African archives in the Caribbean: the Yoruba tradition, cultural experts, and the unmaking of religious knowledge in twentieth-century Trinidad

ABSTRACT

Attending to how religious custodians, colonial agents, and scholars have exchanged knowledge across sites in Africa and the Caribbean during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this article raises questions about continuities and ruptures in religious traditions that challenge perceptions of homelands as sites of stable, originary knowledges/heritages and diasporas as sites of improvised and severed knowledges/heritages. Highlighting the Yoruba-Orisa¹ religion in Trinidad as a rich diasporic site to work through these issues, I employ a transdisciplinary methodology to argue that historicizing and theorizing African heritage religions that have unfolded around and in the wake of the events of the transatlantic slave trade require comparative research methods – historical, sociolinguistic, phenomenological, decolonial, material cultural studies – that facilitate critical explorations of the multidirectional circulation of expert religious knowledge between Africa and its diasporas. In so doing, we can examine the Caribbean and the Americas not only as sites of African diasporic archives and religious history but also as archival diasporas of African continental religious and socio-political history.

KEYWORDS:

• Yoruba religion
• Nigeria
• Trinidad
• Black power
• Orisha/Orisa/Òrìṣà
• Shango/Sango/Ṣàngó
• Diaspora

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Orisa (also Orisha or Òrìṣà) is both a nomenclature for the Yoruba religious system in Trinidad and for its venerated community of deities or ‘powers’. Orisa is phonetically pronounced Oreesha in the English language.

2 The son of a recaptive or liberated African from the west African region that would become Yorubaland, Samuel Johnson was born in Sierra Leone and moved to modern-day Nigeria/Yorubaland with his family when he was still a boy. The terms ‘liberated’ and ‘recaptive’ refer to Africans whom the British rescued from slave ships and often resettled in Sierra Leone. Those who originally hailed from modern-day Nigeria and returned to their homelands from Sierra Leone were called ‘Saro’. For more information see page 5 and note 6. Unless quoting a source that does not include them, diacritical marks are applied to Yoruba terms when specifically referencing the phenomenon of Yorùbá-Òrìṣà religion and other phenomena on the African continent. They are not employed for generic references or for references to the Yoruba-Orisa religion in Trinidad/the African diaspora, unless directly cited from another source. I conform to the Anglicization convention for pluralizing nouns such as Yoruba (pl. Yorubas). No such term appears in the Yorùbá language, and I use them for semantic ease and convenience, since I am working in the English language.

3 Orisa (also Orisha or Òrìṣà) is both a nomenclature for the Yoruba religious system in Trinidad and for its venerated community of deities or ‘powers’. Orisa is phonetically pronounced Oreesha in the English language.

4 African and East Indians descendants make up the largest percentage of Trinidad’s population. Based on census data reported in 2011, nationally roughly 34.2 and 35.4 percent of Trinidad and Tobago’s population are of African and East Indian descent respectively. See ‘Trinidad and Tobago Demographics Profile 2018’, Index Mundi, January 20, 2018, accessed November 1, 2019, https://www.indexmundi.com/trinidad_and_tobago/demographics_profile.html.

5 The African people-groups identified as ‘Yoruba’ (or ‘Yaraba’, as they were called in the nineteenth century) had been ‘liberated’ from slave vessels by Britain’s Royal Navy West Africa Squadron. Most were transported to Sierra Leone for immediate residency and later resettled in Trinidad and other British colonies under Britain’s indentured labor program primarily between the 1830s and 1860s. During these decades, no less than 32,000 ‘liberated’ or ‘recaptive’ Africans, as they came to be known, entered the British Caribbean and Guyana through what I have labeled elsewhere an ‘extended Middle Passage’. According to Da Silva et al., 180,969 Liberated Africans were settled in new homelands across the Atlantic world. They add that ‘The very first of the group came ashore in Philadelphia in 1800 and the last in [the west African coastal island of] St. Helena in 1863’ (2014, 347-348). For additional demographics on the settlement of liberated Africans in the Americas and the Caribbean, (see Chris Cwik 2014).

