Oral Tradition and the History of Segmentary Societies

Author(s): A. E. Afigbo
Source: History in Africa, Vol. 12 (1985), pp. 1-10
Published by: African Studies Association
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 ORAL TRADITION AND THE HISTORY OF SEGMENTARYSOCIETIES*

A.E. Afigbo
University of Nigeria
Nsukka

The field of the methodology of oral tradition has become

increasingly specialized and technical. This much is clear from
even a casual acquaintance with publications in this area. The
fact is that ever since the publication in 1961 of Jan Vansina's
epoch-making book, Oral Tradition, the study of the methodology
of oral tradition has become a minor academic industry among
historians, psychohistorians and anthropologists. Different as-
pects of the problems posed by the use of this family of histor-
ical evidence--dating and chronology, reliability, methods of
collection and preservation, techniques of analysis (synchronic,
diachronic, and multi-disciplinary)--continue to be probed in
monographs, learned journals, and higher degree theses.
This wide-ranging and laudable concern for the methodology
of oral tradition has not only helped to underlie the centrality
of oral tradition as a source for the history of Africa, espec-
ially of Black Africa, in the precolonial period or even in the
colonial period; it has also made all would-be exploiters of this
source alert to many of the problems associated with its use.
Yet it must be conceded that all this feverish, if determined,
activity has not established, and there is little likelihood
that it will ever establish, a science of oral tradition as exact
and universal in its application as the methods of physics and
mathematics. Each user of oral tradition, like each user of doc-
umentary or other sources of history, still has, and always will
have, to decide for himself, and in the light of criteria and
parameters acceptable to him, what use to make of each corpus of
tradition and of each event or strand in the corpus. In other
words, in the use of oral tradition for historical reconstruc-
tion, as in the use of others sources of historical evidence, it
is unlikely that there will be any substitute for the very per-
sonal dialogue between the historian and his sources or for that
equally very personal resolution of this dialogue which is of
the very essence of the historian's calling and craft. In short,
the methodology of oral tradition remains and will continue to
remain part of historical methodology. This requires that we
bear in mind Jacob Burckhardt's warning that "of all scholarly
disciplines history is the most unscientific, because it posses-
ses or can possess least of all an assured, approved method of
selection... Every historian will have a special selection, a

HISTORY IN AFRICA, 12 (1985), 1-10

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2 A.E. AFIGBO

different criterion for what is worth communicating, according

to his nationality, subjectivity, training, and period."'
I make this observation not because I consider the quest
for sharper techniques for handling oral tradition futile or
pointless, but because I believe that it is futile and pointless
to insist on our waiting until the sharpest techniques possible
have been evolved before we begin to face the actual process of
using oral tradition to write our history. More people have
written on the problems of oral tradition or on how these should
be grappled with than have actually used oral tradition as the
major or only source in an extended historical reconstruction.
One feels like insisting, parodying Marx's phraseology, that the
methodologists have written eruditely on the use of oral tradi-
tion; the point however is actually to use it in historical re-
construction.2 There is also the fact that it would appear that
the more the techniques are refined and the rules tightened, the
more the scales are presented as being weighted against the use
of oral tradition in the writing of the history of segmentary
societies. This would appear to be so in the view of our
friends in the field of anthropology and sociology who feel that
historical reconstruction solely on the basis of oral tradition
is not possible, or in any case should not be attempted, espec-
ially in segmentary societies, unless other kinds of evidence--
archeological, linguistic, documentary, demographic, geograph-
ical--are available as a check and supplement.
For instance, writing in 1953 Peter Lloyd, a social anthro-
pologist, expressed the view that historians should make no move
in the use of oral tradition, specifically in the use of myths
and legends, until sociologists have shown them the way. Only
after sociologists have outlined the functions of myths, he
thought, can the historian find his direction, especially when
it comes to identifying where distortions, telescoping, and so
on are likely to have taken place. Moreover, only with socio-
logical guidance would the historian be able to "assess better
their value as historical evidence."3
In his own contribution G.I. Jones, another social anthro-
pologist, distinguished between two main kinds of oral tradi-
tions--those which refer to the recent past (TRRP-Traditions
Referring to the Recent Past) and those which refer to the dis-
tant past (TRDP-Traditions Referring to the Distant Past). In
his view TRRP "may provide valuable historical material when
used in conjunction with other written European records." This
must mean that where "other written European records" are not
available TRRP are without value as historical material. And
indeed the effect of the word "may" in the formulation is that
it is possible that even in the presence of "other European
records" TRRP may still not provide valuable historical evidence.
Coming to TRDP Jones is emphatic in his denial that these
could be of any historical value. According to him TRDP "can-
not help us. They are no substitute for history and are best
regarded as systems in which a very limited number of items are
manipulated to explain or justify existing institutions and
social groups." "It is of course possible," he concluded,

