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For Who Hath Despised the Day of Small Things? Missionary Narratives and Historical
Anthropology
Author(s): J. D. Y. Peel
Source: Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Jul., 1995), pp. 581-607
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For Who Hath Despised the Day of
Small Things? MissionaryNarratives
and Historical Anthropology
J. D. Y. PEEL
School of Oriental and African Studies, London
When anthropologistscome to examine the role of Christianmissionariesin

the transformationof non-Westernsocieties, as they have done increasingly
over the past decade, they soon become deeply embroiled in debates about
narrative.Most obvious and immediateare the writtenand published narra-
tives in which missionariesreporttheir activities, providing the single most
importantsource of data. But the more fundamentalissues lie beyond: They
have to do with the role of narrativein the social transformationitself, and
eventuallywith the place of narrativein the ethnographicaccountthat anthro-
pology sets itself to produce. In this essay, which arises from a largerproject
on the encounterof religions in nineteenth-centuryYorubaland,the focus of
the argumentwill move throughseverallevels of narrative,but it will startand
finish with an argumentthat demonstrateswhy narrativeis so importantfor
the achievementof a properlyhistorical anthropology.
If E. E. Evans-Pritchard'scall, in his MarettLecturefor 1950, for anthro-
pology to end its estrangementfrom history met a growing response by the
end of the decade, it was due less to developmentsintrinsicto the discipline
than to the late- or post-colonial context in which anthropologicalresearch
was then conducted.' Nationalistmovements in Asia and Africa threatened
anthropologywith complete marginalization(or worse, absorptioninto soci-
ology) if it continued to ignore local intellectual agendas, which included
concern with the areas'own pasts and with social change and development.At
least in principle, the idea of a bounded, unchanging unit of study was
abandoned;and it came to be accepted that contemporarylocal culturescan-
An earlierversion of this essay was first given at the Universityof Oxfordas the MarettLecture
for I993. I am gratefulto the Rector and Fellows of ExeterCollege, Oxford, and to the Institute
of Social and CulturalAnthropology,for their hospitalityon that occasion, as well as to anthro-
pological audiencesat the School of Orientaland AfricanStudies, the Universityof Durham,and
the London School of Economics for their helpful commentson other versions. I also thankTom
McCaskie, Michael Carrithers,Kit Davis, David Martin, Akin Oyetade, David Parkin, Terence
Ranger, and RichardRathbonefor valuable advice on particularpoints.
' E. E. Evans-Pritchard, "SocialAnthropology:Past and Present,"Man, 50 (September1950),
I I8-24; idem., Anthropologyand History(Manchester:ManchesterUniversityPress, I96I).
0010-4175/95/3841-2121 $7.50 + .10 ? 1995SocietyforComparative
Studyof SocietyandHistory
58I

582 J. D. Y. PEEL
not be analysed apartfrom an appreciationof such world-historicalforces as

capitalism or the Europeanempires.2 Even so, to the extent that this break-
throughdependedon invoking particularhistoricalconditions, it fell short of
going to the heartof the problem,as it implicitlyconcededthattheremight be
room for anotherkind of social anthropology,one that was not historical.
NARRATIVE AND THE HISTORICIZATION OF ANTHROPOLOGY