6 Diverse peoples claiming Ẹgba, Ijẹsha, Ìjẹ̀bu, Ondo, Ikoyi, Ọ̀yọ́ and other ‘pre-Yorùbá’ identities were caught up in the dynamics of the transatlantic slave trade just as the unifying concept of a Yorùbá ‘nation’—the concept of Yorùbáland—was emerging in West Africa. Furthermore, Yorùbá identity was not forged independent of the emergence of dispersed Yoruba populations. Historians of Nigeria indicate that Yorùbáland as we conceive of it today did not exist during the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth centuries. A wide range of factors related to the rise of capitalism, European colonial and missionary intrusion in Africa, the formation of modern nation states and other outcomes of globalization over several centuries led to the formation of the Yorùbá people as a distinct and unified group. (see Law 1977; Peel 2003; Ellis 1894; Falola 1984; Matory 1999; Matory 2005; Ojo 2009).

7 Additional spellings include Sango and Ṣàngó. Other labels during this period include Yaraba dance, Ebo, Yaraba work, and African work.

8 On the deity Shango and his various global and local formations, see also Tsang, this special issue.

9 Most scholars translate the non-gendered Yoruba term ‘ọba’ as ‘king’ rather than ‘monarch’ or ‘ruler’. I prefer the non-gendered English terms and will use them when forwarding my own analysis.

10 Following current convention, I use the third person plural pronoun here and elsewhere in this article as a gender-neutral third person singular pronoun. Some scholars have noted that not all pre-colonial rulers of the territories that would become Yorubaland were male. For example, (see Oyěwùmí 1997, 80–120).

11 According to Law (1976, 73), this Fourth Reading Book was likely prepared by Mọjọla Agbebi and E. H. Ọkẹ, but included substantial portions of Andrew Laniyonu Hethersett’s history of Ọ̀yọ́ (see Iwe Kika Ẹkẹrin Li Ede, Yoruba 1944 (1911)). I have not been able to locate what Law describes as Hethersett’s ‘history of Ọyọ’. (73). Although Law also mentions ‘historical texts by A. L. Hethersett’ (77), he does not provide any official title or titles of Hethersett’s corpus leading me to believe that it might be inaccessible today or might have had limited circulation as an unpublished manuscript. Law’s bibliography (88) offers more details about the materials that composed the Fourth Reading Book: ‘Iwe Kika Ẹkẹrin li Ede, Yoruba. Lagos: C.M.S. Bookshop, 1911; reprinted 1952. Contains material on the history of Ọyọ by A.L. Hethersett, of Ijaye by E.H. Ọkẹ, and of Abeokuta by Rev. E.W. George (pp. 49-78, 120-129, 165-186)’. Hethersett, who was of Yorùbá descent, had worked for British agents in the region, serving as the Chief Clerk and Interpreter in the Governor’s Office at Lagos, and thus he might have had strong motives for planting a disparaging narrative about Ṣàngó in the minds of his audiences. Ìṣola describes Hethersett as a headmaster at the CMS School in Lagos during the 1940s. However, Law dates Hethersett’s death in 1896. I have not found any corroborating information indicating that Hethersett was alive in the 1940s. However, I have found information indicating that he was actively engaged with the establishment of religious, cultural, educational and historical institutions that began to shape what became a Pan-Yorùbá identity during the late nineteenth century.

12 Ifá dídá is the most commanding sacred text of the Yoruba religion. The Ifá literary corpus is composed of sixteen major and 240 minor Odù (chapters), each containing 600-800 poems/ narratives.

13 Akínyẹmí (2009, 187) translates ‘Ṣàngó pípè’ as ‘intoning Ṣàngó’ and describes this collection of stories and information about Ṣàngó as ‘praise poetry’. Ìṣola (1991, 95) notes that some scholars prefer the classification ‘descriptive poetry’ because, as a prime example of the oriki genre, the Ṣàngó pípè ‘tells the whole story of its subject, including all the unpleasant details … oriki is not all praise’.

