Yoruba

By: Ari Nave

Source:

 Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition

Yoruba

Today more than thirty million people speak some dialect of Yoruba, which belongs to the Kwa group of the Niger-Congo languages. Most Yoruba speakers live in southwestern Nigeria. They form a majority in Lagos, Africa’s most populous city.

Yoruba speakers are traditionally among the most urbanized African people. For centuries before British colonization, most Yoruba speakers inhabited a complex urbanized society organized around powerful city-states. These densely populated cities centered on the residence of the king, or oba. The basic social units were patrilineages in which inheritance, descent, and political position pass through the male line. Though they lived in cities, traditionally most Yoruba men farmed crops such as yams, maize, plantains, peanuts, millet, and beans in the surrounding countryside. Many men also engaged in crafts such as blacksmithing, manufacturing textiles, and woodworking. Traditionally, Yoruba women specialized in marketing and trade, and could gain considerable independence, status, and wealth through their commercial activity. While many Yoruba speakers continue to farm and trade today, they generally also grow and sell cash crops such as cocoa. Meanwhile, the millions of Yoruba in modern cities such as Lagos pursue a diverse array of manufacturing and service occupations.

Originally Hausa speakers used the name Yoruba for the people of the Oyo kingdom. Europeans appropriated the term to refer to all speakers of the Yoruba language. Yoruba speakers identify themselves as members of several different groups, including the Ife, Isa, and Ketu. Some of these Yoruba-speaking groups identify with the larger community of Yoruba speakers. Others, such as the Sabe, Idaisa, and Ketu consider themselves separate ethnic groups and do not feel a sense of community with other Yoruba speakers, though they share Yoruba origin myths. All of these groups, however, share a similar material culture, mythology, and artistic tradition.

Art historians consider thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Yoruba bronzes and terra-cotta sculptures among Africa’s greatest artistic achievements. Yoruba oral histories, folklore, and proverbs have also won international acclaim. Traditional Yoruba religious beliefs recognize a supreme god presiding over a complex pantheon of hundreds of lesser gods. Over the past several centuries Islam and Christianity have spread to Yorubaland. Many Yoruba take a pluralistic approach to religion that integrates traditional religious elements with Christian and Muslim beliefs, as in the Aladura spiritualist movement.

According to folklore, the Yoruba originated from the mythical Olorun, God of the Sky, whose son, Oduduwa, founded the ancient holy city of Ile-Ife around the eighth century C.E.. Linguistic and archaeological evidence suggest that, in fact, speakers of a distinct Yoruba language emerged near the Niger-Benue confluence some three to four thousand years ago. From there they migrated west to Yorubaland between the eighth and eleventh centuries. Strategically located on the fertile borderland between the savanna and the forest zones, Ile-Ife was the center of a powerful kingdom by the eleventh century, one of the earliest in Africa south of the Sahel. Its rulers taxed both food surpluses and trade. While the institution of kingship probably predates the emergence of Ile-Ife, the holy city became the preeminent Yoruba spiritual and cultural center.

Yoruba Nigerian  A man prays at the entrance to the Osun Shrine in Oshogbo, Nigeria, 2006.

(George Osodi/AP Images)

view larger image

In time, other Yoruba cities rose to prominence. Oyo probably originated in the eleventh century and became a substantial city by the fourteenth century. Other Yoruba city-states emerged around the same time. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the nearby non-Yoruba kingdom of Benin conquered parts of eastern and southern Yorubaland.

Oyo, however, became a powerful military state by the seventeenth century. The rulers of Oyo acquired horses by selling slaves to Europeans and reselling the manufactured goods to Hausa traders. The Oyo cavalry invaded neighboring Yoruba and non-Yoruba kingdoms alike, including Dahomey. By the late eighteenth century, however, Oyo, suffering from internal rivalries, began to disintegrate. During the early nineteenth century Dahomey won its independence in a war that further weakened Oyo. During the 1830s Muslim Fulani from the Sokoto Caliphate conquered northern regions of Oyo and cut off its access to trade with the Hausa. By 1840 the Oyo kingdom had completely collapsed.

Wars among Yoruba groups and city-states raged for much of the rest of the nineteenth century. The protracted warfare left many Yoruba vulnerable to enslavement. Large numbers were sold to traders who brought them to Latin America. To this day, Yoruba culture remains influential in Brazil and Cuba, where Santería religious practice carries on Yoruba traditions.

Aiming to repress the slave trade, encourage the production of raw materials, and open markets for British manufactures, Great Britain sought a foothold in the region. In 1851 the British navy seized Lagos, allegedly to shut down the slave market there. In 1888 most of Yorubaland became a protectorate of Great Britain. The colonial administration imposed peace among warring groups after 1892 in an effort to promote its commercial interests. Under the British policy known as indirect rule, Yoruba kings lost their sovereignty but retained a role in local government.

As the capital of British Nigeria, Lagos, dominated by Yoruba, became the center of Nigerian political and economic life. Colonial authorities introduced cocoa as a cash crop in Yorubaland and developed a modern infrastructure of railroads, highways, and schools in the region. As a result large numbers of Yoruba earned substantial cash incomes, became literate in English, and gained positions in the colonial civil service. By the time of independence, Yoruba speakers occupied a dominant position in Nigeria’s economy and government. Since independence, however, the more numerous northern Hausa have dominated the elected and military governments that have ruled Nigeria, and the relatively prosperous Yoruba have tended to remain political outsiders, often subject to repression.

See also Dahomey, Early Kingdom of; Ethnicity and Identity in Africa: An Interpretation; Islam in Africa; Languages, African: An Overview; Oyo, Early Kingdom of; Religions, African.

processed xml | source xml