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constituted patrilineal identities. As individuals traced themselves through fathers and grandfathers in their personal names, so places were resonant of the past as farms, compounds and villages recalled the names of their founders. This ‘landscape of names’ was and remains a changing model of segmentary society, at once both topography and history.⁵

The lineage founders to whom these relationships are traced were the frontiersmen of southern Annang society, though they were often marginal characters. The fi rst settlers were outcasts and refugees, along with hunters and hungry farmers. The founders of Annang villages were fl eeing from inter-village skirmishing and chieftaincy disputes, and settled permanently in the lodges they had built for hunting trips and expanding yam farms.

Though epic journeys involving heroic river-crossings form part of the narrative tradition, individually these settlers had not travelled far. Local accounts suggest that the primary centre of Annang distribution was the nucleus of villages around Abak from where the bulk of the population was derived.⁶ Contemporary village and lineage charters suggest that expansion commenced at least twenty generations ago and ended fi fteen generations later, when all the land to the west of Abak was occupied.⁷ Abak represented the key axis of migration for both the Ibibio and Annang and was struc-turally divided into two parts which faced respectively east and west; the eastern became the Ibibio, the western the Annang.

In its simplest form the pattern of settlement and expansion consisted of a line of settlements reaching away from the parent village to occupy a strip of territory which widened only when it extended beyond the commu-nities on either side of it.⁸ Unlike the Ibibio, however, who expanded along contiguous trajectories to form largely integral groups, the Annang expe-rience was more complex and resulted in a mosaic of villages and affi lia-tions. Confl icts and inequalities in land supply led lineage segments with suffi cient labour to sustain rotational slash-and-burn cultivation to break away and request land from the families of original settlers elsewhere.⁹ The process by which settled lineages became divided between ‘land-owners’ (àmànà ísbn, fi rst settlers) and ‘latecomers’ (àdídún, strangers) then involved the exchange of a genealogical for a territorial defi nition of group identity.Consequently, this ‘disjunctive’ pattern of lineage expansion meant that equivalence and opposition between segments (in a pure segmentary system) was replaced by the principle of non-equivalence and complemen-tarity.¹⁰

A husband and his wife with their children formed an ìdíp, literally the

‘belly’, and as this unit extended with the addition of wives and generations it formed a household (úfck). These family compounds combined as exog-amous patrilineages (ékpûk) in which the head of the most senior family was recognised as lineage head (èté or óbcn ékpûk). They presided over a lineage meeting (àfé úkct), named after the day on which palm wine was presented

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Figure 2.1 Annang and their neighbour

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to them, and which distributed land and adjudicated in minor disputes between lineage members. As new lineages formed, either through fi ssion or new arrivals, the ékpûk heads formed the core of a village council (èsòp) and the senior man of the founding lineage was recognised as the village head (óbdn ísbn).¹¹

As this process reproduced itself, so new villages (óbíò or ídún) were formed and allegiance to the parent village, the home of the original settlers, was expressed in common observance of a communal deity (qdêm), food prohibitions (ìbét) and recognition of the àkúkú (pl. okúkú), a descendant of the original settlers and the group’s ritual and political head. The sphere of an àkúkú’s infl uence was mapped onto the landscape by an annual rite of ‘fi rst fruits’ (ndònò).¹² Allegiance to the àkúkú was distinguished by attendance at his court (èsòp ìkpá ísbn), the fees and fi nes from which constituted the major part of his economic base. Intermediaries from each village (áyáráfbt – literally, the ‘man in-between’) provided the physical and political link between parent and satellite villages which together formed a village group or clan (ìkpá ísbn).¹³ Àkúkú chieftaincy, however, was subject to competing claims of genealogy (between factions within the parent village), of geog-raphy (as distances increased between parent and satellite villages) and of ritual performance (in which failure to redistribute incurred sanction and the loss of followers).¹⁴

