// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhy did Ginuwa I go to the doctor? It had a ruling pain.
| Ginuwa I | |
|---|---|
| Olu of Warri | |
| Reign | Traditionally from c. 1480 |
| Predecessor | Position established |
| Successor | Ijijen |
| Died | Ijala |
| Burial | Ijala |
| Issue | Ijijen Irame |
| House | Eweka dynasty |
| Father | Oba Olua |
Ginuwa I was a prince of the Kingdom of Benin who is remembered in Itsekiri and Benin traditions as the founder of the royal dynasty of the Kingdom of Warri and its first Olu. The traditional chronology places his departure from Benin in the late 15th century, conventionally around 1480, but no contemporary written record fixes the dates of his life or reign.[1]: 177–180 [2][3]: 32–34
The traditions agree that Ginuwa was a son of Oba Olua, also called Oluwa, and left Benin with a substantial royal following. His party is said to have travelled through the western Niger Delta before settling at Ijala, where he died and was buried. His son Ijijen succeeded him and subsequently established the royal capital at Ode-Itsekiri.[1]: 179 [2]: 31–32
The polity that formed around Ginuwa's lineage incorporated communities whose own traditions placed their origins before or independently of his migration, as well as later migrants from several neighbouring regions. Historians therefore treat Ginuwa as the founder of the dynasty around which the Itsekiri kingdom developed, rather than as the founder of the Itsekiri people through a single migration.[1]: 178–180 [4]: 225–226
Sources and chronology
[edit]The accounts of Ginuwa are principally dynastic traditions written down centuries after the events they describe. William A. Moore published the fullest early collection of Itsekiri versions in 1936. In the introduction to its second edition, P. C. Lloyd judged Moore's account to follow the oral history still recounted among the Itsekiri, but warned that publication of a local history tends to turn one version into an official narrative and obscure previously circulating variants.[5]: 16–23 [6]: vi–viii
Later scholars compared these accounts with Benin traditions, traditions collected in Ijaw communities and early European records. Lloyd placed the departure in the mid-15th century, while Ikime described it more cautiously as a migration usually assigned to the late 15th century. The familiar date of about 1480 consequently belongs to a traditional dynastic chronology, not to a contemporary record of Ginuwa's accession.[1]: 179 [2]: 31–32 [3]: 32–34
Departure from Benin
[edit]The sources preserve different explanations of why Ginuwa left Benin. Lloyd recorded an Itsekiri version in which Ginuwa was endangered by the conduct of his father and noted that Jean-François Landolphe's early 19th-century account instead suggested a dispute between Ginuwa and a brother over the Benin succession.[1]: 179 In the version summarised by Ikime, both Olua and Ginuwa had become unpopular in Benin, and the Oba arranged for his son to establish a new kingdom outside Benin in order to secure his future.[2]: 31–32
The best-known version says that Olua obtained the firstborn sons of seventy Benin nobles by announcing that they would accompany a sacrifice to the water. Ginuwa and the young nobles were concealed in an iroko wooden box or ark and taken from Benin. On reaching Ugharegin, Ginuwa is said to have emerged in royal regalia and assumed command of the party. Moore's account adds a supernatural escape by water from a Benin force sent after them. Ikime retained the political outline of the narrative while explicitly declining to decide whether the enormous wooden box was literally the means by which the party travelled.[5]: 16–18 [2]: 31–32
Moore further says that Olua gave Ginuwa half of the Benin royal robes and coral ornaments before his departure. Curnow also records the Itsekiri tradition that the dynasty's original crown was a coral-beaded crown of Benin type.[5]: 16 [4]: 232
Migration to Ijala
[edit]The remembered route places the party first at Ugharegin and then on the coast at Amatu, before a move inland to Oruselemo near the Forcados River and finally to Ijala. Moore's fuller version inserts a stop at Efurokpe and says that the migrants reached Amatu by following the Arun-owun, identified in his account with the Escravos River. He attributes their departure from Amatu to its exposed position, sandy ground and poor soil.[5]: 17–19 Lloyd and Ikime give the same broad sequence from Amatu through Oruselemo to Ijala.[1]: 179 [2]: 31–32
At Oruselemo, Ginuwa is said to have taken an Ijaw wife. Moore names her Derumo and says that Ginuwa killed her, after which a threatened conflict with her relatives helped prompt the party's departure. In his account, the diviner Idibie then guided the migrants to Ijala. Lloyd's shorter synopsis records the Ijaw marriage and the subsequent move but not the details of the conflict.[5]: 18–19 [1]: 179
