Carved Ogboni figures from Abeokuta, Nigeria: Adugbologe who shines like the new moon. There is no place where he is not known on this earth

Amid these chaotic events, Oniyide was at the height of his artistic career-nearing forty years of age, a respected Ogboni member and the senior carver of the Adugbologe workshop (see Wolf 1985:118). I surmise that during this period, the missionary's hat and its image in art, like the chromolithographs of Catholic saints used by Haitian vodouistes, became a subversive device: outwardly fine, acceptable, and of the dominant ideology, but having undercurrents of something altogether quite different. In effect, the indigenous tradition continued under a colonial mask. Then, sometime after the main figure in the Maryland carving was completed (Fig. 9), the attendant figures dressed as Europeans were added, an act which at least gave the impression of increased status for the Oluwo depicted, and therefore Ogboni in general even if the society had in actuality lost a significant amount of real power in recent history. Continuing into the present day, the Ogboni society, having left the most immediate threat of colonialism in the past, still chooses to keep the distinctive hat as a time-honored symbol of status and leadership. It has become a conventional sign of Ogboni-ness rather than foreign-ness. Canonized in art, the missionary's hat remains a prestigious device and an easily recognized marker of Ogboni membership. Today, crown-like but not approaching the deified status of actual Yoruba crowns, the missionary's hat truly does represent something larger than the man. Over time it has gained stature such that it now "commands obeisance," as Doris so aptly put it (personal communication, 2002).

In trying to historicize one aspect of Ogboni iconography, I admit here to a certain amount of oversimplification, and until more is known about when and why the missionary's hat was adopted by Ogboni members in Abeokuta, and when its image became incorporated into local artistic practice, such an interpretation will necessarily remain speculative. Nevertheless, we should heed Babatunde Lawal, who has recognized an "urgent need to separate older from more recent layers of meanings in Ogboni rituals and symbols" (1995:40). Therefore, while the large carvings of Ogboni titled members are today primarily objects of status and prestige, it is conceivable that they have served more complex roles over the course of Abeokuta's rather tumultuous history.

[This article was accepted for publication in July 2002.]

(1.) Excerpted from the praise poetry (oriki) of the sculptor Ojerinde, called Adugbologe. Quoted in Wolff 1985:104.

(2.) Ijebu refers to a Yoruba group southeast of Abeokuta. Other Yoruba peoples mentioned in this article include Egba, Egbado, Owu, and Oyo.

(3.) Major contributions to the study of Ogboni brasses include the following: Morton-Williams 1960, 1964; Williams 1964, 1974; Thompson 1971; Dobbelman 1976; Roach-selk 1978; Brincard 1982; Wire 1988; Drewal 1989; Drewal, Pemberton III & Abiodun 1989; Gosline 1989, 1992; Lawal 1995.

(4.) For Osugbo doors from Ijebu, see, for example, Dobbelmann 1976: figs. 156-57 and Drewal, Pemberton III & Abiodun 1989:123.