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 ORAL TRADITION AND SEGMENTARY
SOCIETIES 3

to construct a hypothetical history using such items

as would appear to support one's conjectures, but it
would be quite impossible to prove it, unless cor-
roborative archaeological or documentary evidence
could be obtained.4

Still much later, in 1971, Robin Horton writing in his very

persuasive style brought the weight of his opinion in support
of this point of view. Explaining the form taken by his contri-
bution to History of West Africa he wrote:

It is not for nothing that I have entitled this chap-

ter 'Stateless Societies in the History of West Afri-
ca' rather than a 'History of Stateless Societies in
West Africa.' For in the present state of our tech-
niques, the difficulty of writing a 'history' of the
same kind as you will find in the chapters of this
book which deal with the great pre-colonial states are
virtually insuperable.

Such a history, he said, would become a viable proposition only

"when we are in a position to consider the indications of oral
tradition along those of linguistic maps, culture trait maps and
the results of archaeological work." Unfortunately, he pointed
out, only in the area of the linguistic mapping of West Africa
has reasonable progress been made. In the other two fields pro-
gress remains at best rudimentary.5
If these counsels of perfection, these rigid prescriptions
issued by the clinicians of the methodology of oral tradition
were to be heeded without question or debated, the effect on
historians working among segmentary societies would be complete
paralysis. It thus becomes imperative for the historian working
among such peoples as the Igbo, the Ibibio, the Idoma, and the
Ogoja to examine these prescriptions critically; unless, of
course, he has decided to fold his hands and wait for the dawn
of the happy but as-yet-distant millennium when we shall have
all the linguistic, archeological, demographic, geographical,
and ancillary data with which to supplement and cross-check the
oral traditions of these peoples.
The critical question to put to these methodological clini-
cians relates to their conception of history--its its
meaning,
methods, and its aims. Jones, for instance, makes a distinction
between "hypothetical history" and history that can be "proved."
What, indeed, is the meaning of "proof" in the social science
and the humanities? Does it have the same meaning as "proof" in
the exact sciences? Do historians, even when they are working
in a literate culture whose history is closely documented, "prove"
the perspectives of the past they construct or do they merely
illustrate these by the judicious selection of examples? Have
historians of the Allied Powers proved that Germany was indeed
the aggressor in the Second World War? Have German historians
proved that Hitler was personally responsible for the genocide
against the Jews?6 With all due respect, Jones's distinction

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4 A.E. AFIGBO

between "hypothetical history" and history that can be "proved"

