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Chapter Seventeen

The Hula “Problem”: Ethnicity on the Pre-colonial Slave Coast

Luis Nicolau Parés

Much has been written about the invention of African ethnicities in colonial times, but few are the works on West African pre-colonial processes of ethnogenesis and little is known about the multiple modes of collective identification existing at that time. In recent years African American studies have pointed out that many of the African ethnicities existing in the New World did not correspond to actual African identities, but were the result of categories enforced by the Atlantic slave trade system. Following this logic, one would guess that a similar dynamic of interaction between local collective identities and external European classification needs would have generated similar processes of ethnogenesis on the Slave Coast. For example, seventeenth and eighteenth-century terms like Popo, Mina, Accra, Krepe, Mahi, Lucumi, or Nago were used in the region by both Africans and Europeans as external labels to designate heterogeneous pluralities of socio-cultural groups, and yet we know almost nothing about how the people named that way identified themselves and how, if at all, they appropriated this generic terminology like they did in the

Americas.1 This essay is a modest attempt to explore the theme of ethnicity in the seventeenth-century Slave Coast, focusing on the so-called Hula (Xwlà in international alphabet) or allegedly Hula groups living in the littoral area. I admit from the beginning that to choose the Hula ethnicity as subject matter for historical study is problematic. As we know from contemporary studies, an ethnic community

 I would like to thank Robin Law for his comments and suggestions and Liza Earl Castillo for her English revision of an earlier version of this paper.  Professor of Anthropology, Universidade Federal da Bahia. 1 For ethnogenesis in pre-colonial West Africa: Robin Law, “Ethnicity and the Slave Trade: ‘Lucumi’ and ‘Nago’ as Ethnoyms in West Africa,” History in Africa 24, 1997, pp. 205-–219. For the Yoruba ethnogenesis: John Peel, Religious Encounters and the Making of the Yoruba (Bloomington- Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000). For African ethnogenesis in the Atlantic system: Maria Ines Cortes de Oliveira, “Quem eram os ‘negros da Guiné’? A origem dos africanos na Bahia,” Afro- Asia 19–20, 1997, pp. 37–74; Robin Law, “Ethnicities of Enslaved Africans in the Diaspora: On the Meanings of ‘Mina’ (Again),” History in Africa 32, 2005, pp. 247–267. 2 is not a physical or geographical entity but a symbolic and dynamic construction, and given the situational and relational nature of ethnic identification, the boundaries of these kinds of social entities are always permeable and diffuse.2 Yet the Hula “problem” is a challenge and, even without conclusive solution, confronting it may be of some interest. Today, kinship collectivities who claim a Hula ethnic identity are spread throughout various parts of southern Benin and in a few coastal villages of both Togo and southwestern Nigeria.3 Indeed, the Hula preserve narratives of a common origin and shared experiences of migration, they recognize a mutual mythical ancestor, often represented by the snake vodun Dogblosu, and they worship a series of deities locally called Hulahun [i.e., vodun of the Hula] and also known as the “sea pantheon” in classic ethnography.4 The Hula are believed to speak a distinct language (Hulagbe), and they acknowledge subordination to particular Hula royal lineages. Some of them share a series of prohibitions as in the eating of certain foods, and they may also celebrate annual ethnically-bound festivals gathering their geographically disperse relatives.5 Hence, discourses on origin, ancestrality, language, religious practice, and ritual seem to be fundamental pillars upon which the Hula contemporary ethnic identity is constructed. Yet, as suggested above, any detailed analysis of how ethnicity operates in practice reveals enormous plasticity and permeability. Some Hula hennus (patrilineal lineages sharing a common ancestor) or hue (residential kinship collectivities), may have not been Hula in origin, and only gradually became so by establishing different kinds of alliances with self-identified Hula lineages (i.e., matrilineal kinship links, slavery, cohabitation in the same village as counselors of a royal family, etc.). Felix

2 See for instance: Abner P. Cohen (ed.), Urban Ethnicity, ASA Monograph (12) (New York: Tavistock Publications, Mitchell, J.C., 1978); Frederick Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. The Social Organization of cultural difference (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969). 3 The 1992 Benin’s census estimated the Hula population in 64,000 (1.3% of the nation’s total): http://www.afrikinfo.com/lois/gouvern/popul/recens/recens.htm. Projection of the same percentage into Benin’s total population in 2002 rises the figure of Hula people to 88,000. Iroko reports late nineteenth century and twentieth century Hula migrations in the coast of Liberia, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Guinea Equatorial, Cameroon, Congo and Gabon: A. Felix Iroko, Les Hula. Du XIVe au XIXe siècle (Cotonou: Les Nouvelles Editions du Benin, 2001), p. 48. 4 For the “sea pantheon”: Melville J. Herskovits, Dahomey, an Ancient West African Kingdom (New York: J.J. Augustin Publisher, 2 vol., 1938); Luis Nicolau Parés, “Transformations of the sea and thunder voduns in the Gbe-speaking area and in the Bahian Jeje Candomblé,” in J. C. Curto, José & R. Soulodre-La France, (orgs.) Africa and the Americas: Interconnections during the Slave Trade (Trenton NJ: Africa World Press, 2005). 5 For instance, the festival Nonvitcha (meaning fraternity) held in Grand Popo, “Capitale Xwla,” since 1921. 3

Iroko has shown the great ethnic heterogeneity of the founders of the majority of villages that today claim to be Hula. He identified at least thirteen different socio- cultural groups (from the Adja-Tado, Fante-Gâ and Yoruba areas) that have intervened in the formation of the Hula ethnicity; accordingly he calls the Hula a “composite socio-cultural group.” Unfortunately his account, mostly based on oral testimonies, does not provide enough information to date these processes of ethnic aggregation, although some of them appear to be from the late nineteenth or twentieth century.6 Significantly, the Phla-Phera group of languages to which the Hulagbe belongs is the most linguistically diverse branch of the Gbe cluster, due partly to their speakers living in several geographically separated communities, but also because of considerable influence by several Gbe and non-Gbe languages in the past.7 Moreover, Hula royal dynasties present important regional discrepancies suggesting different political genealogies. As regards the Hula “pantheon,” the sea vodun are today worshiped by several ethnic groups, while in some self-identified Hula villages their cult may be non-existent. Even scarifications, which would be the physical ethnic mark par excellence, seem to vary from one place to another. In the Great Popo area, for instance, Hula scarifications bear some similarity with those of the neighboring Gen, while in Ouidah they are similar with those of the Hueda. These facts suggest the divergent acculturation processes of the same ethnic group in different areas.8 If studying the Hula in contemporary context is already a complex challenge, it is much more difficult to imagine their social dynamic in the past. Although the

6 Iroko, Les Hula, pp. 75–97. 7 The Phla-Phera is one of the five subgroups of the Gbe cluster and it includes ten lects: 1.- Phla (Hula, Pla, Xwla, Fla, Popo); 2.- Phelá (Fida, Péda, Huela, Hueda); 3.- Tori (Toli); 4.- Aizo (Ayizo, Ayize); 5.- Allada (or Gun); 6.- Tofin (Toffi); 7.- Tsáphe (Sahue, Saxwe); 8.- Gbesi; 9.- Se; and 10.- Kotafon: Capo, A Comparative Phonology of Gbe, (Berlin-New York: Foris, 1991), p. 14. Kluge notes the uncertainty of the classification of some of these dialects and divides the Phla-Pherá group into a western and a eastern subgroups. The lexical similarity of western Hula would be 90% with Gun, 82% with Fon, 68% with Gen, 68% with Aja. The lexical similarity of eastern Hula would be 86% with Gun, 84% with Fon, 73% with Gen, 68% with Aja, 90% with Huela, 88% with Sahue: Angela Kluge, “A synchronic lexical study of Gbe language varieties: the effects of different similarity judgment criteria,” Linguistic Discovery 3 (1), 2005, pp. 43–44. 8 Emmanuel Karl, Traditions Orales au Dahomey-Benin (Niamey : Centre Regional de Documentation pour la Tradition Orale, 1974), pp. 235, 242; Christian Merlo & Pierrre Vidaud, “Dangbé et le peuplement houéda,” in François de Medeiros (ed.), Peuples du Golfe du Bénin (Aja-Ewé) (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 1984), p. 270; Casimir Agbo, Histoire de Ouidah du XVI au XX siècle, (Avignon: Les Presses Universelles, 1959), p. 13. Fio Agbanon II, Histoire de Petit Popo et du Royaume Guin (1934) (Lome/Paris: Editions Haho/Karthala, 1991), p. 24; Iroko notes that not all the Hula use scarifications: Les Hula, p. 96. 4 hypothesis needs further research to be tested, the Hula may have been one of the groups politically invigorated by the colonial classification efforts of French administrative officials, missionaries, and anthropologists at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth, and it would be certainly interesting to evaluate how autochthonous people took advantage of this situation to promote themselves. Yet, despite the possible colonial political instrumentalization of ethnicity, the groups that nowadays identify as Hula have a long history in the region and their present collective sense of belonging relies and is shaped by memories of pre-colonial socio-cultural communities. Based on the analysis of the available historical documentation and the twentieth century oral traditions, this essay examines the history of the Hula as a collectivity in relation to their inner political fragmentation. The main question is to determine whether in the face of a clear past of political division can we still talk of a unifying ethnic sense of belonging. If ethnicity cannot be considered anymore a primordial fixed attribution and, as defended by the instrumentalist theories, should be rather envisaged as the strategic expression of collective interests, how far into the past can we project contemporary ethnic identities onto a people that the record represents as politically and territorially divided? Or is it that their experience of fragmentation under migration and colonization was precisely the cause of their ethnic strength? The ultimate conclusion is perhaps the great difficulty to reconstruct or even to imagine with a certain degree of plausibility the pre-colonial history of such an “ethnic group” (if that is the most appropriate term) and the need for great caution in analyzing the available data.

Popo, Fulao, Jakin and Offra: Are These the Same Hula People?

