The Yoruba Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa

What It's About

Published in 1894, this is a systematic ethnographic survey of the Yoruba-speaking peoples living along the Slave Coast of West Africa — the coastal region broadly corresponding to modern-day Nigeria, Benin and Togo. Ellis examines religious belief and practice in considerable depth, documenting the Yoruba pantheon, ritual observances, and the roles of priests and diviners. Alongside religion he covers social structure, laws, marriage customs, burial practices and proverbs, and includes vocabulary lists and comparative notes on neighbouring speech communities. The book also gathers myths, folk-tales and ceremonies, making it one of the more comprehensive late-Victorian attempts to document Yoruba oral and religious culture in writing.

Modern readers should be aware that Ellis wrote from within the assumptions of nineteenth-century colonial anthropology. His interpretations are shaped by evolutionary frameworks now long discredited, and his comparative method sometimes forces Yoruba material into ill-fitting Western categories. That said, the primary descriptive content — the vocabulary, the ritual descriptions, the recorded narratives — remains a genuine historical resource for students of West African religion, folklore and linguistics.

About the Author

Alfred Burdon Ellis (1852–1894) was a British army officer who served for many years on the West African coast, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. His postings gave him direct contact with several West African peoples and languages, and he used that experience to produce a series of ethnographic studies during the 1880s and 1890s. He died in 1894, the same year this book was published.