Igala’s Royal Masks Borrowed, Invented, or Stolen?

Sidney Littlefield Kasfir all photos by the author except where otherwise noted

n contrast to the numerous small-scale gerontocracies 1979, 2011: 37–39). Here I will cut that argument short and simply found in the area we now know as eastern , a state that, despite all the cultural similarities, there is an Igala lan- strong centralized kingship grew up (or was imposed) guage (which is more closely cognate with Yoruba than Idoma), sometime before the sixteenth century near the - there is an Idoma language (also cognate with Igala), and there is Benue Confluence, nexus of north-south and east-west no Akpoto language, suggesting that the label applied to the entire riverine trade. Its present identity as “the Igala kingdom” region, “Akpoto,” is another name for “unknown territory” on the glosses over a complex historical entity that has shifting claims of part of nineteenth century writers. Later, the British administra- originI among several regional powers over the centuries (Fig. 1). tion came to realize that nearly all of the Idoma-speaking lands Spatially, it is contiguous with Igbo/Ibaji settlements to the south (aje) demonstrated close historical ties with the Jukun and the fed- and western Idoma settlements to the east. Both of these connec- eration of early states known as Apá or the Hausa term Kwararafa. tions are highly visible in Igala masquerade culture. Beyond that, The term “Akpoto came to represent the “indigenous people” who Igala oral histories allege important historical ties to Yoruba, Benin, predated the arrival of newcomers following the breakup of the and Apá/Kwararafa political formations that also figure in Igala Apá federation in the early seventeenth century and the population political and visual culture (Clifford 1936, Murray 1949, Boston shifts it caused among the twenty-odd Idoma-speaking lands. In 1969, Miachi 2012). And the oldest, founding tradition is that the neighboring Igala, these “owners of the land” (i.e., those who were first atta appeared in the form of a leopard with transformative the first to live there) are the Igala Mela, the nine indigenous clans. powers. With such a complicated past, it is hardly surprising that Igala lacks a unified canonical version of its mask history. 1 Nigeria’s main ethnic groups. Tiv and Idoma On the early British exploratory trading expeditions, such as Dr. are actually on both sides of the Benue. Map: Luna Digital Images William Baikie’s 1854 voyage of the Pleiad up the Niger (“Kwora”) and Benue, only the narrow coastal strip along the east bank of the Niger south and north of the Idda capital is identified as “Igara” (Baikie 1856). All the rest of what we consider Igalaland today is bundled together on John Arrowsmith’s map with what is now known as Idoma, both under the general rubric “Akpoto,” a vague term usually interpreted as “indigenous people” (Fig. 2). In the past I have spent many words discussing the “Akpoto ques- tion” as it was applied by the British explorers, traders, and ad- ministrators to people who think of themselves as Idoma (Kasfir

Sidney Littlefield Kasfir is Professor Emerita of Art History, Emory University, Atlanta. She is the author or coeditor of five books and many articles and is now working on a sixth book, Colonialism’s Acquisitive Hunger: Forming the Early Canon of Nigerian Art. She is also engaged in a comparative study of early modernism in two art schools, Makerere in Uganda and Nsukka in Nigeria. [email protected]

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521.indb 62 11/20/2018 12:12:59 PM 2 Arrowsmith’s map from the 1854 journey of the Pleiad. Source: Baikie 1856.