In the large body of work by anthropologistsnewly concerned with history,
there were two significant, and I think interrelated,things missing. First,
there was no over-all theoreticalintegrationof the field, no unified rationale
for the historicisationof anthropology.Thus, SherryOrtner,while noting in
an influential 1984 theoreticalreview thatthe rapprochementwith historywas
"an extremely importantdevelopmentfor the field as a whole," nevertheless
consideredthat it offered only "a pseudointegrationof the field which fails to
answer some of the deeper problems."3In that judgement she was quite
correct. The centraltask, as she then put it, was to develop a model of effec-
tive human agency, or practice. It is, indeed, a perennialproblem of social
theory, but one that requiredto be addressedanew in the face of structural-
ism's success in establishingthe facticity of culture. The second absence was
narrative.4 It was not included in the "bundle of interrelatedterms"-
practice, interaction, experience, performance, and so forth-that Ortner
took as emblematicof the emergingconcernsof the I98os, despite her identi-
fication of "the temporalorganizationof action"as a key issue.5 The irony is
that Ortnerdid not then recognize how integral narrativeis to the practice
perspectivethat her review persuasivelyadvocated:It is a critical instrument
of human agency, for it is the principalmeans by which agents integratethe
temporalflow of their activities.6 Puttingit anotherway, humanbeings pro-
duce socioculturalform throughan archof memories, actions, and intentions.
Narrativeis the way in which that arch may be expressed, rehearsed,shared,
2 In
general, see J. Fabian, Time and the Other: How AnthropologyMakes Its Object (New
York:Columbia University Press, 1983). The point may still need making on particulartopics:
see, for example, J. O'Brien andW. Rosebery,eds., GoldenAges, DarkAges: Imaginingthe Past
in Anthropologyand History (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1991).
3
Sherry B. Ortner, "Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties," Comparative Studies in
Society and History, 26: (1984), 126-66. See also R. Sanjek, "TheEthnographicPresent,"Man
(n.s.), 26:4 (I99I), 609-28.
4 Partlythis may have been due to the "eclipseof narrative"among some of the historiansmost
attractiveto anthropologists,such as FernandBraudeland others of the Annales school. See P.
Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, K. McLaughlinand D. Pellauer, trans. (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1984), I: ch. 4.
5 Ortner,
"Theory," I44, I50.
6 Ortnercame clearly to recognize this: See her "Patternsof History:CulturalSchemas in the
Founding of Sherpa Religious Institutions," in Culture through Time: Anthropological Ap-
proaches, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierey, ed., 57-93 (Stanford:StanfordUniversity Press, I990).

MISSIONARY NARRATIVES, HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 583
and communicated.It is this which gives humanaction its inherenthistoricity

or lived-in-timenessand which requiresan anthropologythat, to be adequate
to its subject matter, should be essentially historical.
Over the last decade, a growing number of anthropologistshave made
narrativecentralto their work, whetherby organizingtheir ethnographyas a
story or by recognizing how much of theirhumansubjects'social existence is
constituted through the stories that they tell.7 Whether it is the outsider-
analyst's or the insider-subject'snarrativethat predominatesin an account,8
neitherkind of narrativecan standwithoutquite a deal of the other;the stories
of anthropologistsare not radically or inherentlydifferentin characterfrom
those of their subjects, and the continuitiesand carry-oversbetween the two
are fundamental. If a single work blazed the way to an anthropologythat
admitted narrative in this double sense, it was Renato Rosaldo's Ilongot
Headhunting, i883-1974.9 Rosaldo intended a study of domestic and local
groups which would move from structureto process in the classic Fortesian
manner.Collecting evidence of developmentalprocesses throughthe datathat
anthropologistshave used for decades without plumbing their full cultural
significance, namely stories, he tells us how at first he was often reduced to
boredomby the Ilongot propensityto tell stories. It was when he was able to
set these stories of recalledexperienceinto a reliablechronologicalframework
that he came to appreciatefully their socially constitutiverole for the Ilongot.
Historicalanthropologymay be seen as dealing with a triangleof relations:
first, those between ethnohistory(or history as representation)and the past or
change-sequencethat it represents;second, those between this past and the
social forms of the presentthat are its outcome; and third, those between the
present social forms (including, very importantly,the system of power) and
the representationsof the past, or ethnohistory,for whose production the
presentforms provide the context.10Narrative,as the most spontaneousform
of historicalrepresentation,has a centralrole in this complex of relations. In
addressing it we need to adopt a perspective different from that animating
much recent analysis of both ethnographic and historical texts, one that
7 For a general exposition of this position, see Michael Carrithers,WhyHumans Have Cul-
tures:ExplainingAnthropologyand HumanDiversity (Oxford:OxfordUniversityPress, 1992), a
book that achieves the rare feat of being at the same time an attractiveand lucid introductionto
the subject and a significant work of original theory.
8 As, respectively, for example, are two excellent recent ethnographiesof southernAfrica:
Colin Murray'sBlack Mountain (I993) and RichardWerbner'sTears of the Dead (1992), both
published by EdinburghUniversity Press for the InternationalAfrican Institute.
9 Stanford:StanfordUniversity Press, I980. The subtitle is A Study in Society and History.
10 In using ethnohistoryto refer to the historicalrepresentationscurrentin any social setting or
people, I departfrom the term'smost common reference, which is to a field of academicstudyon
the frontiersof history and anthropologydealing with the histories of tribal peoples. This is a
shift, however, that others are now making. For furtherdiscussion, see J. D. Y. Peel, "Review
Essay" (A. Biersack, ed., Clio in Oceania, and Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney,ed., Culture through
Time), History and Theory,32:2 (1993), 162-78.

