Bantoid

Bantoid here groups the peoples of the Cross River and the Cameroon borderland, a belt of forest and mangrove running from the Benue tributaries to the Gulf of Guinea. Its western end is Ejagham, or Ekoi, country around Ikom, which by about 200 had produced the carved Ikom monoliths and Nsibidi ideographic signs; the Ejagham also created the Ekpe leopard society, whose masks and grades spread to neighboring peoples.

On the estuary the Efik built the trading towns of Old Calabar, while the related Ibibio held Eket. From the arrival of Portuguese ships in the fifteenth century these towns became middlemen in the Atlantic slave trade, with Ekpe serving as the supreme court and regulator of commerce, and after the British abolition of 1807 they switched to palm oil exports.

Enslaved initiates carried Ekpe to Cuba, where it survives as the Abakua cult. Inland, related Tivoid and Grassfield communities shared the same Bantoid linguistic heritage.