The other major component of Igala politics and culture comes historical conditions for the movement of masquerades, a very from the Igbo, who are among the earliest migrant settlers oc- special type of commodity. cupying the Ibaji area directly south of . They share much The classic version of Igala history in ethnographic writing of the same masquerade culture although they are not a part of posits three successive, or possibly overlapping, periods charac- the palace retinue. terized by Yoruba, Benin, and Jukun hegemony. A parallel struc- Economically, the Igbo controlled the lower Niger River trade ture of political authority that balanced the power of the nonroyal south of Idah, at which point Igala traders transshipped it north- clans, the Igala Mela, against that of the king, along with geograph- ward. The level of trade on the Niger, all carried by canoes, was a ical proximity and closely cognate Yoruba and Igala languages, are source of wonder to the early British explorers (Laird and Oldfield the basis for an assumption by colonial writers such as Clifford 1837, 1: 165): “I was surprised to learn from Dr. Briggs that there and Boston of early historical and genealogical connections be- appeared to be twice as much traffic going forward here as in tween the two cultures. This is not an argument that Yoruba king- the upper parts of the Rhine ….” The Igala kingdom, until the ship itself extended into Igala, but that the linguistic and political mid-nineteenth century when Europeans took control of much markers we recognize as Yoruba may have included a wider region of the trade, therefore based its wealth and power on transship- than previously thought. ment of all manner of goods, from slaves to necessities such as ag- The evidence for a Benin connection is of a different kind and ricultural products and salt and luxuries such as imported cloth involves neither language nor the structure of palace authority. and beads. In this sense, it resembles the Cross River and its hin- Rather, it is based in two other pieces of evidence: the Igala war terland despite the very different form of government. And as I with Benin, which is recorded by the Portuguese as happening in will argue, this trade in commodities provided the economic and 1517 and won by Benin, and the distinctive brass pectoral mask

3 Brass mask ejubejailo suspended from the neck of the Atta of Igala during an audience with visitors. Source: Allen 1840

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521.indb 63 11/20/2018 12:12:59 PM 4 Brass mask belonging to the Atta of Igala (left) and comparable mask from Benin (right), both in 16th c. Benin style. Photos: Luna Digital Images

5 Map of Lower Benue region in the early 20th century. The Tiv migrating from the south have now displaced the Jukun eastward so that Tiv occupy what was once a part of Kwararafa controlled by the Jukun. Map: Kasfir 1979

on a series of 241 interviews conducted between 1976 and 1978. It is not, in itself, a collected oral account but an attempt to ex- plain an extremely complex masquerade corpus by piecing to- gether many of its parts. One the other hand, the most recent atta’s own version of how these masks were acquired, collected in interviews by Igala anthro- pologist Tom Miachi in 2012, is completely different and reasserts a well-known oral tradition: The masks were war booty, left behind on the battlefield by a fleeing Jukun army. My purpose in this essay is to compare the validity of these contrasting historical explana- worn by the atta, which is of undoubted Benin royal provenance tions in light of the visual evidence of the masks themselves. and from the same period. (Baikie, writing in 1854, a half cen- There are numerous collected stories of masquerades accompa- tury before the so-called Benin bronzes were “discovered” by the nying warriors into battle (Yoruba and Idoma as well as Igala), al- British, said that the large “brass plate” closely resembled “the sign though this supposed defeat of the Jukun army by the Igala is hard of an insurance office”) (Figs. 3–4). to correlate with the widely held popular belief that the present Boston assumes that this sixteenth century interlude, during which Igala was in some way under the suzerainty of Benin, fol- lowed a much longer Yoruba connection. The Benin-period hy- pothesis accords well with what we know of Benin during the reign of Esigie, when territorial wars were frequently pursued. The third, Jukun-dominated phase of the precolonial and pre-Fulani jihad kingship of the mid-nineteenth century is the one espoused most consistently by the Igala themselves but, as we shall see, it is histor- ically all over the place. As we have seen, the Igala Mela also controlled the very pow- erful ancestral masquerade, Egwu Afia (cognate in many ways with Yoruba Egungun and even more with Onitsha’s Egwugwu and Idoma Ekwuafia, the Igbo and Idoma versions both referred to as “tall ghosts”). To rival this, the atta, as he consolidated his authority over various indigenous or settler clans (the so-called Akpoto and others), purportedly confiscated (or had estab- lished—still an unsolved question) a mask from each. These eight masks are known collectively as the Atta Egwu, and represented the palace’s ritual dominance and its identity as “the face of the nation” (Sargent 1988). The public representation of the atta’s political dominance was the Ocho Festival, in which the masquerades all appeared in proper ritual order. While an elegant and logical explanation, this is the construct of a professional historian, R.A. Sargent, based