suggests a basic misunderstanding of what historians try to do.
On the same or similar grounds one must question Horton's
refusal to write a history of the "stateless" societies of West
Africa for no other reason than that to do so he would have to
depend entirely on their oral traditions, and this would lead to
a different (that is, an inferior) kind of history from the
history of the great precolonial states of West Africa. The
history of these states, as told in other chapters of History of
West Africa, belongs to the grand or heroic genre of history
which is usually about kings and princes, generals and their
armies, the rise and fall of large-scale socio-political forma-
tions, the clash of rival imperialisms, the march of major world
religions, and so on. Now, is this the only kind of history
or indeed the only valid kind? Should one expect to write such
a history for the "stateless" societies?
Horton's argument is, in fact, a subtle restatement of the
old view which defined history in terms of its sources only and
which for a time provided the ground for denying that Africa,
especially black Africa, had a history before the coming of the
Europeans. Here that definition is being modified by Horton in
order selectively to admit only certain African peoples and so-
cieties into the much-coveted kingdom of Clio while leaving
some others outside it. It is indeed interesting that the edi-
tors allowed such a view to survive in a work one of whose ob-
jectives was to advertise to the world the achievements of modern
African historiogrpahy. Now one of these achievements is the
acceptance of oral tradition as a source of history in its own
right. It could be cross-checked or supplemented with other
sources, but its acceptance as a valid source of information on
the African past is not and should not solely, or even mainly,
depend on the support it derives from these other sources.
I wish to propose that a cardinal tenet of historiography
is that a historian should not put an unfair question to his
source, no matter what that source may be. In other words the
questions which a historian puts to a source should be consis-
tent with the intent and concern of that source. For instance,
since the conception and arrangement of time in a non-literate
African society are different from the conception and arrange-
ment of time in literate Western Society, it is a violation of
this principle to put to the oral tradition of a non-literate
African community questions about datation and chronology which
presuppose answers that make sense only against the Gregorian
calendrical scale. By the same token a historian should not put
to the oral traditions of segmentary societies questions de-
signed to elicit information that will enable him to write his-
tory of the kind he would ordinarily write for the great pre-
colonial states. Once we recognize that history is not an exact
science but a science of probabilities, and that we should put
to the sources available to us questions consistent with their
intent and concern, we shall be better able not only to exploit
fully the promise of oral traditions, but also to advance the
reconstruction of the history of segmentary societies of precol-

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 ORAL TRADITION AND SEGMENTARYSOCIETIES 5

onial Africa. Within this scheme, methodological rigor would

mean taking pains to extract as much information as possible
from a given source, whether oral tradition or other, by putting
to it as many fair questions as possible.
I have voiced my disapproval of the tendency for many people
in this field to theorize on methodology instead of actually
facing the task of using oral tradition to reconstruct history.
If only to show that I try to practice what I preach, I shall
now illustrate how, depending on oral tradition alone, I have
reconstructed an aspect of Igbo history in the precolonial peri-
od. And I did so by asking only such questions as I believed
were consistent with the intent and concern of the traditions
available. The subject of investigation was the Igbo tradition-
al textile industyr. Even though I am fairly familiar with the
history of the textile industry in other cultures, I did not go
into the project determined to compel Igbo oral tradition to give
up such information as would enable me to write the same kind of
history as has been written for these other textile industries.
I did not consider it necessary or profitable, that is, to en-
cumber by little David with the battle dress of Saul.
My interest in the history of Igbo traditional textiles
goes back to the early 1960s when for the first time I read
Jones's emphatic statement that there is, among the Igbo, "lit-
tle weaving or dyeing of cotton cloth (except where introduced
or borrowed from Igala or Yoruba)."7 For a long time this state-
ment perplexed me no end for in the mid-1940s, when I first be-
came conscious of my cultural environment, my home area, the
then Okigwe Division, was still flooded, despite the influx of
imported European textile, with a brand of locally woven cloth
which was widely known as akwa Uburu (Uburu cloth). Now,
Uburu is a village-group of the Northeastern Igbo. The questions
which perplexed me included: Did the weavers of Uburu cloth
borrow cloth-weaving from the Igala or the Yoruba? If they did,
what is the evidence and by what route did the innovation arrive?
If in the 1940s the makers of Uburu cloth were able to compete
with European textiles to the extent they did, what does Jones
mean by the statement that the Igbo did "little weaving or dye-
ing" of cloth? How little is "little?"
To investigate these questions I followed rigidly the meth-
odological prescriptions of the "masters" of the time. This
meant doing extensive library and archival research before em-
barking on field investigations. The method was quite rewarding
not so much because the library and archival sources threw much
light on the origin and development of Igbo traditional textiles,
but because it enabled me to discover on what evidence, or lack
of evidence, the low opinions of the "masters" on Igbo textile
industry were founded. The library search showed quite clearly
that a number of pre-twentieth century printed documents which
carried some descriptions of Igboland had made clear reference
to the vitality of Igbo textile industry. Among these sources
were Olaudah Equiano's Autobiography written in the eighteenth
century by an Igbo ex-slave; W.B. Baikie's Narrative of an Ex-
pZoring Voyage up the Niger and Tsadda in 1854 published in 1856;

