“Breaking juju,” breaking trade: Museums and the culture of iconoclasm in southern Nigeria

Abstract

Previous articleNext article Free“Breaking juju,” breaking trade: Museums and the culture of iconoclasm in southern NigeriaZ. S. StrotherZ. S. Strother Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreFor Francesco Pellizzi, with gratitude and affection for his support of young scholars and for his rich contributions to the study of the arts of Africa and the Americas.West African prophets arose in the 1910s who embraced iconoclasm on a cataclysmic scale. The legendary William Wadé Harris, a Grebo from Liberia, inspired “two hundred thousand or more people … to burn their fetishes [religious icons]” in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana between 1913 and 1914 (Haliburton 1971, 147). In Nigeria, the followers of Kalabari prophet Garrick Sokari Braide destroyed tens of thousands of cultural and religious icons, urging his followers to drown them in the channels of the Niger Delta between 1915 and 1918.1 The African leaders advocating iconoclasm crossed every religious boundary, although we have more photographs for the Christians. In 1930–31, Apostle Joseph Ayo Babalola inspired large numbers of Yoruba to surrender masks, shrine figures, and ceramic or wooden vessels for burning during mass revival meetings (fig. 1). In 1950–51, Atinga, a West African movement connected to spirit possession, arrived in Yorubaland. Individuals accused of antisocial behavior were urged to surrender their ritual objects for display and destruction.2Figure 1. The Apostle Joseph Ayo Babalola (held aloft in the back) poses with a mound of Yoruba Epa masks, shrine figures and leather wallets carried by priests for the orisha Shango, all destined to be burned during the Aladura Revival in Effon-Alaaye (Nigeria), 1930.It is necessary to probe British responses to local religions in order fully to understand the culture of African iconoclasm that developed in southern Nigeria in the first half of the twentieth century and continues to thrive today. Unusually rich documentation associated with the Reverend William Allan collection in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford University, sheds light on the social and political context for attacks on religious shrines in the Niger Delta between 1888 and 1890. It also introduces the tangled question of the relationship between these movements and museum collections.Why shrines?Beginning in the 1880s, if not earlier, shrines and altars became targets for systematic campaigns of destruction by British in Nigeria. Lavish temple installations were a striking feature of cultural life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries among the peoples and polities in what became southern Nigeria. Political or religious communities, kinship groups, and private individuals all maintained shrines honoring various spiritual agencies. On occasion, these temples became the locus for far-flung pilgrimage and attracted European attention. Describing his visit to one such prestigious center in 1910, the Yoruba Agbeni shrine for Shango in Ibadan, Leo Frobenius wrote that the “originality of the building … struck me dumb” (fig. 2). He marveled at the “gorgeous” coloration, the sculptural variety, the mixing of materials: “The whole scene … was superbly impressive” (1913, 1:47). In the Yoruba context, Frobenius learned that anthropomorphic figures represented priests or devotees engaged in rituals honoring the deity. He emphasized that the carvings did not represent the deities themselves and were not objects of worship (1:196). However, Frobenius’s work was exceptional. There was little serious study of African religions during the period of incremental British expansion from the coast, from the 1880s until 1914 (when Nigeria officially became a British colony), and carved images were almost always imagined to be “idols” subject to heinous and irrational worship.Figure 2. The Temple of Shango, Ibadan, Nigeria, 1910. After a watercolor by Carl Arriens, the expedition artist for Leo Frobenius, Und Afrika sprach … (Berlin, 1912), vol. 1, frontispiece.The Reverend William Allan (whose collection will be the focus of this essay) is typical in describing a shrine in Bonny as a “juju-house, juju meaning sacred, and being applied to any object of worship, whether it be a snake (as at Brass), a shark (as at Calabar), a cobra or boa constrictor, or, indeed, anything else” (Allan [1889?], 2–3). The term “juju” was pejorative, signifying that there was no rhyme or reason to what might be selected for religious devotion (Allan’s “or, indeed, anything else”). “Juju” evoked derision but also horror because it was associated with blood and sacrifice. The twinned connotations are manifest in the Oxford English Dictionary, which speculates that the term derives from the childish French word for “toy” (joujou) even while it quotes liberally from propaganda surrounding the sack of Benin