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521.indb 64 11/20/2018 12:13:00 PM Igala ruling dynasty comes from Jukun. Despite its universality is no indigenous Akpoto language, and there is no Jukun spoken in Igala oral traditions, historian Elizabeth Isichei points out that in Igalaland, even by the royal clan. The second discrepancy is the Jukun imperialism in the seventeenth century (arrived at through tendency to attribute too much power to Jukun by equating them king lists supplied by Baikie in 1832) “accords ill” with Jukun in- with Kwararafa. Arnold Rubin, the foremost researcher of Jukun terpretations of their own history (Isichei 1983: 140). So we are art, as well as Charles Kingsley Meek (1931) government anthro- left with several discrepant positions concerning Jukun hegemony. pologist under the British Colonial Administration, both pointed The biggest discrepancy bears repeating: Igala, Yoruba, Idoma, out that the historical “Kwararafa (or Kororofa) Empire” along the and Igbo are all Eastern Kwa languages, while Jukun is usually Benue was not synonymous with the Jukun only, but was a loose classed as Benue-Congo. Igala is 60% cognate with Yoruba, there federation of small states that included Idoma, Alago (Keana and

6 Igala Jamadeka mask,photograph by John Boston, Idah, late 1950s. Photo: courtesy the Estate of John Boston

7a–b Igala Ichawula mask in performance, Idah, 1961. Photos: courtesy the Estate of John Boston

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521.indb 65 11/20/2018 12:13:01 PM (clockwise from top left) 8 Nonroyal Agba mask, Ibaji in the style of an Igala Egwu Atta royal mask. Collection of Barry Hecht and Toby Hecht Photo: courtesy of Barry Hecht and Toby Hecht

9 Agba mask (erroneously labeled Jamadeka), Ibaji. Museum. Source: Eyo 1977

10 Mother and child Lower Benue Valley peoples, Nigeria, Benue River Valley region, 19th–20th century Wood; H. 60.3 cm Gift of Paul and Ruth W. Tishman, 1996 1996.432 This Lower Benue Valley maternity figure was identified by William Fagg as Afo. Several of these figures bear face markings similar to Igala royal masks but none were found in Igala territory. Photo: courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

11 Idoma face mask of the Icahoho type. Facial markings and the cutoff “horns” identify this mask as from the Akweya subgroup, but they are close enough to some Igbo whiteface masks that early writers suggested that Akweya masks were an Igbo substyle, which they are not. British Museum, Doma), Igala, and Afo (Fig. 5). This is borne out by all my field London. Photo: Sidney Littlefield Kasfir interviews in these places, and this alone can account for masquer- ade similarities, as well as those of figures. Despite its historical importance as a crossroads for precolonial trade, war, and migration, Igala has not been investigated through in-depth fieldwork by any art historian. Its primary study has been by colonial officers such as G.M. Clifford (1936) and Kennth Murray (1949), social anthropologists such as John Boston (1969, 2011) (Figs. 6–7), Chike Dike (1976), and Tom Miachi (2012), and historian Robert Sargent (1988), which means that issues of style and visuality—how objects appear and are apprehended visually—have been largely ignored. There is one exception: Cornelius Adepegba (n.d.), who is discussed below but who also did not do fieldwork. Instead, writers on the historically puzzling Igala masks owned by the royal palace at Idah have argued either for the evidence

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521.indb 66 11/20/2018 12:13:01 PM 12 Chart of facial markings. Source: Meek 1921

13a Tiv man Attributed to J. Stöcker, before 1939 Gelatin silver print; 6.5 x 6.5 cm British Museum, inv. Af,B54.21. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum

13b Tiv abaji keloid scars seen on carver Aba of Agagbe, born c. 1900. 1978. Photo: Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

found in oral accounts or for that seen in their distinctive facial scarification patterns in order to trace their origins. Art dealers, and by extension their clients, who are not typically versed in local histories, almost always use facial markings to identify masks, while anthropologists focus on their social significance, and his- torians on oral or documentary accounts to explain their meaning. The masks illustrated in Figures 8 and 9 are actually a nonroyal version, called Agba, whose strong visual resemblance connects them with Jamadeka and other royal masks kept at the palace. They are from the southern reaches of the Igala Kingdom known as Ibaji, a hybrid area settled long ago by Igbo lineages who grad- ually “became” Igala. But it is also very close geographically to Idah, the seat of the Igala royal palace, which means that its people have long been exposed to the public outings of the Atta Egwu,

