evanston, 1972).Google Scholar

⁴ These Note Books are found in the National Archives, Kaduna, Nigeria (NAK BIDDIST Boxes 19, 20 and 21). They were composed in an attempt to register the founder, reign of foundation, ethnic origins and in some cases the owners of the tungazi in the six districts of the Bida emirate in the colonial period—Lemu, Jima, Kachia, Badeggi, Kutigi and Mokwa.Google Scholar

⁵ Nadel, S. F., A Black Byzantium (London, 1946), 25.Google Scholar

⁶ The Lemu District Note Book (NAK BIDDIST Box 21) suggests the existence of thirty rather than a dozen walled Ban towns, all being founded before 1857.Google Scholar

⁷ The Kede are described more fully by Nadel, S. F. in his article ‘The Kede: A Riverain State in Northern Nigeria’ in Fortes, M. and Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (eds.), African Political Systems, (London, 1940).Google Scholar

⁸ For classes in Zazzau, the Hausa state which has been studied in greatest detail, see Smith, M. G., Government in Zazzau (London, 1960).Google Scholar

⁹ Nadel, ibid. 106.

¹⁰ For a full description of slaves in Nupe, see Nadel, ibid. 103–8.

¹¹ For a discussion of clientage in Nupeland, see Nadel, S. F., A Black Byzantium, 22–7.Google Scholar

¹² Palmer, H. R., Sudanese Memoirs, 1928, III, 102.Google Scholar

¹³ Laird, M. and Oldfield, R. A. C., Narrative of an Expedition… in 1832, 1833 and 1834, (London, 1837), I, 420.Google Scholar

¹⁴ NAK BIDDIST Lemu District Note Book, Box 21.Google Scholar

¹⁵ For the Bida campaigns in the south, see my article ‘The Jihad in the South…’ Journal the Historical Society of Nigeria, v (06 1970).Google Scholar

¹⁶ F.O. 97/434, Baikie to Russell, 13 Mar. 1862.Google Scholar

¹⁷ F.O. 84/1278, Enclosure by McLeod in F.O. to McLeod, 23 June 1866.Google Scholar

¹⁸ A total of sixty-five tungazi were known to have been settled by Gbedegi and Ebe in Masaba's reign. This figure might be much higher as many from these areas would have been listed as ‘Nupes’.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Recently collected oral tradition has it that Masaba did not actually fight Dasun; suspecting that the people there might side with his enemies to the west, he seized the elders of the town and transported them to Wuya.Google Scholar

²⁰ That is, excluding tungazi founded by Gbedegi and others who were simply recalled as having been ‘Nupe’.Google Scholar

²¹ These villages were in the Eyagi Doko village unit. NAK BIDDIST Jima District Note Book.Google Scholar

²² As Masaba is the most celebrated of the nineteenth-century etsuzi it is not unlikely that his name attaches itself to the deeds of other kings. On the other hand, he became famous because he did more that is memorable.Google Scholar

²³ 339 were settled by Nupe other than the indigenous Bini.Google Scholar

²⁴ F.O. 84/1061, Baikie to Malmesbury, 17 Sept. 1858.Google Scholar

²⁵ ‘It should seem that since the visit of his master, the King of Gondu who exhausted his treasures, the king never came to himself.’Google Scholar C.M.S. CA₃ O₂₁, John, T. C., ‘A Report of Lokoja Station … 1873’.Google Scholar

²⁶ The same missionary, John, reported that Christians taken captive at Lokoja would be sold to the Hausa from Kano for slaves. C.M.S. CA₃ O₂₁, ‘Report for the year 1870’.Google Scholar

²⁷ F.O. 2/32, Baikie to Russell, 2 Sept. 1859.Google Scholar

²⁸ F.O. 84/1351, Simpson to Granville, 21 Nov. 1891, ‘Report of the Niger Expedition, 1871’, Enclosure 3.Google Scholar

²⁹ C.M.S. CA3 M3, ‘Annual Report of Bishop Crowther… 1875’.Google Scholar

³⁰ See Table 2, ‘Ethnic origins of settlers of tungazi’.Google Scholar

³¹ NAK BIDDIST Jima District Note Book.Google Scholar

³² NAK BIDDIST Mokwa District Note Book.Google Scholar

³³ See Table 2, ‘Ethnic origins of settlers of tungazi’.Google Scholar

³⁴ The export of slaves to pay for guns is recalled in Kontagora oral tradition which I recorded in Aug. 1969.Google Scholar

³⁵ Johnson wrote: ‘Excepting under especially pressing circumstances the chiefs do not now sell their slaves or rather captives of war excepting the old and infirm.’ C.M.S. CAZ/049 (a) Hinderer to Venn, 26 Oct. 1855.Google Scholar Cited in Oroge, E. A., ‘The Institution of Slavery in Yorubaland with Particular Reference to the Nineteenth Century’, Ph.D. thesis, Birmingham, 1971.Google Scholar

