Ouidah. Robin Law

Fon and Hueda, to the Gbe family) which according to tradition originated in Grand-Popo (whose correct indigenous name is, in fact, Hula) and migrated east to settle at various places along the coast, including in particular Jakin (modern Godomey).¹² ‘Offra’, the name given by Europeans to their principal place of trade in Allada during the second half of the seventeenth century (which was situated close to, though distinct from, Jakin), is clearly another variant of this name. The application of this name to Ouidah presumably reflects the fact that an important, perhaps originally the dominant, element in its population was Hula rather than Hueda.

       The foundation of Ouidah

      Stories of the foundation of Ouidah are in fact contradictory. The original settlement, which predated European contact, is generally identified today with the quarter called Tové, on the north-eastern side of the town; and this is consistent with a report of the early eighteenth century that the indigenous village of Glehue was situated to the east of the French and English forts there.¹³ There is also, however, a compound called ‘Glehue Daho’, i.e. ‘Great Glehue’, to the west of Tové (nowadays considered to fall within Fonsaramè, the Dahomian quarter of the town); although now occupied by a Dahomian family, Nassara, this is also sometimes claimed to represent the original pre-Dahomian settlement, as its name implies.¹⁴

      The founder of Ouidah is regularly named in local tradition as Kpase (in French spelling, ‘Passè’), who is in consequence the subject of a cult in the town to the present. After his death, he is said to have metamorphosed into a tree that still survives as the focus of his shrine, in what is known as Kpasezun, ‘Kpase’s Forest’, located in Tové quarter, or, rather, originally in the bush beyond Tové, but nowadays absorbed within the town.¹⁵ In contemporary sources, however, the earliest reference to the story of Kpase and his cult in Ouidah is only from the 1840s.¹⁶ The inhabitants of Tové are said to have been dispersed in the Dahomian conquest of 1727, but subsequently resettled there under Dahomian rule; they were led in this resettlement by a nephew of Kpase called Tchiakpé, who founded a family that still exists in the quarter.¹⁷ The dominant family in Tové in recent times, which also controls Kpase’s shrine, called Adjovi, rose to prominence only in the nineteenth century, but claims descent from Kpase (although this claim is disputed by others in the town).¹⁸

      Kpase is normally supposed to have been a king of Hueda,¹⁹ usually identified as its second ruler, son and successor to the founder of the kingdom, who is named as Haholo.²⁰ While this has become the canonical version, however, a different account of the origins of Ouidah is given in the traditions of the Hula kingdom of Jakin, whose capital was originally Godomey but was removed, after the destruction of that town by the Dahomians in 1732, further east to Ekpè, and subsequently (after the destruction of the latter in turn in 1782) to Kétonou. These recount the migration of the Hula founder-king, called Kposi (‘Possi’), from Grand-Popo to settle at Glehue, which by implication he founded. This account envisages a period when Glehue was independent of the Hueda king at Savi, with whom Kposi is said to have delimited a frontier. However, subsequently the Savi king is said to have made war on Kposi, driving him to move east to settle at Godomey.²¹ Although the traditions state that this displacement occurred in the reign of Hufon (Houffon), the last Hueda king before the Dahomian conquest (reigned 1708–27),²² it is clear that if historical it must in fact have been earlier; Glehue was evidently already subject to Savi by 1671, when the French established their trading factory there, since they negotiated with the Hueda king for permission to settle it.²³