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521.indb 67 11/20/2018 12:13:02 PM 14 Abaji scars on Ekwotame figure, in an Idoma- Tiv borderline village, 1977. Photo: Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

15 Igala Odumadu mask. Drawing: Luise White, after Kenneth Murray (Sargent 1988).

16 Igala superstructure mask Jos Museum, Nigeria Photo: courtesy the Jos Museum

around 1915 (Fig. 13a–b), fell out of favor a few years later with Tiv women, who refused to marry men who had them. This apparently caused great anguish for the men because the abaji were keloid scars, raised welts caused by hooking and lifting, not just incising the royal masks that Agba resembles. Genealogically, this means the skin, and so were impossible to remove. The ekwotame figure that we will need to repeat the same arguments for both the royal seen in Figure 14 was in an Idoma village in the 1970s, before it and nonroyal versions. disappeared into a private collection somewhere, but it had been One of the more fascinating historical questions is, Did mas- purchased in Tivland by the grandfather of the then owners in querades actually accompany warriors into battle in former times? Where and why? We ask this because, as already mentioned, Igala tradition states that some of the royal masks were Jukun, captured or left behind on the battlefield in an Igala-Jukun war. Let’s call this the “palace account” and return to it further on. By contrast, markings on the face or body surface are a popu- lar art market attribution method when the stylistic identification is ambiguous. It is not as reliable as people usually think, partly because facial and body markings are not only visual symbols for identity but also because they obey the rules of fashion, as well as strategic political alliances. And like fashions, they change over time. In addition, many patterns spread regionally in this way are not exclusive to a single culture. It is for this reason that art dealers and often collectors—even, occasionally, experts—confuse Idoma and Igbo whiteface masks (Figs. 10–11). The earliest published evidence of facial marking was found in accounts by nineteenth century travelers, such as Siegfried Passarge (1895), followed by early twentieth century colonial an- thropologists (Meek 1921), which included illustrations of every- thing from cicatrization to raised keloid scars to tattoos. In Meek’s chart the Igala (Fig. 12) are shown with the same long, curved scars from the corners of the mouth to the temples as are seen on many of the royal masks, suggesting an Igala origin. However, we know from anthropologist Paul Bohannan (1956) that, for example, the Tiv abaji markings that were all the rage

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521.indb 68 11/20/2018 12:13:03 PM 17 Frontal view of Figure 10. Photo: courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

18 Benue Valley maternity figure Nasarawa, Nigeria Wood; 70 cm x 30 cm x 30 cm Horniman Museum, London Source: Bernard Fagg Papers

Attributed to Afo by William Fagg, although orig- inally thought to be Yorùbá or Idoma by earlier writers (see Fagg 1965: 42).

19 Stool/caryatid Afo, Benue Valley, Nigeria Wood, plant fiber; 57 cm x 27 cm x 26 cm ID No. III C 18455 Ethnological Museum, Berlin Photo: Martin Franken, © Ethnological Museum— Africa, National Museums in Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz