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6 A.E. AFIGBO

and Rev. J.C. Taylor's diaries containing his experiences and

observations around Onitsha in the 1850s. Clearly Jones had not
used Equiano or Taylor, nor did he use Henry Barth, whose travel
journals had made it quite clear that textile products from Igbo-
land competed with Kano textiles on the right bank of the Benue
in the nineteenth century.9 And even though Baikie's Narrative
of an Exploring Voyage is listed in Jones's bibliography it is
doubtful that he used it exhaustively for that work contains pos-
itive information on the export of textiles from Igboland, especi-
ally from the Elugwu Igbo, to the Niger-Benue confluence region.10
The information I gathered from these works made it quite clear
that Jones's assertion about the Igbo doing little weaving could
be treated as unhistorical. It did not, however, establish
whether or not textile inspiration came to the Igbo from the
Igala or Yoruba. Indeed the works mentioned above did not consid-
er any such question.
From the library the search moved to the archives, which
housed mainly the records of the colonial era. A careful search
of these records showed quite clearly that the colonial rulers
were not very much interested in the finer aspects of the people's
existence. In fact so arrogantly contemptuous were these men of
the arts and cultures of our people that they made only a haphaz-
ard attempt to survey the arts and crafts of the country. One
such survey was made in 1922. But with almost one voice the col-
onial administrators located in Igboland declared the Igbo as be-
ing without any arts and crafts worthy of attention. One of
them, writing on the Aba Division, for instance, said

The local Ibo is virtually ignorant of the art of work-

ing metals and is hopelessly backward in arts and
crafts... Indigenous trades such as that of weaver,
the brass-worker, or tanner, are unknown...11

It is sufficient to mention here that the Aba Division about

which this officer was writing included the Ndoki clan, one of
the bastions of the textile industry in Igboland. Another offi-
cer, reporting from Nsukka, also an important center of the text-
ile craft, said "the only industry of any importance [there] is
pottery-making, but this is in a very crude state and the pots
themselves of no value.1" Some mention, however, was made in
this 1922 survey of weaving in the Afikpo and Abakaliki areas.
Uburu was also mentioned as a distributing center for locally-
woven cloths.
On further considering the matter it became quite clear
that it was probably this low opinion of the early colonial days
that G.I. Jones amplified in his categorical assertion quoted
above. Further work showed that this suspicion was justified,
for colonial records of the late 1930s and early 1940s contain
abundant evidence that as time went on the colonial authorities
became more aware of the vitality and extent of the textile in-
dustry in Igboland. To such an extent was this the case that
about 1945 the government considered introducing the broadloom
weaving technique into the Nkanu clan because this was considered

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 ORAL TRADITION AND SEGMENTARYSOCIETIES 7

a viable venture in view of the strength of the traditional text-

ile craft there, as indeed elsewhere in Igboland.13 Again none
of these records, neither those of the 1930s nor those of the
1940s, considered the question of the origin of Igbo textile
inspiration, let alone expressed an opinion on it. This made
Jones's assertion that the Igbo derived their textile inspiration
from the Igala more questionable. Then, of course, with the Rub-
lication of Thurstan Shaw's Igbo Ukwu in 1970, which showed that
textiles already existed in Igbo culture by about the ninth cen-
tury A.D. that opinion became completely worthless.14 The argu-
ment here is not that the Igbo could not have felt the cultural
impact of their Igala neighbors by that date, but that there is
no concrete evidence for this particular one.
These researches established that neither the holdings of
the libraries nor those of the archives could be of much use to
me in attempting a more elaborate history of Igbo traditional
textiles. It was thus quite clear that I had to rely solely on
oral tradition. I therefore decided to investigate such specific
issues as it appeared to me the available oral sources were cap-
able of supplying fairly reliable information on. There were
many of these but I would consider only two aspects here very
briefly.
The first was to try to determine the extent of the distri-
bution of traditional textile industry in precolonial Igboland.
From the beginning it was quite clear to me that even though
this would be more thorough and more comprehensive than the ef-
forts of the colonial rulers, it could not for any reason aim
at what might be considered a complete inventory. There were
two reasons for this. One was that not all Igbo communities
could be visited during the survey. Thus it is possible that
there are Igbo villages in which there still exist fast-disap-
pearing evidence of cloth weaving but which could not be visited.
In the second place it was clear that there must be many villages
in which some weaving was done in the past but from which the in-
dustry has since disappeared without easily-visible traces of
the impact of colonial rule.
The survey showed conclusively that the craft of weaving
was more widely spread in Igboland than the colonial authorities
imagined. The weaving communities fell into four main clusters:

