Ikayan aru: Ijo vessels of sacrifice.

I became interested in the Ijo as an NEH intern at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, where my assignments included research on a Kalabari Ijo screen. A year later, when I enrolled at Indiana University, Dr. Sieber confided that he had initially intended to study Kalabari art but changed his mind on the way to the field after learning that Robin Horton had already begun his own work on the Kalabari. Though others expressed doubts about a woman's ability to work in a culture that promotes a male warrior ethos, he encouraged me to go to the Niger Delta and conduct my dissertation research on the arts of the Central Ijo.

I chose to write about sacrificial canoes for this memorial issue partly because Dr. Sieber heard a paper I presented on the topic at the annual African Studies Association meetings in Toronto in 1994. A friend who sat near him reported that he was slapping his knee and chuckling at some of my comments, including one about my informants tiring of questions easily. During the Q&A period, he asked whether I had found any references to ikiyan aru in the literature, so I dug deeper and discovered the two I have mentioned here.

   Ogbaseri has killed all the animals in the animal kingdom
   Ogbaseri has killed all the fish in the fish kingdom
   So war canoe, go to him
   We are tired of dying
   War canoe, go to him

From a song for a sacrificial canoe, Korokorosei, Nigeria

Given their longstanding reliance on watercraft, it is hardly surprising that people living in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria transform their canoes into works of art and employ them in a variety of rituals (see Anderson 2002b). Countless performances incorporate canoes or include segments that pantomime canoeing, and numerous shrines display miniature canoes or paddles. Ceremonial war boats--replete with "bullet-proofing" medicines--turn out for civic and ritual occasions (Fig. 1); their dazzling cousins, festooned with colorful bunting, compete for attention at regattas. Even humble, workaday canoes can convey sacrifices to water spirits. More remarkably, the Delta's most numerous inhabitants, the Ijo, produce canoe effigies, or ikiyan aru (ikiyan = sacrifice, aru = canoe), for use in sacrificial rites (Fig. 2).

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The Ijo, who refer to ikiyan aru as "spiritual war boats," deploy them to cleanse villages, avert epidemics, and keep hostile spirits at bay. Manned by spirit warriors, who may take the form of crudely carved figures equipped with paddles, cutlasses, and guns, ikiyan aru transport their cargo to the spirit world. Despite the simplicity of their forms, the imagery that surrounds them proves to be complex and intriguing. Indeed, these objects and the rites that accompany them are so fundamental to Ijo notions of sacrifice that informants who are asked about ikiyan nearly always respond by speaking about ikiyan aru.

Although sacrificial canoes appear wherever the Ijo have settled from Okitipupa in the west to at least as far as east as the Kalabari region (Richard Freeman and Robin Horton, personal communications, 1991)--I have been able to find only two brief, written references to what must surely be ikiyan aru. Both appear in colonial documents: one in an assessment report on Western Ijo groups in Warri Province written by J. W. C. Rutherford in 1929 and the other in an intelligence report on a Central Ijo clan submitted by J. C. Porter in 1931. Notably, Porter, who covered the area where I conducted most of my research, found the "wooden representations of war canoes" he observed at Oporoma to be more interesting than the contents of a shrine for the clan deity, Boupere, which they protected. (1)

The secrecy that shrouds sacrificial canoes has left many of my own questions unanswered, and, inevitably, I wish I had asked more. Still, I want to bring this fascinating, and quintessentially Ijo, phenomenon to light in hopes of sparking further research and analysis. During two years of field research near the center of the Delta, I conducted numerous inter views with carvers, diviners, shrine priests, and other practitioners, and documented both authentic and commissioned exam pies of the canoe effigy and its associated ritual. Drawing on the data I gathered there, I will consider ikiyan aru as both art and sacrifice. By examining how their symbolism relates to Ijo concepts of space, disease, and the spirit world and by demonstrating their ties to what I have previously identified as a "warrior ethos" (see Anderson 2002a), I hope to show why the Ijo--or at least those who continue to visit shrines and consult diviners--consider these metaphorical war boats to be such an efficacious form of sacrifice. (2)

Defining Sacrifice

The Ijo use the term ikiyan to encore pass everything from an odd assortment of offerings to the spirit world--including dogs, chickens, plantain, cowries, coins, cloth, drum calls, masquerades, and various purification rites--to the resources expended in doctoring or schooling a child. Confounded by this diversity, I turned to the literature on sacrifice, where I found an equally bewildering array of definitions, categories, and theories that, albeit fascinating, proved to be of little help in explaining either the range of objects and actions involved in ikiyan aru or the ends that the rites seek to achieve.

In conformance with Hebraic and Greek notions, most studies of sacrifice have been heavily biased toward blond sacrifice. Over the years, scholars have viewed the latter as a means of communicating between the sacred and profane, proposed that it results from a need to compensate the earth after a shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture, explained it as an attempt to reconcile hunting with totemism, and regarded it as a means of containing violence by confining it to a scapegoat. When scholars have considered bloodless (or victimless) sacrifice, they have typically arranged offerings of food or objects on a hierarchical or evolutionary scale, regarded them in terms of barter, or explained them as surrogates for humans or animals (as, famously, in Nuer rites, where a cucumber can take the place of a cow). Nearly all the items in question end up being immolated, destroyed, or consumed in the process of consecration. Furthermore, though definitions often include averting evil or preventing illness as aims of sacrifice, they typically stress the idea of appeasing the supernatural. (3)

Anthropologists, who have contributed or espoused many of these theories, have been equally vocal in contesting them. Luc de Heusch (1985), for example, has rejected the sacred/profane dichotomy proposed by Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss (1964) as having an Indo-European bias, and has challenged theories that view the sacrificial victim as a scapegoat (see Girard 1979, 1990). Rather, Heusch (1985:215) and a growing number of others, including Marcel Detienne (in Detienne & Vernant 1989) and Maurice Bloch (1992), have questioned the very assumption that sacrifice can be defined cross-culturally; instead, they have stressed the importance of investigating local classifications. As Bloch puts it (1992:42), why should we separate pig sacrifice from other parts of Buid seances if the Buid themselves make no such distinction?