Collection, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Figs. 10, 17). The supposed genealogical connection lies in the scarification lines extending from the corners of the mouth upward to the hairline, as well as the overall vertical scarification on the face. But here the exchange for a slave, a dane gun, and a brass bracelet, dating its resemblance really ends, and even if we accept the connection, purchase to about 1875. It has the characteristic Tiv female navel the origin of the figure itself is not at all clear. I wrote about this scarification and the raised facial keloid scars similar to abaji. What this does not tell us is whether or not it was made by a Tiv artist. Iconographically yes, but stylistically, very unlikely. Not only that, but with their shared boundary and frequent cross-cultural borrowing, both navel scarification in a mudfish pattern and abaji scars are also found in occasional Idoma masks and figures, attest- ing to the designs’ ability to cross boundaries. The sole work that focuses on Igala mask scarification was writ- ten by Cornelius Adepegba, a Yoruba art historian and student of Roy Sieber at Indiana University in the 1970s. After completing a PhD dissertation on scarification practices in Nigeria, based not on fieldwork but on the existing literature, he turned to the matter of using these designs to identify works of art, including the puzzle of the Igala royal helmet masks. The Igala royal helmet masks look distinctly different from other large Igala masks such as superstructure types, which roughly resemble Idoma and Igbo ones with their combination of birds, people, and animals (Figs. 15–16). The most striking difference is the helmet type itself, which functionally affects its style, since it must be very wide-necked if it is to be carried this way. They also are often fully scarified and wear an abrus-seed covered hairpiece or helmet. And as Adepegba pointed out, they share certain scarification patterns with several maternity figures found in different places in the Benue Valley between the Niger-Benue Confluence and . His idea was to identify the Igala royal masks, at least the three or four helmet types, with one of these figures and verify their common origin. I’m afraid the evidence is strewn with fur- ther questions, and I’ll try to show why. The best fit of these was a female figure then in the Tishman

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521.indb 69 11/20/2018 12:13:03 PM at the turn of the twentieth century, when many of these figures were collected by German and British scholars or administrators, these similar patterns of facial markings were indeed a wide- spread regional practice. Now I want to turn to the other argument, put forward by oral historians and social anthropologists such as Robert Sargent (1988) and, most recently, Tom Miachi (2012), both building upon the earlier writings of John Boston (1969) and Miles Clifford (1936). Robert Sargent, the historian invested in a big-picture approach, says that the Igala royal masks are each associated with a particular local clan that was incorporated, over a long period of time, into the kingdom and thus brought under the atta’s authority. They are literally and historically “the face of the nation” (Sargent 1988: 17). The problem is that the reputed clans of origin for the masks are different in Sargent’s and Miachi’s accounts, both of them based in extensive interviews done in the 1970s in Sargent’s case, and in- termittently over thirty-plus years in Miachi’s. There’s another im- portant assumption made in all the oral accounts, namely, that the Igala kingship is, and always has been, of external origin. Following the periods of Yoruba and Benin influence, the power of Kwararafa, dominated by the Jukun, supposedly expanded and the local population was forced to pay annual tribute to the Jukun. Finally they dug in their heels and refused, at which point the Jukun armies invaded. Here is where things get murky. In the most recent (but also long-running) fieldwork of the Igala anthro- figure many years ago in a catalogue of the Tishman Collection pologist Tom Miachi (2012), the account of a war with Jukun in (Kasfir 1981) and then again in Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts which Jukun masks were left on the battlefield as their soldiers fled of the Benue River Valley (Kasfir 2011). It has been called Afo be- is recorded from his interview with the atta of Igala himself. But cause of its broad resemblance to several maternity figures found this atta, who died in 2012, insisted that these events happened in scattered throughout the north bank of the Lower Benue valley the 1400s, while there has been general agreement among schol- (i.e., not in Igalaland) and widely accepted as Afo in William and ars that the Kwararafa federation began breaking up two hundred Bernard Fagg’s deductions, even though none were found in an years later—around 1630—following an invasion from Bornu. We Afo village (Figs. 18–19).1 know from Portuguese accounts that the Benin period is reliably The problem is that the shared scarification patterns between dated to their victory over Igala in a 1517 war, and the apparent Igala helmet masks and these figures are found throughout the time sequence of Igala dynasties is Yoruba, Benin, Jukun. (I’ll ex- lower Benue Valley in this period, roughly the 1870s to 1950s. plain later what I mean by “apparent”). So the atta’s account is off So in the end, all the scarification argument really tells us is that, by a couple of centuries and also reverses the order! Not only this,

20 The Idoma- Akweya mask Akpnmobe, Otobi village, 1978. Owned by the Ekpari clan, 19th century settlers in central Idoma from the Yachi region of Ogoja, the mask is said to accompany warriors into battle (note spear). Photo: Sidney Littlefield Kasfir