in 1897, for instance, “Nothing seemed to be celebrated properly in this Juju land unless it was accompanied by the death of some unfortunates.”3 The colonial legacy has left many contemporary Nigerians ambivalent or hostile to the practice of African religions. Although one can speak of “good juju,” as one might refer to a “white witch,” the term remains remarkably pejorative in Nigeria today and signifies dangerous occult practices. It is necessary to examine the historical record on several important shrines because accusations of human sacrifice continue to distort the perception of indigenous African religions.The reasons for visiting a shrine reflected the full range of personal and social concerns. Following the destruction in 1904 of a temple alleged to be a site for ritual murder, the investigating officer was embarrassed to discover that everyday life at Yók-Òbòlo was devoted to blessing marriage and pregnancy. In addition, pilgrims sought success in trade and valued the expertise of the priests in adjudicating criminal trials (Whitehouse 1905, 414–15). One of the most important political functions for shrines in southeastern Nigeria was the enforcement of oaths during the brokering of trade agreements, peace treaties, and diplomatic exchanges. For example, when the leader of Obolo surrendered to the city-state of Bonny in 1826, he first smashed a tortoise on the altar of the main shrine dedicated to Ikuba and then suffered himself to be slapped and to have his head shaven as a demonstration of his commitment to abide by the negotiated settlement (Alagoa and Fombo 1972, 75; Ejituwu 1991, 138).The documentation is unusually good for pledges sworn at Agwut-Obolo. In 1869, following civil war at Bonny, the wealthy trader Jaja sought refuge at Obolo with a large following. The Obolo first required Jaja to “swear an oath of submission before the national deity.”4 At the main shrine, Jaja promised eternal loyalty to the Obolo nation to be demonstrated by a yearly tribute to the shrine on the date of the deity’s annual festival. Following the pledge, priests shaved Jaja’s head and cut his fingernails (thereby giving them powers of retribution over Jaja). They slaughtered the tortoise that he had brought with him and sprayed its blood over ritual objects displayed on the altar. In conclusion, the priest fastened a distinctive necklace around his neck, which demonstrated his allegiance to the deity.5 By all accounts, Jaja respected the terms of his contract and heeded instructions never to remove the deity’s necklace, which was buried with him (Ejituwu 1991, 144, 155n41).After Jaja had assured the Obolo of his allegiance to them, he requested permission to found a new economic polity, Opobo, on an island in the Imo River. The founding of a new community is always momentous, but this case was particularly fraught due to the long history of altercations between Obolo and its neighbors. The Obolo required new oaths sworn on the site under the supervision of priests from all the major shrines, reinforced by sacrifices of numerous animals and one human being (Ejituwu 1991, 138). According to the historian Ejituwu: “The blood of sacrificial animals, Obolo believed, had the power of conveying human prayers and requests to the beings to whom they were addressed. Animal sacrifices ranged from fowls to human beings, the particular type selected depending on the size of the human unit making the offering, the importance of the deity being addressed, and the gravity of the request being made” (Ejituwu 1991, 62). In the cases above, the death of a tortoise (a peaceful creature) sufficed to secure peace treaties because the oaths were sworn before the most important altar and because they were reinforced by acts of ritual submission (shaving the head, paying tribute, etc.). The exigence of a human life in the founding of Opobo testifies to genuine anxiety on the part of Obolo about establishing a rival state close to its borders. The welfare of the entire social polity was at stake.In review, many community altars in southern Nigeria contained eye-catching assemblages of found objects and works of art. The priests at important shrines engaged in a wide array of activities addressing personal healing, social healing, or the adjudication of conflicts between communities. Prayers were usually empowered through the blood sacrifice of chickens or other domestic animals. A small number of shrines were associated with human sacrifice administered, as Ejituwu outlines, in cases of grave consequence for sizable communities. In contrast, in the British imaginary, Nigerian shrines were imbued with revulsion as the sites for sadistic and bloody displays of human sacrifice and cannibalism. As one colonial administrator reflected, no one ever inquired about the good things that juju did (Talbot 1916, 313).The hunt for “master-juju”From the beginning, economic interests affected the perception of local religious practices. Acting Consul