Where Gods and Mortals Meet: continuity and renewal in Urhobo art

Perkins Foss

This exhibition, curated by Perkins Foss, opens at the Museum for African Art, Long Island City, New York, on April 8 and runs through August 16. It assembles more than 80 works of Urhobo art together with photographs and video and audio recordings of cultural performances. As of this writing, "Where Gods and Mortals Meet" is scheduled to travel to the Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, South Carolina, from October 16, 2004, to January 16, 2005. Arrangements for other venues are pending.

The accompanying catalogue (9" x 12 ", 192 pp., 110 color photos), edited by Foss and including essays by six contributors, is available for $65 in hardcover and $45 in softcover (subject to change). The book is published by the Museum for African Art and Snoeck, Ghent.

The exhibition and catalogue have been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.

"Where Gods and Mortals Meet" and its accompanying catalogue constitute the first comprehensive presentation of the arts of the Urhobo, a southern Nigerian people who number about 1.5 million. (1) The Urhobo occupy the western fringe of the Niger River Delta, where a green rain forest belt descending from Benin City meets the alluvial plains of the delta proper, in an area encompassing some 5,000 square kilometers.

The works in the exhibition are organized into six sections that display and analyze the forms and underlying aesthetic values of Urhobo art and culture. These sections highlight the realm of personal images that offer protection and advancement, masquerade arts and accompanying song and dance, and, at the grandest level, communal shrine art, awesome in scale and form. They also provide an introduction to newer forms that are products of a culture in transition. In addition to the guest curator, both the exhibition and its catalogue have benefited from the scholarship and curatorial assistance of others, each a specialist in a particular aspect of Urhobo art. These include a world-renowned printmaker and sculptor, Bruce Onobrakpeya; a folklorist, G. G. Darah; a social scientist, Peter Ekeh; a poet and oral historian, Tanure Ojaide; a specialist in African religion, Michael Nabofa; and an art historian with expertise in both traditional and contemporary African culture, John Picton.

The title of one of the major chapters of the catalogue, "Beauty for the Gods," alludes to a key conceptual element of Urhobo aesthetics. Here, statues, staffs, and masks are not made to be pleasing to mortals; they are, rather, intended to attract, honor, and entertain the edjo, those powerful spirits of forest and stream who lie in the realm of erivwi, the world of the dead. According to Urhobo artistic convention, the gesture of an open mouth revealing rows of aggressive teeth is associated with a skull, especially the skull of a fish whose skin and flesh have been boiled off. This harsh image, fearsome and ugly to mortals, is seen as beautiful to the gods. (2) Its association with marine life reinforces the common expression "Edjo n'ame rhe," "The spirits come from the water." During an interview held in September 1972, Oviede Aramuemu Aki, a prominent artist from Evwreni, commented on this aesthetic attitude. He had carved for the water spirit Ohworhu a mask with a jutting jaw and sharp, bared teeth (Figs. 17, 18). When I asked him to compare it with the more naturalistic imagery of his neighbors to the north at the court of Benin, he replied, "Ah! They are making humans, but I am making edjo."

[FIGURES 17-18 OMITTED]

The subtitle of the exhibition, "Continuity and Renewal in Urhobo Art," highlights Onobrakpeya, who was born and raised in Urhoboland. His prints bring, as another scholar has noted, "a fresh lens through which to focus our understanding of Urhobo iconography." Each of the sections of the exhibition contains prints by Onobrakpeya--made in his unique plastograph technique--that provide contemporary thematic connections to Urhobo art from past generations (Fig. 16). A highly innovative printmaker who has been practicing his art for forty years, Onobrakpeya has turned to Urhobo themes for inspiration. His work offers a poignant perspective on modern African art as well as an innovative commentary on Urhobo culture and visual aesthetics.