The sweeping, outcome-based definitions that have resulted from these discussions can embrace a wide range of sacrifices. Heusch suggests that "to perform a sacrifice is, primarily, to try to outwit death" (1985:215). Expanding on this notion, Allen Roberts (1995:42) adds that sacrifice "is often performed to restore or insure one's physical and social status, in transaction with divinity." Yet numerous anthropologists continue to equate sacrifice with ritual killing, i.e., "the exchange of a life for LIFE" (Roberts 1995:42). Though Roberts intends this phrase to cover many--not all--instances and understandably focuses on blood sacrifice in a book about animals in African art, others who purport to speak more broadly appear unable to shrug off Eurocentric presumptions. Writing for a recent encyclopedia of cultural anthropology, Jack Glazier (1996:1133) begins promisingly by noting that the variance in cross-cultural manifestations of sacrifice confounds definition, but then he reverts to the timeworn assumptions that have infected the literature by definitively restricting the term to offerings of living beings. Interestingly, Joseph Henniger takes a more liberal view in his entry for a comparable volume on religion by going so far as to include incense and tobacco smoke--if not the masquerades and drum calls that appear in Ijo inventories--on a list of bloodless offerings (1987:344, 346).

Some African Notions of Sacrifice

Determining how others define sacrifice proves tricky, because scholars steeped in traditional European views tend to super-impose their own prejudices. Thus, we must ask whether Abdellah Hammoudi (1993), whose absorbing study of a Muslim feast looks at masquerade and blood sacrifice as two parts of the same ritual process, has considered whether the masquerade itself might be a form of sacrifice. Anita Jacobson-Widding (1979:149-51) broadens the spectrum by noting that in the Lower Congo region, minkisi power objects accept sacrifices of everything from grains of maize, palm wine, and peanuts to gunpowder and small pieces of cloth; nevertheless, we might question her characterization of dancing and shooting as activities that contribute to the "character of the tribute." Might they not be sacrifices themselves? In a bold statement that challenges the literature more radically, she finds that scholars have not only ignored bloodless sacrifices but have wrongly assumed blood to be the point of sacrificing animals. For the Kongo, she objects, "the hen constitutes the tribute rather than the blood."

The beliefs of two neighboring groups provide parallels to Ijo concepts, including the victimless sacrifices listed at the beginning of the previous section. Both fit the loose definition of sacrifice as a rite performed to achieve a desirable outcome, and encompass a wide range of possibilities. J. O. Awolalu (1973, 1979), a Yoruba author, acknowledges the link between Ifa divination--a theoretical solution to a problem put before a diviner--and sacrifice--a practical response to the directive of an oracle. An Ijo diviner asked about sacrifice stated the same idea more simply when she responded, "Everything I do is ikiyan." Yoruba sacrifice can be performed either to change things or to keep and improve on good fortune; similarly, Ijo living near the center of the Delta define ikiyan as anything that is done to cleanse, to clear one's head, or to unblock something that is blocked (whether the birth of a child or material success). (4) Building on Awolalu's definition, Henry John Drewal and Margaret Thompson Drewal (1990:6) assert, "Art is sacrifice and artistic displays carry the sacred power to bring things into existence." The costly and time-consuming construction of an elaborate Igbo mbari house provides a textbook example of art in its role as sacrifice (see Cole 1982; Okparocha 1976).

In addition to considering its purpose, two writers--one Yoruba and the other Igbo--provide further insights by distinguishing between different types of sacrifice. S. A. Adewale (1988:93) notes that the Yoruba perform sacrifices both as a form of worship (e-bo) and as a mode of appeasement or propitiation (etutu) "that cools that which is hot or that which is disastrous or catastrophic," such as an outbreak of smallpox. As we shall see, the latter best describes sacrificial canoes, though they function primarily by driving off rather than by placating evil spirits and influences, with a nod to G. T. Basden (1938), the Igbo author Francis A. (later Cardinal) Arinze (1970:48-61) objects to schema that classify sacrifices simply as animate or inanimate. He argues that the Igbo differentiate between joyful and joyless sacrifices according to whether the intended recipient is a good spirit or an evil one, in which case the message is "Please leave us alone!" (Intriguingly, the person who carries such a sacrifice sometimes dresses for war and wields a knife.) Both the Ibibio (Justin 1990:90) and the Ijo draw similar distinctions: in addition to offering good food (e.g., cassava meal with palm oil and cooked plantain) to good spirits, and bad food (e.g., cassava meal without palm oil and with raw plantain) to evil spirits, Ijo officiants may throw offerings to bad spirits as far from their bodies as possible to avoid contamination, Ikiyan aru involve similar concepts.