H. H. Johnston defined “juju” for the Fortnightly Review as “the cruel and nonsensical fetish rites which formed such a serious barrier to trade” (Ayandele 1966, 106). In 1887, Johnston wrote to Lord Salisbury that he was going to make certain recalcitrants “break juju” in his presence (106), meaning that Africans would be forced to break their oaths to tutelary spirits and to break their ritual paraphernalia, actions that would finally enable Johnston to “break trade”—that is, open markets.The blurring of religious and judicial functions in southern Nigerian shrines made them overdetermined sites for conflict. In particular, the administering of oaths at the shrines to secure contracts, both commercial and political, gave the British anxiety. Europeans knew the importance of such agreements from firsthand knowledge since they themselves had relied on contracts sworn at certain prominent shrines along the coast during the Atlantic slave trade. They were keenly aware of the importance of oaths in settling disputes between African polities at the shrines. Well into the colonial period, British officers fretted about oaths of resistance sworn at certain renowned shrines. It was this history that inspired the British military to focus on the destruction of shrines as a means of imposing a new governmental and commercial order.Moreover, the strategy of destroying important shrines was proposed as a cheap and easy alternative to military occupation, especially when dealing with the acephalous political systems common in the southeast.6 This practice emerged from a noxious cocktail of assumptions about African religions. As imagined, immoral but diabolically clever priests manipulated a gullible (childlike) African population and intimidated it into terrified submission through the practice of “ritual murder” on blood-soaked altars.7 By destroying the shrines, the military hoped to discredit African gods and expose their priests as charlatans, thereby discouraging armed resistance.The targeting of shrines proved spectacularly unsuccessful. Shrines might be rebuilt immediately or armed resistance continue for decades. The most famous instance is the blowing up of the Ibinukpabi (or “Long Juju”) of Arochukwu, unquestionably the most renowned Igbo shrine, in 1901–2, the destruction of which did not prevent nearly continuous insurrection through the 1910s (Isichei 1976, 126–39). Similarly, although the Oron shrine was demolished in 1897, British rule over the Oron was not judged secure until the 1920s. Despite its failures, many British commanders held fast to their beliefs that they would be able to subjugate the people if they could eradicate their most important shrines. Although British-instigated destruction of altars declined in the 1920s following the establishment of firm administrative control, the old anxieties could resurge at times of crisis (Harneit-Sievers 2006, 73).David Pratten refers to this kind of logic as the “master-juju thesis” (2007, 221) and documents an extraordinary revival after World War II, when colonial police were investigating so-called leopard murders in Annang territory. In 1946, the district officer in Abak wrote, “The priests must be in it, though at present there is no evidence. … Mr Ogbolu (Assistant Superintendent of Police) shares my opinion that there is a master-juju. … The evidence is inconclusive, but it is clear that if a master-juju exists we must locate it.”8 Convinced that there must be occult practices at work, police began to document every known shrine for the Idiong society of diviners and finally banned the institution on February 24, 1947. Pratten reports that, following the order, nearly one thousand Idiong shrines were systematically demolished within a ten-day period. To their disappointment, the investigating officers did not find “any suspicious material.” Loath to abandon their hypothesis, they could only conclude that wily diviners had been able to hide their apparatus in time (2007, 271).George Steinmetz argues for the importance of ethnographic claims in the formation of colonial policy. Inspired by Pierre Bourdieu’s formulation of “symbolic capital,” Steinmetz writes that German colonial officers “competed with one another” for status through manipulation of their “ethnographic capital,” that is, the “acuity of their perception and judgment with respect to exotic cultures and indigenous subjectivities” (2007, xiv–xv). All too often, as Pratten makes clear, these ethnographic claims were rooted in cultural stereotypes that resisted the absorption of contrary evidence.It can seem a paradox that frequently the same individuals were involved in both the destruction of shrines as well as the preservation of the artifacts associated with them through photographic documentation and/or museum collections. In his study of blackface minstrelsy, Love and Theft, Eric Lott warns that one must be careful not to oversimplify racial dynamics in the nineteenth century: “Minstrel performers