584 J. D. Y. PEEL
strongly emphasizes their fictive quality,that is, the authorialobjectives and

literarydevices thatintervenebetween the object and its representation.1 The
premier case is perhaps Hayden White's study of nineteenth-centuryhisto-
riography,which focussed on the "poetics"or forms of emplotment,to argue
againstthe notionthatany one form of emplotmentmightbe preferableto any
other on the groundsof its realism or empiricaladequacy.12Behind this lies
the structuralistdoctrine of the arbitrarinessof the sign: The emphasis is
stronglyon the gap, ratherthan on the links, between signifier and signified.
It is with this feature of White's argumentthat David Carr takes issue,
suggesting a much closer mutual implication of narrativeand the human
activities that are its object.'3 Drawing on a phenomenologicalaccount of
individual consciousness, Carr argues that human beings have a "pre-
thematic"awarenessof the passage of time, which means that narrativecan-
not be regardedas merely imposed form. Thus, we live narrativebefore we
tell it; or, rather, our living and our telling of narrativesare deeply and
continuously implicated with one another.'4Where White argues from the
undoubtedsimilaritiesof historicaland fictional narrativethatthe formeris as
disjoined from reality, as much the productof art as the latter, Carrsuggests
that narrativegives reality to fiction precisely because it is so implicated in
how we actually live our lives. Since the temporalconfigurationsthat mark
narrative(for example, departure/return,initiative/opposition/resolution)oc-
cur in life as well as in art, how does life differ from art, representationfrom
practice?Carr'sinitial answeris that the differencelies in "the absence in life
of thatpoint of view which transformsevents into a storyby telling them, . . .
[which is] not just a recounting of events but a recounting informed by a
certainkind of superiorknowledge."'5 Yet this contrastis far from absolute,
since as agents we also strive, argues Carr, "to occupy the story-teller's
position with respect to our own actions," so that life is continuously influ-
enced by art. Thus narrativesarenot only representationsof the past, of things
presumed to have happened or existed, but also sketches of possibilities,
prophecies, or scenarios for things that might be. Nowhere is this of more
consequence for anthropologythan in the way that most peoples in the world
today link representationsof the past and schemes for future development.
Havingarguedvigorouslyfor the pre-thematiccharacterof narrative,which
would make it a humanuniversal,Carrseems to falterin his conviction in the
1 From a sizeable literaturedominated by J. Clifford and G. E. Marcus, eds., Writing
Cultures(Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1986), one of the most subtle is M. Strathern,
"Outof Context:The PersuasiveFictions of Anthropology,"CurrentAnthropology,28:3 (1987),
251-81.
12 Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-CenturyEurope
(Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, I973).
13 David Carr,Time, Narrative, and History (Bloomington:IndianaUniversity Press, 1986).
14 See A. P. Norman's critique of the strong form of Carr'sthesis, "TellingIt Like It Was:
Historical Narratives on Their Own Terms," History and Theory, 30:2 (1991), 119-35.
15 Carr,Time, Narrative, and History, 59-61.