21 Jukun helmet mask Aku Wa’uwa, Chinkai village, 1965. Neg. No. 782, Rubin Archive, Fowler Museum at UCLA. Photo: Arnold Rubin

22 Jukun helmet mask Aku Washenki, Arufu village, 1965. Neg. No. 94, Rubin Archive, Fowler Museum at UCLA. Photo: Arnold Rubin

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521.indb 70 11/20/2018 12:13:08 PM there is a logical inconsistency: If the Jukun lost the war and were see it moving through the elephant grass some distance away is not driven out, why is the Igala kingship still thought of in the present something one ever forgets.2 day as in the hands of a Jukun-derived dynasty? But I would submit, following Boston’s and Vansina’s views on There is an answer to that question, but I bring this up because it the matter, that the explanation for the origin of the Igala royal reveals the serious problem with taking oral accounts too literally. masks probably should not be taken too literally, even if masks Historian Jan Vansina spent his career studying oral tradition in did indeed appear on battlefields in precolonial Nigeria. Rather, the Kuba kingdom and, by the 1980s, he concluded—contrary to Boston (1969) argues that the story symbolizes the creation of a his and others’ views, dating from the early days of African Studies fully Igala nationality—or as Sargent says, “the face of the nation.” in the 1960s—that oral traditions are not the “raw material” from Finally, when we look at actual Jukun helmet masks (Figs. 21– which the history of nonliterate cultures can be constructed (an 22), a few, such as Aku Washenki, bear close resemblance to cer- idea many historians have let go of reluctantly or not at all). Oral tain Igala royal masks. But it is not necessary for us to place them traditions are actually already mediated histories in themselves on a battlefield in Igalaland to make the historical connection. (Vansina 1985: 22). The extreme statement of this position would There is another whole set of Igala traditions—reinforced in neigh- be that oral histories are essentially politically useful inventions, boring Idoma, Doma, and Keana—that they all, including Igala, or “mythical charters” as Bronislaw Malinowski once put it. John were once part of the Kwararafa (Apá) federation further east on Boston, another anthropologist, was more subtle about this when the Benue and thus were in close cultural contact with the Jukun. he stated in 1969 that Igala tradition “takes a synoptic view of the While this is a less exciting explanation than abandonment on the past,” compressing (and, we could add, deleting and sometimes battlefield, it is a good deal simpler and therefore more plausible. reversing) events that played out over several centuries or, con- The Afo also claim that connection, and they are both linguisti- versely, re-ordering events that were not really sequential at all cally and geographically very close to Idoma. So, as with the mater- (like the supposed Yoruba–Benin–Jukun ruler sequence) but were nity figures that have scarification patterns similar to some of the simply different threads of a complex tapestry. masks, I prefer to believe that we are looking at a regional, lower- to So back to enemy helmet masks left behind on the battlefield: mid-Benue Valley phenomenon, extending all the way from the Both the Yoruba and the Idoma have detailed oral accounts, Niger-Benue confluence to Wukari, the Jukun capital, and very the former collected by John Willis (2011) on Egungun and the possibly deriving originally from the Kwararafa federation of states latter by me, of masquerades accompanying Idoma-Akweya before it broke apart in the early seventeenth century. As Adepegba warriors into battle. realized, body markings are seemingly striking evidence, but only Why bring a masquerade onto a battlefield? The answer to that as rough boundary markers, and without these complicated oral was brought home to me when I saw and heard for the first time histories that are not only heavy with symbolism but also at least the Akpnmobe masquerade belonging to the Ekpari clan (Fig. 20): partly mythical, we would not be able to guess where these distinc- it shouts, “Akpnmobe olebe oche!” (loosely, “I eat the meat of human tive Igala helmet masks originated—or for that matter, the mater- beings!”). It is also about eight feet tall and carries a spear, and to nity figures with similar scarification.

