^{page 267 note 1} The estimated population of the four wards in the village of Umor in 1935 (based on a total count of adult males and a sample of household composition of two patricians) was as follows (figures rounded to nearest 100 and 10):

The number of adult males in the component patricians ranged from 50 to 180 with the majority having somewhat less than 100. The villages of Ekuri and Nkpani consist each of three wards with a similar range of population. My 1935 estimates of total population for the Yakö villages are: Umor, 10,900; Ekuri, 7,100; Nkpani, 4,400; Nko, 2,600; Idomi, 1,900. (Yakö is more correctly written Yakǝ).

^{page 268 note 1} See Forde, D., ‘Fission and Accretion in the Patrilineal Clans of a Semi-Bantu community in Southern Nigeria’, J. Roy. Anthrop. Inst. vol. lxviii, 1938.Google Scholar

^{page 268 note 2} In Umor these pillars were destroyed or badly damaged in a great fire in the twenties and have not been restored. The carvings, which are similar on all the pillars, represent a woman with a child across her knees and a number of crocodiles (efem) and iguanas (Krite). Prayers are made at the pillars to the creator sky god (obasi) by a diviner in each ward (see Fig. 3).

^{page 268 note 3} ‘Kinship in Umor, Double Unilateral Organisation in a Semi-Bantu Society’, Am. Anthrop. vol. xli, 4, 1939; ‘Double Descent among the Yakö’, in African Systems of Kinship and Marriage, ed. Radcliffe-Brown and Daryll Forde, 1950.Google Scholar

^{page 270 note 1} The Yakö have a six-day week, including one main non-farming day or market and a second non-farming day four days later. These days, especially the former, are selected for ceremonial as well as market activities, and are the basis on which forward reckonings and intervals in ritual sequences are calculated. The Yakö terminology is: aiyo kokǝ (before kokǝ), kokǝ, kokǝblǝka (after kokǝ), aiyo opoŋobi (before opoŋobi), opoŋobi, opoŋobiblǝko (after opoŋobi).

^{page 271 note 1} The rattles, known as Ligwomi rattles (ntesan, sing, etsesan), are shaped like a large handbag, with a rectangular wooden base and sides and handle of basketry. During the public ceremonies of Ligwomi, i.e. the later processions and dances in the ward squares, all initiated men are free to use them, but at other times they may be carried and used in dances only by the Elders (Yakambən), as, for example, at the funerary rites of an Elder. The rattles of the Elders are, like the paraphernalia of the Yakowa, stored in the Ogbolia's patrician assembly house Others keep them in their houses and bring them out for Ligwomi celebrations.

^{page 273 note 1} The livestock provided by Elders and by members of the kεkpan group during and following their admission are handed over to the Ogbolia who keeps them as a stock to be drawn on for appropriate feasts.

^{page 273 note 2} Earlier, the Elders also dance in the compound and perhaps elsewhere in the ward. They alone may do so with Ligwomi rattles, and such restricted dances of the Elders are known as Kekambǝn.

^{page 274 note 1} See note 2 on page 276 for methods of calculation.

^{page 275 note 1} See Forde, D., ‘Land and Labour in a Cross River Village’, Geog. J. 1937, vol. xc, pp. 24–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar and map, and also ‘Government in Umor’, Africa, vol. xii, 1959, pp. 139–42.Google Scholar

^{page 275 note 2} In Umor three-year intervals appear to have occurred recently in Ukpakapi ward, while one interval of only two years was recorded for the larger ward of Idjum. At the same time the ceremonial recognition of an age set has sometimes been postponed for several years on account of failure by the new set to accumulate in good time the food supplies necessary for the feast. Thus the Ukpakapi set, whose leaders were called for by the Ward Head and recognized in 1936, did not give their establishment feast until 1938.

^{page 275 note 3} Thus in the Ukpakapi ward of Umor, with an adult male population of 387 in 1935, there were sixteen sets in existence, of which the youngest were 40 to 50 strong, while the oldest contained less than 10 each.

^{page 276 note 1} Terms derived from the names of two villages of the Agwa'agune people situated on opposite banks of the Cross River.

^{page 276 note 2} This age-set system affords a means of determining the approximate chronological age of any person. The assumption of a four-year interval between all but the most recent sets corresponds very well with the age obtained independently for particular men by means of dated events at their births and first marriages. Thus if the sets extant in a ward in 1939 be numbered in order of juniority, an Ukpakapi man of age set V, the approximate age of whose members was estimated to be 62-5 in 1939, could be independently estimated, from the occurrence of his first marriage in the year of a British military expedition through the Cross River country, to be 61 years old. In the same way, a man of age set XVI (the age of whose members was estimated at 22-5 in 1939) could be shown to be 26 years of age, since the year in which he went away to school was 1925 and that was also the year of the second time that his father who farmed a six-year cycle of plots had again cleared a farm on the particular land (Ebe) where he was farming when his son was born. The man was thus 12 years old in 1925 and 26 years in 1939. Similar independent age estimates have confirmed the estimates of the age ranges of other sets. Owing to more frequent reductions of intervals between age-set formations in the large Idjum ward of Umor two groups of two sets are equated with two single sets in the other three wards.