Ijo Concepts of Pollution and Disease

The Ijo set their ritual calendar according to the rise and fall of the Niger River and associate its floodwaters with pollution. They consider the lunar month that follows the cresting of the floods in late October, known as sei ogonowei, or "the bad month" (sei meaning bad, evil, wicked, feces), to be a dangerous period when spirits abandon their shrines, leaving communities vulnerable to malevolent forces. The festivities that follow sei ogonowei mark the end of one year and the beginning of a new one: communities must stage purification rites before residents can farm the newly deposited alluvial soil; those who serve spirits must refresh their shrines in preparation for their return. Despite these precautions, people identify the dry sea son that follows as the time when epidemics strike and evil spirits invade their villages. Consequently, most sacrificial canoes appear in the weeks and months after sei ogonowei.

The study of ikiyan aru also calls for an investigation of Ijo concepts of epidemic disease. These prove difficult to pin down, because people tend to defer questions about the supernatural to diviners, who are notoriously evasive. Whereas others may refuse to answer questions to avoid the wrath of vengeful spirits or the heated arguments that often erupt in this highly contentious culture, diviners may do so in part because they wish to project an aura of mystery about their activities. Nevertheless, certain widely shared concepts emerged during the course of my research.

In this impoverished region, where medical facilities are at best rudimentary and often nonexistent, people frequently die of afflictions that would be considered minor in the industrialized world. The toll exacted by smallpox and other epidemic diseases must have been extremely high in the past, and cholera and influenza continue to claim lives. Not surprisingly, residents may turn to the spirit world for help. Some call on the Ijo creator, Wonyinghi, or "Our Mother," although she, like most of her African counterparts, ordinarily remains detached from human affairs.

Shrines dedicated to Wonyinghi still survive in at least two Central Ijo villages, and I attended a festival held for her at a town in Bassan clan in 1979 (Fig. 3). There, her priest informed me that Wonyinghi found epidemics to be unreasonably harsh, so she went before a court in the spirit world, arguing that people should die one by one, according to the agreement each individual seals with her before birth, and not many at one time, as they do in epidemics. After winning her case, she made people promise to stage a yearly festival for her, during which they would use medicines from the pot in her shrine to "spoil," or neutralize, the power of epidemics, and a small broom to sweep the town clean. Another long-abandoned shrine for her in a nearby community mounted an ikiyan aru for the same reasons.

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Of the numerous people I interviewed about ikiyan aru, only one offered a more complete explanation of how epidemics and other unseen dangers strike, but it seems to correspond with the larger worldview as well as with the symbolism of the canoes. In response to my questions about the weapon-wielding figures that appeared inside an ikiyan aru, its acting priest explained: "We believe that if sickness is coming, it arrives in a supernatural war boat carrying evil spirits; they jump into the town, spreading sickness and other things. We put the images in the canoe to fight against these invisible spirits, and tell them to go back."

Ikiyan Aru

Although people agree about the aims of ikiyan aru, these spirit canoes can take many different forms. In Olodiama clan, where I conducted the majority of my research, people distinguish between smaller examples, which usually measure about one and-a-half to two feet in length (Fig. 4), and larger ones, known as opu (or "great") ikiyan (Fig. 5), which may be the size of real canoes. (5) Worn-out canoes can also serve the purpose. Both types of ikiyan aru function as containers for offerings of food, including plantain, palm fruit, egg, cassava meal, alligator pepper, and coconut; beverages, such as palm wine, which is often contained in a snail-shell vessel; and objects, like native chalk and coins. Some also carry rough-hewn figures, as noted earlier, or natural objects like termite mounds and vines.

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Supplicants can implement ikiyan aru on different occasions and in various ways. For reasons I have already mentioned, most appear in annual purification rites or shrine renewals, but diviners can call for them whenever they deem them expedient. One or more effigies can be dispatched secretly in the dead of night or paraded openly in theatrical daytime productions that incorporate drumming, dancing, divination, and possession. They may be mounted on forked sticks at the waterside, staked at the edge of the bush, or positioned in front of shrines. Alternatively, bearers can set them into the river to float downstream.

When mounted on stakes, ikiyan aru play a defensive role, like those Porter (1931:13) observed at Bopere's [Boupere's] shrine in Oporoma: "poised at the brink of the river and supported some feet from the ground ... ranged at likely points around the shrine shed on the riverside and ... inclined towards the water ready to launch into battle." (6) When borne from one cud of town to the other, they collect pollution along with offerings. (7) Bearers can emphasize the cleansing role of the ritual canoes by dipping them into the river to wash away the filth they have accumulated or by placing them there to be swept away by the ebb tide (Figs. 6, 7). Songs and invocations explicitly command that "All sicknesses should enter this canoe" and that "All evil should flow off to the sea." In one of many variations on these themes, followers of Biebou, a spirit who controls a section of the forest opposite Korokorosei, take advantage of the vessels' dual abilities to protect and cleanse by dispatching three opu ikiyan, "one big, one bigger, and one biggest." They mount the smaller ones above and below the town to serve as sentinels and set the largest one into the river to carry pollution away.

