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55-520: (Redirected from Ejagham ) " Ekoi " or " Ejagham " may refer to: Ekoi people , a group of people found in south-eastern Nigeria, also known as Ejagham Ekoid languages , the language spoken by the Ekoi people of south-eastern Nigeria Ekoi mythology Lake Ejagham , a small lake in western Cameroon Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with

110-576: A result of these interactions. The Bantu migrations, and centuries later the Indian Ocean slave trade, brought Bantu influence to Madagascar , the Malagasy people showing Bantu admixture, and their Malagasy language Bantu loans. Toward the 18th and 19th centuries, the flow of Zanj slaves from Southeast Africa increased with the rise of the Sultanate of Zanzibar . With the arrival of European colonialists,

165-468: A secure agro-technological base was established. Fishing was practiced by those at the coastal areas and hunting by those residing in the hinterland. Domestication of animals like sheep, goats, and fowls was common while the knowledge of iron workings provided the tools through which most of these activities were carried out. Before Igbo arrival to the Arochukwu region, a group of proto Ibibio migrated to

220-833: A significant clustered variation of genetic traits among Bantu language speakers by region, suggesting admixture from prior local populations. Bantu speakers of South Africa (Xhosa, Venda) showed substantial levels of the SAK and Western African Bantu AACs and low levels of the East African Bantu AAC (the latter is also present in Bantu speakers from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda). The results indicate distinct East African Bantu migration into southern Africa and are consistent with linguistic and archeological evidence of East African Bantu migration from an area west of Lake Victoria and

275-479: A vast genomic analysis of more than 2,000 samples taken from individuals in 57 populations throughout Sub-Saharan Africa to trace the Bantu expansion. During a wave of expansion that began 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, Bantu-speaking populations – some 310 million people as of 2023 – gradually left their original homeland West-Central Africa and travelled to the eastern and southern regions of the African continent. During

330-537: Is also spoken. The Ejaham are spread out living in multiple villages called etek . Seeing a number of coconut trees or a mboma tree at the entrance or center of a village is an indication that you have entered Ejaham territory. In order to have easy access to a reliable source of water, all villages are built by a river or stream. It was convenient for people to live in the Cross River area, as they were used as main roads and journeys for trade routes. The Ekoi language

385-615: Is one of the Ekoid languages , a Bantoid language in the Niger–Congo dialect cluster. The Ekoi are the likely creators of the Nsibidi script, a script which can be seen in many surviving artifacts found in the areas inhabited by the Ekoi/Ejagham people, and which roughly translates into "cruel letters". It is an entirely African script, with virtually no Western influence. According to Ekoi folklore,

440-1786: Is reconstructed as *-ntʊ́ . Versions of the word Bantu (that is, the root plus the class 2 noun class prefix *ba- ) occur in all Bantu languages: for example, as bantu in Kikongo , Kituba , Tshiluba and Kiluba ; watu in Swahili ; ŵanthu in Tumbuka ; anthu in Chichewa ; batu in Lingala ; bato in Duala ; abanto in Gusii ; andũ in Kamba and Kikuyu ; abantu in Kirundi , Lusoga , Zulu , Xhosa , Runyoro and Luganda ; wandru in Shingazidja ; abantru in Mpondo and Ndebele ; bãthfu in Phuthi ; bantfu in Swati and Bhaca ; banhu in kisukuma ; banu in Lala ; vanhu in Shona and Tsonga ; batho in Sesotho , Tswana and Sepedi ; antu in Meru ; andu in Embu ; vandu in some Luhya dialects; vhathu in Venda and bhandu in Nyakyusa . Within

495-654: Is seen as cruel and dangerous as he terrifies the people of Ekoi and is responsible for leading them to death. He does not accept offerings, though the people will still attempt to do so by throwing objects in the air only for them to come back down. In order to protect the people from the fallen objects, Obassi Nsi will draw them down into the earth which shows that Obassi Nsi is more powerful than Obassi Osaw. These deities are friends, they split offerings and eat together. The Ekoi community refers to Obassi Nsi as their mother due to her kind spirit (Ma Obassi as known as Lady Obassi), while Obassi Osaw (Nta Obassi as known as Lord Obassi)

550-453: Is the plural of the word 'umuntu', meaning 'person', and is based on the stem '--ntu', plus the plural prefix 'aba'. In linguistics, the word Bantu , for the language families and its speakers, is an artificial term based on the reconstructed Proto-Bantu term for "people" or "humans" . It was first introduced into modern academia (as Bâ-ntu ) by Wilhelm Bleek in 1857 or 1858 and popularised in his Comparative Grammar of 1862. The name