14 Since Hethersett died in 1896 (birth date unknown), it is quite probable that his account of Ṣàngó served as an urtext for the accounts Ellis and Johnson wrote. However, it is certainly possible that Ellis’ account played this role for both Hethersett and Johnson if Hethersett wrote his account toward the very end of his life. Ellis’s 1894 volume was based upon his twenty-year experience in West Africa as a British army officer, including service as a lieutenant in the First West India Regiment, beginning in1873. Ellis apparently spent about eight months in Yorùbá-speaking territories during the year 1880, and he published an account (1894, 50–52) of Ṣàngó’s purported suicide by hanging that was based upon, in his words, ‘some later myths, which make Shango an earthly king who afterwards became a god’ (50) ‘Some later myths’ was an accurate interpretation that presumably points to a different mythologizer (Christian missionaries) than Ellis intended to identify (local Yorùbá devotees). Although both Ellis and Johnson attribute Ṣango’s death to suicide by hanging, neither author includes, as does Hethersett, any discussion of the words ‘ọba kò so’ to indicate a counter narrative to the denial of Ṣango’s suicide (‘the king did not hang’) among Ṣango’s supporters. Ellis (52) does note, however, that ‘ … this myth is rapidly becoming blende with the older ones, and, in consequence of these events having taken place at Kuso, Shango has the title of Oba-Kuso, ‘King of Kuso.’’.

15 Dada (or Dadda) might have been introduced to Trinidad by Yorùbá-speaking people from the Aradagun area of Badagry in contemporary Lagos State (see McKenzie 1997, 291).

16 If not the first, Olawaiye (now late) was one of the earliest researchers to conduct a comparative study of varied Yoruba-based Nigerian and diasporic religious cultures. His insider-outsider location as a native Yorùbá-Nigerian is also worth noting since scholars of West African Yorùbá heritage are still underrepresented among those studying Yoruba-Orisa religious traditions in the African diaspora. Father Isaac ‘Sheppy’ Lindsay was a well-known and widely respected Orisa priest during 1970s and 1980s (see Henry 2003, 9).

17 Ozoluah Uhakheme, ‘Sango Returns in Oba Koso’, The Nation, April 1, 2012. See also Ọlajubu (1978) and Ogúndèjì (1998). Both scholars discuss Ládipò̩’s heavy reliance on Andrew Hethersett’s account of Ṣàngó’s life and death for the script of his play, Ọba Kò So.

18 According to Houk (1995, 189), the OYCO was founded in 1985. It is telling that the OYCO transliteration of the phrase ‘ọba kòso’ is consistent with the translation ‘ruler/monarch of Kòso’, long established in Trinidad but eclipsed by the OYCO’s mistranslation in the prayer.

19 McNeal’s chart of the Orisa and their Catholic counterparts, based on research conducted during the early 2000s, reinforces Houk’s findings.

20 Houk (185-186), in particular, notes the many different St. Johns connected with Shango.

21 Emphasis original. In the same message, Abímbọ́lá also corrected the improper spelling of the words (Baálẹ̀, gbà and wá, originally transcribed as Baalẹ̀, gba and wa) in Houk’s text due to the elimination of important diacritical marks.

22 The very spelling of the words (ọba kòso) belies the translation ‘King who did not hang’ (ọba ko so).

23 Although published details about Andrew Hethersett’s life are scant, he and Samuel Johnson were pupils of German CMS missionary Gottlieb Friedrich Bühler in 1863. The two students left Ibadan with Bühler in December 1862 after he visited the CMS school in Ibadan where they were studying and resumed studies at the Abeokuta CMS day school that Bühler supervised. Hethersett was likely an adolescent at the time, and thus, he probably wrote his narrative of Ṣàngó/history of Ọ̀yọ́ at a later life stage. Most of the liberated Yorùbá persons who settled in Trinidad entered between 1840 and the 1860s. Thus, they probably would not have been exposed to CMS or other colonial narratives of Ṣàngó. For more on Hethersett’s CMS training, see Kehinde Olabimtan (2011).

24 Paul Lovejoy (2000) cites the work of John Thornton to make a similar point: ‘When John Thornton reveals the influence of the Kongo civil wars on the revolution in St Domingue, he is not only addressing issues of agency in the Americas but also uncovering new material on the Kongo civil wars themselves’.