Notes Valley (Nigeria). Los Angeles, CA: Fowler Museum at Laird, MacGregor, and R.A.K. Oldfield. 1971. Narrative This paper derives from an earlier version presented at the UCLA. of an Expedition into the Interior of Africa by the River Baltimore Museum of Art in 2015 during a symposium Niger in the Steam-vessels Quorra and Alburkah in Clifford, G.M. 1936. “Resident’s Summary of Intelli- honoring a new installation of the art of eastern Nigeria. 1832, 1833, and 1834. London: Frank Cass. Originally 1 The one exception was photographed by Bernard gence Report by D.H.F. Macbride, A.D.O.” Nigerian published 1837. Fagg in an Afo village in the 1940s, but its first publica- National Archives, Kaduna, G2.0 [1935–39]. tions was in the Arts of the Benue (Berns, Fardon, and Meek, Charles Kingsley. 1971. The Northern Tribes of Ni- Dike, Chike. 1976. Igala Kingship: Symbolism and Ritual. Kasfir 2011). geria. 2 vols. London: Frank Cass. Originally published Draft of PhD diss., University of Nigeria, Nsukka. 2 There are two versions of this powerful mask. One 1921, 1925. is now in a private collection in Paris and originated in a Eyo, Ekpo. 1977. Two Thousand Years of Nigerian Art. neighboring village to Otobi. Both belong to the Ekpari Meek, Charles Kingsley. 1931. A Sudanese Kingdom: An Lagos: Federal Department of Antiquities. clan of Akweya speakers, who were originally from Ethnographical Study of the Jukun-speaking Peoples of Ogoja but settled in Akpa district in the nineteenth cen- Fagg, William Buller. 1965. Tribes and Forms in Africa. Nigeria. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner. tury or earlier and were Idoma-ized under the British New York: Tudor. administration. Miachi, Tom A. 2012. The Incarnate Being Phenomenon Isichei, Elizabeth. 1983. A . London: in African Culture: Anthropological Perspectives on the References cited Longman. Igala of North-Central Nigeria. Ibadan: Kraft Books. Adepegba, Cornelius. N.d. Unpublished typescript on Igala royal masks. Kasfir, Sidney. 1979. Visual Arts of the Idoma of Central Murray, Kenneth C. 1949. “Idah Masks.” Nigerian Field Nigeria. PhD diss., School of Oriental and African 14 (3): 85–92. Allen, William. 1840. Picturesque Views on the River Studies, University of London. Niger: Sketched During Lander’s Last Visit in 1832–33. Passarge, Siegfried. 1895. Adamaua. Berlin: Dietrich London: Murray. Kasfir, Sidney. 1981. “96. Female Figure.” In Susan Vogel Reimer. (ed.), For Spirits and Kings: American Art from the Tish- Sargent, Robert A. 1988. “Igala Masks: Dynastic History Baikie, William Balfour. 1966. Narrative of an exploring man Collection, pp. 163–64. New York: Metropolitan and the Face of a Nation.” In Sidney Littlefield Kasfir voyage up the rivers Kwóra and Bínue, commonly known Museum of Art. as the Niger and Tsádda in 1854. London: Cass. Origi- (ed.), West African Masks and Cultural Systems, pp. nally published 1856. Kasfir, Sidney, ed. 1988. West African Masks and Cul- 17–53. Annales 126. Tervuren: Musée Royal de l’Afrique tural Systems. Annales 126. Tervuren: Musée Royal de Centrale. Bohannan, Paul. 1956. “Beauty and Scarification l’Afrique Centrale. amongst the Tiv.” Man 56 (Sept.): 117–21 + plates. Vansina, Jan. 1985. Oral Tradition as History: Madison: Kasfir, Sidney. 2011. “Idoma Ancestral Masquerades.” University of Wisconsin Press. Boston, John. 1969. “Oral Tradition and the History of In Marla Berns, Richard Fardon, and Sidney Littlefield Willis, John C. 2008. Masquerading Politics: Power and Igala.” Journal of African History 10 (1): 29–43. Kasfir (eds.), Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Transformation in a West African Kingdom. PhD diss., Benue River Valley (Nigeria). Los Angeles, CA: Fowler Boston, John. 2011. “Igala Masquerades.” In Marla Emory University. Berns, Richard Fardon, and Sidney Littlefield Kasfir Museum at UCLA. (eds.), Central Nigeria Unmasked: Arts of the Benue River

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