The Relationship between Early Forms of Literacy in Old Calabar and Inherited Manuscripts of the Cuban Abakuá Society

Oral tradition has long been the main engine of cultural transmission in West Africa, but for several centuries, literacy in many forms has played an important if secondary role. The Cross River area of Nigeria and Cameroon, for example, is famous for its old and indigenous nsìbìdì scripts or pictograms, as well as for the Èfìk elites of the Atlantic port of Calabar who became proficient in alphabetic English in the 1700s. Here, Miller explores the influence of forced migrants from this region who entered Havana and Matanzas, Cuba, on the production of manuscripts in the Spanish colony from the early 1800s. These texts contain historical-mythical information about the Abakuá society that were codified in its initiation language, employing a mix of pictograms and alphabetic script, as well as detailed "mythic" maps of the Calabar region.