As elsewhere along the West African coast the relationship between the symbols and vocabularies of animals and chiefs were intimately woven;

animals were the ‘ideal incarnations … that conjured forth intense onto-logical speculation’.¹⁵ Allegiance to the àkúkú was also recognised in tribute in the form of hunted leopards. The right to receive a leopard and to carry out the appropriate purifi cation and sharing rituals concerning it marked, as in Banyang society, the independent and superior status of the leader of one order of residential grouping above less signifi cant groups.¹⁶ Leopards were therefore a means of acknowledging a chief ’s authority, although the animal associations of Annang chieftaincy were not exclusively linked to the leopard in the same way as Banyang leaders where the leopard (nkwo) was associated so closely with leadership and political authority. Other animals – elephants and vultures – were also of symbolic importance to the Annang hierarchy. As messengers of the highest deity (àbàssì énybn) vultures were necessary witnesses at the installation of a chief, and the elephant’s tusk (qnûk éníìn) was a key element of the chieftaincy regalia. Its physical possession staked a claim to the offi ce, and it summoned the village to war and to peace. Nevertheless, by redistributing leopard meat on the basis of seniority between fellow village or lineage heads, chiefs could in turn mark out allegiances and obligations. This tribute also acknowledged the chief ’s position as the paramount public peacekeeper. In such a dynamic and fl uid political context, the popular recognition accorded to those who settled

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cases, mediated in confl icts and supervised the disposal of poisons was a key index of power. Only a chief could remove those parts from a leopard which might be used in the preparation of poisons – its bile sack (èdídôt) and whiskers (pkám).¹⁷ The leopard’s whiskers are not in themselves poisonous.

When ground up in a mortar and mixed into soup or stew, however, the chitinous powder becomes an undetectable and lethal cocktail since the shards can scarify the gut when consumed. Like all medicine (íbdk) leop-ard’s whiskers had to be rendered impotent by burning or by throwing them into a pit latrine. The python’s (àsáwe) similarly potent properties also had to be disposed of publicly by the chief.

As the makers of this history of settlement, and the basis of individual and collective identity, ancestors and ancestral worship formed a key aspect of Annang religious life. From lineage and village founders onwards, generations of ancestors are recalled and invoked at household shrines (ísó ékpó – the face of spirits) in which they are represented by short wooden stakes (àkúà – from the ékdm tree, Coula edulis). Successive male heads of household maintain such a shrine to the patrilineal ancestors by adding a new àkúà at the death of their father.¹⁸ The transition of the disembodied spirit to ancestorhood was perilous. Extensive performances of separation and purifi cation were linked with death,¹⁹ including the construction of a highly decorated memorial structure (pwómó – see Figure 2.2),²⁰ and a ceremonial burial (íkpó) which was held between three and seven years later as an induction of the spirit into the village of the ancestors (óbíò ékpó). Without these obsequies the spirits became poor and emaciated, and would wander about causing harm, and they were necessary, therefore, to safeguard the status of lineage ancestors, the nature of their power, and the effect they have upon the living.

The distinction in the character of ancestors in Annang society was drawn between good spirits, those that were successful, and bad ones, those that were unsuccessful or notoriously malicious.²¹ These categories were linked to both the status of the living person and the manner of their death;

a natural death (mkpá) was contrasted with a sudden or violent one (àfáí).²² The ancestors were most commonly propitiated in libations. Drink was poured with the right hand to ancestors who had successfully entered óbíò ékpó to ensure safety, prosperity and fertility. Libations poured with the left hand sought to dispel vagabond spirits, a category of malevolent, restless and roaming ghosts (àfáí ékpó) who had not made the transition.²³ This opposition expresses a common contrast in Annang belief between the right hand, associated with respect, authority, truth and good character, and the left, linked to disrespect, wrong-doing and malevolence. These practices also capture the inherent ambiguity of power and of powerful people in Annang society. The deliberate inversion of this right hand/left hand code, for instance, was a means by which malicious forces were imprecated into

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the self to do harm to another. Corpses and graves, especially those of a powerful person (a diviner, medicine-specialist or a chief), or of those who had been killed violently (those who were murdered, executed, killed in battle or who had died from the effects of false oath-swearing), were imbued with this order of power. These forces could be conjured to kill in graveside libations or in preparation of a charm, often a ring, which was left on the grave for seven days, after which its force was infl icted by touching the ring (átúák túák íbbk) on the victim.²⁵

The right/left, good/bad opposition corresponds to the aesthetic expression of concepts of beauty (étî) and ugliness (ìdíók). These terms are ways of relating character (étî íló, good person; ìdíók íló, bad person) and behaviour (étî úsún, good way; ìdíók úsún, bad way). The aesthetic representations of personhood are captured at their most fi gurative in the ancestral masquerade (ékpó) and in its use of beautiful and ugly masks.²⁶ At harvest time each year the ancestors return to their lineages in the form of Figure 2.2 ´Nwómó (Reproduced with kind permission of Kegan Paul)²⁴

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the ékpó masquerade. Ékpó is indigenous to the Ibibio-speaking language cluster, and, in its simulation of ancestral presence, represents Annang cosmology writ large. Members of the society wear carved wooden masks, which impersonate and become possessed by the spirits of the ancestors.