[FIGURE 16 OMITTED]

Urhobo Origins

"We came from Benin" (Avware ihwo Aka). This commonly heard statement, when pursued by more detailed inquiry, usually reveals that although the Urhobo claim political allegiance to Benin, their origins are much more complex, and those of many village groups point not so much to the north as to the east and to the south--to the Igbo and to the Ijo. (3) Most Urhobo stories of migration and settlement share a theme of struggle, disagreement, and dispute. The historian Obaro Ikime notes that "a man and his immediate kith and kin might decide to found a new settlement in a search for greater farming and other opportunities, or as a result of some quarrel" (1969:15). Such tales of unrest--and the ultimate struggle to gain and hold land--seem to concur with the militaristic demeanor of much Urhobo shrine statuary. These images are, first and foremost, a family of invincible spirit-warriors, weapons at the ready, poised to protect. Their military gear--spear, cutlass, bands of leopard teeth--recalls in a general sense that worn by the soldiers who appear on Benin brass plaques. The actual manner of deployment, however, has been shifted into what can be termed a particularly Urhobo idiom.

Very little can be said regarding the specific dates of settlement of the various Urhobo village groups. Duarte Pacheco Pereira, one of the first explorers to chronicle the coast of the Niger Delta, noted in 1508 that the "Subou" occupy the hinterland of the western delta, thus suggesting that at least parts of the country may have been occupied at this early date (Pacheco Pereira & Kimble 1937:128-29). The Benin historian Jacob Egharevba provides a late-fourteenth-century date for a migration from Benin into what is now Urhobo country, during the reign of Oba Egbeka; he states that Egbeka "had several civil wars with the Uzama Nihinron [Kingmakers]" and suggests that these may have spurred the southward migration of disgruntled factions (Egharevba 1968:13; Ikime 1969:12). James Waddington Hubbard, a Church Missionary Society priest stationed among the neighboring Isoko, hypothesizes that the earliest migrations took place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (1948:152). Present-day accounts of Benin connections ("We came from Benin") may well stem not so much from actual genealogical inheritance but rather from the political pressures brought to bear in generations following the actual migration. Thus Ikime: "That Benin exerted some influence over the Urhobo, and that the contact with Benin was, in certain respects, maintained, is not denied. The main reason why the Benin connection was maintained was because Benin was regarded as a repository of power. The Oba of Benin was a powerful ruler who was regarded with deep veneration as a neardeity" (1969:13).

Urhobo Religious Belief

Urhobo religious thinking centers on those singular and collective spiritual forces that exist in natural phenomena--in bodies of water, certain trees and plants, certain pieces of land, and even in the air itself. These spirits, known as edjo, (4) are pervasive forces whose powers encompass nearly all aspects of Urhobo life. Certain generic categories are recognized: edjo of water (edjorame), of land (edjoto), of the atmosphere (edjenu). Nearly every Urhobo community has an edjokpa, or oil-palm spirit. (5) Most edjo have visual manifestations, in masquerades, shrine statuary or in significant but less obvious places, such as a strip of white cloth wrapped around a certain tree, or a small platform containing offerings of chalk cowries, and scraps of food at a waterside shrine.

Conceptualizations of the edjo usually operate on locally defined levels. Each community has its own particular edjo, often more than one. A body of water that passes near a town may be the realm of one such spirit; another may be a specific tree that exists in or near the settlement. Others find their inspiration from more arcane sources; especially prevalent in this category are the supernatural powers said to have been brought to a community by its founding members.

Urhobo Sculpture

Personal images for destiny, wealth, and the control of aggression

Urhobo men and women maintain personal shrines that bring health, wealth, and happiness to their lives. The most common grouping includes a triad of carved works of art that enforces the concepts of destiny, wealth, and aggression. An urhievwe, an image of destiny (Fig. 1), provides for the healthy lives of one's children. Usually taking the form of a nursing mother, an urhievwe is most commonly kept by women. An obor, or "image-for-wealth" (Fig. 2), carved in an abstract, hourglass shape with a band of cowries at its middle, is maintained to bring financial prosperity to its owner. Rarely seen in public, an obor is usually secreted within the confines of a man's bedroom, and upon his death is interred within his coffin. (6)

[FIGURES 1-2 OMITTED]

Iphri, (7) works that commemorate aggression, evoke the control and focus of assertive, sometimes bellicose power (Figs. 3-6). Of the three basic types of personal images, the iphri is the most elaborately rendered. It alludes to broad qualities of male leadership, including those of a persuasive public speaker, a group leader, a powerful hunter and warrior. Iphri are also said to protect individuals from losing valuable possessions. These sculptures suggest forces that are quintessential to the Urhobo male personality: aggressive energy, forceful posturing, successful hunting, and powerful oratorical skills. The metaphor extends to all parts of Urhobo male society, and iphri are believed to both increase and, at the same time, control one's aggressive tendencies. While some images are massive and complex forms that exceed three feet in height, in 1971 I saw a four-year old boy--a "difficult child"--wearing a tiny iphri, no more than a half-inch tall, around his neck (Fig. 6). Iphri imagery typically includes one or more male figures standing atop or riding a quadruped whose face is dominated by multiple sets of large, threatening teeth. In different parts of Urhoboland, artists render iphri according to distinct substyles.