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Ikiyan Aru as War Canoes

Ikiyan aru make use of the same military tactics the Ijo once called on when setting off to war (see Anderson 2002a). In addition to flaunting figures of armed warriors, some fly battle flags, both as symbols of war and as charms against disease and other evils. Many display young palm fronds (Fig. 8), whose reddish color connotes warfare and danger. Like fronds on real war canoes, they purportedly prevent bullets from striking, and protect the occupants from other, unseen, but equally deadly, dangers. (Even now, people sometimes place palm fronds over the motor of a boat carrying a corpse to another area for burial, for without them the body can "spoil.") Spiritual war boats carry additional medicines to empower and protect them, as do many of the worldly variety. Residents of a town in Oiyakiri clan maintain, for example, that the smoke-filled pot inside their ikiyan aru (Fig. 9) emits an odor so strong that it drives sickness away. (8) Some take the additional precaution of darkening their canoes with soot, a strategy aimed at avoiding detection when staging a nocturnal raid. Indeed, because the sacrificial canoes are setting off to war, people must observe certain prohibitions when dealing with them. A priest clearly understated the dangers they pose to participants and onlookers when he warned, "If you cross in front (of ikiyan aru), troubles will beset you."

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The songs that accompany sacrificial canoes underscore their defensive role. The lyrics of a song sung for one ikiyan aru--"My boat is at the front, my boat is at the back"--warn that sacrificial canoes positioned above and below the town will defend it from attack. Two sung for the smoke-emitting canoe mentioned above refer to the community of Umbugbologbene as the "town of the bay"; this term alludes to the Ijo preference for siting towns on bends in the river to gain an advantage in spotting enemy war canoes. One song mentions a widespread prohibition against having intercourse with a woman before going into battle; men must abstain from sex for as long as a week before performing ikiyan aru rites. The other recalls how the "men of the bay" used to terrorize people.

Parallels in Ijo Art and Ritual

The "warrior ethos" informs much of Ijo art and ritual, but shrines for bush spirits and the rites performed to address the types of problems they inflict on people provide the clearest parallels to the kind of military symbolism found in ikiyan aru (see Anderson 2002a). The idea of beating back spirits appears in numerous rituals, including one known as bouyou seimo ("to spoil the bush people"), and a diviner explicitly compared conducting another called bou gbee ("to pay back the bush") to going to war. However, these rites differ from ikiyan aru by addressing problems that affect a specific person or, less often, a group of persons (e.g., friends who have strayed into a forbidden part of the forest, incurring the wrath of the spirits who reside there).

The carvings placed inside sacrificial canoes beg comparison with images of enshrined bush spirits: the latter often carry weapons, wear "bulletproofing" medicines, and sport war paint, just as Ijo warriors once did when setting off to battle (Fig. 10). In addition, shrines for bush spirits often contain war medicines, and their followers typically sing war songs in their honor. However, images and shrines generally originate when spirits approach people, calling on personal relationships to demand acknowledgment; though ikiyan aru can originate in a similar fashion and may be empowered by established shrines, the figures inside them often appear to be anonymous warriors drafted for battle, Informants even tend to be uncertain whether they represent water or bush spirits, although people generally consider the two to be quite different in everything from appearance to temperament and tastes. The rudimentary figures (Fig. 11) more closely resemble those used in rites (feun duwei, or "air dead") performed when a person who was hastily buried at the waterside due to an "irregular" death (as a witch, suicide, or victim of an accident, drowning, etc.) insists on a proper funeral. Burial calls for a temporary surrogate for the corpse rather than more lasting embodiment in a shrine, and a one-time send-off instead of the regular attentions that nature spirits require. Likewise, when preparing an ikiyan aru, carvers choose the pliant wood of the umbrella tree (akpowei), not because it is durable but because it floats.

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Many other rituals share features with ikiyan aru, mad those that address similar problems tend to function on similar principles. Although the visual resemblance between heavily trimmed opu ikiyan and raffia masks may be largely coincidental, some towns employ such a masks in annual purification rites to drive out malevolent spirits and sweep away pollution (Fig. 12). In other instances, before the alluvial soil can be farmed, women must process along the main thoroughfare at night, carrying burning sticks and singing, "Bad sickness, leave this town." They end by throwing their torches into the river to be washed downstream. A variation, no longer performed in the area, involved d ragging a sheep through town, then throwing it into the river with other sacrifices. These rites, like ikiyan aru, follow the theory that the tidal waters that reassert themselves at the start of the dry season can wash away the pollution left behind by the muddy floodwaters. Many other, more idiosyncratic, rites undoubtedly echo the aggressive response to unseen threats that sacrificial canoes exemplify. Residents of Ikebiri, for example, report that the former priest of a mask called Uguberi, or "Hammerhead shark," could avert epidemics simply by running through town, waving a machete and yelling, "Sickness is coming and I am going to drive it away."

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Some ritual devices also present parallels to ikiyan aru. The most common variation of zibe bari, the rite performed to renegotiate an unfortunate destiny (determined by a contract each individual seals with the Creator before birth) involves the use of a basket mounted on a pole (Fig. 13). Acting on instructions from spirits, the diviner places items like leaves, eggs, alligator peppers, and chickens into the basket. Encouraged by drumming, singing, and dancing, the supplicant becomes possessed and moves about, sometimes even swimming across a river while holding the basket aloft. Some or all of the offerings may spill out before spirits guide hint or her to pin it into the ground at a certain spot. The Ijo clearly make the connection in this case, for one of the songs sung for a sacrificial canoe mounted in Korokorosei refers to the zibe bari basket by the general term for sacrifice, ikiyan.

