Ewale A Mbedi - Historicity

Historicity

Historians and anthropologists such as Edwin Ardener, Ralph A. Austen, and Jonathan Derrick suggest that the Ewale narrative is "quite plausible because it is not very pretentious in either chronological or ideological terms." The gap between Ewale and the first Duala leaders corroborated in European sources is logically sound and does not suggest a great deal of mythology. Nor is Ewale an obviously mythologised heroic figure. Nevertheless, Ewale occupies a nebulous position between history and myth, meaning that he may have been several generations further into the past than modern Duala oral histories place him.

Dutch traders reached the Cameroon coast in the early 17th century. They traded with a leader named Monneba, whom Ardener and others equate with Ewale's son from the Duala genealogy, Mulobe a Ewale. Based on this inference, Ewale's migration from Piti may be dated to the late 16th century, a point just prior to the first European explorers reaching the coast of Cameroon.

Many tales give the reason behind Ewale's migration as his desire to trade with the Europeans. Ardener and Ardener do not dismiss this hypothesis, and Ewale may very well have encountered European merchants and become the first Duala leader to establish trade ties with them. However, Austen and Derrick doubt that trade was the motivation for Ewale's exodus from Piti. No traders had yet begun operations on the Cameroon coast in the late 16th century. Instead, Ewale's move from Piti may have been prompted by population pressures; Piti is the site of only a small creek, from which a fishing people such as the Duala would have had a difficult time feeding many mouths. This view finds support in the versions of the tale that ascribe Ewale's departure from Piti to a row with his family, although this reasoning may only be a recasting of the later split of the Duala into the rival Bell and Akwa lineages to a more ancient time.

As for the driving off of the Bassa and Bokoko, these peoples were not fishermen. They were farmers, so getting them to leave the coast and major rivers for the interior would presumably not have been too difficult. The Bassa and Bakoko would have avoided conflict by doing so, and they would be better able to farm in the interior anyway.