605-400: Is their father. Leopards especially would be seen as important in Ekoi society. In times of ntuis (chiefs), the appointed ntui would leave his house and make a series of sacrifices. This included those of skull-caps with leopard's teeth, a staff bound with leopard's skin, and a necklace of leopard's teeth. Also, when a ntui died, his people would enter the jungle to bring back

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660-590: The ngbe as the ntui 's spirit returns to God. If they were not wary, it is believed a real leopard would attack them. Bantu peoples The Bantu peoples are an indigenous ethnolinguistic grouping of approximately 400 distinct native African ethnic groups who speak Bantu languages . The languages are native to countries spread over a vast area from West Africa, to Central Africa, Southeast Africa and into Southern Africa. Bantu people also inhabit southern areas of Northeast African states. There are several hundred Bantu languages. Depending on

715-888: The Congo rainforest by about 1500 BC and the southern savannas by 500 BC, while the eastward dispersal reached the Great Lakes by 1000 BC, expanding further from there as the rich environment supported dense populations. Possible movements by small groups to the southeast from the Great Lakes region could have been more rapid, with initial settlements widely dispersed near the coast and near rivers, because of comparatively harsh farming conditions in areas farther from water. Recent archeological and linguistic evidence about population movements suggests that pioneering groups would have had reached parts of modern KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa sometime prior to

770-656: The Democratic Republic of the Congo alone. The larger of the individual Bantu groups have populations of several million, e.g.the large majority of West Africa, notably the most populous African nation Nigeria , Rwanda , Tanzania , Uganda , Kenya , Burundi (25 million), the Baganda people of Uganda (5.5 million as of 2014), the Shona of Zimbabwe (17.6 million as of 2020), the Zulu of South Africa (14.2 million as of 2016 ),

825-787: The Green Sahara . The gradual movement of the Proto Ejagham to the Lake Ejagham area may have been associated with the expansion of Sahel agriculture in the African Neolithic period, following the desiccation of the Sahara in c. 3500 BCE . Ntufam Ndifon Attah explains that "Ejagham" is derived from the combination of three words: ekub (a whole or parcel), ejag (split or broken), haam (going on infinitely or without end). Put together then, Ejagham stands for that unified whole or parcel that

880-667: The Indian Ocean slave trade . The Swahili culture that emerged from these exchanges evinces many Arab and Islamic influences not seen in traditional Bantu culture, as do the many Afro-Arab members of the Bantu Swahili people . With its original speech community centered on the coastal parts of Zanzibar, Kenya, and Tanzania – a seaboard referred to as the Swahili Coast – the Bantu Swahili language contains many Arabic loanwords as

935-676: The Kingdom of Matamba the Kuba Kingdom , the Lunda Empire , the Luba Empire , Barotse Empire , Kazembe Kingdom , Mbunda Kingdom , Yeke Kingdom , Kasanje Kingdom , Empire of Kitara, Butooro , Bunyoro , Buganda , Busoga , Rwanda , Burundi , Ankole , the Kingdom of Mpororo , the Kingdom of Igara , the Kingdom of Kooki , the Kingdom of Karagwe , Swahili city states , the Mutapa Empire ,

990-690: The Luba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (28.8 million as of 2010 ), the Sukuma of Tanzania (10.2 million as of 2016 ), the Kikuyu of Kenya (8.1 million as of 2019 ), the Xhosa people of Southern Africa (9.6 million as of 2011), batswana of Southern Africa (8.2 Million as of 2020) and the Pedi of South Africa (7 million as of 2018). Abantu is the Xhosa and Zulu word for people. It

1045-521: The National Party governments adopted that usage officially, while the growing African nationalist movement and its liberal allies turned to the term "African" instead, so that "Bantu" became identified with the policies of apartheid . By the 1970s this so discredited "Bantu" as an ethnic-racial designation that the apartheid government switched to the term "Black" in its official racial categorizations, restricting it to Bantu-speaking Africans , at about

1100-570: The Zulu Kingdom , the Ndebele Kingdom , Mthethwa Empire , Tswana city states , Mapungubwe , Kingdom of Eswatini , the Kingdom of Butua , Maravi , Danamombe , Khami , Naletale , Kingdom of Zimbabwe and the Rozwi Empire . On the coastal section of East Africa, a mixed Bantu community developed through contact with Muslim Arab and Persian traders, Zanzibar being an important part of

1155-412: The 3rd century AD along the coast and the modern Northern Cape by AD 500. Cattle terminology in use amongst the relatively few modern Bantu pastoralist groups suggests that the acquisition of cattle may have been from Central Sudanic , Kuliak and Cushitic -speaking neighbors. Linguistic evidence also indicates that the customs of milking cattle were also directly modeled from Cushitic cultures in