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Ikiyan aru can also echo cane divination ladders and basketry coffins; all three can answer questions addressed to the super-natural by spinning around or tipping up and down. (9) When an interrogator asks the spirits if they are ready to perform the rites, the canoe must nod affirmatively (Fig. 14). It may also be quizzed about matters that concern the community. Interestingly, some Ijo diviners work by interpreting the movements of real canoes. In one shrine renewal I witnessed, the priest rode a divination ladder into the arena, prompting comparison with the canoe as a worldly vehicle (Fig. 15).

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As vessels loaded with food, ikiyan aru also suggest the small tables (ekpekpe) that prudent Ijo set up outside their homes to display offerings of food and drink (Fig. 16). These comestibles are intended to satisfy evil spirits who happen by so they will leave without causing trouble. People sometimes compare them to the sort of hospitality routinely offered to human visitors. (10) In contrast, informants offer two explanations for the food deposited inside ikiyan aru: it sustains the friendly spirits who man the canoe and persuades hostile ones to stay away. Although ekpekpe, like ikiyan aru, may be stationed in front of shrines or at the edge of town, the latter's association with the dry season and clear identification with warfare distinguishes them from the former.

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Documenting Ikiyan Aru

Nowadays most Delta residents--including some shrine worshippers--profess to be Christian, and the growing popularity of iconoclastic sects has limited production of ikiyan aru. They must have been quite common in the past, however, for one town reportedly had four great ikiyan: one held to mark the end of the year, two staged as part of shrine renewals for bush spirits, and another mounted to honor the clan war god. Though none have been performed there since about 1960, other communities still stage similar rites. Unfortunately--at least from a fieldwork perspective--most prohibit outsiders from seeing them. Some even prevent residents who have traveled from returning until nightfall of the day following their implementation.

During my first visit to the area in the late 1970s, I saw an opu ikiyan when I happened to visit a town in the saltwater zone during its year-end festival; however, I was not allowed to go near it or even to ask questions about it. When I returned in the early 1990s, I saw several of the smaller sacrificial canoes stationed along Ikebiri Creek near my base at Korokorosei in Olodiama clan. Two very different types of events had led to their deployment. In January 1992 a young woman and several children died of what people (in the absence of trained specialists) identified as cholera. One evening, soon after the deaths occurred, the town crier announced that no one should leave town the next day, because a group of women planned to mount a ritual during the night. This prohibition holds whenever significant rites are performed; dangerous spirits, alerted by drums, are thought to be roaming the forests, ready to attack and even kill anyone they encounter. Two days later, my assistant took it upon himself to identify and question the diviner who had led the expedition. Although he spent hours plying her with local gin, she would only disclose that the party had performed a sacrifice and had "sunk it in the river." A day or two later, we spotted an ikiyan aru (Fig. 17) mounted upriver from the town, near the place where the local creek branches off from a larger arm of the Niger--the closest thing to a crossroads in a riverain area, and similarly associated with danger (see Anderson forthcoming). Later we noticed several others above and below the town, apparently prompted by the same events.

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In the weeks that followed, sacrificial canoes connected with Eleke, a powerful water spirit, joined the first group (Fig. 18). After learning that Eleke had been punishing a criminal by killing off his relatives, members of the afflicted family had come to sponsor the costly three-day performance necessary to prevent further deaths. A canoe carrying two small ikiyan aru set out openly on the evening preceding Eleke's first appearance. Although they would not allow me to accompany the expedition, shrine members explained that drums would alert spirits that Eleke was about to perform, but not all of them would be welcome to attend. The ikiyan aru would not only keep evil spirits from entering the town but also prevent them from disrupting the performance of the masquerade, itself an extensive ikiyan that involves a variety of sacrifices.

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Aside from these limited experiences, most of the information I collected came from numerous interviews with practitioners and a series of demonstrations I commissioned in Olodiama and Oiyakiri clans. Ijo informants, who tend to tire of questions easily and prefer demonstration to analysis, had suggested tiffs approach. Though hardly "authentic," such events still involve a degree of caution and impose inconvenient sanctions, for, as with Eleke, the songs, drumming, and invocations can attract volatile spirits. One bush spirit stubbornly refused to consent to allow shrine members to perform the rites when they consulted him repeatedly through divination. Consequently, his priest could not reveal the contents of the sacrificial canoes that the rite involved, or even sing the songs for them, because everyone in the vicinity would have to leave the bush, resulting in a shortage of fresh food. A leader of the Korokorosei shrine community agreed to let me hear the songs for the "New Year" ikiyan aru only if I sponsored a demonstration of the rite. The town had abandoned it in the 1950s because residents--who were primarily Christian by that time--had complained bitterly about the disruptions it caused.

An Opu Ikiyan Performance

Ikiyan aru originate in the same manner as most Ijo shrines and performances, including funerary rites and masquerades: spirits communicate instructions through diviners or convey them to ordinary people by appearing to them in dreams, approaching them when they travel outside their villages, or abducting them. Because spirits may specify everything from the size, contents, and ultimate destination of the vessel (or vessels) to the songs, invocations, and dance steps to be included in the performance, each ikiyan aru is distinctive. Moreover, every rendition is different, for participants can improvise as long as they execute the required elements. For example, bearers can move their canoes about the village, spinning around, greeting people, or demanding drink; and members of their entourage can add songs or introduce new ones. These contributions "sweeten" the performance, or make it more interesting, for spirits are believed to appreciate the artistic execution of ritual as much as humans do. The unpredictability of possession adds another layer of drama to the occasion.

