FimtvLearn : Kingdom of Warri Inhabitants The menfolk are...

FimtvLearn : Kingdom of Warri

Inhabitants

The menfolk are well built, and similarly the womenfolk are well formed, impressive after the beauty of those countries. All the native - born , both men and women, are marked with three incisions, each cut an inch long, one on the forehead above the nose and one on either side of the eye on the temples, and they may wear their hair short or long,according to their inclination. The inhabitants are in many things more ingenious than the people of

Benin.

Their clothing is like that in Benin, yet they wear also a kind of beautiful fine cotton or silk garment ( as those in Benin dare not do), as large as small bed sheets, which they fasten above the navel with an ingenious knot under the arms.

Each may take as many wives as he likes to have, or as he can come by, and once in a while the King hands out widows.

Government

The King of Ouwerre, although he pays tribute to the King of Benin, governs his land with absolute power not with, and is in alliance with the King of Benin.

The King usually has three great nobles as his councillors to whom certain territories are allotted which they govern in the King’s name with general consent.

The King who reigned in the year 1644 was a Mulatto or half - caste, called Dom Antonio de Mingo by the Portuguese and other Europeans. His father1 was married to a Portuguese girl whom he took with him out of Portugal (since he had been there in person) and by whom he had his son. He always dressed as the Portuguese do, and always wore a sword at his side as other Mulattos do.

Religion

In the matter of religious observance they they are almost the same with the people in Benin, though they make fewer sacrifices of men and animals, but regard such things as atrocities,and the work of the devil,so that these people can be brought to Christianity with a little instruction. Also no ‘Feticeros’ or devil hunters are permitted in that country; people forgive one another readily there, not as in Benin. The inhabitants and the King himself lean towards the Roman religion 2.

There is a church in the city , with an altar and on it a picture of Christ on the Cross with Mary and the Apostles, and beside it two candlesticks. And the negroes enter this church with paternosters in their hands all the while, like true Portuguese people, and they read these as well as other Popish prayers. They appear to be most godly, and can also read and write and are eager for Portuguese books pens, ink, and paper.

Footnote

1.ie Domingos who married a Portuguese noblewoman, a niece of the Condenser da Fries, and who appears at some date after 1620, to have succeeded his father, Sebastian as Olu( Ryder (1960), pp. 7-10, and below, pp. 176-8)

2. Sebastian, who had been converted probably in early 1570s, succeeded as Olu before 1597. The dynasty remained Catholic until 1730s(ibid.,p. 19; see below, pp137-9 and 231)

Dapper, Olfert, 1668. Naukerige Beschrigjvinge see Afrikaensche Gewesten. Amsterdam. French edition - Description de l'Afrique, Amsterdam, 1686. English edition Africa, by J. Ogilby, London, 1670.

Text copied from Victor Wilberforce Post on Nigeria Nostalgia Group.

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