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1210-795: The 9th and 15th centuries, Bantu-speaking states began to emerge in the Great Lakes region and in the savanna south of the Central African rainforests. The Monomotapa kings built the Great Zimbabwe complex, a civilisation ancestral to the Shona people. Comparable sites in Southern Africa include Bumbusi in Zimbabwe and Manyikeni in Mozambique. From the 12th century onward, the processes of state formation amongst Bantu peoples increased in frequency. This

1265-516: The Aro-Ibibio Wars. The Igbo settlers invited Ejagham ( Akpa ) mercenaries led by Osim and Akuma Nnubi . The allied Igbo settlers, Ibibio rebels, and Akpa mercenaries won the war. The Arochukwu kingdom was founded by Akuma Nnubi. The Atlantic slave trade was at its peak in the 18th and 19th centuries after previous encounters with the Portuguese. Old Calabar, a city state in southeastern Nigeria,

1320-562: The Bantu expansion, Bantu-speaking peoples extirpated and displaced many earlier inhabitants, with only a few modern peoples such as Pygmy groups in Central Africa, the Hadza people in northern Tanzania, and various Khoisan populations across southern Africa remaining in existence into the era of European contact. Archaeological evidence attests to their presence in areas subsequently occupied by Bantu speakers. Researchers have demonstrated that

1375-537: The German-Ekoi War between 1899-1904. The Ekoi have a large number of spoken stories. One creation tale tells of God creating the first man and woman and allowing them to live in a hut. God tells the man to impregnate the woman and leaves before the child is born. When the child is born, God instructs the man and woman to care for their new child. At the end of the tale it is revealed that all people are descendants of this man and woman. Another tale that explains

1430-614: The Khoisan of the Kalahari are remnants of a huge ancestral population that may have been the most populous group on the planet prior to the Bantu expansion. Biochemist Stephan Schuster of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and colleagues found that the Khoisan population began a drastic decline when the Bantu farmers spread through Africa 4,000 years ago. Before the Bantu expansion had been definitively traced starting from their origins in

1485-533: The Nnimm feather) and finished off with a cowrie-fringed wrapper. Nnimm plumes would become very important to Africans in Cuba . The Ekoi culture is known for mastering the art of sculpture. The complexity of its art is a hint to the complexity of the Ekoi people's organization. Their masks are unique because unlike most traditional African masks , the Ekoi masks are fairly realistic. In the Ekoi's approach to make 2-sided masks,

1540-605: The Zanzibar Sultanate came into direct trade conflict and competition with Portuguese and other Europeans along the Swahili Coast, leading eventually to the fall of the Sultanate and the end of slave trading on the Swahili Coast in the mid-20th century. In the 1920s, relatively liberal South Africans, missionaries, and the native African intelligentsia began to use the term "Bantu" in preference to "Native". After World War II ,

1595-688: The area and established the Ibom Kingdom . This proto Ibibio group originally came from Usak Edet ( Isanguele ), a segment of the Ejagham in present-day Southern Cameroon . Eventually, groups of Igbo settlers moved into the area. Tensions between the Igbo settlers and the majority of the indigenous Ibibio led to the Aro-Ibibio Wars . The Efik were originally from the Ibom Kingdom and might have left before or during

1650-555: The area. Cattle terminology in southern African Bantu languages differs from that found among more northerly Bantu-speaking peoples. One recent suggestion is that Cushitic speakers had moved south earlier and interacted with the most northerly of Khoisan speakers who acquired cattle from them and that the earliest arriving Bantu speakers, in turn, got their initial cattle from Cushitic-influenced Khwe-speaking people. Under this hypothesis, larger later Bantu-speaking immigration subsequently displaced or assimilated that southernmost extension of

1705-659: The body. The head is the home of the spirit, therefore, to come back with the head of an outsider showed you were a strong man. Men were expected to engage in combat in order to be accepted in a male power society and have the opportunity to get married. The Ekoi believe that the heirs of the first settlers of their present settlement own the land. Though newcomers are not allowed to buy land, they are able to purchase rights of settlement. Ekoi men have traditionally hunted, while women have engaged in fishing, agriculture , raising yams , plantains , and corn (maize). Both men and women participate in weaving. The people of Ejagham treat

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1760-542: The darker side represented the male force, and the whiter side the female force. The wooden masks were often covered with strips of animal skin or human skin. The realism aspect is further pushed with shiny eyes and sometimes including human hair. The teeth can be carved with wood like the rest of the sculpture or different materials like wood or cane are used. Body-painting and poetry are also critical to men, as they are seen simultaneously as warriors and artists. Though war has been largely uncommon in Ekoi history, except for