[FIGURES 3-6 OMITTED]

Images of female beauty to honor brides, mothers, and elders

With statues and festival masks, Urhobo artists commemorate women at various stages of their lives. Young brides, called opha, soon to move to their husbands' households, are feted with extensive rites of passage. They parade through their village, their bodies decorated with elaborately prepared dyes, usually made from red camwood (pterocarpus) mixed with palm kernel oil (Fig. 7). As a permanent honor to these women, wooden statues (Fig. 8) and masks (Fig. 9) are carved to portray them in all their finery.

[FIGURES 7-9 OMITTED]

Images of nursing mothers (oniemo), usually included within communal shrines, allude to the generations that have descended from the founding families of a community (Fig. 10). These appear as commemorative statues and also as masked visages in festival performances. Another image that appears in the form of both masks and figures is known as the original female ancestor, the eldest among elders, "the mother-of-us-all," inene-ode.

[FIGURE 10 OMITTED]

Shrine statuary for spirits

Until well into the twentieth century, Urhobo communities maintained huge sculptural groups that were manifestations of spirit forces, the edjo. Nearly every community had one or more shrines that housed such images. According to local lore, when the Urhobo came together six centuries ago, they were constantly striving for land ownership. These figures represent the heroic founding families who, aided by the magical powers of the edjo, struggled to develop and maintain new communities.

The most powerful examples of Urhobo imagery are over-life-size statues, usually carved from huge pieces of hardwood perhaps more than three feet in diameter. (Figure 11 is an example of the very large version of these figures; Figure 12 illustrates a rare pair of male and female figures, on a smaller scale.) Looming in tightly enclosed shrines, these figures depict families of spirits that were the founding men and women of a community. They often have assorted additional accoutrements, including mirrors, skulls of animals that have been sacrificed at annual festivals, and staffs of high office (Fig. 13). For all but a few days of the year they are hidden from public view. The contradiction inherent in much of Urhobo art exists here: the edjo statues are held to be both fearsome (to mortals) and beautiful (to the spirit world).

[FIGURES 11-13 OMITTED]

Individuals may have affinities to more than one edjo. Usually upon advice of divination, a person may be told that he or she is being troubled by a particular edjo in the town and that providing the spirit with regular offerings will alleviate this suffering. At the same time, however, one particular edjo in the community is usually recognized as the spirit of the town (edjo r'ovwodo). (8) It is here that the artistic expression of the edjo receives its fullest manifestation, in the form of assemblages of up to a dozen carved statues housed in a single shrine building. (9)

I saw a particularly well-maintained edjo group in May 1969 in Ovu Inland (Fig. 14). This collection of twelve wood statues commemorated the spirit of Ovu, called Ovughere. The figures were painted with a whitewash of chalk. Red and black trim outlined the highlights of their weapons and accoutrements. Freshly installed behind the figures was a broad white cloth, above which were the skulls of decades of animal sacrifice. A thick curtain of dried palm raffia obscured the facade of the shrine; this barrier is removed to allow public viewing only at certain moments on festival days.

[FIGURE 14 OMITTED]

An elaborate hierarchy of titled priests and priestesses, the spiritual leaders of the cult, is associated with Ovughere. The community of Ovu Inland staged large annual festivals in honor of the spirit; on these occasions numerous elaborate dances were performed, often complete with masquerade performances, lavish meals, and extensive displays of wealth and finery. The event culminated in a mock battle, staged between two extended families of Ovu (Fig. 15). In the open space in front of Ovughere's shrine, the two sides struggled for possession of a clay vessel holding medicinal herbs (orhan). This vessel was said to contain the magical ingredients that gave martial prowess to the spirit in ancient days.

