In the olden days, Ewa Abagi lived at Inkum. She was very rich and was considered to be a most beautiful woman. She made most of her money by trading in palm kernels and camwood, but, as she was so popular wherever she went with the young men of the country, she also made a lot of money out of them, as, if they did not pay her well in advance, she would have nothing to do with them.
She received many offers of marriage, but refused them all, until one day a chief of Insofan named Awor sent a message to her that he wished to make her his wife, as he had heard what a fine woman she was.
Ewa Abagi then sent word back to the chief that she could not marry him just then as she was expecting to bear a son, but that, some time after the child was born, she would go up the river to Insofan and marry him as she had heard that he was rich and was a good man.
The child turned out to be a girl, and shortly after her birth, Ewa Abagi bought a young slave woman called Mossim to look after her baby, while she herself went to the different markets trading.
When the girl baby had become six years old, Ewa Abagi dressed herself and her daughter up in their best clothes, and crossed over the river to Okuni with the slave woman Mossim carrying her load. They then proceeded to walk overland to Insofan.
On reaching the Abum River which is quite close to Insofan, Ewa Abagi went to bathe, and took her little daughter with her, putting down her cloth and beads on the ground. As the river was very shallow, it being the dry season, they walked and waded down to the Cross River.
When she got there, she washed her daughter and then called upon Mossim to scrub her back. The slave woman then came up behind her mistress, and pushed her into the Cross River, where she at once disappeared.
When the little girl, whose name was Essere, saw that her mother had gone, she began to cry, but Mossim said, “Do not cry. You must call me your mother, and I will treat you well. When we get to the town, you must not tell anyone that I am not your mother, or I will punish you severely.”
She then dressed the child and put on the cloth and beads of Ewa Abagi herself, having just tied up her own clothes into a bundle with some stones and thrown them into the Cross River.
Mossim and the child then walked on to Insofan, and, when they got there, the slave woman went to Chief Awor’s house and said, “I am Ewa Abagi whom you wanted to marry, and this (turning to the little girl) is my daughter Essere.” The chief welcomed her, but was not very pleased, as he had expected to see a much finer woman from all the reports he had heard of her beauty.
When the people of Insofan heard that the chief’s new wife had arrived, many of them went to see her, as she was so well known by name. When they saw Mossim, they were not greatly impressed by her looks, and said so quite freely in very plain terms.
Now, one of the young men of the town, who had been down the river trading, knew Ewa Abagi very well indeed, and, when he saw the slave woman, he recognized her as the servant, so he told Chief Awor. The chief said, “Very well, I hear what you say, and will not marry the woman at present. We will wait for a time, and I will make enquiries.”
In the morning Mossim told the girl to go and get water from the spring, and the little girl went off with the water pot on her head. Essere, however, did not go to the spring as she had been told, but went to the place where she had seen the slave woman push her mother into the water. She then sat down and began to cry for her mother.
When Ewa Abagi heard her daughter crying, she came out of the river and talked to her. She then painted her daughter with okukum,[1] and having helped the child with the water pot, she returned to the river, and Essere went home.
When she arrived at the house, Mossim asked her who had painted her with okokum and why she had been so long getting the water from the spring. The child did not answer, so the slave woman said to her, “Don’t you be so long another time, or you will get into trouble.”
The next day Essere went to get the water at the same place. She called for a long time, but her mother did not come out, as she saw a man making tombo in a tree near at hand. At last, however, as she did not like to hear her little daughter crying, Ewa Abagi came out very quickly, helped Essere with the water pot on to her head, and went back again into the river.
The man, who had been watching, saw Ewa Abagi and recognized her. He therefore came down from the tree and went at once to the chief and told him what he had seen.
The chief then told all the young men of the town to go early the next morning to the place where Ewa Abagi had been seen and to try and get her out of the river. He promised them that, if they succeeded in bringing the woman to him, he would hold a big play and “dash” them plenty of tombo and food.
The chief told Essere that, when she went in the morning to get the water, if she wanted to get her mother back, directly she had got the water out of the river she must take the pot back some little distance into the bush.
When the morning came, the little girl went off with her pot, as before, and having filled it with water, carried it back into the bush some little way from the river, and then sat down, and called for her mother to come and help her.
The young men, who had gone to the place before it was light, and who had lined both banks of the Abum river, by the chief’s orders, were all hidden out of sight, and, when Ewa Abagi came out of the water, they immediately surrounded her and caught her before she could get back to the river. They then carried her back to the chief.
The slave woman was then seized, and tied up to a tree, and, when the morning came, the chief charged her with trying to kill her mistress. She was found guilty, and was ordered to be killed as a sacrifice to the water ju-ju.
Mossim was then handed over to the young men who had rescued Ewa Abagi, and they took her to the place where she had pushed her mistress into the river, and, having cut her head off, threw the head and body into the river. This is one of the reasons why slaves are always killed and put into the grave of their master or mistress when they die, as a warning to other slaves not to try to kill their owners.
Author’s note.
There is a firm belief amongst all the natives in the Ikom district that the slaves who are killed and buried with their master will meet him again in the Spirit Land, where the conditions of life will be the same as they were on earth. The master will recognise his slaves and they will work for him. They also believe that, when a chief arrives in the Spirit Land, accompanied by these slaves, carrying the gin cloth, rods, etc., which were placed in the grave, the people of the Spirit Land-will say, “This is a chief coming. Look at his slaves, etc.”
Some years ago a road was being made through an old compound which had tumbled down and disappeared, leaving no trace of any human habitation. The road passed through an old grave of a chief who had been buried in the house, and many things, including rods, bottles of gin and plates, had been put in the grave. The natives who were working on the road were afraid to touch anything in the grave, but a native foreman, who came from another country where they held different beliefs, opened a bottle of gin and drank some of it. When the natives saw that nothing happened to him, they all rushed in and there was a regular scramble for everything.
Told by Abassi of Inkum.—[E.D., 1.6.10.]
Thomas, District Clerk, Inkom, told me this grave incident, and said it happened in his presence some years ago at Calabar, when he was time-keeper in the P.W.D.