closing stages, when he considers the relationshipof narrativeto historiogra-

phy as it has existed in the West since the eighteenthcentury.16 Is his thesis
compatiblewith the evidence of cross-culturalvariationin the forms of histor-
ical consciousness? Anthropology is exercised upon the same point: Even
Rosaldo seems to hover between presenting the narrativeemphasis of his
Ilongot study as being something particularlyrequiredfor the portrayalof
Ilongot culture and as being a way to resolve general theoreticalproblemsof
social analysis. Carr shies away from suggestions that peoples who lack
anythinglike a stronglylinear,continuousconceptionof historysomehow fall
shortof historicityand humanity;and he rightlyrejectsas a resolutionthe idea
of distinguishingbetween a lower level of narrativity,applyinguniversallyto
individual experience, and an upper level of collective, culturally specific
structuresof narrativethought. This contrastdoes not work because, though
narrativeinheres in individuals, it is also inseparablefrom their communica-
tive and organizationalneeds.17 So while narrativeas a universal human
capacity underlies all forms of historicalconsciousness, it is always realized
in forms that are affected by particularmaterial, social, and culturalcondi-
tions. In all its forms, from the simple stories that enable individuals to
schedule theiractivities over time to the complex historiesthatmaintainsocial
hierarchiesand nationalidentities, narrativeempowersthroughenhancingthe
capacity for action.
NARRATIVE IN STUDIES OF MISSION
In order to make these points in a less abstractmannerand at the same time

move closer to the substantialtopic at hand, let me refer to the very different
treatmentsof narrativein two recentanthropologicalstudies of the missionary
impact on non-Europeansocieties: Geoffrey White's study of Santa Isabel in
Melanesia18and Jean and John Comaroff's of the SouthernTswana.19Both
make extensive use of the narrativesof missionaries, particularlythe Co-
maroffs;but in two respects narrativebulks much largerin White's study. He
makes great use (where the Comaroffsmake none at all) of indigenous narra-
tive, and narrativein general plays a much largerrole in his account of the
place of local agency in the culturaltransformationlaunchedby the mission-
aries. White's centralobjective is to show how the SantaIsabel islandershave
used narrativesof their conversionto Christianityin the years aroundI900 as
16 Ibid.,
I77-85. Notably he baulksat Paul Ricoeur'sassertionof the "transculturalnecessity"
of the link between narrativeand the temporalcharacterof humanexistence. "[W]hatif we find
peoples who do not construetheirtemporalitythroughthe activityof narrating?"he asks. It would
show more confidence in his own case if he were preparedto give at least this hostage to fortune
and declare that if such a people were shown to exist, his case would fall.
17 Carrithers,WhyHumans Have Cultures, chs. 4-5, is excellent on this.
18 Geoffrey M. White, Identity throughHistory: Living Stories in a Solomon Islands Society
(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, I99I).
19 Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, Of Revelationand Revolution:Christianity,Colonial-
ism, and Consciousness in South Africa, vol. I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

586 J. D. Y. PEEL
discoursesof contemporaryidentity:By telling storiesof what was an epochal

transitionin their history, they define what they are and clarify their options
for their future.His study is built precisely roundthe triangularnexus of links
among currentsocial relations, ethnohistory,and the past that ethnohistory
represents.Forboth White and the Comaroffsthe saliency of narrativein their
accountsseems directlyrelatedto what they take to be the "narrativity" of the
in
society question. This is only implicit in White's case, as there is no doubt
that the Santa Isabel islandershave a variety of narrativemodes, formal and
informal, in idioms both traditionaland modem, in which they reflect on their
collective experiences over the preceding century,experiences in which the
reception of Christianityhas had a cardinalplace. One might expect some-
thing of the same would also hold for the Tswana-perhaps more so, since
their polities were much more centralized,which tends to stimulatehistorical
consciousness.20Yet the Comaroffspresent the Tswana as a markedly"un-
narrativist"people, while ascribingstrongnarrativeto the incoming mission-
aries. Two questions arise for the readerwho is not convinced by this. Is this
denial of narrativeto the Tswanajustified and what are its consequences for
the kind of account that can then be given of Tswana historical agency?
The Comaroffsdo not deny the Tswanasome form of historicalconscious-
ness.21But it does not occur "in narrativestyle, as a linearaccountof events."
Rather, "it resides less in propositions than in dispositions, in a dynamic,
open-ended order of distinctions . . . which are sometimes acted out, some-
times spoken out . . . always vested in everyday things and activities."22 The
missionary sources, they tell us, yielded "hardlyany Tswana narratives"for
the nineteenthcentury, and their own researches"elicited few chronicles of
indigenous events," except some from the literate elite, presumably influ-
enced by Europeanmodels.23 Praise poetry and initiation songs were "the
medium of collective representation in precolonial . . . politics"; and nowa-
days there is the "poetic practice"of ordinarypeople "who [speak] of their
history with their bodies and their homes, in their puns, jokes and irreveren-
cies." In seeking (and failing to find) narrativein the form of "chronicles"or
as "collective representation"among the Tswana, the Comaroffssimply ig-
nore the most universaland primaryforms of narrative,which are stories told
from personalmemoryand experience. Are we really to accept that "a loqua-
cious news-telling people," as the Reverend John Mackenzie called the
Tswana,24were strangersto narrativeor that their politics of chieftaincy did
20 See, for
example, I. Cunnison'sclassic History on the Luapula, Rhodes-LivingstonePaper
21 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 195I).
21 For a
telling critique, which proceedsby the indirectroute of showing the significanceof
narrativeand of local appropriations of Christiannarrativeamong many otherpeoples of southern
Africa, see TerenceRanger,"No Missionary:No Exchange:No Story?Narrativein SouthernAfrica"
(paperpresentedat the All Souls Seminaron Past Fantasies,Oxford, England,June 1992).
22 Comaroffand Comaroff, Of Revelationand Revolution,34. 23 Ibid., 35.
24 Ibid., 242 (cited in anothercontext).