1815-416: The death of a friend. The nsibidi script is used in the Ekoi languages and is understandable in reading and writing. The script's importance is emphasized through its beauty and artistic aesthetics rather than its ability to shape cohesive sentences. The predominant paternal haplogroup among the Ejagham is E1b1a1-M2 . The ancestors of the Ejagham originally came from Northeast Africa and moved around

1870-412: The definition of "language" or "dialect" , it is estimated that there are between 440 and 680 distinct languages. The total number of speakers is in the hundreds of millions, ranging at roughly 350 million in the mid-2010s (roughly 30% of the population of Africa , or roughly 5% of the total world population ). About 60 million speakers (2015), divided into some 200 ethnic or tribal groups, are found in

1925-404: The deities named Obassi Nsi and Obassi Osaw. Though both powerful, Obassi Nsi is seen as the loving and caring deity who ripens the food that the Ekoi people plant in the ground. Once you die, your body will be buried in the ground along with your important belonging from earth. The soul then leaves the body and takes on this new form as you live on under the earth with Obassi Nsi. Now, Obassi Osaw

1980-402: The earth with the utmost respect. The land provides the crops that grow in the fields, water to drink and bath in from the river, and animals to hunt in the forest. The man who chooses the place of settlement becomes the chief of the village. The current chief of the village along with all the previous chiefs before him are honored until the end of time. Each time the village is met with a blessing

2035-688: The fierce debate among linguists about the word "Bantu", Seidensticker (2024) indicates that there has been a "profound conceptual trend in which a "purely technical [term] without any non-linguistic connotations was transformed into a designation referring indiscriminately to language, culture, society, and race"." Bantu languages derive from the Proto-Bantu reconstructed language, estimated to have been spoken about 4,000 to 3,000 years ago in West / Central Africa (the area of modern-day Cameroon). They were supposedly spread across Central, East and Southern Africa in

2090-469: The incorporation of Khoekhoe ancestry into several of the Southeast Bantu populations ~1500 to 1000 years ago. Bantu-speaking migrants would have also interacted with some Afro-Asiatic outlier groups in the southeast (mainly Cushitic ), as well as Nilotic and Central Sudanic speaking groups. According to the early-split scenario as hypothesized in the 1990s, the southward dispersal had reached

2145-568: The larger ethnolinguistic phylum named by 19th-century European linguists. Bleek's coinage was inspired by the anthropological observation of groups self-identifying as "people" or "the true people". That is, idiomatically the reflexes of * bantʊ in the numerous languages often have connotations of personal character traits as encompassed under the values system of ubuntu , also known as hunhu in Chishona or botho in Sesotho , rather than just referring to all human beings. The root in Proto-Bantu

2200-466: The natural world tells of Eagle and Ox playing hide-and-seek. Eagle finds Ox immediately and then hides on Ox's horns where Ox cannot see him. Ox goes to every animal and asks if they had seen Eagle, but Eagle tells them all not to say anything. Finally, Fowl tells Ox that Eagle is on his horns. Enraged, Eagle seizes Fowl and swears that he will take his children for this offense. It is said that because of this, eagles eat younger fowls. The Ekoi believe in

2255-512: The oldest Bantu groups and were an integral part of the Bantu expansion . By 200 AD, the Ejagham civilization had developed to such an advanced level that gave inspiration to the creation of ingenious forms as exemplified by the Ikom monoliths and Nsibidi script. There was a large and centralized Ejagham kingdom with a capacity for mobilizing its citizenry for its various needs. A strong economy supported by

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2310-469: The people present offerings to the ancestors. The Mgbe and Nnimm societies were for males and females, respectively, in the Ekoi community. The Ekpe(Leopard) Society believed in the story of an old king named Tanze. When he died, he became a fish that was caught by a woman. A man killed the woman, created the Leopard Society, and Tanze became the body of a female drum. This tale raised the symbols of

2365-934: The range of Cushitic speakers. Based on dental evidence, Irish (2016) concluded: Proto-Bantu peoples may have originated in the western region of the Sahara , amid the Kiffian period at Gobero , and may have migrated southward, from the Sahara into various parts of West Africa (e.g., Benin , Cameroon , Ghana , Nigeria , Togo ), as a result of desertification of the Green Sahara in 7000 BCE. From Nigeria and Cameroon, agricultural Proto-Bantu peoples began to migrate , and amid migration, diverged into East Bantu peoples (e.g., Democratic Republic of Congo ) and West Bantu peoples (e.g., Congo, Gabon ) between 2500 BCE and 1200 BCE. Irish (2016) also views Igbo people and Yoruba people as being possibly back-migrated Bantu peoples. Between