often attempted to repress through ridicule the real interest in black cultural practices they nonetheless betrayed. … [The coupling of] a nearly insupportable fascination and a self-protective derision with respect to black people and their cultural practices … made blackface minstrelsy less a sign of absolute white power and control than of panic, anxiety, terror, and pleasure” (1993, 6). Something of the same dynamic seems to manifest itself in the ambivalence surrounding shrines and their votive sculpture. Collectors were also on the hunt for “master-juju.”A substantial donation made by William Allan to the Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford University) in 1902 demonstrates the tight relationship of attraction and revulsion in late nineteenth-century responses to religious works of art in Africa. Although Allan wrote in loathing of the “cannibal worship” of Bonny, he developed a deep emotional investment (dare we say love?) for what he humorously called “my idols.”9 He was proud to report that several of his sculptures were included in the blockbuster “Stanley and African Exhibition” of 1890 as well as a series of missionary exhibitions, transported “in cases especially made for them.”10 When Allan left London for a small town in Suffolk, he maintained a “museum” at the vicarage. He wrote that “I should not have parted with any of these things in my life time” had early retirement not forced him to move to a smaller home. Wishing to donate his collection to Oxford, his alma mater, he originally approached the Ashmolean Museum but accepted redirection to the “Ethnological Dept.” at Pitt Rivers, so long as his “objects would be valued and taken care of.”11 He compiled an unusually rich dossier for the museum to demonstrate that the works “possess great interest from an Ethnological as well as Missionary point of view.” Annie Coombes cites Allan as an example of the efforts that certain British missions (the Church Missionary Society [henceforth CMS] in particular) took in cultivating a scientific and intellectual foundation for their work with the general public.12 Yet, Allan was driven as much or more by his attachment to the objects themselves. Documentation of ethnographic value was the best means in 1902 to secure the works’ preservation and display.Asaba, April 1888: Action for actionJudging from the number of references in his correspondence, Allan considered the most impressive object in his collection to be what he described as the “National Idol, of the People of Asaba” (fig. 4). Asaba was a prosperous commercial entrepôt situated on the western bank of the Niger River, dominated by Igbo merchants who maintained a substantial population of domestic slaves, as much for status as for labor.13 In April 1888, Sir James Marshall, Chief Justice of the Niger Territories, learning that a chief had died, took “the opportunity of commencing a crusade against the inhuman slaughter of slaves” (Mockler-Ferryman 1892, 27–28).14 The words belong to Captain A. F. Mockler-Ferryman, private secretary to Commissioner Major Claude MacDonald, who was dispatched the following year to investigate alleged abuses of the Royal Niger Company (xii).Marshall called the town’s “chiefs” (i.e., titleholders) together and demanded that they bury their comrade without the customary inhumation of slaves (1892, 28).15 Knowing that the elite of Asaba were likely to flout the chief justice’s order, the administration sent “trained spies” to investigate and finally a troop of seventy constables “armed with Martini rifles and a Gatling gun” (28). Nevertheless, the townspeople concluded their funeral in secret and attacked the cantonment.16 After two days of fighting, the constabulary struck Asaba with heavy artillery bombardments and gained control of the town. According to Anglican Archdeacon Johnson, “part of the town was burnt to the ground, and the great idol temple in the centre of the town demolished” (CMS 1889, 33). Mockler-Ferryman wrote that “every temple, juju-house, and idol was destroyed,” at which point the chiefs agreed to unconditional surrender (1892, 29).Human sacrifice was a genuine humanitarian concern, one sure to appeal to a known evangelical such as Claude MacDonald (Ayandele 1966, 112). However, the political significance of the measure was well understood. Honoring a man’s wealth and position by sending him into the otherworld with an accompaniment of servants reinforced the prestige and sanctity of political titles.17 For this reason, titleholders jealously guarded the prerogatives of their peers. Moreover, in this instance, British officers chose human sacrifice as a litmus test for political subjugation. The expected refusal to comply granted the punitive expedition a righteous pretext to strike with the full force of modern armaments and to burn down communities.18 Asaba is an early example of what became de facto British policy in the protectorate through the 1910s.The role of the obliteration