Departure of the Nshie: A North Nsukka Ibo Origin Legend by Austin J. Shelton
The few origin legends or ideas of origin among the Ibo of Northern Nsukka Division in Eastern Nigeria are generally similar and at best are only vague guides to the history of the people.
In most villages it is believed that the ancestral founder was an Ibo man who with his brothers or grown sons moved to the present village location “in the olden days.”
The name of the founder and the father-spirit of perhaps most villages is Eze Ugwu Ehuru although in some cases the founder is mythical; in Imilike the founder is called Nna Ogene – “Father of the Sacred Iron Gong.”
The northern Nsukka villages possess some lineages with Ibo forefathers and other lineages begun after the late nineteenth century Igala conquests and thus originally Igala (for example, Umu’ Attama – “Children of the Lord of the Spirits”)…
The villages of Northern Nsukka were among the latest in Eastern Nigeria to experience contact with the Europeans (within the past forty years), although in the the late nineteenth century they had been conquered by the Igala – now of Kabba Province, Northern Nigeria, living just north and west of Nsukka Division – who established lineages among the Ibo clans, especially the lineages of the attama or shrine priests, so that the conquerors would retain power as the intermediaries between the Ibo people and the village alusi.
In most villages today this Igala heritage has been forgotten, although some Elders in these patrilineages still speak of their Igala forefathers.
The Identity of the Nshie
Except for those few people who claim to be descendant, in Nsukka Division, there are no nshie, although the latter are known and spoken of.
One encounters several clashing opinions, however, in attempting to classify the little people.
The term nshie among Nsukka Ibo refers always to pygmies, dwarfs or midgets.
Among the semi-educated English-speaking Ibo, the term refers to Congolese pygmies who periodically travel throughout West Africa and are said to be dibeas (magicians, herbalists or medicine men) with special powers transcending those of the Ibo dibeas.
There is no external evidence to support this identification.
Some midgets (not pygmies) have appeared as freakish entertainers with high-life bands claiming to be from the Republique du Congo, so it appears from the superficial physique of the midgets and the notion of the nshie held by the semi-educated.
The term nshie can be easily confused among non-Igbo speaking people with nshië meaning poison, and although some etymological relationship might exist, the words at present have different referents.
A highly educated informant, Dr. Bennet Ukeje of Awka Division, Eastern Nigeria, furnished me with a different interpretation.
He said the the name of these people is actually nsie, an Nsukka mispronunciation and misconception of the name of the dwarfish Nri people of the Awka-Onitsha area of Iboland.
When a midget is born among the Ibo of that area, as soon as the dwarfism is certainly established (about the age of seven or eight), the abnormal child is sent to live among the Nri people, who are all [supposedly] makers of medicine.
*Ukpum-Uwana, Nigeria, 29th January 1905. Charles Partridge © Trustees of the British Museum (Af,A156.49)
IGBO HISTORY.TV…GROUP (SINCE 3000BC)