not occasion arguments that turned on narrativesof descent and succes-

sion.?25 Could the various Tswana chiefs have made their fine and complex
judgements about how to respondto the dangers and opportunitiespresented
by European encroachment except on the basis of historical assessments
which must have taken a largely narrative form?26Did the first literate
Tswanahistoriansreally have no priorlocal narrativetraditionsto work from?
In so far as the Comaroffs'case for the lack of Tswananarrativederives from
its absence from "the nineteenth-centurysources," it is a notoriously weak
kind of historical reasoning, the argumentumex silentio; and it is made the
weakerby the fact that the sources were very largely those same missionaries
who, in the Comaroffs'view, thoughtof themselves as making history for a
people who lacked it.27
What is the importof this virtuallimitationof Tswanahistoricalconscious-
ness to non-narrativeforms, which apparentlyplaces them in such sharp
contrastto the missionaries, full participantsin the European"masternarra-
tive" of science and empire?28The Comaroffsappreciatethe non-narrative
expressive forms of the Tswanaas vehicles of resistanceto theirsubordination
to the forces of colonial capitalism;and more generally they share the post-
modernistsuspicion of narrativeas an instrumentof repressionand domina-
tion. The practicallinkage of "nationand narration"is well made.29But the
importantpoint about narrativeis the same as a point that can be made about
science: It not thateither is inherentlyrepressive,but that it can be so because
it empowers those who possess it. Narrativeempowers because it enables its
possessor to integratehis memories, experiences, and aspirationsin a schema
of long-termaction. The more potent narrativeshave the capacity to incorpo-
rate other agents, so that they become accessories to the authorsof the narra-
tives. To the extent that (for whateverreason) narrativecannot be achieved,
agency or self-motivatedaction-the hinge between the past of memory and
the future of aspiration-becomes impossible. It is extraordinarythat the
Comaroffsreckon they learnt their "most profoundlesson about [historical]
consciousness in ruralSouth Africa"-its prime reliance on other than narra-
tive means-from what they describe as a "wordlessencounter"with a mad-
man.30 But the madman, heroized though he has been in various schools
25 See JohnL. Comaroff,"Rulesand Rulers:PoliticalProcesses in a TswanaChiefdom,"Man
13 (1978), I-20.
26 I.
Schapera, TribalInnovators: Tswana Chiefs and Social Change, 1795-I940 (London:
Athlone Press, 1970); 0. Gulbrandsen,"Missionariesand NorthernTswana Rulers:Who Used
Whom?"Journal of Religion in Africa, 23:1 (1993), 44-83.
27 Comaroffand
Comaroff, Of Revelationand Revolution, 14. 28 Ibid., 15.
29 See Homi
Bhabha,Nation and Narration (London:Routledge, I990); and, acknowledging
the influence of Hayden White, J. Fabian, History from Below: The "Vocabularyof Eli-
sabethville" by Andre Yav(Amsterdam:John Benjamins, 1990), I9I.
30 Jean Comaroffand JohnL. Comaroff,"The Madmanand the
Migrant"(1987), reprintedin
their Ethnographyand the Historical Imagination (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), 155-78;
significant partsof the phrasingof the last paragraph(pp. 176-77) occur on page 35 of their Of

