Chief Onyeso with Ọfọ, Oton, and Ritual Bag

🪘 Chief Onyeso with Ọfọ, Oton, and Ritual Bag — Nigeria, 1913
📷 Source: Anthropological Report on the Ibo-Speaking Peoples of Nigeria by N.W. Thomas (1913)
📚 Also referenced in The Peoples of Southern Nigeria by P. Amaury Talbot (1916)
🖋️ Curated by: MayowaBlades

Seated with solemn authority, Chief Onyeso poses alongside three powerful cultural symbols: the Ọfọ (staff of ancestral authority), the Oton (ritual object), and a traditional bag likely used for spiritual or administrative purposes. This rare image, taken in 1913 during early British anthropological expeditions in Nigeria, captures not only a person but the embodiment of Igbo leadership, ritual, and cosmology.

Photographed by Northcote W. Thomas, a colonial anthropologist whose reports remain controversial for their extractive lens yet invaluable in documenting precolonial African institutions, the image today serves a deeper purpose: to reclaim African history through African voices.

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📍 Africa » Nigeria » Southeastern Nigeria
🗓️ Year: 1913
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