The Hula people are reputed to have been fishing and producing salt for centuries in the lagoon belt of the littoral area of modern Benin. Proof of the long association with the salt trade is that in many southern parts of the country the salt is named

Hula ko (the sand of the Hula) or just Hula.9 Moreover, the Hula would have been the founders of villages like Great Popo, Little Popo, Agbananken, Glehué (Ouidah), Offra, Jakin (Godomey), Ekpe, and Seme which, in the seventeenth and eighteenth

9 B. Segurola & J. Rassinoux, Dictionnaire Fon-Français (Cotonou: Société des Missions Africaines, 2000 [1963]). 5 centuries, were some of the main slave trade centers on the Slave Coast.10 If for only that reason, the Hula deserve some attention. The first serious methodological difficulty in the historical analysis on the Hula is that, to my knowledge, the first unambiguous record of the term Hula does not occur until the eighteenth century. Hence, for the seventeenth-century study, one has to rely on denominations both of “kingdoms” and villages which presumably refer to the Hula. There is indeed in West Africa a general system whereby a town shares the same name with its inhabitants,11 but this does not necessarily mean that the name of a town corresponds to a single ethnic group or that a toponym should be readily identified as an ethnonym. The alleged links between the Hula people and their toponyms, and the diversity of these toponyms, is what I want to problematize. One of the most accepted assumptions identifies the Hula with the Popo living in the Mono delta region in the western part of the Slave Coast.12 The vernacular names of Great Popo and Little Popo, two of its main settlements, are Hulagan (Great Hula) and Hulaviho (Little Hula). Afla or Fla is how the neighboring Ewe groups pronounce Hula, while Epla or Pla is the pronunciation used by the

Gen.13 In 1727 there is a first reference to a place, close to Ouidah, called Aplah that was attacked and destroyed by the Dahomians, but though it was most probably a

10 For other coastal villages allegedly founded by the Hula, such as Aflao (Aflahu), Abrée (Agbodrafo), Glidji, Jeta, Adamè, Bè, Togo, Donukpa (Cotonu), see: Roberto Pazzi, Introduction à l'histoire de l'aïre culturelle ajatado (Lomé: Université du Benin, Institut National des Sciences Humaines, 1979), pp. 36, 42, 94–96, 106–7, 126, 147, 172–74; Nicoué Lodjou Gayibor, Les peuples et royaumes du Golfe du Bénin (Lomé: Université du Benin, 1986), pp. 29–30. The first-established quarter of Cotonu (called Placondji), is also supposed to be a Hula settlement: Amelie Degbelo, Placondji: un site témoin des mouvements migratoires côtiers en République Populaire du Bénin, des origines a 1900 (Cotonu: Centre Béninois de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique, 1983). It is worth noting that many of these villages (i.e., Aklaku, Jeta, Glidji, Aneho, Glehué, Jakin, Ekpe, Cotonu, or Badagry) were subsequently occupied or dominated by foreign groups to the point that their Hula origin is now forgotten or only vaguely remembered. Iroko mentions many other Hula settlements, most of them in the Mono margins and delta, several of which may have been of recent foundation: Iroko, Les Hula, pp. 48, 52. 11 I. A. Akinjogbin, Dahomey and Its Neighbours, 1708–1818 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 213. 12 The Mono province known as les Popos during the French protectorate is nowadays divided between Togo and Benin. The modern Département du Mono in Benin (Cercle du Mono during the French colony) extends east of the Mono river. The province includes some eleven ethnic groups. The Hula or Popo occupy some twenty villages on the coast; the Hueda are located around the Aho channel and the Aheme lake; the Watchi around Comé; further north are the Sahouè, Sê, Kotafon, Tchi, Gbessi, Houé, Dogbo and some Abomean groups: Emmanuel Karl, “Les Populations du Mono Béninois (esquisse historique),” in Medeiros (ed.), Peuples du Golfe du Bénin, p. 249. 13 The sound xw is transformed into ƒ by the Ewe, so Xwla (Hula) becomes Fla. It is unclear why the Gen, who have the sound xw in their alphabet, call them Pla. They probably borrowed the ethnonym from the Ewe, since the Gen pronounce p where the Ewe use f : Pazzi, Introduction, p. 26. 6

Hula settlement, there is no particular reason to identify it with Grand-Popo.14 We have to wait until 1785 for Paul Erdman Isert to unambiguously mention the term

Afla as the local name of Great Popo.15 A century later, in 1885, the French missionary Pierre Bouche reports that Little Popo “in the country’s language is called

Plavijo” [pronounced Plaviho].16 Beyond the fact that contemporary Popo people identify themselves as Hula, these rather late references to the vernacular ethno- toponyms are the strongest reason we have to associate the ancient Popo with the Hula. The earliest recorded instance of the term Popo, under the form of Papouès, dates from 1553, when a dispute with the Benin kingdom led the Portuguese to seek alternative places of trade there.17 Based on information collected among African slaves in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia), in 1627 the Spanish Jesuit Alonso de Sandoval, wrote on “the powerful kingdom of the Popoes,” saying that its ruler lived “sixty leagues [i.e., 290 km] in the hinterland. It has a secure port close to a river named Agouato, where presently lives a Black nobleman called fidalgo.”18 Some scholars have argued that this hinterland Popo kingdom was Tado, and that the then subordinated coastal port of Agouato must have been Great Popo. Hence at that time

14 Robin Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa 1550–1750. The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade an an African Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002 [1991]), p. 287; cf. FN 1055/1, Abraham Duport, Ouidah, 12 November, 1727. 15 Paul Erdman Isert, Voyage en Guinée et dans les îles Caraïbes en Amérique, (introduction and notes by Nicoué Gayibor) (Paris: Karthala, 1989 [1789: Dutch 1st edition; 1793: French 1st edition]),, p. 114. Letter written the 28 March 1785. Another toponym using the same root, thus suggesting a Hula settlement, is Aflahu (Aflao), first mentioned as the secondary residence of the Glidji kings by Isert: Voyages en Guinée, pp. 88–89, 110. It would translate as, “the door of the Hula”: S. Wilson, “Aperçu historique sur les peuples et cultures dans le Golfe du Bénin: le cas des ‘Mina’ d’Anécho,” in Medeiros (ed), Peuples du Golfe du Bénin, p. 129. 16 Abbé Pierre Bouche, La Côte des Esclaves et Dahomey (Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie. Imprimeurs- Éditeurs, 1885), p. 305. See also D’Albéca, Les établissements français du golfe de Bénin: géographie, commerce, langues (Paris: Librairie Militaire de L. Baudoin et Cie, 1889), p. 37. 17 Robin Law, The Kingdom of Allada (Leiden: Research School CNWS, CNWS publications, 1997), p. 87; cf. Brásio, Monumenta Missionaria, ii, n. 97, Jácome Leite, São Tomé, 8 August 1553. Poupous appears in the map of Bartholomeu Velho and the atlas of Fernão Vaz Dourado in 1561 and 1570, respectively: Nicoué Lodjou Gayibor, “Les villes négrières de l’ancienne Côte des Esclaves, d’Ada à Grand-Popo”, in Robin Law & Silke Strickrodt (eds.), Ports of the Slave Trade (Bights of Benin and Biafra) (University of Stirling, Centre of Commonwealth Studies, 1999), p. 40. However, I was not able to find any reference to the Popos in the versions of these maps I had access to. For the atlas of Fernão Vaz Dourado: cf. Cortesão & Texeira da Mota, Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica, iii, n. 266. 18 Alonso De Sandoval, Naturaleza, policia sagrada i profana, costumbres i ritos, disciplina i catechismo evangelico de todos Etiopes (Sevilla: 1627), p. 51; my translation. Sandoval's indirect account may have mistaken the name of the Popo port [Agouato], since in the late fifteenth century, Pacheco Pereira mentions “Huguatoo” as the port of the Benin: Duarte Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo de situ orbis: côte occidentale d’Afrique, du Sud marocain au Gabon, R. Mauny (translator), (Bissau: Centro de Estudos da Guiné Portuguesa, 1956 [ca. 1506]); apud Pazzi, Introduction, p. 74. The Popo region was known in Portuguese cartography as Cabo da Mota, Terra gazela or Terra Anegada. 7

Popo may have designated indistinctively the hinterland Tado (or its king according to some oral traditions) and / or the inhabitants of the coastal province.19 In the latter case, we could tentatively infer the presence of some Hula groups in the littoral since mid-sixteenth century, and more convincingly in the decade of 1620.

Sanson d'Abbeville, “La Guinée et pays circomvosins, tires de Mercator ,” 1656 (detail).

Another toponym that probably refers to the Hula is Fulao (Faloim, Foulaen, Foulaan), mentioned throughout the seventeenth century and subsequently disappearing from the record. As suggested by Robin Law, Fulao may represent

Hula, being yet another phonetic variation of the ethnonym.20 The term seems to be first recorded as Faloim in a Portuguese document dated in 1607, referring to a trade center in the region of Popo and Allada.21 In 1625 another record registers an incident in which Dutch pirates took a Portuguese ship at Fulao.22 Two years later, De Sandoval refers to Fulao as a prince living between the Popo and the Allada kingdoms. “In old times this Fulao was subject to the king of Popo” (i.e., Tado), but at one point, the king Popo ordered the Fulao prince to carry in his mouth all necessary water for the construction of his new palace. The Fulao partisans could not stand the humiliation and revolted against the Popo king, cutting off one of his hands. Since then the Fulao paraded this trophy during the planting season as a sign

19 Gayibor, Les peuples et royaumes du Golfe du Bénin, p. 31; Law, The Kingdom of Allada, pp. 24, 32. 20 Law, The Kingdom of Allada, p. 16. 21 Law, The Slave Coast, p. 120; cf. Brasio, Monumenta Missionaria, v, n. 137 “Relação da Costa da Guiné, 1607.” 22 Beatrix Heintze (ed.), Fontes para a história de Angola de seculo XVII (Wiesbaden, Franz Steiner Verlag, 1985–88), ii, n. 53, “Fernão de Souza, n.d. [c. 25 March 1625]”; apud Robin Law, Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving ‘Port’, 1727–1892 (Athens/Oxford: Ohio University Press/James Currey, 2004), p. 30. 8 of their triumph and vengeance.23 De Sandoval, probably still referring to the Fulao, mentions the cult of snakes and caimans, an indication that would support the identification of the Fulao with the Hula, whose mythical ancestor is the boa. Thirty years after Sandoval, in 1656, Foulaen appears in Sanson d'Abbeville’s map (see above, fig. 1) as a costal village between Popou and Jackeyn, presumably representing Glehué (present day Ouidah). Olfert Dapper's account, published in 1668 but reflecting events from the 1640s or early 1650s, describes the Foulaen as rebellious subjects of the Allada king: “the people of Foulaen, although his subjects will not submit to him, but keep a government of themselves, and by night send some robbers to the sea-villages, to the great detriment of the Arders.”24 An account by the Spanish Capuchin De Zamora, written in 1674 but based on information collected by the Spanish missionaries in Allada in 1660–1661, confirms the Fulao independence, stating that eleven former provinces had rebelled against