      The names ‘Kpase’ and ‘Kposi’ are sufficiently similar to raise suspicions that they might be variants of a single name, and I suggested earlier that Kpase/Kposi was originally a figure in Hula tradition, whose co-option into the list of Hueda kings is spurious.²⁴ But the two names are understood locally to be philologically distinct. At the very least, however, some degree of confusion (or conflation) between the two figures is indicated by traditional stories relating to the arrival of the first European traders in Ouidah. These agree in attributing the first contact with Europeans to a man called Kpate (‘Patè’), who is said to have been collecting crabs on the seashore when a European ship was passing, and raised a cloth on a pole as a makeshift flag to attract their attention;²⁵ in contemporary sources, Kpate’s name and story were first recorded in the 1860s.²⁶ Like Kpase, Kpate is worshipped as a deified hero. The office of priest of Kpate, or Kpatenon, remains hereditary within a family that claims descent from him, resident in Docomè, the quarter of the Portuguese fort. In different versions of his story, Kpate is associated either with Kpase, the Hueda king at Savi (to whom he allegedly introduced the European traders), or with Kposi, the Hula king settled locally (in whose entourage he originally arrived in Ouidah).²⁷ The former version, it may be noted, implies that Europeans were hitherto unknown; whereas the latter explicitly states that Kposi and Kpate were familiar with them already, from earlier experience at Grand-Popo. There is also a parallel (and evidently related) ambiguity about Kpate’s own ethnic affiliation. Some versions claim that he was, like Kpase, a member of the Hueda royal family;²⁸ current tradition in the Kpatenon family denies this, but agrees that Kpate was Hueda.²⁹ But other accounts state that he was Hula.³⁰ These two traditions, of foundation by the Hueda Kpase and the Hula Kposi, may perhaps be regarded as complementary rather than contradictory, since Ouidah clearly included both a Hueda and a Hula element: the different stories may therefore relate to the origins of different elements within Ouidah, rather than strictly representing alternative traditions of the foundation of the town as a whole.

      The Hula element in Ouidah is represented today most visibly by the cult of Hu, the vodun (god) of the sea, who was in origin the national deity of the Hula people. The priest of the cult, the Hunon (Hounon), nowadays has his compound in Sogbadji, the quarter of the English fort, which was established only in the 1680s;³¹ and one of the oldest-established Hueda families in this quarter, called Déhoué, claims to have invited the first Hunon to settle there, implying Hueda priority of settlement.³² However, the traditions of the Hunon priesthood itself claim that Déhoué was instrumental, not in the Hunon’s original settlement in Ouidah, but in his resettlement there after fleeing from the Dahomian conquest in the 1720s.³³ In any case, there is an older shrine of Hu, located in the area called Adamé, which is now included within the Maro quarter of Ouidah, but before the nineteenth century was beyond the south-western limits of the town; and it is this earlier shrine which is said to have been established by the Hula founder-hero Kposi. The cult was certainly established locally already in the seventeenth century, since European accounts of the Hueda kingdom in the 1690s refer to the worship of the sea, to whom offerings were made for calm weather to facilitate the operation of the European trade.³⁴ Hu’s importance was presumably enhanced, as these accounts imply, by the development of the trans-Atlantic trade, but he functioned as patron of watery spaces more generally, including the coastal lagoon; among lesser deities associated with him (and represented as his children) was the goddess Tokpodun, who was linked with the lagoon (and identified with the crocodile).³⁵ The Hula identity was in fact defined by their occupation of the lagoon environment, rather than by their connections with the sea as such. Certainly, the traditions of the Hunon priesthood claim that it was established in Ouidah already before the arrival of the first European traders, and insist that Ouidah was in origin a Hula settlement, in distinction from the Hueda town of Savi.

      The question of priority of settlement as between the Hueda and Hula is difficult to resolve, but Hula claims to precedence are supported by evidence relating to the hierarchy of status among the gods worshipped in Ouidah. The national deity of the Hueda was Dangbe, the royal python, originally associated with agricultural fertility, who was incarnated in actual snakes that were maintained in his shrines.³⁶ Dangbe remains today one of the most important vodun of Ouidah, with his principal shrine located in the centre of the town.³⁷ Local tradition nowadays asserts that the cult was instituted in Ouidah from its beginnings by the Hueda founder-hero Kpase.³⁸ In the Hueda kingdom as a whole, as reported in the 1690s, first rank among the gods was held by Dangbe, to whom the sea-god Hu was considered a ‘younger brother’.³⁹ The principal shrine of Dangbe at this period, however, was located at the Hueda capital Savi, rather than in Ouidah; its relocation