Beautiful masks are worn on the opening and closing performances of the masquerade in the market, and are painted white or yellow to represent good spirits (kfdn ékpó). Beautiful masks portray the face in a human form and stress fertility, often with a series of smaller children’s faces carved on the forehead. Ugly masks, in contrast, are painted in dark colours with exag-gerated and distorted features representing malevolent wandering spirits (ìdíók ékpó). They are usually smaller, with non-human features such as jagged teeth and sometimes represent disfi gurement and diseases such as gangosa.²⁷

The fear of malevolent ancestral spirits, those invoked by enemies or provoked by disregard, featured prominently in the daily, and especially nocturnal, imagination. These spirits, like the masked players who represent them, are potent, dangerous and unpredictable. During the ékpó performance there is, consequently, a strong emphasis on the control of the fi ercest spirits represented by the masks. These include categories of ‘nonsense’ spirits (qtímé qtímé ékpó) such as the deaf spirit (ínán ékpó) who cannot hear the drum’s directions or onlookers’ pleas for mercy, and who delights in destroying farm crops.²⁸ The most awesome and dangerous of the masks, however, is that of the spirit of the ghosts (ékpó qdêm). Wearing this mask is a form of ordeal and only a descendant of the society’s founder can don it without suffering misfortune. Its highly ambiguous source of power contributes to ékpó qdêm’s status. The initiate who wears the ékpó qdêm mask sleeps in the forest (ákáì) for seven nights where he must not eat food cooked by a woman. He will pour libations on the graves of seven ‘wicked’ people (ìdíók íló – ugly character), and will consume roots known as ádûn àbàsì (root of god) which make him feel as if he is fl ying.²⁹ His seclusion, invocations and consumptions each contribute to a state of possession once masked as ékpó qdêm that exceeds the usual sense of possession (náám – ‘not knowing oneself ’ and having a ‘hot head’) expressed and represented by other ékpó players. The malignancy of the possessed state of ékpó qdêm is demonstrated in various symbolic forms, including the way the masked performer is tied at the waist with palm-tapper rope to prevent him from attacking onlookers, and the way he circulates round the market clockwise, by the left-hand side, thereby demonstrating his malicious intent.³⁰ Symbolic elements of the ékpó masquerade therefore illustrate not only how ancestors shaped individual identities, but also how the past possessed a potent infl uence over the lives of the living.

The ancestral masquerade (ékpó) marks the conjunction of modes of Annang identity and selfhood: descent and initiation, lineage and secret

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society. The second principal factor in the construction of Annang identities was membership, through initiation, of masquerades, secret societies and titles. By defi nition the mask and the masquerade concern the disguising of identities, but initiation into and membership of secret societies also marked social and physical transformations and created new boundaries of belonging and hierarchy. These identities also represent a differentiated expression of the articulation of power, and distinguished more sharply between identities and hierarchies constituted on the basis of access to knowledge.³¹

Initiation in Annang society comprised several of the classic elements of rites of passage. They were based on separation in the form of seclusion, they involved physical transformations through fattening, tests of character in public ordeals, the acquisition of new social roles sometimes expressed in liminal moments of rebirth, and processes of re-aggregation in perfor-mances at markets.³² Both male and female identities were determined by a series of initiations. These included ‘healing’ initiations in which an affl iction was cured by entering a secret society; ‘protective’ initiations which were common for children to ensure physical safety and to reduce later ‘full’ initi-ation costs;³³ ‘coming of age’ initiations of socialisation, ‘joining a society’

initiations to promote one’s rank, and ‘establishing a lodge’ initiations to launch a new branch and by which societies were distributed and decen-tralised throughout the coastal hinterland.