Allada, including “Foulao, Jura, Fo, and Lucumi.”25 Fo would be the hinterland Fon; Lucumi a Yoruba group (although not necessarily the Oyo), and Fulao the Hula of Glehué, while Jura may represent the emerging kingdom of the Hueda (from where the variants Juda, Fida, Whydah, Ouidah derived) with their capital at Savi (Sabi,

Xavier).26 The close relationship between the Hula and the Hueda is a complex, unsolved problem that will be commented upon in more detail below. From Dapper and Zamora’s information there is reason to infer that, by the mid-seventeenth century, the Fulao of Glehué were independent from Allada and the Hueda (Jura) kings at Savi. Hula oral traditions also claim that Glehué was independent of the

23 De Sandoval, Naturaleza, pp. 51–51v. Naxara collected a very similar story in Allada in 1660–61, but the identity of the hero who defeated and killed the King of Popo was attributed to a former Allada king: José de Naxara, Espejo mistico, en que el hombre interior se mira prácticamente illustrado, (Madrid, 1672), pp. 202–5. The use of the same narrative stereotype does not mean that both stories could not refer to different historical episodes. For further discussion on this theme see: Law, The Kingdom of Allada, pp. 30–33; Pazzi, Introduction, pp.174–76, 183; Gayibor, Les peuples et royaumes du Golfe du Bénin, p. 30. 24 Olfert Dapper, Naukeurie Beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche Gewesten (Amsterdam: 1668 [2nd ed., 1676]), p. 493. Dapper's account locates Foulaen 3 Dutch miles (19 km) east from Popou [Great Popo] and 5 miles (32 km) west from klein Ader [little Ardra], the port of Jakin [Godomey]: idem, p. 488. One cannot rely entirely on Dapper's figures, as they were obtained from estimates of indirect sources, but the data seem to support the identification of Foulaen with Glehué which lays roughly equidistant 30 km from Great Popo and Godomey. See also Law, The Kingdom of Allada, pp. 6, 16. 25 Basilio de Zamora, Cosmographia, o descripción del mundo (Toledo: Biblioteca Publica do Estado, Colección de MSS Bornon-Lorenzo, 1675), p. 47; apud. Law, The Kingdom of Allada, p. 22. 26 For a detailed account of the relations between Ouidah and Allada see: Law, The Kingdom of Allada, pp. 24–27, 9

Hueda, with whom a boundary was allegedly delimited.27 By 1670, the region was probably subordinated to Allada again, since Delbée’s description of the coast east of

Popo [Tary] mentions neither Fulao nor Hueda.28 The following year, however, Glehué appears to be subject to Savi, since when the French established their lodge “near to the village of Pelleau” (i.e., Glehué), they did so with “the consent of the king of Juda.”29 The Hueda command of Glehué intended to control the slave trade and, after the French established a factory there, the English did too. As Glehué became the most important trading center in the region, the village progressively came to be known to Europeans by the name of the kingdom (Juda, Whydah, etc.). It is interesting to note that in 1682, Jean Barbot called Glehué Pelleau, which seems to be a variation of Fulao, and yet he also referred to the independent port of Foulaan further east, belonging to the small Torry kingdom.30

27 Mouléro, “Histoire et légendes des Djêkens,” Etudes Dahoméennes (nouvelle serie) 8, 1966, pp. 43– 45. See also Richard Burton, A Mission to Gelélé King of Dahome (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966 [1864]), p. 59, referring to the “unwilling allegiance” paid by Glehué to the king of Savi. The Glehue-Savi boundary may also correspond to the one reported in oral traditions in Agbananken: Karl, Traditions orales, pp. 214–217. For a detailed account of the relations between the Hueda and Hula at Ouidah see Law, Ouidah, pp. 22–24. 28 Sieur Delbée, “Journal du voyage du Sieur Delbée aux isles, dans la coste de Guinée,” in D. de Clodoré (ed.), Relation de ce qui s'est passé dans les Isles et Terre-ferme de l'Amérique pendant la dernière guerre avec l'Angleterre, et depuis en exécution du Traitté de Breda (Paris: G. Clousier, 1671), ii, pp. 381–84. 29 Jean Barbot, Barbot on Guinea: the Writings of Jean Barbot on West Africa 1678–1712, P. Hair, A. Jones & R. Law (eds.) (London: Hakluyt Society, 1992 [1688], 2 vol.), p. 635; note 3, p. 645. In this essay, I use the critical edition of Barbot's earliest French account from 1688 translated into English, but I occasionally refer to his 1732 English version: Jean Barbot, A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea; and of Ethiopia Inferior, Vulgarly Angola: being A New and Accurate Account of the Western Maritime Countries of Africa (London: 1732). 30 In 1656, Tary appears in Sanson’s map as the name of a river with the sea mouth between Foulaen and Jackeyn. In 1670, Delbée talks of Tary or Thary as a “neighboring kingdom” of Allada, certainly referring to Great Popo; he also mentions the “river of Tary,” probably referring to the outlet of the inland lagoon: Delbée, “Journal,” pp. 381–82. Following Delbée, Barbot refers to Tary as a river or village in Popo. In 1688, he does not relate this river to the eastern kingdom of Torry or Tori, although he does so in his 1732 edition: Barbot, Barbot on Guinea, pp. 619, 621; note 1, p. 659. Coronelli’s 1690 map locates Tari in the hinterland, and Fulao in the coast: Vincenzo Coronelli, L'Africa divisa nelle sue parti secondo le piu moderne, relationis, 1690. This would be the first record of the kingdom of Tori located between Savi and Allada. The new inland location of Tori, Toli persists throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is tempting to think of the kingdom of Tori as the place where the coastal Fulao sought refuge. According to some oral testiminies, the Tori dynasty was taken by the Hula: Moulero, “Histoire et légendes des Djêkens,” p. 50. 10

Based on Barbot. Editor: sn, 1747. Extracted from Histoire Générale des Voyages, vol. 4, n. 7 (detail)

Barbot clearly identifies Juda [Ouidah] and Torry [Tory] as two separate kingdoms between Popo and Allada, specifying that “Torry is a small state, with only one village on the sea, called Foulaan, its entire extent being within a circumference of four leagues; nevertheless, it is completely independent of its neighbours, although inferior in all respects” (my emphasis).31 This seems to be original information and it is improbable that Barbot was wrong in regarding Fulao and Glehué as two separate places, with the first lying to the east of the latter, since he was actually in Glehué in April, 1682. The apparent displacement of Fulao from Glehué to the region of present day Avlekete, may have resulted from sectarian conflicts with the Hueda and suggests a progressive Hula eastward migratory path.32 Yet, after Barbot's reference to it in 1682, there is no more documented evidence of the Fulao, suggesting that they might have lost their political independence under Allada or that they were absorbed by neighboring Hula lineages in the Hueda and Jakin kingdoms. Located further east on the Slave Coast was Jakin (Jakkein, Jackeyns, Jaquim, Jaken, Djèken), the center of the slave trade in the Allada kingdom. The toponym Jakin also indicates the presence of the Hula. Its existence is already reported in Dapper's account: “Jakkein, thus as we [the Dutch] call it, after the nobleman who, in the name of the king [of Allada] reigned there.”33 According to Hula oral traditions, Djèken is indeed an honorific title of the Hula kings, alluding to

31 Barbot, Barbot on Guinea, pp. 621–22, 656. In 1732 he wrote: “Torry is a little state by itself, having but one sea-port town or village, called Foulan (…) but independent of the king of Ardra and Fida, tho’ extremely inferior to them both in wealth and power”: Barbot, A Description, p. 327. 32 According to oral evidence, the Hula escaped from Ouidah to Avlékéte when the Hueda king Houffon declared them the war, a few years before Agadja's invasion of Savi (1727), may be an anachronism reflecting events from the seventeenth century: Mouléro, “Histoire et légendes des Djêkens,” pp. 43–44. 33 Dapper, Naukeurie Beschrijvinge, p. 488. I thank Mattijs van de Port for the English translation. 11 their involvement in the production and trade of salt (djè means salt in the Fon language), and the autochthonous name of the village would be Hula Djèken, corresponding to present day Godomey.34 Some decades later, Snelgrave corroborates that the Jakin fidalgo was a “hereditary” position and that he “paid his tribute in loaves of salt.”35 Since the presence of the Dutch West Indies Company (WIC) in the

Allada area dates from the 1630s,36 we could infer the existence of this Hula settlement at least since that time. Close to Jakin was situated the village of Offra, a toponym that some authors have interpreted as yet another phonetic variation either of Pla or Ohula, thus probably indicating a new Hula settlement.37 Jakin and Offra have been sometimes confused, but seventeenth century evidence shows they were different places, ruled by two different governors or fidalgos.38 Dapper’s account refers once to Offer [i.e., Offra] where beer was produced, and several times to the town of Ba, encircled by an earthen wall, located a quarter of a mile from Jakin, where an important salt market was held and where the WIC had a lodge. Dapper reiterates that Ba, like Jakin, was governed by an independent fidalgo.39 Dapper was never on the Slave Coast and thus might have been mistaken in considering Offra and Ba as distinct villages when they probably were the same place. Other records, for instance, indicate that the Dutch lodge that Dapper locates in Ba was certainly located in Offra.40 Moreover, Dapper