^{page 276 note 3} Thus a man of the lineage of Kikungkula kepun in Idjum ward at Umor had as Koboma-fellows seven men of his own patrician, five other men of his ward, each from a different patrician, and three men of two different patricians in another ward. The koboma of a man of Ukpakapi ward included three men of his own patrician, two of another patrician in Ukpakapi, one of another ward, and one or two others whose clan and ward affiliations were not recorded.

^{page 277 note 1} This is described in my Marriage and the Family among the Yakö, Humphries, Lund, 1941.Google Scholar

^{page 277 note 2} A large part of the village of Umor was almost entirely burnt out in this way in 1919 and there have been other less disastrous fires in recent times. There is a strict rule that all house fires must be stamped out before leaving the compound, and breach of this regulation is punishable by fine; but the ward endeavours to protect itself further by maintaining a guard which is also a protection against thieving from houses which are deserted for most of the day.

^{page 278 note 1} According to the sample of the association and other memberships of in men of one ward, already referred to, p. 274.

^{page 278 note 1} The insignia of the senior grade in Ebiabu were generally similar in each ward and included two staffs (utubaka) decorated with dog skulls covered by a ram's skin, the jaw bones of a cow, a short sword (iwong), a bifid spear (ketun), and raffia bags decorated with bells (leblabukpa). Particular songs appear to have been specific to the grades of Ebiabu referred to below. Each grade, or a contingent of all grades from a ward, would threaten with physical violence or destruction of livestock any outsider who sang their songs (see Fig. 5).

^{page 279 note 1} About a third of the adult members of Ebiabu are accepted as Abu.

^{page 279 note 2} e.g. the gathering of a large yam harvest of 400 sticks or more, or after making or receiving a marriage payment.

^{page 279 note 3} Such shoulder-pieces or sleeves (ηpabo = fleeced arms) are common features of the costumes of leading dancers in several organizations, e.g. Leko, Obam, Ukwa.

^{page 279 note 4} i.e. kill any cow in the village, compensation for which would be due not from the organization but from the outsider who had infringed its rules.

^{page 280 note 1} Lebulibulikǝm in Idjiman (where the Okeŋka house is established), Akugum in Idjum, and Egbisum in Ukpakapi ward.

^{page 281 note 1} Biko-Biko, a more recently established ward in Umor, has not created its own Eblǝmbe lodge but, as for a number of organizations, participates equally in a joint lodge with the adjacent Ukpakapi ward.

^{page 282 note 1} e.g. In Ukpakapi and Biko-Biko, the Head must be of Egbisum, Ndai-Lekpaŋkǝm, or of Biko-Biko Lekpaŋkǝm or Lebokǝm; the leader of the Rear Guard should come from Ndai-Lekpankǝm, or Egbisum in Ukpakapi, or Lebokǝm, Npani, or Lekpaŋkǝm in Biko-Biko.

^{page 282 note 2} The traditionally standard shares are 60 rods to the Head and Advance Guard Leader, 30 rods to the Rear Guard Leader, and the rest equally among the ordinary members.

^{page 282 note 3} The wards had their several war priests and in Umor that of Idjiman ward was at the same time a village war priest and a member of the Priests' Council. The Onun Eko performed rites at the Akota (sing. Lekota) War Stones (leko = war, leta = stone).

^{page 283 note 1} In the Ukpakapi ward of Umor the only Eko-blami costume in the thirties was in the possession of a wealthy member of the Ikpungkara association who lent it as needed to a dancer of whom he approved, receiving from him a calabash of wine. This costume, he said, had been made by Agoi people and anyone who paid for such a costume to be made could have it and keep it. The two female costumes in use in this ward were known as Ma Oba and Ma Eni. The former, said to be ‘for the old men’, kept, and similarly lent out, by a man who had succeeded to its ownership from a dead kinsman; the other had been made only a year or two before by a man of early middle age.

^{page 284 note 1} In Umor the camp of Idjum ward is far out in the forest on the Emun path; Idjiman has two established camps, one near the Liplo'opoŋ path and the other far out between the Egoeti and Omini Odji paths; Ukpakapi and Biko-Biko wards, as for the Fighters, share a single leader and camp at the far end of the Ikiki paths.

^{page 284 note 2} In a sample of the Ukpakapi ward of Umor, 31 per cent, of men claimed to be members of Kodjǝ while 56 per cent, said they danced Leko. The latter may have included men who had danced in the past but would no longer do so, but the wider participation in the dancing as compared with group hunting was evident.

^{page 284 note 3} Leko drums should be kept in the house of the Obot Kodjǝ of the ward.

^{page 285 note 1} These are Ekoi terms. The dancers wear netted ‘one-piece’ suits of black eteni fibre. The Ikoko dancer carries a switch and a length of cloth tightly bound round the waist from which a string of bells hangs down at the back. The Nyaŋpe costume consists of a loose covering of strips of cloth extending over the body from the mask to the ground.

^{page 287 note 1} In Umor the wards of Ukpakapi and Biko-Biko are, as in the case of some men's organizations, a single unit in the Ekuruso organization.

^{page 287 note 2} A few men join the meetings and feasts of Ekuruso and are said to be sons of deceased women members who had no daughters.

^{page 287 note 3} In the thirties the heads in the wards of Umor were of age sets VII to IV = 53-64 years in 1935.

^{page 288 note 1} In Umor there is similarly a single organization for both Ukpakapi and Biko-Biko wards.