Initiations often overlapped with transitions in a person’s life-cycle, but they did not all defi ne such moments. Without a recognised age-grade system, there was a nominal sequence to membership of the secret soci-eties in an Annang man’s life, of warriorhood (áwíè òwò) in the teen years, the ancestor society (ékpó) in adult years, and the leopard society (ékpê) subsequently.³⁴ In certain respects this cycle corresponded to the broad Annang generational categories of childhood (qtb áyín), youth (kkpàráwà), and elderhood (èté). Crucially, however, while this hierarchy captured levels of seniority and authority, it was based on the cost of initiation and in this way the societies offered an opportunity structure that cut across strict generational lines.

Initiation for young men into the warrior society (áwíè òwò – to cut head, known in Ibibio as ékón – war) was a condition of male citizenship and a precondition of entry to other societies.³⁵ The smoothness of the carving and painting of áwíè òwò/ékón masks denoted the youthfulness of its members.

Unless a man was initiated he was nothing in the Annang village, and at death it was only members of áwíè òwò who were accorded full burial rites.³⁶ As the society’s name suggests, entry into warriorhood was linked to the status accorded to those who took an enemy’s head in combat.³⁷ Oral and written accounts of áwíè òwò initiation relate the use of a skull carried by a senior áwíè òwò member into the forest. He was chased by the novice

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who, upon fi nding him, acted out the process of beheading an enemy.³⁹ Following this performance initiates entered a period of seclusion for up to three months, during which they were fattened and taught the martial arts of combat.⁴⁰ Performances before confl ict and during the new yam festival, which involved jumping over a fence of pots and palm leaves, provided a public test of the authenticity of a warrior’s initiation.⁴¹

For most men who had reached social maturity, initiation into the ancestor society (ékpó) involved a simple presentation of food and money.

Jeffreys provides a detailed account of early twentieth-century ékpó initi-ation costs. The fi rst stage was to join the drum-beaters (ádúk ìbît ékpó).

After that he provided the society with food (étímmé údíá ékpó – pound yam for ékpó) in which the initiate prepared 100–150 balls of fufu yams (ùsùn), and spent 600 manillas to buy palm wine and 800 manillas to buy fi sh. He might wait two or three years before calling the ékpó members again to present them with between 100 and 150 manillas. Having paid each member, he became a full ékpó member.⁴² In northern Annang villages ékpó was organised by the lineage and it was the lineage head who presided over the initiation.⁴³ In southern Annang there was more fl exibility to this process and the ékpó society was based on a decentralised system of lodges (àfé ékpó) producing networks and alliances which cut across village lines and which bound lineages through the distribution of ritual offi ces. There Figure 2.3 Ékpó (© David Pratten)³⁸

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was a premium on establishing a new ékpó lodge within a village, as this description illustrates:

Before Ekpo starts in a town a man will buy a cow and give a feast to other intending members of the Society. He also will give to the chiefs of the town a big sum, about 2000 manillas. They in turn distribute this among the Ekpuks. The chiefs put round this man’s neck ndan (raffi a) [qdáám]. This is the sign of his position. He gives the orders to other members of Ékpo to shoot non-members etc. When in his town many men have joined Ekpo and consequently much money has been paid to him he again gives a feast and his Ekpo men dance around the market. People of other towns then know who is the ¯Ob¯oŋ Ekpo.⁴⁴ Several lodges from inside and outside the village formed a cluster around a prominent market where opening and closing performances were held.

The annual performances of these lodges inscribed a set of village and inter-village allegiances onto the Annang political landscape. During the ékpó season masked players marched and sang songs along the boundary paths that defi ned an ékpó cluster, thereby mapping out the political landscape of the ékpó leaders and the relationships between them.

Violence too formed a central part of ékpó initiation. Before each ékpó performed in the market the ékpó leader (èté ékpó) blew a mouthful of ‘hot’

drink onto the performer’s outstretched right hand, the hand with which they struck non-initiates (àkpô ékpó). The wounds they infl icted, with knives, swords or arrows, were injuries sent from the village of the dead (óbíò ékpó) and, however superfi cial, were treated most seriously. To heal the wounds non-initiates were forced to pay the initiation fees and join the society. There

drink onto the performer’s outstretched right hand, the hand with which they struck non-initiates (àkpô ékpó). The wounds they infl icted, with knives, swords or arrows, were injuries sent from the village of the dead (óbíò ékpó) and, however superfi cial, were treated most seriously. To heal the wounds non-initiates were forced to pay the initiation fees and join the society. There