[FIGURE 15 OMITTED]

Bruce Onobrakpeya has turned to Urhobo shrine art for inspiration in his own work. Agbogidi Shrine (1972), a plastograph print, (10) developed out of visits that the artist made to the northern Urhobo communities of Ogharefe and Idjerhe (Fig. 16). In the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, Onobrakpeya has written a vivid description of this work:

   Urhobo shrines and those of her neighbours (Edo, Ijo, Isoko and
   Igbo) are virtual art galleries because each has an assemblage of
   art works ranging from sculptures (metal, wood and clay), pottery,
   textiles, found objects and paintings. The priests who are sometimes
   the artists themselves aesthetically arrange these in a room or in
   an enclosure in the forest. One Edjobeguo whom I encountered in the
   nearby Ogharefe suburbs in the 1970s was both the priest and the
   carver of the figures in his Urhapele shrine.

   Shrines, particularly those situated in special rooms of forest
   enclosures, nearly always have frontal composition which is roughly
   divided into three sections that dovetail into one another. The
   middle sections have the dominant forms which may be separated with
   vertical shafts. There is the foreground with smaller objects that
   are links between the main figures. In the third section are the
   background walls, usually painted, on which other objects are hung.

   In "Agbogidi," the dominant forms in the middle section are two mud
   sculpture figures, a carved wood staff with some figures on top, two
   pots, one with snail shells and a vertical wooden rattle with
   cowries tied onto the middle section. There are vertical staffs
   which are a kind of support to these main objects. The first of the
   two main figures has the paraphernalia of a chief or a priest. It is
   bedecked with ritual objects like ukokogho (gourd containing
   charms), a colonial bowler hat, bangles (egblogho obo) and an apron
   (buluku) on which are tied cowries (igho) and metal rattles
   (ugherighe). The second figure is a soldier brandishing a spear
   (oshue) and a cutlass (opia). It has a cap and wears an elephant
   tusk (ukoro) at each ankle. At the foreground of the composition are
   the carvings of three obor (hand) statues worshipped for good
   fortune. One of them sits on an enamel plate. Other objects are
   rattles (aghwala), kaolin chalk (oorhe), cowries (igho), palm
   kernels (ibi) and a hoe (eghwlo) and smaller objects which serve as
   textures that weld the larger forms together. Conspicuous on the
   background assemblage are a mirror with decorated frame and chicken
   legs (igbawo echo). There is a frieze of objects including figurines
   and masks at the top of the painted background.

Water-spirit masquerades and related performance arts

Urhobo communities maintain close spiritual affinities with the rivers and streams that flow southward into the western part of the Niger Delta. Each body of water--be it a major avenue of transportation, such as the Warri, Kiagbodo, and Eghwu Rivers, (11) or a smaller, less navigable tributary--is believed to harbor certain spirits that control both the water and all who use it. They are known as edjorame, or "spirits of the water." Erivwi, the dwelling place of the dead, exists beneath a river's surface. In a related metaphor, the denizens of the water--fish, crayfish, crocodilians, crabs--are said to be sent to "this world" (akpo) as "gifts" (ese) from "the other side."

In homage to the edjorame, Urhobo produce elaborate spectacles of dance, music, and song. Families compete to offer aesthetically pleasing performances. Wearing masks made of wood, cloth, or vegetal fiber, performers dance in honor of the spirit forces of the particular body of water that runs through their community. Water spirits are believed to influence the well-being of a community. At festival times they are invited into town and are regarded as potentially dangerous, powerful guests that must be treated with respect.

Three components dominate the visage of the Urhobo water-spirit mask: a broad, sweeping forehead; concave cheeks; and a protruding mouth (Cover; Figs. 17, 18). Five lineage marks define the curve of the forehead; one mark, placed on center, travels vertically from the top of the forehead to the bridge of the nose. While the forehead bulges outward, the cheeks receive the opposite treatment. Beneath crisply defined eyes, they recede to instill a gaunt, stark quality. Three dots are arranged sparingly in a horizontal line beneath each eye. These, the most common of Urhobo facial marks, echo the horizontal thrust of the eye cuts while leaving the cheek planes largely unadorned. (12) The recesses of the cheeks are drawn forward to frame the mouth, at which juncture appears a most forceful image: multiple rows of bared teeth.