The most extensive reenactment I documented was the one staged in Olugbobiri in 1992. Because this ceremony, like numerous others, is off Limits to outsiders, I would not have been able to see a zeal performance. Opu (or Great) Ikiyan, the name given to this particular opu ikiyan, draws on a sacred part of the forest called Boupere (Lord of the Forest), after a spirit of the same name. A powerful bush spirit called Oguaran, who appears in the famous Ozidi saga, also inhabits that forest. (Clark Bekederemo [1991:99-127] refers to him as "Ogueren," a warlord with twenty heads and twenty feet.) Oguaran showed his original priest, Numa, how to prepare the canoe; it is Oguaran who animates the canoe and empowers it to combat epidemics and other types of evil. Following Numa's death in 1936, his successor took over as priest, but he died in 1970 without revealing the herbal medicines necessary to invoke Oguaran. Nevertheless, townspeople had performed the rites as recently as 1985, the year before its last bearer died. (11)

The canoe incorporates medicines from Boupere as well as several natural objects from that bush, all of which are believed to be bush spirits. These include a length of vine widely known as Peleghe-dighe, or "The Uncuttable Rope," and distinctively shaped termite mounds named Ekabu (or Ekebu), and Kinrinwan, which look vaguely anthropomorphic. Diviners and priests call on all three spirits when pouring libations for the bush, and one or more termite mounds appeared in several of the ikiyan aru I sponsored. No one could (or would) tell me what purpose the vine serves, but it undoubtedly has supernatural properties, for people are forbidden to cut it. Some say it can transform itself into a python, a snake venerated by many Ijo and considered particularly sacred by the people of Olugbobiri. (12) Rumor holds it to be a potent medicine when used in charms.

The Ijo also endow Ekabu and Kinrinwan with special powers. Some claim to hear Ekabu calling "Where is my knife, where is my knife?" during intense storms, and in one performance I witnessed, his cap had to be broken off before the canoe was set in the river to prevent heavy rain from falling. (13) A shrine I visited in Oiyakiri clan invokes Ekabu's help in healing (Fig. 19); the organizers of Opu Ikiyan supplied him with an unripe palm nut to crack, chew, and spit out against epidemics. Kinrinwan's combative nature and short, bulky build--which is ideally suited to the sport of wrestling--probably account for his inclusion in many ikiyan aru. Some wrestlers claim him as a patron, and warriors might well have done so in the past. Diviners may tell a champion who suddenly struggles against his opponents or suffers a serious illness that Kinrinwan is demanding sacrifices. In addition, two live birds were suspended from the canoe, recalling a widespread form of sacrifice in which officiants tie a small chick and a bunch of plantain to a stake to satisfy the appetites of potentially troublesome spirits, much as the ekpekpe tables described earlier were laden with comestibles.

[FIGURE 19 OMITTED]

Preparations for the performance take place on the outskirts of town. I was not allowed to witness them, but was told that libations are poured at the edge of the forest and that Oguaran causes the canoe to sway on the ground when followers sing songs for Boupere. Herbal medicines are applied to the bearers' eyes to induce contact with the spirit world before they raise the canoe to their shoulders and enter town. A man, reddened with camwood to signify his heightened ritual state, represents Boupere (Fig. 20). Carrying a medicinal root in one hand and holding another in his mouth, he leads the opu ikiyan (Fig. 21) back and forth between the bush and the river--one of the principal axes of Ijo ritual. When the procession reaches the water-side, he blows medicine out over the river, then calls out, "If anyone thinks evil against the town, send it back to them." The third time (the number 3 is considered auspicious), he jumps into the water to wash himself. The ikiyan party then enters the main thoroughfare and proceeds from one end of town to the other, following the second common avenue of Ijo ritual.

[FIGURES 20-21 OMITTED]

This particular opu ikiyan represents a canoe bearing a corpse, so drums beat funerary rhythms at each of three stops it makes on its journey through town. At the first, the arena for opuaduwei, or important ancestors, they perform a small drama. A widow, who is played by a male (Fig. 22), rolls on the ground as if in mourning while another woman consoles her. An elderly female assumes the second role because women believe their husbands will die if they touch someone who has recently been widowed. After another participant brings her palm wine, the bearers raise the canoe again.

[FIGURE 22 OMITTED]

At the other stops, drums beat, people present offerings (Fig. 23), and an interrogator questions the canoe to determine whether Oguaran foresees sickness or death affecting anyone. The bearers occasionally stop to greet people and ask for refreshments as they move through town (Fig. 24). When they reach the end of the thoroughfare, the public part of the performance ends. The principal participants ferry the ikiyan aru by canoe to a spot above the town, where they mount it on forked sticks.

[FIGURES 23-24 OMITTED]

Two Stories about Ikiyan Aru

Two stories I collected offer some tantalizing possibilities for interpreting the deeper meaning of ikiyan aru. The first involves a spirit whose image incorporates a sacrificial canoe. It begins in Ado (Benin), where residents consulted a diviner about an alarming number of deaths. He instructed them to prepare an ikiyan aru but cautioned that the person who carried it into the bush would never return. Lacking a volunteer, the townspeople decided to trick a man named Koroboazo into carrying it. They approached him as he was returning from the bush--before his wife could warn him of the danger--placed it on his head, and marched behind him singing and drumming until they came to the edge of town. (14) Still hearing the music, Koroboazo continued on, thinking the townspeople were following him. The spirits led him deeper and deeper into the forest, where he turned into a bush spirit named Edisibowei. He roamed about the Delta until he reached a section of the Ikebiri forest known as Dirimobou, where the presiding spirit overpowered and enslaved him. He continued to terrorize people who entered Dirimobou before approaching a great hunter to establish a shrine for him, an event said to have taken place in 1928.