588 J. D. Y. PEEL
of culturalcritique,standsat an extremeof social incapacity;and his elevation

to a kind of paradigminvites us to regardthe Tswana as patientsratherthan
agents in theirhistory.(The poor madmanwas, indeed, literallya patient.) Of
course nonverbaltokens can indeedbe readby an informedanalystin termsof
their particularengenderinghistories, and they may serve as triggersor mne-
monics for the subjects' apprehensionof their own histories, but they can
form partof a subjectivehistorical consciousness only to the extent that they
are integratedinto some kind of narrative.31Withoutthis, they perhapsserve
as gestures of refusal, but an effective politics requiresa narrative.
The denial of indigenous narrativeallows the anthropologicalobject to be
constituted in a particularway: Where "dispositions"are privileged over
"propositions,"Tswana cultureis renderedhighly amenableto a certainkind
of anthropologicalanalysis. Moreover, since non-narrativeforms of expres-
sion require exegesis, decoding even, in ways that narrativedoes not, the
anthropologist'srole as gatekeeperto outside intelligibility is magnified. As
for the subjectsso conceived, we can applyto them a phrasethatMarxused in
another context: "They cannot represent themselves, they must be repre-
sented."32Devoid of narrativethemselves, they dependon the anthropologist
to tell the story for them. The irony here is that this is precisely the role that
missionarieshave so often ascribedto themselveson behalf of the people they
evangelise. And so we are led back to the missionaries,the thirdapex of the
triangle of intellectualpower relationsthat underliethe Comaroffs'study.
As with the Tswana, so with the missionaries.The treatmentof narrativeis
cruciallysymptomaticof how the Comaroffspositionthemselves in relationto
this other majorcollective actor in their story. In contrastto the Tswana, the
missionaries spoke too unambiguouslyin their own voices for them to be
denied narrative,so differenttechniquesof reductionare used. Some of their
narratives, those that record the missionary's initial passage to the field-
"highly self-conscious texts thatpositionedEuropeanand native on the moral
and colonial margins . . . stressing the unreconstructed savagery of the land
and its inhabitants"33-are read attentively in a deconstructivevein. Other
narratives-and this includes the numberlessaccountsof religious encounter
that lie at the core of any missionaryarchive-are read so as to displace their
content. The Comaroffsconstantly strive to shift the focus of their account
away from the content of the missionarynarrativesto their form, or implica-
Revelationand Revolution.For a sceptical view of the decoding of the madman,see J. Vansina's

review in International Journal of African Historical Studies, 26:2 (I993), 418-19.
31 The of the discursive needs to be reiteratedin the face of the recent
importance powerful
(and, as far as it goes, valid) argumentfor the significance of memory practices of a "non-
inscribed"kind by P. Connerton,How Societies Remember(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity
Press, 1989).
32 Karl Marx, The EighteenthBrumaireof Louis Bonaparte (Moscow: Progress Publishers,
1977), io6.
33 Comaroffand Comaroff, Of Revelationand Revolution,ch. 5, I73.