34 According to Mouléro, djèken would mean the one who provides or distributes salt and, according to Pazzi, it would mean “querelle du sel”: Mouléro, “Histoire et légendes des Djêkens,” p. 43; Roberto Pazzi, “Aperçu sur l'implantation actuelle et les migrations anciennes des peuples de l'aire culturelle Aja-Tado,” in Medeiros (ed.), Peuples du Golfe du Bénin, p. 14. Other oral traditions report that “c'est une question de viol commis dans un couvent d'Agbanankin qui a été suivie d'une sanction des coupables qui furent obligés d'émigrer vers Kétonou où ils on pris le nom de Hula Djékin”: Karl, Traditions Orales, p. 295. 35 William Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the Slave Trade, containing …the History of the Late Conquest of the Kingdom of Whidaw by the King of Dahomè (London: Frank Cass, 1971 [1734]), p. 20. 36 Law, The Kingdom of Allada, p. 5; cf. Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague, OWIC 8, Minutes of Amsterdam Chamber of WIC, 28 Nov. 1639. 37 Law (The Kingdom of Allada, p. 19) identifies Offra with Pla, while Pazzi (Introduction, p. 199) identifies it with Ohula. The latter seems more plausible since Pla is the Gen pronunciation of Hula, and the Gen only arrived in the Popo area in the 1680s, much later than the first record of Offra. 38 In 1685, there is explicit mention of a “Fidalgo in Offra” and a “Fidalgo of Jaquyn”: A. Van Dantzig (ed.), Dutch Documents Relating to the Gold Coast and the Slave Coast 1680–1740, Translation of Letters and Papers collected in the Algemeen Rijks Archief (ARA), State Archives of the Netherlands at the Hague, 1971, p. 13. Bosman in 1698 explicitly distinguishes between two separated “lands,” and describes Offra as “a little lower [eastward], but farther inland” than Jakin: Bosman, A New, p. 398. For references to further evidence see: Law, the Kingdom of Allada, p. 19. 39 Dapper, Naukeurie Beschrijvinge, pp. 488, 493. 40 Delbée, “Journal,” p. 388. 12 mentions Stokvisdorp [i.e., stockfish village] where the Europeans engaged in slave trading, and which probably was another alternative name of the same Offra.41 Roberto Pazzi also identifies Ba with Offra and suggests that it was founded by a Hula clan called Ba. Indeed, Ba is clearly documented in recent times as the name of a Hula group, the Hula-Ba, settled near Porto Novo and the eastern side of

Lake Nokue.42 The Hula groups in Badagry also refer to their place of origin as

Whara-Ba [i.e., Hula-Ba].43 Oral testimonies collected in Godomey Agonta recall civil strife between the Hula-Djèken (i.e., Jakin) and the Hula-Ba (i.e., Offra).44 These events are dated in the eighteenth century under Kpengla’s reign, but as we will see below they could also reflect former seventeenth century conflicts between Jakin and Offra. In any case, the Offra, Ba, and Jakin toponyms, together with references to fishing activity and salt trade, strongly suggest the presence of Hula people in the region.

This preliminary exposition already suggests the difficulty in dealing with a people known by different names in different geographical areas, names that, on the other hand, as in the case of Popo, may have not been exclusively applied to them. If my analysis is correct, we can conclude that by the early seventeenth century the Hula already constituted a plurality of distinct political entities or chieftaincies, namely the Popo, Fulao, Jakin, and Offra spread along the whole Slave Coast and each with relatively independent leaderships. If they ever constituted a single territorial political unity under a single monarchy, that was in a remote past. Given their navigational skills and the fact that the lagoon was the most important commercial route in the area, it is quite probable that the Popo, Fulao, Jakin, and Offra maintained regular contact and exchange. Yet the evidence raises some questions as to whether one should group them all using the single ethnic category of Hula, and also regarding whether in those times these peoples ever acknowledged such a unifying social bond. As we will see below, historical data from the period clearly shows the existence of repeated disputes and rivalries, and

41 Dapper, Naukeurie Beschrijvinge, p. 492. For the identification of Stokvisdorp with Offra: Law, The Kingdom of Allada, p. 19. 42 Pazzi, Introduction, pp. 199–200, 209. Coulainba, a village between Popo and Ouidah, first mentioned in 1682, could be a transcription of Hula-Ba too: Barbot, Barbot on Guinea, p. 621. 43 Caroline Sorensen-Gilmour, “Badagry 1784–1863: The Political and Commercial History of a Pre- Colonial Lagoonside Community in South-West Nigeria,” PhD thesis, University of Stirling, 1995. 44 Pierre Verger, Notes sur le culte des Orisa et Vodun, à Bahia, la Baie de tous les Saints, au Brésil et à l'ancienne Côte des Esclaves en Afrique (Dakar : IFAN, 1957), p. 542 13 even though sectarian quarrels may arise within the same ethnic group, the predominance of territorial and political separatism in this case makes it difficult to imagine any sort of effective or strong “ethnic” solidarity. On the other hand, twentieth century Hula narratives of origin are consistent in evoking memories of multiple migratory exoduses, which would account for their geographical dispersion, social fragmentation and continuous reconfiguration. The present-day Hula describe themselves as having undergone what one might call a micro-diaspora, leading them to live under the rule or protection of various independent kingdoms (in the seventeenth century, for example, the Popo under Tado and Allada, the Fulao under Ouidah, and the Jakin-Offra under Allada) and, more acutely in the eighteenth century, the Hula seem to have been constantly escaping from persecuting and oppressing powers, most notably the Dahomean. I would suggest that these migrations and the “diasporic experience,” as well as the memories of colonization by the regional hegemonic powers, may have been critical factors in reinforcing an “ethnic” bond that political separatism and social intermixing were constantly compromising. In this respect, it is worth briefly examining the Hula myths of origin and migration, one of their main “ethnic” diacritical signs.

The Hula Narratives of Migration and of a Tado Origin

Although oral traditions are not always entirely reliable on matters of detail, all narratives collected in Ouidah, Godomey, Avlekete, and Kétònou present the Hula people as a branch of the Adja issued from Tado, and they also indicate a quite consistent migratory path that starts from the primordial town of Tado to Agbananken (the Popo capital in the Mono delta), and from there spreads eastward along the Slave Coast.45 It is worth noting that narratives collected in the eastern part of the Coast, despite occasional and anachronic references to Agoué (only founded in

45 In Ouidah the Hula describe a trajectory starting in Tado and passing through Adja-Honhoué, Adamê, Agbananken, Agoué, Ouidah, Avlekete, Jakin, Ekpe, Tori, Kétònou, Vèché (Badagry), Adjido, and Gbadagligo: Mouléro, “Histoire et légendes des Djêkens,” pp. 39–52. Law suggests that Moulero collected this information in Ketonou but Pazzi informs that, “Le Père Moulero recueillit dans les années 1930 la tradition Hula auprès d’un vieux catéchiste à Glexwe”: Pazzi, Introduction, p. 163. In Godomey, the Hula report a similar trajectory from Adja Tado, passing through Agbananken, Agouèn, Avlekete, Glehué, Godome, Ahuansori Agé (Cotonou), Èkpè, Kétònou, Agonsa, Dglègbé Hòyèmè, Hogbonu (Porto Novo), and Adjido: Interview with the Hula vodunons, Godomey, September 1995. I collected another version in Avlekete that generally coincides with these two versions. For a simpler version, also in Avlekete: Verger, Notes, p. 541. For a version collected in Ketonou: Michel D.K. Videgla, “Kétonou: un royaume témoin des rivalités européennes et africanisnes dans le Golfe du Bénin,” Cahiers du CRA, spécial Togo-Benin 8, 1994, pp. 240–44. 14

1821–23), contain no recollection of the Hula western migrations into Little Popo and further. Concurrently, narratives collected in the western town of Agbanaken, although they also acknowledge the Tado origin, do not recall the eastern expansion.46 The fragmented character of these memories suggests local elaborations reminiscent of an ancient division between two Hula political centers: a western one at Popo and an eastern one around Jakin, and subsequently Kétònou.

Main settlements in the Slave Coast (seventeenth to eighteenth centuries)

In the eastern narratives, one can distinguish three main stages that may reflect, to a certain extent, distinct historical periods. The first stage (the only one recalled in the western narratives) would comprise the Tado departure, the scales at Adame and Agome-Seva and the arrival to the sea at Agbananken. The Hula coastal settlement would have occurred prior to the arrival of the first European ships, hence before the mid-sixteenth century.47 This first stage is acknowledged and supported by most scholars. Pazzi dates the first migrations from Tado in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, while

Gayibor suggests that the Hula began their exodus in the fifteenth century.48 Iroko

46 Karl, Traditions orales, pp. 210–212. 47 Mouléro, “Histoire et légendes des Djêkens,” pp. 40–41; Karl, Traditions Orales, p. 213. 48 Roberto Pazzi, “Notes sur l'Histoire des peuples Aja, Eevé, Gen et Fon,” Recherches sur l'histoire des peuples Aja, Eevé, Gen et Fon, depuis les origines jusqu'au siècle passé, fascicules 1–2, Lomé, 15 stresses the importance of Adame where the Hula socio-cultural identity would have emerged.49 According to Pognon, it was during their sojourn on the banks of Lake Aheme that the Tado migrants subdivided into two groups: the ones who remained at the lake were to be known as Huéla (later Hueda), meaning “the segment who stayed close to the house” (hué = house), and the ones who went further south to meet the sea were to become the Hula, “the segment who stayed close to the sea.”50 Indeed, in the Fon language, hu means sea. “Since then, the sea became the principal deity of the Pla. Since then the new village was named Pla or Hula.”51 The close relationship between the Hueda and Hula is a theme open to debate, but what needs to be retained is the hypothesis of two ethnic groups emerging from a common Adja background. The second migratory stage would correspond to the eastward migration from the Popo region to Ouidah, Avlekete until Jakin, reflecting, as we have seen, the situation in the seventeenth century and to a certain extent evoking the Fulao movement from Popo to “Torry.” The third stage took the Hula from Jakin to Kétònou, Ekpe and other villages in the southeast bank of Lake Nokué, spreading out until reaching Adjido, between Badagry and Lagos, already in the “Glinsi” (English) domain [i.e., Nigeria]. This movement would have taken place in the eighteenth century and seems to reflect the Hula’s flight from Agaja’s forces after the Dahomean conquest of the littoral in 1727, the destruction of Jakin in 1732, and the subsequent struggles with the troops of Tegbesu and Kpengla during the second half of the century. Although these traditions suggest a unidirectional migratory path moving south and then east, usually presented as led by a single anachronistic king called Aho Kpossi, they conceal much more complex migratory movements forward and backward occurring in different periods (see below). The reminiscence of continuous migrations caused by persecution by an aggressive alien force certainly reflects a history of social instability, violence, and insecurity and a general predisposition to run away as a survival strategy. Yet, it also hides the pride of independence, auto determination, and resistance to colonization, indeed a strong base for ethnic building. The complementary binding element that 1973, pp. 123, 128; apud. Iroko, Les Hula, pp. 20, 29; also Pazzi, Introduction, pp. 164, 172–74 ; Gayibor, Les peuples et royaumes du Golfe du Bénin, p. 30. 49 Iroko, Les Hula, p. 19. 50 Pognon, “Le problème Popo,” Etudes Dahoméennes 13, 1955, p. 13. For more on Hula etymology see: “Interview with André Pognon,” in Karl, Traditions orales, p. 288; Mouléro, “Histoire et légendes des Djêkens,” p. 56; Merlo & Vidaud, “Dangbé et le peuplement houéda,” p. 273 ; Verger, Notes, p. 540. 51 Mouléro, “Histoire et légendes des Djêkens,” pp. 40–41. 16 stresses the collective sense of belonging is the imagination of a common descent or, in other words, the discourse on origins. Establishing where all started is fundamental for any ethnic group and most especially for those who have a “diasporic” existence. As we have seen, the Hula claim a Tado origin and yet, despite the apparent consensus, the exact nature of this origin is rather confused. Let’s first briefly examine a few narratives collected among the Hula as regards their Tado departure. In Agbananken, for instance, they tell that in Tado there were three brothers who engaged in a dispute over the throne. To avoid further conflict, two of the brothers departed to found the kingdoms of Abomey and Porto Novo, while the eldest, meto Awussan, after scales in Agome Seva and Adame, went south to found