The face of the mask is surmounted by a vertically and usually symmetrically arranged frieze of human, animal, and bird motifs, occasionally varied by abstract geometric shapes. (13) These forms allude to various cult personalities (servants, visionaries, priests, and priestesses) and fauna (crocodilians, fish, birds) associated with the waters.

A water-spirit masquerader wears a white cloth that attaches to the edge of the mask and hangs freely to the ankles. With hands protruding from the edges of the cloth, he executes a series of dramatic gestures from within the loose, flowing garment. Billowing it upward, spreading it first to one side and then to the other in tightly phrased responses to the drums, he activates the cloth. The cloth is white (ufuafo), the prime color for Urhobo water spirits, for it is the color of riverbed chalk (oorhe). Chalk is seen as "food" for all types of Urhobo spiritual forces; alluvial riverbed deposits are the most common source for the material. Chalk metaphorically becomes the interface between land and water. By wearing pure white cloth, the masqueraders are wrapped in the sacred substance of the rivers themselves. In this regalia, they refer once again to the fundamental belief that exists behind much of Urhobo art: Edjo n'ame rhe, "The spirits come from the water."

The displays of Urhobo imagery included in this exhibition define the relation between earthly and spirit worlds, between this world and the next. The forms of Urhobo art--masquerade sculpture, shrine statues, personal shrines--offer glimpses into the art of a vital but little-known culture. Contemporary visions, seen through the eye of a master artist, bring our view of Urhobo creativity into the present day.

[This article was accepted for publication in December 2003.]

(1.) Other exhibitions that have displayed representational examples of Urhobo art include, "Three Rivers of Nigeria," Atlanta and Washington, 1978; "Sets, Series and Ensembles," Center for African Art, New York, 1985; "Ways of the Rivers: Art and Environment of the Niger Delta," Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA, 2002.

(2.) Tanure Ojaide elaborates on the "ugly/beautiful" dichotomy in an informative chapter in the catalogue, "How the Urhobo See Themselves through Art."

(3.) The historian Obaro Ikime notes this phenomenon (1969:6): "Most of the Urhobo people trace their origin back to Benin. The clans [sic] which constitute the Urhobo and Isoko Divisions in fact fall into three migratory groups. There are those which trace their migration to their present location directly from Benin; others say that they moved to their present site from what is now Ijoland; and a third group, the latest arrivals, claim Ibo origin. However, some of the clans in the last two categories have vague memories of an even earlier migration from Benin to Ijo or Ibo-land, Hence the general statement that most of the Urhobo clans claim Benin origin."

(4.) Edjo are one of the fundaments of Urhobo religion. Welch, in discussing the neighboring Isoko, refers to "A wooden edo [cf. edjo] carved to represent a man for a male and a woman for a female" (1937:143). For the Isoko, Hubbard comments that "although the esemo (ancestors) have general control ... there are a number of beings called edjo who have only lived in Eri (world of the dead, an abbreviated form of erivwi) and never in Akpo (world of the living) except in so far as they have taken human form at odd times to suit themselves" (Hubbard 1948:276-77). In discussing the traditions of Uzere village group (again in Isoko country) he cites Israel Loho, a native of Uzere: "Eni [the founder of Uzere clan] followed them from Benin; it may have been a family spirit edjo, not an ancestor" (Hubbard 1948:103). Bradbury reports that the term "appears to have the same connotation as the Benin word ebo and the pidgin [West African English] word 'juju'" and that it often refers specifically to "wooden images" (1957:160).

(5.) "An Intelligence Report on Ukpe-Sobo," submitted by L. E. H. Fellows in 1928, reports on this cult, which today has nearly died out: "Fertility of the palm bush: palm bush is closed for three months and no collecting is done. One palm tree, EJOKPA, which is always regarded as head of the palm bush, is worshiped and a dog is sacrificed to it. A young man and woman are selected by the village and they become priest and priestess. They stain their bodies with camwood and wear cloths of red and white colour. The palm tree is decorated with red cloth. A dance, in which the actors wear masks of rams, fishes and crocodiles, is performed and the whole village gives itself up to rejoicing. The festival lasts for about three months and hospitality is offered to strangers on a generous scale during the period" (Fellows 1928: par. 62).

(6.) Michael Nabofa, in his contribution to the exhibition catalogue, describes Urhobo hand imagery in some detail.