³⁶ C.M.S. CA3 O28, Rev. C. Paul, ‘Journal for the Year 1878’.Google Scholar

³⁷ Vedova, G. dalla, ‘Pellegrino di Matteucci ed ii suo diario inedito’, Boll. della Società Geographica Italiana, x, 9 (1885), 675.Google Scholar

³⁸ See Table I, ‘Foundation dates of tungazi’. I am grateful to Bertin Webster for the suggestion that slave imports should be considered on an annual rather than a regnal basis.Google Scholar

³⁹ Of the 282 new tungazi, III were settled by ‘Nupe’, 66 by Bini and 49 by Ebe, Benu and other Nupe. There were only thirteen hamlets settled by all types of Yoruba and three by Afenmai.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ For discussion regarding Bini clients, see below, p. 468. Nadel (ibid. 358) hints at the same pressures on free farmers when he suggests ‘(The) submission to patronage was often the only means by which the peasants in Cis-Kaduna could hope to retain their property’.

⁴¹ There had always been a steady flow of Yoruba slaves back to their homelands. As one report pointed out: ‘From the day they reached [Bida] until the year it was broken [1897] we found Yagbas dribbling back to their homes… if escape from Bida had not been so very easy [the Nupes] would have sucked the district dry in an incredibly short time.’ NAK SNP 558P/1913. After the fall of Bida one of the Nupe princes complained ‘all our slaves are running away to the other side of the river’. C.O. 147/124, ‘Report by Sir George Goldie…’, encl. in Morley to Salisbury, 29 Apr. 1899.Google Scholar

⁴² Klein notes regarding the Senegambia at the beginning of the colonial period: ‘…flight was more attractive to those slaves who remembered another home and could go there’. ibid. 22. Elsewhere (p. 14) he suggests that flight was more likely among the newly enslaved.

⁴³ ‘When slavery was abolished and wars came to an end, when the “absentee” landlords no longer needed [clients] as soldiers for their private armies and could no longer support a large household of henchmen and hangers-on in the town, they offered their land to their [clients] and so new settlers went out into the country, occupying the land and forming new farm settlements’, Nadel, ibid. 196.

⁴⁴ In late 1857 Bids had an estimated population of 60,000. C.M.S. CA3/O2, ‘Extracts of a letter from Dr. Davies to Consul Campbell, 27 September 1857. Two decades later it was put at I00,000. MMS Yoruba 1877–1882, Milum to Kilner, 24 Oct. 1879.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ For a study of Nupe cloth and its marketing, see Johnson, Marion, ‘Cloth on the Banks of the Niger’, J. Hist. Soc. Nigerza, forthcoming. I am grateful to the author for permitting me to read the typescript of this essay.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ F.O. 97/436, Whitford to Hamilton, 19 Dec. 1865, encl, in Hamilton to Wylde, 12 Jan. 1866.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ The shea fruit is first gathered by women in the rainy season and then dried in a large oven. The nuts are then separated from the flesh and dried separately. After this they are fried, crushed and boiled until they excrete oil. This oil (mikote), is used in Nupe for illumination, cooking and medicine.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Oral tradition collected in December 1972 at Bida, Wuyagi, Nyinti, Jima, Evungi, Rabba, Etotsu, Kuchi, Kwakwa and Pici by Abel Yisa.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ For Sine and Salum see Klein, 12 and for Yoruba, Oroge, 199.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Oral tradition, sources as n. 48 above.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Klein (ibid. 19) writes of a similar situation in the Senegambia: ‘Above and beyond the services a slave gave, he was a form of capital investment.’

⁵² NAK BIDDIST Box 19, Kachia District Note Book.Google Scholar

⁵³ NAK BIDDIST Box 21, Badeggi District Note Book.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ NAK BIDDIST Box 21, Lemu District Note Book.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Ibid.

⁵⁶ NAK BIDDIST, Jima District Note Book.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Nadel, ibid. 242.

⁵⁸ C.M.S. CA3 O28, C. Paul, ‘Journal for… 1878’.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ As far as I know, there is no reliable means of estimating the population of any part of rural Nupe in the pre-colonial period. The earliest census, that of 1921, estimated the total population of Nupe as 349,008. To what extent the population rose or fell after 1897 is not known.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ NAK BIDDIST Box 21, Lemu District Note Book.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² See map.Google Scholar

⁶³ NAK BIDDIST Box 21, Lemu District Note Book. The term ‘fief’ is used in this text.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Ibid.

⁶⁵ The figures for the tungazi in Kachia are incomplete.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ In Badeggi District seventy-nine were founded by Bini, in Kachia seventy but in Kutigi only seventeen.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ NAK BIDDIST Box 20, Kutigi District Note Book.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ NAK BIDDIST, Mokwa District Note Book.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ For a discussion of historical evidence relating to population together with a population map of Nupe, see my article ‘Population Density and “Slave Raiding” …’, J. Afr. Hist. x, 4 (1969), 551–64.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ See especially the Note Books for Badeggi, Jima and Lemu Districts.Google Scholar

⁷¹ For oral tradition regarding the alienation of Bini lands as well as other data, I am grateful to my research assistant, MrYisa, Abel of the Department of Economics, Ahmadu Bello University.Google Scholar