Agbananken.52 In Ouidah they recount a variation of the same theme. The Ashante Fofo Ayi married a Tado princess, half-woman half-panther, who had three children: Avlekpon, Adjahuto, and Awekpon. Adjahuto killed the heir of Tado’s throne and the three brothers had to run away, first settling in Adja-Honhué, from which point Adjahuto and Awekpon continued on, first to Allada and later to Abomey. Avlekpon, after a stage at Adame, finally established himself at Agbananken.53 In Godomey they sustain that the Tado migration started after a dispute over an adjitogban between the Hula king, Avlekpon (or Aho), and Ganye Hèsu (the first Dahomean king). Avlekpon had to run away until he reached the coast where he claimed that the Hula would not be further expelled.54 Despite variations in detail, these and other similar traditions all explain the Hula exoduses as caused by an initial royal dispute or power struggle at Tado. What is worth noting is the narratives’ strong resonance with the “official” foundational myth of the Dahomean kingdom. This myth, regardless of local discrepancies, generally sustains that the Tado princess Aligbono, raped by the mythical panther Agasu, gave birth to Adjahuto, who in turn murdered the Tado royal heir. The Agasuvi (i.e., children of Agasu) had to flee and later founded the kingdom of Allada, from where, after yet another royal dispute, three princes split. One remained

52 Karl, Traditions orales, pp. 210–212. Gayibor also reports the same Agbananken tradition: Gayibor, Traditions historiques du Bas-Togo (Niamey: CELTHO, 1992), p. 283; apud Iroko, Les Hula, p. 24; Karl, “Les populations du Mono Béninois,” pp. 251–252; apud Iroko, Les Hula, p. 22. 53 Mouléro, “Histoire et légendes des Djêkens,” p. 40. 54 Interview with the Hula vodunons, Godomey, September, 1995. Yet an informant stated that the dispute occurred in Agbananken. The same tópos of a dispute over a golden adjikui was recorded in Godomey Agonta in relation to king Aho and the Dahomean king Kpengla: Verger, Notes, p. 542. 17 in Allada while the other two went to found the kingdoms of Dahomey and Porto Novo. The Hula versions seem to adapt the “official” Dahomean story, inserting the Hula founder of Agbananken as part of the Agasuvi migration or resorting to similar narrative episodes, like the three brothers’ split. The transposition of topoi or “traditional stereotypes” between different chronological and geographical (as well as political) contexts is quite common in oral traditions, yet the Hula use of elements from the Dahomean narrative would date these versions, or at least the Tado segment, from the mid-eighteenth century onward, since only then did the Fon elaborate their version. According to Robin Law, the Dahomean narrative, especially the Aligbono-Agasu episode, would be a fictitious eighteenth century construction intended to legitimate the Tado origin of the Dahomean rulers.55 The Hula emulation of the hegemonic “official” Dahomean model may be interpreted as an effort to legitimate the Hula royal origins or, as stated by Blier, the recounters of these histories “may be seeking to advance their own political identity vis-à-vis the kings of Danhome.”56 In relation to Allada and Dahomey, Law suggests that the claim to origin from Tado need not reflect actual migration, but may merely reflect the perception of “having succeeded to (or claiming to have succeeded to) the paramountcy earlier enjoyed by Tado.”57 This interpretation fits better the Allada and Dahomean cases than the Hula, since the latter never attained the formers’ political hegemony in the region. In the Hula case, as Verger suggests, the claim of a Tado origin could reflect an invasion of the Adja from Tado over the Hula who, according to this author, were the original inhabitants of the coast. Because the Adja, either by force or other means, managed to subdue the indigenous population, the historical memory ended up favoring the dominant immigrant group to the point that, nowadays, most Hula consider themselves to be one of the multiple branches of the Adja from Tado.58

55 Agasu would be a Fon indigenous god, while Aligbono, “the supposed princess of Tado whom he married, is primarily associated with the town of Wassa, near Abomey”: Law, The Kingdom of Allada, pp. 29–32, 37–40, 48; cf. Burton, A Mission, p. 297; Le Herissé, L'anciènne royaume du Dahomey: moeurs, religion, histoire (Paris: Emile Larose Ed.), p. 277; Suzanne Preston Blier, “The Path of the Leopard: Motherhood and Majesty in early Danhomè,” Journal of African History 36, 1995, pp. 401–2. See also, Robin Law, “History and legitimacy: aspects of the use of the past in pre-colonial Dahomey,” History of Africa 15, 1988, pp. 431–56. 56 Blier, “The Path of the Leopard,” p. 406. 57 Robin Law, The Kingdom of Allada, p. 35. 58 Verger, Notes, p. 539. 18

Indeed, some oral traditions in Tohun (an Adja village near Tado) and Hèvè (a Hula village in the Mono delta) claim that the Hula were already settled in the coast before the arrival of the Adja.59 De Sandoval’s early seventeenth-century account of Tado’s control of the coastal port with its fidalgo or provincial governor may correspond to this period of Hula subordination to the Adja. The idea of the Hula as the original inhabitants of the coast opens an alternative interpretation of their origins. Merlo and Vidaud, for instance, based on the comparative analysis of ethnographic data, argue that the Hula and Hueda were originally the same ethnic group, but issued from a “proto-Yoruba” group called Idjè, which before the fourteenth century settled around Akron and Adjaché (the site of the future Porto Novo) in the eastern part of the Slave Coast. The Hula-Hueda would have subsequently migrated westward along the coastal lagoon to settle in the Mono delta and the Lake Aheme.60 The “proto-Yoruba” ancestry of the Hula is also suggested by early twentieth-century Yoruba traditions which consider the Popo or Olukpokpo (the king of Popo) to be a branch of Oduduwa’s descendants, issuing from Ilê Ifé, who occupied the coastal territories.61 It is worth noting that the Portuguese explorer Duarte Pacheco Pereira, who made four trips in the Gulf of Benin from 1471 onward, when describing the coast east of Lagos in the Rio dos Forcados, mentions a group called Huela.62 Are these eastern Huela to be identified with the Hueda or Hula later found in the Slave Coast? The idea of an eastern “proto-Yoruba” origin of the Hula-Hueda is further reinforced by the earliest account of Hueda origins, in an anonymous French manuscript, written in Ouidah around 1714, which says the ancestors of the Hueda kings came

59 Verger, Notes, p. 539. In Hèvè, they recount that the Adja prince Huesu migrated from Athiémé to Allada, from where part of his group spitted to found Abomey and Porto Novo, while he moved south to Great Popo where the Hula were already established all along the coast. The use of “Dahomean” elements would also date this narrative at least from mid-eighteenth century. 60 Merlo & Vidaud, “Dangbé et le peuplement houéda,” pp. 269–270. 61 The hypothesis about the Olukpokpo tradition relating specifically to the Hula is proposed by Verger (Notes, p. 540), but is questioned by Robin Law (personal communication, 31 st December 2006). The latter argues that in European missionary sources from the 1840s the term “Popo” was used for the Gun of Badagry, suggesting that in Yoruba usage the term refered to Gbe-speakers in general, rather than the Hula in particular. For Olukpokpo, as the sixth child of Okambi and grand-son of Oduduwa: Rev. Samuel Johnson, The History of the Yorubas (Lagos: CSS Bookshops, 1976 [1921]), pp. 8 or 2–12. For the etymology of Popo: Pazzi, “Aperçu sur l'implantation,” pp. 13–14. Gayibor suggests that in Yoruba kpokpo means junior or the youngest: Gayibor, “Les villes négrières,” p. 40. This etymology is questioned by Iroko: Les Hula, p. 27. See also Pazzi, Introduction, p. 41. 62 Pereira, Esmeraldo de situ orbis; apud. Iroko, Les Hula, p. 29. Alternatively some Benin-focused scholars have identified these Huela with the Iwere (i.e., the Itsekiri). 19 from “Lukumi,” which would fit Akron as a Yoruba settlement before the arrival of the Allada dynasty and the establishment of the Porto Novo kingdom. Law argues that the contradictory traditions about Hueda origins, some of which claim (like the

Hula) a Tado origin, reflect the heterogeneity of the population.63 These apparently contradictory versions—of an eastern proto-Yoruba origin and of an Adja-Tado one—could ideally fit together if we date a first Hula-Hueda westward migration from Lake Nokue as having occurred at some point during a remote, undocumented past, and a second Hula eastward migration (the one evoked by oral tradition) as having taken place somewhat later (i.e., fifteenth or sixteenth century onward). What remains central in the Hula history is a complex series of migrations and social interactions involving processes both of fusion and scission with other “ethnic groups,” such as the Adja and Hueda.