(7.) This term has been published with a number of variant spellings, including ivwri and ivri, which reflect different dialects of Urhobo and the neighboring Isoko. Numerous scholars whose first language is Urhobo have suggested the present usage, iphri. The most comprehensive study to date is a doctoral thesis by John Tokpabere Agberia (1998). Further reinforcement supporting this choice has come from recent personal communications from G.G. Darah and Bruce Onobrakpeya, and especially from Professor Rose Oro Aziza of the Department of Language and Linguistics at Delta State University, Abraka.

(8.) The term ovwodo refers to a permanent community of any size, that is, all except for temporary farming or fishing settlements.

(9.) Bradbury notes that the term edjo itself "often refers specifically to 'wooden images'" (1957:103). Oral tradition as well as written sources suggest that the Agbarho and Agbon village groups had more of these shrine groups than any other Urhobo area. In the years 1850-1925, this area prospered in palm-oil commerce, especially with the Itsekiri Most of the figures were carved during that time. The communities in this locale were wealthier than much of the rest of Urhoboland, and it was here that artists received substantial commissions. Today these shrines are rarely maintained, but there are a few notable exceptions. The fledgling Niger Delta Cultural Centre at Agbarha-Otor has outlined plans to commission contemporary versions that will house statues of famous Urhobo of the modern era.

(10.) Onobrakpeya has described plastography as a "deep etching technique" that "involves the use of epoxy resin to build up surfaces for engraving." See Darah & Quel 1992:35-36.

(11.) These river names are of European origin. The Urhobo rarely refer to an entire river by a single name; instead they identify a part of it by the name of a nearby community. Thus, urhie-Ughienvwe refers to "the river at Ughienvwe," and the same body of water at the town of Ughelli is known as urhie-Ughelli.

(12.) These small marks are known as iwu; often they are termed "Urhobo tribal marks" although they are also worn by many Isoko and Itsekiri, and the term itself reiterates the relationship between the Urhobo and their neighbors to the north. Iwu is cognate to the Bini term that Melzian identifies as "tribal marks ... not including the face-marks on the forehead" (1937:104).

(13.) In Evwreni, masks specifically commemorate Ovata, the faithful wife who awaited her husband's return from deep in the Ijo creeks. She stands atop the superstructure, her oversized vagina boldly on display. Such overt sexual symbolism offers the viewer irrefutable evidence that the mask is performing in praise of women.

References cited

Agberia, John Tokpabere. 1998. "Iphri Soalptures as Icon and Images of Religious Worship among the Urhobo People of Nigeria." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

Bradbury, R. E. and International African Institute. 1957. The Benin Kingdom and the Edo-speaking Peoples of Southwestern Nigeria: The Benin Kingdom; the Ishan; the Northern Edo; the Urhobo and Isoko of the Niger Delta. London: International African Institute.

Darah, G.G. and Safy Quel (eds.). 1992. Bruce Onobrakpeya: The Spirit in Ascent (with essays and notes by the artist). Lagos, Nigeria: Ovamuoro Press.

Egharevba, J. U. 1968. A Short History of Benin. [Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press.]

Fellows, L. E. H. 1928. "An Intelligence Report on Ukpe-Sobo, 1928." Ibadan, Nigeria: National Archives, University of Ibadan.

Foss, Perkins (ed). 2004. Where Gods and Mortals Meet: Continuity and Renewal in Urhobo Art. New York: Museum for African Art; and Ghent: Snoeck.

Hubbard, J. W. 1948. The Sobo of the Niger Delta: A Work Dealing with the History and Languages of the People Inhabiting the Sobo (Urhobo) Division, Warri Province, Southern Nigeria, and the Geography of their Land. Zaria, Nigeria: Gaskiya Corp.

Ikime, O. 1969. Niger Delia Rivalry: Itsekiri-Urhobo Relations and the European Presence 1884-1936. New York: Humanities Press.

Melzian, H. J. 1937. A Concise Dictionary of the Bini Language of Southern Nigeria. London: K. Paul Trench Trubner & Co.

Pacheco Pereira, D. and G. H. T. Kimble. 1937. Esmeraldo de situ orbis. London: Printed for the Hakluyt Society.

Welch, J. W. 1937. "Isoko Clans of the Niger Delta." Microform.

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