Edisibowei's figure (Fig. 25), like those of numerous other bush spirits, portrays him as a proud warrior. Two smaller figures, armed with guns, man the miniature war canoe, or ikiyan aru, he supports on his head: "Black magic will not hurt me" loads his gun; "Diviner from Ufe" uses his weapon to drum out messages to Edisibowei, who is deaf. (Being enslaved or disabled makes bush spirits irritable, enhancing their reputation as fearsome foes and powerful allies.) The figures that flank him reinforce an impression of barely contained aggression. Although Christian iconoclasts destroyed Edisibowei's shrine in 1979, people are still advised to run for cover if they hear pounding noises or a kingfisher's call when working in Dirimobou, for these sounds might signal his approach.

[FIGURE 25 OMITTED]

The lyrics of a song sung for the Korokorosei ikiyan aru, which appear at the beginning of this article, encapsulate the second story. Like the first, it provides a slightly different point of view than I was able to elicit from informants. According to storytellers, Ogbaseri was a great hunter who always returned from the bush with many animals. Tired of his rapacious behavior, spirits sent a delegation of monkeys to surprise him while he was hunting. Hearing his name called, Ogbaseri was amazed that animals had spoken to him in his own language. As he stood transfixed, the monkeys threw an ikiyan aru at him and ran away. He returned home only to die shortly after telling people about the incident. The story closes with the ominous words "No one ever learned what the spirits had put inside it," suggesting that the canoe contained lethal charms.

The Edisibowei story certainly appears to associate an ikiyan aru with a human scapegoat, but it seems odd that none of the informants I interviewed about sacrificial canoes linked the two ideas. I do not believe that they would shy away from mentioning human sacrifice; the Ijo talk freely about killing people for their clan war gods, and rumors persist that greedy multinational oil companies sacrifice people to garner the enormous profits they accrue by exploiting the Delta's rich petroleum reserves. (15) (I have only come across the idea of a man being transformed into a spirit in one other case, and that concerned a legendary, but apparently real, sociopath whose fellow townspeople viewed him as a menace to society and thus assassinated rather than sacrificed him; see Anderson 2002a:108.) Theories that link totemism and hunting with sacrifice would seem to bear directly on the Ogbaseri story, but it also provides a metaphorical explanation for the way epidemics exceed socially acceptable limits by claiming too many human lives in one stroke. As the case brought by the creator god Wonyinghi shows, the Ijo find this to be an unnatural situation, one that calls for extraordinary measures.

Whether mounted on sticks or set adrift in rivers, ikiyan aru challenge preconceived ideas about sacrificial offerings. Their symbolism does not generally support theories that trace the origin of sacrifice to scapegoating, although the story of Edisibowei does hint at such practices, nor do theories that interpret objects as substitutes for human or animal victims satisfactorily explain the use of miniature war boats. (The use of effigies to stand in for a war party composed of spirits is quite different from the type of substitution that these theories address.) Although ikiyan aru, particularly the larger type, can involve blood sacrifices--like the birds attached to the Olugbobiri example or a chicken provided for a generic one I commissioned--these do not appear to be central or even essential to their function. As in the case of the Kongo hen, they--not their blood--would seem to constitute the sacrifice.

Because neither the effigies nor their contents have much aesthetic merit, intrinsic value, or economic significance, ikiyan aru also confound theories that arrange offerings on a hierarchical scale with human sacrifice at the top. The neighboring Igbo reportedly saw epidemics as presenting such a threat that they once sacrificed human lives to avert them (Arinze 1970:90, citing Jordan n.d.:138); although, as already noted, the Ijo acknowledge human sacrifice in other contexts, they prefer to counter epidemics with "spiritual war boats." This solution seems appropriate for a culture in which children learn to retaliate for the slightest insults, and minor disagreements led adults into warfare in the not-so-distant past.

Although they can be visually stunning when loaded with offerings, embellished with medicines, and paraded about in dramatic, multimedia displays, ikiyan aru defy notions of art that emphasize the aesthetics of the object. Made of soft wood and exposed to the elements, the vessels are allowed to deteriorate, much like the magnificent mbari houses built by the Igbo. Rather than being immolated, eaten, burned, or otherwise destroyed, however, the effigies often last much longer than the rites performed to launch them, especially when staked as sentinels in front of shrines or on the edge of the bush, where they are less subject to flooding than those stationed on riverbanks. Ikiyan aru thus occupy a middle ground between shrine sculpture and ephemeral offerings like libations, food, music, and dance.

The "artistic" aspects of the rites that surround ikiyan aru--particularly the larger opu ikiyan--satisfy spirits, for they, like people, enjoy a bit of theater. Nevertheless, the rites do not function simply, or even primarily, by appeasing the spirits' appetites for food and entertainment, for even small, unadorned examples, deployed secretly in the dead of night, can be efficacious. Rather, a unique combination of attributes accounts for their prominence in Ijo sacrificial rites. As vehicles, they can mediate between the physical and spiritual realms. As vessels, they not only invite offerings but also carry off pollution. Most important, as war canoes employed in what Meyer Fortes (1987:297-98) termed "rituals of defense," they can fend off malevolent invaders. These simple vessels manage to radiate power by visibly demonstrating a community's spiritual resources and its readiness to do battle to protect its well-being and, ultimately, to ensure its survival.