[i] the Northern cluster in which the most active

weavers were found around Nsukka, the Anambra
valley, and the Nkanu clan

[ii] the Northeastern Cluster centered around Ngbo,

Ezzangbo, Ezzilo, and Nkalagu

[iii] the Southern Cluster centered around the Ndoki and

Asa Clans

[iv] the Western Cluster centered around the present

Aniocha local government area with Asaba and Ubulu
Ukwu taking pride of place.

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8 A.E. AFIGBO

The next issue which I investigated was the question of the

origins and early history of weaving in Igbo culture. This was
quite difficult to pursue but the effort did not prove totally
futile. On the question of origins it was quite clear that,
like in all such matters, no one knew when the industry origina-
ted. But a careful sifting of the information collected led to
the conclusion that textile weaving is a very long established
craft in Igboland. This much the Igbo Ukwu excavations helped
to make clear. It was also established that inspiration in
this matter flowed forwards and backwards among the Igbo as be-
tween them and their neighbors. Different communities evolved
different weave patterns for which they came to be famed and
which their neighbors borrowed from them. Thus in the Nsukka
area one comes across claims of weaving inspiration coming not
only from the Igala but also from the Idoma. However, on care-
ful investigation and analysis these claims boil down to the
diffusion of certain weave patterns from these areas.
Allied to the question of origins is the evolution of the
craft over the centuries. Here I was able to establish that Ig-
bo traditional textile industry went through three main stages
of development. The first covered the period when the Igbo wore
bark cloth made from aji and akpo Nkwu, the latter being the
material that covers the flower bud of the oil palm. After this
came the second stage during which the Igbo wove textile apparel
from various fibers such as from the raffia palm and certain
shrubs in the hibiscus family. The final stage was marked by
the use of cotton fiber which was grown locally and spun locally
into yarns for weaving. There was an interesting development
within this third stage which was associated with the coming of
the Europeans. This was the use of foreign-made yarn, which from
about the seventeenth century or so was obtained by raveling im-
ported foreign fabric and using it along with local yarn in
weaving. This minor revolution in Igbo textile industry appears
to have been restricted to the Southern cluster, in whose tradi-
tion it is associated with the life and career of a woman known
as Dada Nwankata, a shadowy figure at times also described as
the originator of the very art of textile weaving among the
Ndoki.
By dealing with other related matters in this way, I was
able to build up a history of traditional Igbo textile industry
running to about 65 pages which, along with a contribution from
a textile artist, is being published by the Cultural Division of
the Federal Ministry of Information.15 It is not a definitive
history. Indeed I expect those coming after me to improve on it
and to obtain a sharper perspective. They can do so through a
more intensive and more expert exploitation of the oral sources.
When, and if, more archeological and other evidence becomes
available such revision should be made even easier. I am not
worried by this likelihood of my reconstruction being revised or
superseded as times goes on. Trevor-Roper has rightly observed
"accuracy is always replaced by greater accuracy, which profits
by its predecessor: that is the fate of all sciences."'18 The
point I want to make is that we must go out deliberately, indeed

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 ORAL TRADITION AND SEGMENTARYSOCIETIES 9