of the community’s shrine (“juju-house”) in the narrative is crucial. According to Mockler-Ferryman: (1) when resistance began to crumble, (2) the British were able to destroy the juju-house, (3) thereby undermining the morale of the chiefs so that they sued “for peace on any terms,” and (4) “[swore] to abandon human sacrifices for ever,” (5) thereby sending a lesson “far and wide” (1892, 29). Curiously, the captain gauges the effect of destroying a shrine over the impact of witnessing a rapid-fire Gatling gun in action. He also omits the fact that part of the town was “burnt to the ground” (CMS 1889, 33). More often than not, the destruction of shrines was accompanied by the firing of part or all of the host community or even the region.Ashis Nandy argues that the “civilizing mission” developed to justify European colonialism in the nineteenth century was always at war with British ideals of “manliness” distorted by conquest to value aggression, hierarchy, and raw displays of power. Colonizers had to build psychological defenses against a “possible sense of guilt” when they knew that their actions were indefensible according to their own cultural mores (1983, 9–11). In this case, it did not matter that the destruction of “juju-houses” failed to squash guerilla warfare.19 The iconoclasm served a brilliant rhetorical strategy by deflecting attention away from human anguish. Economically, it conveyed two messages at once. For the African audience, it transmitted the lesson that resistance was futile. For the British, firing the “juju-house” avowed violence while excusing it.In his study of the “first significant Protestant iconoclasm” at Wittenberg in 1522, Joseph Koerner sought to “freeze-frame the hammer while it strikes” (2004, 83–84). He maintains that iconoclasts such as Andreas Karlstadt “directed their actions against other actions they deemed abominable: ‘Idolatry’ stood for the sum of all the false, superstitious and devilish practices fostered by the Roman Church; iconoclasm was more a war against these than against the things toward which they seemed directed, since in the image-breaker’s view the idols were nothing” (85). Specifically, the reformers were seeking to prevent others from kissing images, kneeling before them, and offering them gifts of silver and gold (94). The “top-down” British destruction of shrines was shaped by a similar logic of abominable deeds calling forth a manly response. In this case, the burning and leveling of the temple in Asaba was directed against the action of human sacrifice. The temple itself and its contents were less the targets than what was imagined to take place there.20The captured godConsequently, it should come as no surprise that beguiling objects were frequently looted from the shrines before they were burned. The accession catalogs of the British Museum and many other public collections in Great Britain are peppered with references to works of art “collected” or “taken as loot” during the such-and-such punitive expedition. Some write frankly, for example, “I took the things away with me as trophies” (Hives 1930, 37). Others felt a duty to document what they found for the ends of science.21 Others seemed to respond to the objects themselves. As principal medical officer for the Oil Rivers Protectorate, Robert Allman amassed a significant collection while serving in the important punitive expeditions of his era: Cross River, Eket, Okrika (1895–96); Benin City Expedition (1897); Oron (1897); Ekuri (1897–98); Ubium and Ishan (1899); Aro Expedition (1901–2).22 The range of his acquisitions demonstrates his appreciation of both artistic creativity and technical expertise (fig. 3).Figure 3. Ibibio marionette “taken from a Ju-Ju House at the time of the Aro Expedition, 1901–2,” by Dr. Robert Allman, Principal Medical Officer for the Oil Rivers Protectorate. H. 28 ½ in. (72.5 cm). The action directed against the Igbo oracle of Ibinukpabi in Arochukwu was probably the largest military campaign in the British conquest of Southern Nigeria and required four military columns, which crisscrossed the southern half of Igboland over a period of months (Harneit-Sievers 2006, 71). Metropolitan Museum of Art 1978.412.403a–c. The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Gift of the Matthew T. Mellon Foundation, 1960.The dialectic between destruction and preservation is well documented at Asaba. Mockler-Ferryman emphasized that “every temple, juju-house, and idol was destroyed” (1892, 29). However, Allan annotated his copy of the text: “It is not correct to say that ‘every idol was destroyed,’ for the principal national idol fell into the hands of Dr. Cross.”23 Cross, chief medical officer for the Royal Niger Company, passed the sculpture along to the architect for the CMS, who gave it to Allan.24In his hunt for master juju, Allan was pleased to describe the sculptural tableau repeatedly as the “National Idol, of the people of Asaba.” However, Allan’s belief that the