[This article was accepted for publication in November 2802]

(1.) Rutherford (1929) reported seeing "altars shaped like canoes for the casual offerings which are a feature of the riverbank."

(2.) A Kress Doctoral Dissertation Grant sponsored my initial field research in 1978-79 and a Fulbright Hayes Faculty Research Fellowship supported an additional year of research in 1991-92. A Smithsonian Institution Short Term Visitor's Grant funded research on sacrifice in Washington, D.C., in 1995.

(3.) Drawing on Evans-Pritchard, Levi-Strauss (1962) uses the Nuer example to illustrate the principle of substitution.

The Literature on sacrifice is vast. Numerous authors have dedicated entire books to the subject, and nearly every general book on culture or religion--from a classic tome on social anthropology (Beattie 1964) to a recent volume devoted to issues in religious studies (Tyler 1998)--addresses it. In addition to the encyclopedias cited in the text, I have found overviews provided by a number of authors to be helpful in untangling competing theories. M. F. C. Bourdillon provides an extensive overview of both theological and anthropological approaches In a volume he co-edited with Meyer Fortes (1980). Beattie's essay in that volume discusses anthropological theories in addition to proposing a fourfold classification. Jill Robbins (1998:288 91), who is primarily concerned with Judeo-Christian practices, devotes a section of her entry in Tyler's volume on religion to the anthropological literature on sacrifice. Allen Roberts provides a more concise and helpful summary of the debates surrounding sacrifice (1995:42-43).

Because anthropological theory bears most directly on this topic, I should mention W. Robertson Smith (1894) as one of the most basic references In addition to those I have listed. Also notable is a provocative study edited by two scholars of Greek religion, Walter Burkert and Jonathan Z. Smith and the literary critic and social theorist Rene Girard (1987), which considers sacrifice as a violent act critical to social formation.

(4.) Alagoa (1968:21) describes ikiyan more narrowly as "some object into which all the evils within a community have been ritually transferred. This object is then taken out of the community and is usually placed in a section of the river reserved for it until it is replaced by another ikiyan in due time." He goes on to suggest that the term can cover an entire festival.

(5.) Carvers rough out the form in the same manner used for producing real canoes, but do not apply fire to bend out their sides A research assistant informed me that relatively small canoes can serve as opu ikiyan if they involve extensive offerings.

(6.) Though Porter could not determine whether the ikiyan aru he observed were meant to tight the clan deity or defend him, the spirit's followers clearly intended them to protect the shrine from malevolent forces,

(7.) Nowadays performances often skip the part that takes place in the village, for fear that witches might insert charms that will harm or kill townspeople Beliefs in witches, introduced around 1950 [P. Leis 1962:55; N. Leis 1964:202), have intensified in recent years.

(8.) Robin Horton (personal communication, 1991) told me that Kalabari Ijo ikiyan aru always have smoldering fires, which can actually burn through the canoes and scorch the skin of their bearers.

(9.) The movements of these devices sometimes seem to echo those of a canoe floating on the water; although this may not be a conscious form of imitation, I have heard certain dance steps performed in masquerades Interpreted in this fashion.

(10.) These altars appear to be particularly useful during thunderstorms and performances of powerful masquerades, for both attract spirit visitors.

(11.) That occasion was unusual, because a man who had spoiled a previous performance by questioning its efficacy later became sick and was told by diviners that he must sponsor another or he would not recover. People are still very familiar with the visual appearance of the canoe as well as the songs and other elements. The performance could be revived if and when the spirit chooses to reveal the medicines to a new priest.

(12.) Israel Kigibie, a Christian Korokorosei schoolteacher and my research assistant in 1978-79, tested a widespread prohibition by eating python meat. After his death in 1990, when he would have been about fifty, rumors circulated that this experiment had cost him his life. The fact that his mother hailed from Olugbobiri was seen as compounding his offense.

(13.) In an interview following the Olugbobiri performance, the organizer claimed that Kinrinwan took the form of a "capped" termite mound and that Ekabu had a pointed shape, but others told me just the opposite, and I believe them to be correct. Some, however, identify Ekabu as a female who supports Kinrinwan. The priest of the Ekabu shrine I visited identified him as a male with a cap that keeps rain from touching his body. In addition to an appropriately shaped termite mound, the shrine includes medicine pots for use in treating children who suffer from chickenpox, high fever, and other ailments. The priest pours libations and invokes Ekabu to heal family members and other people who approach him for help.

(14.) According to another version, the power of the oba of Benin was so great that the wife could not tell her husband what was in store for him, but managed to feed him before he set out to perform the sacrifice.

(15.) I had been told that bodies occasionally float by on the rivers, and one day I was called to see the headless body of a woman as it passed by the town. People informed me that it was obviously a sacrifice made by Shell Oil or one of the other oil companies that do business in the area--I was assured that no one could make so much money without sacrificing human lives. This puts an interesting twist on the idea that the transition from one way of life creates the sort of stress that calls for sacrifice.

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Martha Anderson earned a master's degree in art history at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts and completed her Ph.D. at Indiana University. She has conducted fieldwork among the Ijo in the Niger Delta and is now a professor at Alfred University.