Warfare and the Hula Political Division in the late Seventeenth Century

The final part of this essay will examine in some detail the historical evidence relative to the Slave Coast in the last decades of the seventeenth century. This period has been thoroughly studied by Robin Law and here I will only summarize the events that are relevant to our discussion on the Hula ethnicity.64 I will start by discussing the impact of the arrival of Gold Coast refugees in the Popo area in the western part of the Slave Coast and then comment on the political tension exerted by the slave trade on the eastern part at Jakin. Great Popo nominated the king’s village and was often described as an island “in the midst of the river” or “formed by morasses and bogs, which led the Portuguese to call it Terra Anegada, i.e., drowned land, and others, Terra Gazela.” It probably was a seasonal island created by the river floods and topographic transformations of the Mono delta which, as along with wars and other reasons, seem to have forced the village to move its location through time. Generally speaking, the toponym referred to the set of fishing and salt-producing villages in the lagoon islands around the king’s residence.65

63 Robin Law, personal communication, 3 September 2001; cf. AANAO, Dépôt des Fortifications des Colonies, Côtes d'Afrique, ms 104, “Relation du Royaume des Judas,” ca. 1714. 64 See for instance, Law, The Slave Coast, pp. 238–52. 65 The citation is from Barbot, A Description, p. 322. For other reference to the location of Great Popo see: Barbot on Guinea, plates 51, 52; Bosman, A New, p. 336; Jean Baptiste Labat, Voyage du Chevalier des Marchais en Guinée, isles voisines et à Cayenne, fait en 1725, 1726 et 1727 (Paris: Chez 20

By the 1650s Great Popo may have enjoyed independence from Tado and a certain economic growth. The Dutch, for instance, established a factory there in the

1660s, which was described as being “of the size of a large village.”66 However, despite this transitory prosperity, the subsequent political fluctuation in the Popo area suggests a period of great social instability. Allada had replaced Tado as the regional hegemonic power and managed to control or centralize the Popo slave trade. In 1671, Delbée reports that the Tary [i.e., Popo] “bring[s] the Blacks to Ardres to trade, and pay duty to the King of Ardres.”67 Yet, in 1682, Barbot heard that “some years ago” the Popo had been freed from Allada, favoring “fairly considerable trade there for slaves.” The same year, however, they were “at war with those of A Monte [i.e., Coto] and of Juda [i.e., Ouidah],” and when the Popo king was on the point of losing his territories he made an alliance with the Juda against the Monte.68 The Monte (Cape Monte) or Coto people seem to have been the first Gold Coast refugees escaping from the Akwamu raids to arrive in the Slave Coast (east of the river Volta) in the early 1680s. Originally from the kingdom of Ladoku or Adangme (Lampi or Alampo in contemporary sources), they settled in Keta (or Kitto, from where the term Coto probably derived) and became famous for their

Saugrain, Quay de Gefvres, à la Croix Blanche, 4 vol., 1730), ii, pp. 6–7; Isert, Voyage en Guinée, p. 114; Abade J. Laffitte, Le Dahomé, souvenirs de voyage et de mission (Tours: Alfred Mame et fils, 1872), p. 23; Gayibor, “Les villes négrières,” pp. 11, 39. For the topographic transformations of the Mono delta: Pazzi, Introduction, p. 32. 66 A. Van Dantzig, “British views on the Slave Coast,” in Medeiros (ed.), Peuples du Golfe du Benin, p. 79; cf. S. Van Brakel, “Eene Memoire over handle der WIC omstreeks 1670,” Bijdragen en Mededeelingen van het Historisch Genootschap, XXXV, 1914. See also Law, The Slave Trade, pp. 142–43. 67 Delbée, “Journal,” p. 382. Barbot also remembers Popo’s former dependency on Ardres: Barbot on Guinea, p. 620. Similarly Ducasse mentions that “in the past Grand Popo and Piguenine Popo, depended from the king of Ardres”: Jean baptiste Ducasse, “Relation du voyage de Guynée fait en 1687 sur la frégate 'La Tempeste' par le Sieur Du Casse,” in Paul Roussier (ed.), L'établissement d'Issiny 1687–1702: voyages de Ducasse, Tibierge er d'Amon à la Côte de Guinée (Paris: 1935 [1687]), pp. 14–15. 68 Barbot, Barbot on Guinea, p. 620; Following Bosman, in 1732 Barbot identified Monte with the Coto kingdom: A Description, p. 323. 21 banditry.69 The Lampi were reported to have raided the Dutch lodge at Popo in 1680, which suggests that their arrival preceded that of the Accra refugees.70 Also escaping from the Akwuamu, the Accra fugitives (i.e., Gâ) were led by king Forri (Ofori), whose presence in the region was first registered in 1687.71 In his 1688 account, Barbot mentions that many Accra people had moved to Little Popo “where they established themselves,” but this may be something he heard not when he was on the coast in 1682, but subsequently.72 By the turn of the century Bosman explicitly refers to the inhabitants of Little Popo as “the remains of the kingdom of

Acra.”73 The Hula´s western spread in the Togolese coast probably predated the arrival of the Gold Coast refugees, but it is difficult to know by how long. Gayibor suggests that the inhabitants of Great Popo periodically occupied the Glidji region during the farming season, while they moved to Hulaviho (Little Popo), on the coast, during the fishing season. According to him, Ofori and the Gâ established their capital in Glidji and occupied other Hula towns like Aflahu and Agbodafro.74 Yet, references to the latter two only appear after the arrival of the Gâ, suggesting that the Gold Coast immigrants forced the resettlement of some Hula groups and the foundation of new villages.75

69 Robin Law (ed.), Correspondence from the Royal African Company’s Factories at Offra and Whydah on the Slave Coast of West Africa in the Public Record Office, London 1678–93 (Edinburgh University, Centre of African Studies, 1990), pp. 48, 49. Keta is firts referred to in 1682 as Quitto: Robin Law (ed.), The English in West Africa 1681–1683: The Local Correspondence of the Royal African Company of England, 1681–1699, Part 1 (London: British Academy, 1997), n. 431, “Ralph Hassell, Accra, 22 May 1682.” Bosman identifies Coto as the “Land of Lampi” (although Lampi is described as a separate western kingdom) and mentions Verhou as another of its names. Bosman, A New, p. 329. For the description of the kingdom of Lampi: ibid, p. 327. According to Gaybor, Verhou would correspond to Aflahu: Gayibor, in Isert, Voyage en Guinée, note 8, p. 87. Some authors identify the Coto refugees with the present day Anlo confederacy or ethnic group. 70 Barbot, Barbot on Guinea, note 14, p. 629; Law, The Slave Coast, p. 243. 71 The Akwamu war on Accra was in 1677 and its king died. Yet the prince, Ofori, escaped to Little Accra and Barbot met him (Fourri) at the Dutch Fort in Accra in 1679. In 1680 there was a second Akwamu attack, presumably the one that drove the Gâ to Little Popo: Barbot, Barbot on Guinea, note 3, p. 441. For the first reference to Ofori in the Slave Coast: ibid., note 16, p. 630; cf. OBLCR, C.747, J. Carter, Ouidah, 10 May 1687. 72 Barbot, Barbot on Guinea, p. 579. 73 Bosman, A New, p. 332. 74 Nicoué Lodjou Gayibor, Les Genyi: un royaume de la Côte de Guinée au temps de la traite des Noirs (Lomé: Haho-Karthala, 1990), p. 47; idem, “Les villes négrières,” p. 38. As far as I know, the first occurrence of Glidji appears as Graji in 1784: Isert, Voyage en Guinée, letter 7, p. 110. 75 Abron, Abren, or Abree, presumably corresponding to Agbodrafo (Porto Seguro in the nineteenth century), is documented in 1683, although Law suggests it may be Little Popo: Law, Correspondence RAC, n. 1, p. 37. Aflao or Aflahu was the secondary residence of the Glidji kings: Isert, Voyages en Guinée, pp. 88–89, 110. It may correspond to Anfro, mentioned as tributary to Ouidah in 1688: Law, The Slave Coast, p. 244. The root Afla strongly suggests a Hula settlement. 22

What must be noted is that the first printed reference to Little Popo appears in

1683.76 The town may have already existed as a Hula settlement, but it clearly gained importance with the arrival of the Accra refugees and other immigrants. Canoe men from Elmina, for instance, the Fante-Ané, are also reputed to have arrived in Little Popo in the same decade (1680), establishing a new neighborhood called Aneho (the house-ho of the Ané), which eventually would give name to the town.77 Yet it must be noted that the presence of Gold Coast merchants going in canoes to trade on the Slave Coast is already documented in 1659, suggesting that some “Mina” imigrants may have predated the Gâ settlement at Gliji.78 Last but not least, Little Popo may have also been inhabited by other autochthonous Gbe-speaking groups beyond the Hula. In the late eighteenth century, Isert mentions the Krepe (Krepi) as the “original inhabitants” of Little Popo.79 Krepe—another interesting example of local ethnogenesis—became a generic label used to designate all the countries situated to the southeast of the river Volta, including the Hula but also the Watchi and other

Ewe-Adja groups.80 Hence, Little Popo became a multiethnic state, which, under the hegemony of the Accra seems to have split politically from Great Popo.81 Because of the presence of the Ané from Elmina, the Little Popo inhabitants under Ofori’s rule started to be