tions beyond the field of religion. In orderto effect this, a distinctionis drawn
between "two faces" of the "long conversation"between the Tswana and the
missions.34 They counterposeboth an "overt content, what the parties most
often talked about, . . . dominated by the substantive message of the mis-
sion . . . conveyed in sermons and services, in lessons and didactic dia-
logues" and "another kind of exchange, . . . [a] struggle over the terms of the
encounter,"over the forms of language, space, argument,and so forth. There
is no question about the importance of the second set of topics, nor of
the many telling things that the Comaroffshave to say about them. But the
relation between the two faces is clearly crucial, and we might expect the
move from the overt to the implicitto be arguedwith care and scrupulousness.
Instead, it is effected by an insinuatingmetaphor:The faces at once become
"levels," and the priorityof the nonreligiousis establishedby its being taken
as the "deeper"level.
This scamping of the overt content of the long conversationtouches pre-
cisely one of the main areas where conscious Tswana reflexion on their
situationis likely to be found. The sacrednarrativespresentedby missionaries
have time and again been shown to be vehicles for profound reflexion on
individual lives and communal history, often in conjunction with the more
secular narratives(for example, of bourgeois development). The Comaroffs
report, unsurprisingly,that missionary teaching was "widely rejected" and
"less than enthusiasticallyreceived"35;and they use this reaction to move
quickly to their preferred"deeper"level, where various forms of practical
innovationoccurred.In fact, we may expect to find at both levels a mixtureof
acceptance and rejection or a patternof selective appropriationaccordingto
local criteria. If such criteria are applied, as surely they must be, within
narrativeconstructs-people ask one anotherwhat has happenedin the past,
and what might happen to them in the future, if particularnovelties are
accepted or rejected-then the denial of narrativeto the Tswana is incompat-
ible with any view of them as agents in their own history.
NARRATIVE IN THE CHURCH MISSIONARY SOCIETY JOURNALS

In the case study that follows, the voices most to be heardwill not be those of
Europeanmissionariesbut of a group of agents of enormous significance in
any study of the effects of mission and almost entirely absent from the Co-
maroffs' study: the African pastors, catechists, and teachers. The Yoruba
Mission of the ChurchMissionarySociety (CMS) was, for specific historical
34 Ibid., I99.
35 Comaroffand Comaroff,"Madmanand Migrant,"177; idem, Of Revelationand Revolution,
236. These are slippery expressions since "widely rejected"is quite compatible with "widely
accepted"and "was less than enthusiasticallyaccepted"with "won a significantdegree of accep-
tance." But rhetoricallyit makes a lot of differenceto call a glass half-emptyratherthanhalf-full.

590 J. D. Y. PEEL
reasons,36remarkablein thatit countedYorubanatives among its agents from

its inceptionin I845; and it is a fortunatepeculiarityof the reportingpractices
of the CMS that the journals of these African agents bulk so large in the
nineteenth-centuryrecords of the mission. What gives their testimony espe-
cial value is not merely that their authorswere both insidersand outsidersto
the society they were writingaboutbut thatthey show an intense awarenessof
the narrativeimplicationsof mission. A particularaspect is their sensitivity-
much greater than that of the Europeanmissionaries-to the narrativesof
their pagan fellow countrymenwhom they sought to convert.
The extent of the multilayeredqualityof these journals'narrativeswas first
broughtclearly home to me by my text: "Forwho hath despised the day of
small things?"I am not sure when these words first caught my attention, for
typically they do not come flagged as a quotationand sometimes appearin
slight variantslike "forwe are taughtnot to despise the day of small things";I
supposed them to be a cliche of missionary discourse, the sort of thing
evangelists might say when things were not going well and they felt dis-
pirited.37But in fact the phrase is a quotationfrom Zechariah(4:9-IO), and
reads in full:
The hands of Zerubbabelhave laid the foundationof this house; his hands shall also
finishit; andthoushaltknowthatthe Lordof hostshathsentme untoyou. Forwho
hath despised the day of small things?
Zerubbabelwas governorof JudahunderPersianoverrule. "Thishouse" was