carving was venerated or even religious in nature is dubious. In fact, the work is unusual in the historical corpus of Igbo art and repays close analysis (fig. 4). It stands forty inches tall and depicts ten figures grouped in two tiers, all carved from a single block of wood with the exception of two female figures nailed to the upper base. The composition is organized around a tall male figure, who looms over all the others, distinguished by a top hat tied with a red cloth. He is further individualized by dynamic designs from the uli body-painting tradition, which was much appreciated in Asaba.25 The bare and taut torso signals vigor and self-confidence. This man has nothing to hide.Figure 4. Igbo display sculpture collected in Asaba, Nigeria, by Dr. Cross, Chief Medical Officer, Royal Niger Company, 1888. H. 1020 mm (40 ⅛ in.). Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (donated by Rev. William Allan), PRM 1902.9.30a. Photo: Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.In 1881, a missionary wrote that “wealth and prosperity is the characteristic of the 400 nobles of Asaba” (Isichei 1976, 256); the large figure represents one of this elite group. He displays emblems related to the prestigious Ozo title.26 Igbo once competed for titles, which were expensive to acquire, and conferred both privileges and responsibilities. The Ozo title conferred political and judicial influence and made it easier for a man to command public meetings. In his right hand, the figure holds an elephant tusk trumpet, the blowing of which called attention to his arrival in a community. In nearby Onitsha, taking Ozo rank was described as “taking the horn” (Cole and Aniakor 1984, 49). In his left hand, the figure carries an Ozo staff, the original made of iron, here recognizable through the openwork basket on the bottom.Stools were important emblems for Ozo titleholders. Certain titleholders were even buried sitting on their stools to mark their rank. The most common version had a round base and seat joined by three to four interior supports. In general, the more inventive the form, the more prestigious the individual. In the tableau, the artist makes a visual pun equating the titleholder with his stool by showing him standing on it, supported by four caryatid figures. Instead of spreading a leopard skin on top of the seat, as leaders were wont to do, the artist depicts the pelt spread out on the base. Furthermore, the protagonist manifests his dominance over a host of small, active figures, presumably enslaved, certainly under his control. He stands upright, resting his elbows on two of his minions, steadied by his grip on tusk and staff. The contrast between his stability and the others’ frenetic activity glorifies him as a man who marks the world around him, who literally makes others jump.The lead figure also acts out his virility, his domination, through the act of intercourse. His erect and engorged member is poised, ready to penetrate the deeply notched, triangular vagina of a small female figure, who has been nailed to the upper base at a 135-degree angle to receive him. It is she who carries his fan, possibly to gentle (cool) his ardor (fig. 5). The graphic sexuality of this scene is obscured by the surrounding figures and is hard to photograph. It may only be fully appreciated by the viewer who is drawn in to investigate. Herbert Cole reports that it is extremely rare to find sexually explicit imagery in Igbo wood carving, much less religious icons.27Figure 5. Detail of sculpture in figure 4. PRM 1902.9.30a. Photo: Copyright Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.G. I. Jones recorded that artists in Eastern Nigeria made figures for secular purposes (1984, 127). Some were stored in a priest’s house and displayed on special occasions when they might be “used as an emblem or trophy, the centre-piece of a type of ‘play’ in which people danced and sang around the carving, which was either carried aloft on a dancer’s head and shoulders or, if too large and heavy for this, was supported on the ground” (Jones 1984, 127). Viewers were allowed to inspect objects displayed on the ground at close hand.Herbert Cole and Chike Aniakor contrasted the forms of what they call “display sculpture” or “secular sculptures” to “cult statuary” (1984, 107–10). Whereas the latter are made from hard wood and depict idealized figures drawing on a small repertoire of gestures and postures, the former are extremely varied in form and carved from soft, light woods so that they can be used for dancing. They found that uli (body painting) was “present on most secular images and virtually absent from cult figures” (107). They describe these display sculptures (ugonachomma) as “true works of art” inspired by competition among individuals and age grades (107–8).The light weight of the sculpture (only 8,400 grams), the depiction of uli, the frenzied inventiveness of the figures, and most of all, the sexually explicit union all suggest that th