76 The earliest reference to the existence of the two Popos is in the map of Van Keulen (1683, p. 10), copied by Robijn / Roggeveen (1685, p. 26): Barbot, Barbot on Guinea, note 16, p. 630. In 1687, Ducasse mentions “Popo Grande and Popo Piguenine”: “Relation du voyage de Guynée,” p. 14. References to Little Popo and Great Popo are also found in the WIC Dutch correspondence in 1688: Van Dantzig, Dutch Documents, p. 17. In 1688, Barbot also distinguishes both towns, albeit en passant: Barbot on Guinea, p. 621. 77 The Ané arrived, either with the Europeans as pirogueers or on their own, as refugees, when the Gâ were already established in Glidji: Norberto Francisco de Souza, “Contribution à l'Histoire de la Famille de Souza,” Etudes Dahoméennes 13, 1955, p. 17; Fio Agbanon II, Histoire de Petit Popo, pp. 36–37. In the eighteenth century, Aneho (i.e., Little Popo) became the main slave trade port of the Genyi kingdom: Gayibor, “Les villes négrières,” pp. 40–41. For the arrival of the Gen (i.e., Gâ) see also: Pazzi, Introduction, pp. 213–214. 78 Law, The Slave Trade, p. 149; cf. Report of Jan Valckenburg, September 1659, in “Brieven en Rapporten,” p. 394. 79 Isert, Voyage en Guinée, letter 7 [1785], p. 110. 80 In the early nineteenth century, “Kerrapay” included “Quitta” (i.e., Anlo), various villages between Keta and Popo (i.e., Aflahu), “Tetaytokou” (?) and “Tadou” (i.e., Tado): T. Edward Bowdich, Voyage dans le pays d'Aschantie ou relation de l'ambassade envoyée dans ce royaume par les Anglais, (translation of Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee) (Paris: Gide fils, 1819), pp. 313–14. Gayibor identifies the Krepe with the Watchi migrants from Notsé: “Les villes négrières,” p. 41. Law identifies Krepe with the hinterland state of Peki and present day Ewe including a plurality of groups tracing their origins to Notse: The Slave Coast, p. 14. 81 In the late eighteenth century the Popo king was praised by the Little Popo as a mere religious figure rather than a political authority: Isert, Voyage en Guinée, p. 114, note 19. 23 also referred to as Mina by the Europeans.82 From this complex process of ethnic interpenetration between the Hula, Ané, Accra, and probably other “Krepe” groups (i.e., Watchi), a new Gen ethnicity emerged in the eighteenth century that gave raise to the Glidji or Genyi kingdom, having Aneho (i.e., Little Popo) as its main port. All this social fluctuation and ethnic diversity makes it clear that post-1680 references to the Popos cannot be identified unequivocally with the Hula. For instance, when Bosman reports successive wars between Coto and (Little) Popo, he is referring to the Accra population led by King Ofori, rather than to the original autochthonous

Hula.83 These circumstances left Great Popo, the Hula bastion, in a difficult position. Despite the aforementioned strategic cooperation with Ouidah against the Coto in 1682, Great Popo engaged in a continuous series of inconclusive wars with Ouidah, which was at that time disputing Allada's commercial hegemony. In 1688, a visitor to Ouidah reported that this kingdom received tribute from “Papo” (i.e., Popo) and “Anfro” (probably Aflahu). In 1693 another European found Ouidah at war with Great Popo and, in 1698, Bosman reports that the last Popo monarch was put onto the throne by the king of Ouidah. However, the new king rebelled against his benefactor and in retaliation, the monarch of Ouidah tried unsuccessfully to invade the Popo, who sought refuge in the river islands, forcing the enemy to use small boats for their attacks. This gave the Popo the opportunity to chase away both the

Ouidah and their French allies.84 Hence, after gaining freedom from Allada, the Hula at Popo alternated between cooperation with and subjection to their “cousins,” the Hueda at Ouidah, eventually shaking off the yoke of domination, but nonetheless being left in a precarious, isolated, and defensive position. By the end of the century, the country was “thinly peopled” because of wars and slave raids and, although they still sold slaves to the Europeans or alternatively to Little Popo, “their greatest gain” was “by the fish.”85

82 Van Dantzig, Dutch Documents, p. 18: cf. “Van Hoolwerff to the directors of the Chamber of Amsterdam,” 10 February 1688. 83 Bosman, A New, pp. 329–30, 332–33. Isert also identifies Popo with Little Popo, while Grand Popo is referred as Afla: Voyage en Guinée, p. 110 84 For 1688: Law, The Slave Coast, p. 244. For 1693: Barbot, Barbot on Guinea, note 13, p. 629. For 1698: Bosman, A New, pp. 335–36. For a contemporary Portuguese reference to Bosman’s conflict: Pierre Verger, Fluxo e refluxo do tráfico de escravos entre o Golfo do Benin e a Bahia de todos os Santos (São Paulo: Editora Corrupio, 1987 [1968]), p. 59; cf. “Letter from members of the Conselho Ultramarino in Lisbon, 2 December 1699,” AHU, codice 252, f. 232, r. & v. Bosman’s account was subsequently used by Barbot in his 1732 edition: A Description, p. 322 85 Bosman, A New, p. 336–37. For the depopulation discussion see Law, The Slave Coast, pp. 221–24. 24

Let’s now shift our attention back to the eastern side of the Slave Coast, where similar processes of social turmoil and political fragmentation were happening. In mid-seventeenth century, Jakin and Offra were the main coastal centers of the slave trade in Allada and its vassal regions. Yet by 1671, a rebellion took place against Allada in “the part of the … country fronting the sea,” most probably Offra, which “placed itself under the protection” of Ouidah. The Allada civil war lasted for several months, benefiting trade in Ouidah.86 Alternate alliances and rebellious attitude from Offra toward Allada were reported in 1679 and 1681.87 In 1688, Ducasse reports that Offra was “presently governed by two fidalgos.

One established by the king of Ardre the other by the one of Juda.”88 These two fidalgos may correspond to the rulers of Jakin and Offra, respectively, or they may represent concurrent local lineages at Offra, but they clearly express the rivalry between Ouidah and Allada to control the European slave trade. In fact this rivalry was exacerbated by the parallel commercial rivalry between the Dutch and the English. The Dutch factor Van Hoolwerff was defending the king of Allada’s interests, and when the Offra fidalgo “brought a war on himself” forcing the closing of the slave trade routes, Van Hoolwerff made “a large number of Accra and Myna

Negroes come here [Offra] in order to compell his party to peace.”89 This is the first mention of the use of mercenary troops in the Slave Coast and of the intervention of Europeans in local warfare. Concurrently, the English Petley Wyburne was maneuvering in favor of Ouidah’s interests, helping the Offra fidalgo against the king of Allada.90 In the summer of 1688 the situation was tense with many rumors about

86 Barbot, Barbot on Guinea, p. 636. 87 In 1679 trade in Allada was reported to be “entirely stopped because of war”: Van Dantzig, Dutch Documents, p. 6; cf. Herman Abremsz, 23 November 1679. But by 1680 there was “peace between the king & phidalgos”: Law, Correspondence, n. 4, pp. 17, 18; cf. John Mildmay, 13 October 1680. In May 1681 “the king [of Ouidah] and Phidolgo [of Offra] are great friends again” (cf. Rawlinson C.745: John Thorne, Glehue, 24 May 1681) but later in the year there was a recurrence of hostilities. Yet in November 1681 the kings of Allada and Ouidah sent representatives to Offra “to make peace with the Phidalgoe” (ibid. Accounts Offra, 12 November 1681): Law, Correspondence, p. 27, note 3. See also Law, The Kingdom of Allada, pp. 53–54. 88 Ducasse, “Relation,” p. 15. 89 Van Dantzig, Dutch Documents, pp. 17–18; cf. Van Hoolwerff to the directors of the Chamber of Amsterdam, 10 February 1688. 90 Law, Correspondence, pp. 55, 58–59, 62–63; cf. letter 29, Petley Wyburne, Ouidah, 13 September 1688; letter 30: Petley Wyburne, Ouidah, 16 November 1688. Letter 32 indicates the English intervention in local politics when it states that “this war hath been much of your [Wyburne’s] own management to compass your designes”: Royal African Company to Petley Wyburne, 2 July 1689. 25 wars.91 If indeed Offra and neighboring villages were governed by Hula lineages, this intrincate political competition and military mounting pressure would denote serious intra-ethnic tensions. By the end of 1690, after an obscure incident involving Van Hoolwerff wounding or murdering some locals, the factor was apprehended by the Offra fidalgo and executed, while the Dutch lodge was burnt down. This caused further confusion in the area where “the surrounding fidalgoes and other black chiefs [probably Allada's allies] pretend that they want to take revenge for the death of Oppercommier Van Hoolwerf, whom they presume to have been murdered by the natives of

Ardra.”92 The identity of the parties is unclear, but it is not unthinkable that under these “surrounding fidalgoes and other black chiefs” different Hula lineages, from Offra, Jakin, and even Fulao, which Barbot had located some years before precisely between Offra and Ouidah, were involved in sectarian civil strife. In any case, the events certainly enraged the king of Allada who, in early 1692, “bribed Affory [i.e., Ofori, the Accra general of Little Popo] to destroy those of Offer [i.e., Offra] and to ruin them as rebels against the king.” The war was so successful “that the fidalgo and the principal men of Offer have fled to Fida, and the surrounding villages have been destroyed and burnt.”93 To further corroborate the argument of Hula political scission, early eighteenth-century sources blame Jakin for the destruction of Offra, which most probably means they remained loyal to Allada and assisted the Little Popo force.94 As mentioned above, oral testimonies in Godomey recalling conflict between the Hula Djèken (i.e., Jakin) and the Hula Ba (i.e., Offra) may evoke these events.95 In any case, this was the end of Offra and, if it was still there, presumably of the neighboring Fulao. As already said, references to Fulao disappear from the record during this period.

91 Van Dantzig, Dutch Documents, p. 19; cf. Van Hoolwerff to the directors of the Chamber of Amsterdam, 14 August 1688. 92 Van Dantzig, Dutch Documents, pp. 20, 34; cf. Valentyn Gros (Offra) to Chamber Amsterdam, 21 December 1690; Resolutions of the Director General and the Council at Elmina, 7 September 1690. 93 Van Dantzig, Dutch Documents, p. 35; cf. Resolutions of the Director General and the Council at Elmina, 18 February 1692. After Ofori’s victory, the king of Allada further pleaded to him to distroy Ouidah, his main rival in the slave trade, but after a series of attacks he had to withdraw without a decisive victory. Back in Little Popo, he engaged in new war against Coto where he ultimately died: Bosman, A New, pp. 332–333. See also Law, Correspondence, pp. 73, 74, 76; cf. letter 41: Cabo Corso, 6 April 1692; letter 42: Edward Jacklin, Ouidah, 10 May 1692; letter 44: Cabo Corso, 20 July 1693. 94 Van Dantzig, Dutch Documents, pp. 70, 73 ; cf. W. de la Palma, Savi, 31 March 1705; Report by W. de la Palma on his voyage to the kingdom of Fida, 19 February to 6 April 1705. 95 Verger, Notes, p. 542. 26

One could further detail the history of the region, but the events from the last two decades of the seventeenth century suffice to demonstrate that this was a period of great social turmoil and insecurity and that to a great extent the European demand for slaves was a major force behind the regional economic disputes and consequently one of the main causes for the Hula political competition and division. Many of the “wars” referred to were forms of banditry, either periodic razzias to capture slaves or attempts to violently disrupt the slave trade in neighboring areas in order to propitiate it at home. In this context, the coastal Hula were quite vulnerable and, despite their possible involvement in the trade, may have been one of the main victims of the traffic too. The Hula pride, as reflected in their oral traditions, lies in the idea that they were never captured by their enemies. Although this is more a myth than a reality, it evokes a history in which escaping, rather than confronting the enemy, became their main strategy for survival: the power of the weak, one might say. This is expressed, for instance, in the Hula vodun Avlekete, one of whose main skills is to alert the population to the enemy’s imminent arrival. And yet if running away may not be a moral dishonor when it implies not being captured, that does not mean the Hula were always successful. The significant presence of the Hula sea voduns in Brazil, Haiti, and Cuba suggests that they were one of the coastal ethnic groups more severely affected by the slave trade.