aggressively and even provocatively, to break the methodologi-

cal stranglehold which the pundits appear to be imposing, by de-
sign or otherwise, on the business of writing the history of the
preliterate acephalous societies of Africa.
Historians working in this field must cultivate a conscious-
ness of the historiographical tendencies of the age--especially
as these affect segmentary societies. Stateless societies con-
tinue to be regarded as bringing up the rear in the evolutionary
procession of human societies. Consequently their history con-
tinues to be written in terms totally unfair to them and complete-
ly favorable to the great states. In the colonial period they
were regarded as having constituted the slave reservoirs of the
centralized states during the precolonial period. They were al-
so seen as the poorly polished surfaces reflecting only dimly
the impact of these great states. But above all their greatest
value is supposed to lie in providing information which could
help us to understand the "transformations" which led to the rise
of the great states. This is a perspective that goes back to
the evolutionary sociologists of the nineteenth century. It is
the perspective of Horton's chapter in the History of West Afri-
ca. The main value of that paper is that it puts forward a
model which seeks to explain how the great states arose as a re-
sult of local initiative rather than by external Hamitic impact.
It is thus not a history of the stateless societies, but an intro-
duction to the early history of the great states.
I must now summarize. The intensive and extensive effort
being made by scholars to sharpen the methodological tools at
our disposal for handling oral tradition is a good thing and
must be encouraged. But its ultimate limitations must be recog-
nized, for there can be no sovereign and universally valid tool
or criterion for the selection of evidence for historical con-
struction. Yet this must not be allowed to discourage, as it
appears intent on doing at present, the recovery and reconstruc-
tion of the history of African societies, especially of prelit-
erate acephalous societies, on the basis mainly or even solely
of oral traditions. It is necessary to remind ourselves constant-
ly that, much as oral tradition could be enriched through being
cross-checked and supplemented with information from archeolog-
ical, linguistic and other sources, the value of oral tradition
as a source of history is independent of information uncovered
by these ancillary techniques. By the same token the history
of segmentary societies has value in itself rather than just be-
cause of the light it is believed to throw on the early history
of the great states. Finally, our goal in reconstructing the
history of segmentary societies, no matter our source, should
not be to write for them the same heroic genre of history as we
write for the great states. Rather it should be to write his-
tory which is as close an approximation to their own experience
as is possible with the sources and techniques available to us.
In the last analysis, this is the ultimate ambition of history,
whether conceived as an art or as a science. In keeping with
this ultimate objective of history we must ensure that the ques-
tions which we put to the oral traditions of any society are

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10 A.E. AFIGBO

consistent with the intent and concern of the people's percep-

tion of their society and the world.

NOTES

*An earlier version of this paper was delivered as a lec-

ture to the staff and students of the Department of History,
University of Calabar in 1979. This revised version has
benefited from the discussions that followed.
1. Jacob Burckhardt, Judgements on History and Historians
(London, 1958), 158.
2. Here I refer to Marx's statement that "the philosophers
have interpreted the world in various ways; the point how-
ever is to change it."
3. P.C. Lloyd, "Yoruba Myths: a Sociologist's Interpretation,"
Odu, 2 (1955), 20-28.
4. G.I. Jones, The Trading States of the Oil Rivers (Oxford,
1963), 24.
5. Robin Horton, "Stateless Societies in the History of West
Africa" in J.F.A. Ajayi and M. Crowder, eds., History of
West Africa, I (London, 1971), 78-80.
6. See A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War
(Harmondsworth, 1971) and the debate generated by it. See
in particular Taylor's "Second Thoughts" in this se-tion.
7. D. Forde and G.I. Jones, The Ibo and Ibibio-speaking Peoples
of South-Eastern Nigeria (London, 1950), 15.
8. S. Crowther and J.C. Taylor, Journals and Notices of the
Native Missionaries Accompanying the Niger Expedition of
1851-1859 (London, 1859), 29-30.
9. A.H.M. Kirk-Greene, Barth's Travels in Nigeria (London,
1962), 115.
10. W.B. Baikie, Narrative of an Exploring Voyage up the Niger
and Tsadda in 1854 (London, 1970), 287-88, 297.
11. "Tribal Customs and Superstitions (Southern Provinces of
Nigeria) compiled from the Reports of D.O.S. in 1922,"
Chapter IX, 1313. National Archives, Enugu.
12. Memo No. Ns. 810/16 of 31 May 1938 from D.O. Nsukka to
Senior Resident, Onitsha Province, in the National Archives,
Enugu in file O.P. 1760, vol. 1.
13. O.P. 1760 vol. 1: Local Industries etc. National Archives,
Enugu.
14. T. Shaw, Igbo Ukwu: An Account of Archaeological Discover-
ies in Eastern Nigeria (2 vols.: London, 1970).
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