2420-460: The region between Cameroon and Nigeria, two main scenarios of the Bantu expansion were hypothesized: an early expansion to Central Africa and a single origin of the dispersal radiating from there, or an early separation into an eastward and a southward wave of dispersal, with one wave moving across the Congo Basin toward East Africa, and another moving south along the African coast and the Congo River system toward Angola. Genetic analysis shows

2475-402: The roaring fish and the leopard as signs from God and so they would be referred to in every Ekoi court. Initiates of Nnimm would be unmarried young girls. They would wear cursive body-painting and material dresses of calabash and shells, as well as leather necklaces. Bones of monkeys were matched with feather headdresses (the single feather at the back of the head was most important, as it was

2530-631: The same language, have not tended to live in complete unison. Living in what is now Southeast Nigeria and Southwest Cameroon, the people were physically divided by British and German colonial holdings in Africa. When a German captain named Von Weiss was killed, the European power took measures to combat the native Ekoi people (1899-1904 German-Ekoi War). However, the response was not uniform; not only were there no pitched battles, but some villages fled instead of fighting back. Moreover, Ekoi people in British-controlled Nigeria did not act to help their ethnic compatriots. The Ejagham, an East Nigerian ethnic group,

2585-450: The same time that the Black Consciousness Movement led by Steve Biko and others were defining "Black" to mean all non-European South Africans (Bantus, Khoisan, Coloureds and Indians ). In modern South Africa, the word's connection to apartheid has become so discredited that it is only used in its original linguistic meaning. Examples of South African usages of "Bantu" include: [REDACTED]  This article incorporates text from

2640-412: The script was taught to them by mermaids. Nsibidi ideograms convey countless concepts. There are over 12 different symbols for love, 7 different symbols for hatred, 7 different symbols for speech, 8 different symbols for mirror, 14 different symbols for a set table, and 6 different symbols for journeys. Symbols that are shaded in usually mean danger or bad fortune, and include ideas of a dead body or

2695-413: The so-called Bantu expansion , comparatively rapid dissemination taking roughly two millennia and dozens of human generations during the 1st millennium BC and the 1st millennium AD. Scientists from the Institut Pasteur and the CNRS, together with a broad international consortium, retraced the migratory routes of the Bantu populations, which were previously a source of debate. The scientists used data from

2750-583: The title Ekoi . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ekoi&oldid=807350331 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Ekoi people The Ekoi in Nigeria are found in Cross River State . The Ekoid languages are spoken around this area, although English (the national language)

2805-399: Was a major center for the Slave Trade as well as trading palm oil. During this time the indigenous culture was completely destroyed and manhunts along with human sacrifice were at an all time high. Ekoi people taken into slavery across the Atlantic were notable in Cuba , where their art, seen in the forms of drums and headdresses, survives to this day. The Ekoi people, while all speaking

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2860-452: Was originally one but is now broken into pieces and is forging for reunification. This refers to the first break away of the other tribes (in Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda, South Africa etc.) that migrated from the historical Bantu . It further refers to the reunification of the Ejagham speaking communities in Ikom LGA, Etung LGA, Quas of the present Calabar and it environs, Ishibor in Ogoja and Southern Cameroons among others. The Ejagham are one of

2915-557: Was said to be coined to represent the word for "people" in loosely reconstructed Proto-Bantu, from the plural noun class prefix *ba- categorizing "people", and the root *ntʊ̀ - "some (entity), any" (e.g. Xhosa umntu "person" abantu "people", Zulu umuntu "person", abantu "people"). There is no native term for the people who speak Bantu languages because they are not an ethnic group . People speaking Bantu languages refer to their languages by ethnic endonyms, which did not have an indigenous concept prior to European contact for

2970-412: Was the first to make skin covered masks and dance in them. The Nigerian and Cameroon regions share similar tribal organizations and traditional masks. Nkwa-mbuk, a mask-wearing society of the Ekoi, performed rituals such as human sacrifices and head hunting. Once a battle was won, the skin of the enemies were taken and made into a mask to proclaim victory. The head and heart are the most significant parts of

3025-449: Was the result of several factors such as a denser population (which led to more specialized divisions of labor, including military power while making emigration more difficult); technological developments in economic activity; and new techniques in the political-spiritual ritualisation of royalty as the source of national strength and health. Examples of such Bantu states include: the Kingdom of Kongo , Anziku Kingdom , Kingdom of Ndongo ,

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