A Brief Eighteenth-century Overview and Some Concluding Remarks

The Hula fate does not seem to have improved in the following decades when the Dahomeans conquered the coast. Indeed, Agadja’s invasion of Allada in 1724 and of Savi in 1727 provoked new serious migratory movements, affecting both the Hueda and Hula of Ouidah. The defeated survivors from both groups escaped to Popo where, amid resistance to Dahomey and civil wars, they remained together for several years, a fact that certainly increased the ongoing process of acculturation between these groups. This western migratory movement led Tidjani to suggest that the arrival of the Hula to the Great Popo region occurred only then. This is a questionable hypothesis, though the possibility of this migration having contributed to the foundation of Agabananken, or at least to having altered its power structure, should not be discarded. This would then explain the elaboration at that time of the 27 above-mentioned Tado narratives intended emulate the Dahomean royal genealogy in order to legitimate the Agabananken (new?) kingship.96 In the eastern part of the coast, despite initial submission to Agaja in 1724, the Jakin tried by different means, encouraged by the Dutch factor Hertog, to challenge the increasing Dahomean power in the region. Angered by this defiant attitude, in April 1732 Agaja’s troops invaded and destroyed Jakin, taking more than 4000 prisoners, including the king’s mother. Some Hula may have escaped west to Popo, but Hertog and the king of Jakin escaped east, the former reaching Appa in the Badagry-Lagos area. Members of the royal family had already been sent in advance to Appa, suggesting a political alliance with that eastern port and probably the pre- existence of Hula population in that area.97 The king, failing to regain Jakin, eventually established his new political capital in Kétònou, on the southeast bank of Lake Nokué, where a Hula royal lineage is perpetuated until today. The Hula settlement in other villages between Kétònou and Porto Novo (i.e., Ekpe, Seme) must date from that time. This eighteenth-century eastern movement from Jakin to Kétònou until Appa and Adjido is the one more clearly evoked in Hula oral traditions. Verger notes that these traditions only recall the history of the royal families but are silent about the history of the lay people.98 In such a turbulent period, one can imagine that Hula groups were forced into independent “micro-diasporas” spreading in several directions. After Agadja's campaigns, some Hula may have returned back to Ouidah from the Mono-Aheme area, or to Kétònou from Appa and Adjido.99 There are indications that others were temporarily in Abomey and some may have gone further north to the Mahi country.100 Moreover, war refugees included a plurality of

96 Serpos Tidjani, “Notes sur le mariage au Dahomey,” Etudes Dahoméennes 6, 1951, p. 33. For the late arrival of the Hula into Popo see also Verger, Notes, p. 540. 97 Snelgrave, New Account, pp. 83, 91, 149–52; Verger, Fluxo e refluxo, pp. 154–55; cf. João Basilio, Ouidah, 8 September 1732; Van Dantzing, Dutch Documents, p. 176; cf. Hertogh, Appa, 16 April 1732. 98 Verger, Notes, p. 541 99 For the movement from Adjido back to Kétònou, see for instance: Videgla, “Kétonou,” p. 242. For the migrations of Gbe-speaking people into Nigeria: A. I. Asiwaju, “The Aja-speaking peoples in Nigeria: A note on their origin, settlement and cultural adaptation up to 1945,” in Medeiros, Peuples du Golfe du Bénin, pp. 87–102. 100 The Hula clan Hunon, “owner” of the cult of the sea vodun Hu, was introduced into Ouidah by the mediation of the Dêhouè clan, a Hueda collectivity of canoemen who had served the Hueda kings and then the Dahomeans. The head of the Hunon may have been enthroned in Abomey as Hunon Dagbo or supreme priest of Ouidah’s vodun cults: Christian Merlo, “Hiérarchie fétichiste de Ouidah,” Bulletin de l'IFAN, vol. 2, 1–2, 1940, p. 5; Casimir Agbo, Histoire de Ouidah du XVI au XX siècle (Avignon: Les Presses Universelles, 1959), pp. 189–190. The ancestors of the Capo Chichi family in Savalu may have 28 ethnic groups like the Aizo from Allada, Adja, Hueda, Ouemenu, and so on which contributed to further social and cultural intermixing in some cases favoring new processes of ethnogenesis, like the emergence of the Gun in Porto Novo or the

Tofinu in the northern part of Lake Nokue.101 After these western and eastern Hula migrations caused by Agadja’s military campaigns, there seems to have been a period of relative stability between 1747 and 1777. But, coinciding with the weakening of Oyo and the reign of Kpengla, the 1780s were a period of intense attacks and counter-attacks between Dahomey, Porto Novo, Badagry, and Lagos which surely caused new Hula migratory waves in the region, especially from Ekpe which was destroyed in 1782. The main point of this brief overview of the eighteenth-century Hula dispersion is to reinforce the idea of recurrent social and political fragmentation. This dynamic is further confirmed by the analysis of the Hula royal genealogies preserved by oral traditions which, despite inherent anachronism and local variation, present a significant major duality. The lists of Hula kings reported in the western part of the Coast (Agbananken, Heve) are quite consistent and they generally name meto

Awussan as the first monarch.102 However, the dynasties collected in the eastern part of the coast (Godomey, Glehué, Kétònou and Avlekete) are quite different from the former and all recognize ahosu/aholu Avlekpon as the first king, followed by Aho

Kpossi among others.103 Meto (mitó), a title meaning “our father,” was also used by the Porto Novo monarchs and the Chacha in Ouidah, while ahosu (meaning king or chief) was often used by the Dahomean king.104 There is no reason to identify Avlekpon with Awussan, and the discrepancy rather suggests an ancient political division of the Hula into two main different royal lineages, one in Popo-Agbananken and the other in Kétònou (issued from the Jakin). Other data, like differences in the

been Hula: Merlo & Vidaud, “Dangbé et le peuplement houéda,” p. 289. 101 The Tofinu (from Tofi) would be an ethnic group derived from the mixed population of the Lake Nokué area, including Aizo, Fon, Yoruba, Hueda, and Hula: Christian Merlo, “Notes sur le peuplement Houéda,” in Medeiros (ed.), Peuples du Golfe du Bénin, p. 69. 102 Verger, Notes, p. 540; Karl, Traditions orales, p. 231; Pazzi, Introduction, p. 94 ; Gayibor, Les peuples et royaumes du Golfe du Bénin, p. 30 ; Iroko, Les Hula, p. 113. 103 Verger, Notes, pp. 541, 543 ; Mouléro, “Histoire et légendes des Djêkens,” pp. 39–45 ; oral evidence, Godome, September 1995. 104 Alternatively, Gayibor suggests that meto, as title of the Hula kings, means “king of the river”: Isert, Voyage en Guinée, notes 16, 19; pp. 114, 116. For ahosu to refer to the Dahomean monarch: Burton, A Mission, p. 124. Aholu is a Oemenu (eastern) phonetic variation of Ahosu: Segurola & Rassinoux, Dictionnaire, pp. 81–82. 29 respective vodun pantheons or in their dialectal forms of Hulagbe, could be invoked to reinforce this geographical and political duality. Therefore, what we can conclude from this analysis is a scenario of paradoxical cultural and political antagonisms. On the one hand, commerce, marriage alliances, banditry, warfare, mercenary recruitment and slavery were responsible for continuous populational displacement, affecting not only the Hula but various ethnic groups in the region. This migratory dynamic promoted a continuous process of cosmopolitan cultural contact, and consequently of increased linguistic and kinship interaction and hybridism. As demonstrated by Barth, it is precisely in contexts of shared cultural homogeneity that ethnic boundaries are highlighted in processes of differentiation and contrast based on selected diacritical signs.105 It is also in these situations of cultural encounter that new ethnic or communal identities can emerge. This was particularly true in the western Slave Coast as suggested by the Little Popo- Gen example. On the other hand, the Hula diasporic experience led them to severe political fragmentation. As we have seen, the seventeenth-century Popo, Fulao, Jakin, and Offra appear to have been independent of each other, each state governed by its own king, prince, or fidalgo. From this perspective it would seem that territorial identity, based on residential affiliation, was much more important than ethnic identity based on kinship, ancestrality, and cultural affinities. Taking into account the instrumentalist theories that interpret ethnic identity as resulting from corporate mobilization on the basis of common political and economic interest, one must conclude that the often competitive and politically divided Popo, Fulao, Jakin, and

Offra could hardly have developed and maintained a common Hula identity.106 Yet, as we have also seen, the Hula clans, due precisely to the absence of a strong unifying political institution and to their location in the economically strategic coastal lagoon, lived most of the time subject to alien domineering groups who tried to control the European slave trade. Under the influence of the states of Tado, Allada, Ouidah, Genyi, Porto Novo and especially Dahomey, their experience of colonization seems to have run parallel to their experience of exodus. In that sense, despite the inner political division, the struggle against oppressive powers may have

105 Barth, Ethnic Groups. 106 For the instrumentalist theories of ethnicity see, for instance: Cohen, Urban Ethnicity. 30 been a critical factor to reinforce and preserve a Hula collective identity based on a real or imagined common origin and their shared experience of subalterity. All these conflicting, though not necessarily contradictory, interpretations show the great difficulty in assessing the nature of pre-colonial Hula ethnicity and, by inference, that of any other group in the Slave Coast at that time. The “proto- Hula” collective identity, if we can still use this generic category, seems to have struggled in a tension between, on the one hand, a common diasporic experience of migration and colonization—prone to stress, unifying elements of common descent, and ancestrality (together with their religious expression)—and, on the other hand, a dynamic of political division into independent states or polities stressing an alternative and probably simultaneous territorial identity. This might have been the socio-cultural backdrop against which the Hula ethnicity crystallized in the late nineteenth century under the French colonial domination.

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