E. J. Alagoa found a comparable coastal-to-inland movement in traditions collected among the Iduwini and Ogulagha Ijaw. These traditions also associated the founders of Warri with an early settlement at or near Amatu before their movement up the Forcados. Alagoa treated the accounts as evidence for the broad movement from the coast up the Forcados.[7]: 320–321
Historical evidence and Portuguese contact
[edit]Portuguese vessels traded in the Forcados–Escravos area during the late 15th and early 16th centuries, but the surviving records do not name Ginuwa. A. F. C. Ryder found that the identity of the people called Huela in Duarte Pacheco Pereira's early 16th-century account could not be established with certainty. The records instead document trade and suggest that the area remained within Benin's sphere of influence.[8]: 294–301
Moore recorded a tradition that Portuguese visitors encountered Ginuwa at Ijala in 1516.[5]: 19, 86–88 Ryder, however, found no contemporary record of the beginning of Portuguese contact with Warri. He considered it possible that an independent Itsekiri state had not yet developed by 1530, while expressly describing that reconstruction as conjectural.[9]: 1–2 Alagoa interpreted the early Portuguese evidence differently, arguing that the description of Warri as a port of Benin supported the existence of an early polity under Benin influence which later developed into an independent kingdom.[7]: 320–321 The surviving documents therefore establish early European trade in the region but do not name Ginuwa or verify the reported 1516 encounter.
Succession and legacy
[edit]The traditions place Ginuwa's death and burial at Ijala, which became the royal burial ground of the Olu. His senior son, Ijijen, succeeded him, and his other son Irame later followed Ijijen as Olu. Ijijen led the royal party from Ijala to Okotomu and established a settlement beside the community associated in tradition with a figure named Itsekiri. The royal centre developed there as Ode-Itsekiri, also called Ale Iwere.[5]: 20–23 [1]: 179
In the traditions, Ginuwa's settlement at Ijala and Ijijen's establishment of the capital are separate events. Ikime considered it improbable that the kingdom's formal political institutions were organised during Ginuwa's lifetime and associated their development with the later settlement at Ode-Itsekiri.[2]: 34–35 Communities around the new dynasty were incorporated at different times and preserved differing accounts of their relationship to the Olu.[1]: 178–180, 192–194 Curnow accordingly describes the Itsekiri as communities of diverse origins that coalesced under Ginuwa's dynasty.[4]: 225–226
References
[edit]- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Lloyd, P. C. (1957). "The Itsekiri". In Forde, Daryll (ed.). The Benin Kingdom and the Edo-Speaking Peoples of South-Western Nigeria. Ethnographic Survey of Africa, Western Africa, Part XIII. London: International African Institute. pp. 172–216.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Ikime, Obaro (1969). Niger Delta Rivalry: Itsekiri–Urhobo Relations and the European Presence, 1884–1936. London: Longmans, Green and Co. pp. 31–34. ISBN 978-0-582-64515-8.
- 1 2 Ayida, Allegra (December 2022). "Pre-Colonial Lusophone Kingship and Elite Migrations: A Case Study of the Warri Kingdom". e-Journal of Portuguese History. 20 (2): 30–46. doi:10.26300/zzm1-km21.
- 1 2 3 Curnow, Kathy (2002). "Everyone to His Quarter: Ethnic Interaction, Emulation, and Change in Itsekiri Visual Culture". In Anderson, Martha G.; Peek, Philip M. (eds.). Ways of the Rivers: Arts and Environment of the Niger Delta. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. pp. 223–246. ISBN 978-0-930741-90-7.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Moore, William A. (1970) [1936]. History of Itsekiri. London: Frank Cass.
- ↑ Lloyd, P. C. (1970). "Introduction to the Second Edition". History of Itsekiri. William A. Moore. London: Frank Cass. pp. v–xiii.
- 1 2 Alagoa, E. J. (1970). "Long-Distance Trade and States in the Niger Delta". The Journal of African History. 11 (3): 319–329. doi:10.1017/S0021853700010173. JSTOR 180341.
- ↑ Ryder, A. F. C. (December 1959). "An Early Portuguese Trading Voyage to the Forcados River". Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria. 1 (4): 294–321. JSTOR 41970640.
- ↑ Ryder, A. F. C. (December 1960). "Missionary Activity in the Kingdom of Warri to the Early Nineteenth Century". Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria. 2 (1): 1–26. JSTOR 41970817.