Negotiating Time, Space, and Spirit: A Case Study of Oral Tradition and the Construction of Lineage Identity in West Africa

Countless Africans from hinterland societies were dispersed along the Atlantic coasts of Africa as a consequence of the transatlantic slave trade and domestic slave trade associated with the Atlantic system. Today, few of their descendants know of this past, or wish others to know of it. This paper presents the case history of a lineage whose identity and kinship entail the ritualizing of the kidnap of a young girl—possibly of western Savannah-Sahel origins, seven generations removed—sold into slavery in southern Togo. She is today the revered common ancestor of a family tree spanning from Ghana to Nigeria as well as several countries outside the continent. The account provides a window for bridging the epistemology of memorializing and culture loss/culture retention, and also for shedding light on the ties that bind devotees of tradition to kin assimilated to European culture. It also adds the dynamic of oral narrative to the historic interaction of peoples across West Africa.