The Encounter with "Evil Forests" in Igbo-land: The Legacy of Nineteenth-and Twentieth-century Missionaries' Interactions with African Culture

The Christianization of Igbo-land in southeastern Nigeria, from the 1850s up to the1920s and even beyond, occurred in a fraught atmosphere in which missionaries had encounters with forests set aside for certain sociocultural purposes and designated as "evil"/"bad." This study dwells on these encounters and their legacies. The study uses oral, primary, and secondary sources to contribute to scholarship in social history by interrogating the relevance of the encounters and their legacies in understanding how Christian missionary works of the colonial period are remembered and captured through the experiences of indigenous people as active agents in their own history.