the Temple, then being rebuiltafter the Jews' returnfrom Babylon; the term
was later taken as a metaphorfor the Church. So this favouredquotation at
once takes us out from the immediatenarrativesof religious encounterin the
dusty streets and crowdedcompoundsof Abeokutaand Ibadan.It takes us in
36 The ChurchMissionarySociety was foundedin
1799 by leadingmembersof the evangelical
wing of the Churchof England.For an excellent recent studyof its intellectualand social milieu,
see B. Hilton, The Age of Atonement:The Influenceof Evangelicalismon Social and Economic
Thought, i795-i865 (Oxford:ClarendonPress, 1988). The CMS's great secretary,Henry Venn
(1841-73), was strongly committed to the ideal of self-governing, self-supporting, and self-
propagatinglocal churches, so the developmentof "nativeagency"was a priorityof the mission.
The presence of many Yorubaamong the Christianized"liberatedAfricans" in Sierra Leone
enabledthe Yorubamission to realize this policy from the outset, a circumstancenearlyunique in
missions to Africa. For details, see the classic studies by J. F. Ade Ajayi, ChristianMissions in
Nigeria, i841-1891 (London:Longman, 1965), and E. A. Ayandele, TheMissionaryImpacton
Modern Nigeria, i842-I914 (London:Longman, 1966).
37 For example, S. A. Crowther,Journal,November 24, I845 (on laying the foundationof
Igbein chapel) and in a letterto G. C. Greenway,September13, 1847; the EnglishmanJ. Smith,
Annual Letter, December 30, i865 (of Ogunpa, Ibadan's weakest congregation); D. Olubi,
Journal,March 17, 1867 (again of Ogunpa, "we may not despise small things");J. Okuseinde,
Journal, September4, i872 (on rebuilding Kudeti church after its destructionby a tornado);
James Johnson, Annual Reportfor 1879 ("it is yet a day of small things here," on reopeningof
Ilugun station), Yoruba Mission, CMS Archives, BirminghamUniversity Library. All CMS
Archive referencesup to 1879 come from the CA 2 series (listed by individualmissionary);from
I88o, they come from the G3 A2 series (listed by year).

two directions:back to the great Ur-narrativeof the Bible, as well as forward

to the practicalprojectof the mission itself, a narrativethat would have to be
written in social practice before it was written as a text.
We thus come again to the question at issue between David Carr and
HaydenWhite: the relationshipbetween the temporalconfigurationsof narra-
tive and those of real life or history. Fundamentalis the reciprocityof those
relations:the shapingof life by persuasiveor authoritativenarratives,and the
narrativerepresentationof life. If the quotationfrom Zechariahis a telling
instance of the former, the CMS journals as a whole requireto be assessed
primarilyas the latter.Here the distinctioncommonly made in the philosophy
of history between chronicle (the mere itemizationof sequentialevents) and
narrative(the configurationof events in a meaningful sequence) becomes
relevant.38The journals evince two very differentlevels of narrativity.
First, there are the entries for particulardays, which most often present a
selected episode or incident. These are usually composed as plotted wholes,
even if they are very short. For example, "I could not go out today because I
had fever" is a narrative,albeit an extremely simple one, because it presents
two events in temporaland causal configuration.Let me give two examples of
common narrative plot forms, both from the journal extracts of Charles
Young, the catechist at Ondo, a town of eastern Yorubaland.The mission
there was still in its first year, so there was not yet a churchbuilding or even
local converts, and services were being held in the open or at the houses of
chiefs:
At ChiefAdaja'shouse,Youngpreachesthe Parableof the Sower.Afterwards
the
Adajaasksa commonquestion:"Whatshouldtheynow do for Godin the matterof
sacrifice . . . as something which must be done which might prove as it were their
sincereworshipto God."YoungrepliesthatGodonlywantsus to giveupourheartsin
prayerandto stopsacrificingto idols, sinceJesushas alreadymadethe all-sufficient
sacrifice.39
Here the plot takes a simple dialectical form, entirely consonant with the
dialogue that is its subject:A missionaryinitiativeleads to a local responseof
some promise, to which the missionary replies by seeking to correct and
channel it in a Christiandirection. More thanthat, this narrativeembodies, in
microcosm, what the mission aimed to achieve in its whole project;it is a kind
of practicalsynecdoche, a part to betoken and forwardthe realizationof the
whole project to bring the Yorubato Christianity.40
38 See Hayden White, "The Value of Narrativityin the Representationof Reality,"in his The
Content of the Form (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 1-25.
39 C. N.
Young, Journal,May 2, I875.
40 This structurehas some
similarityto the typical conversionnarrativecurrentin SantaIsabel
(Geoffrey M. White, Identity throughHistory, ch. 4). Here, too, a dialectical schema is used:
approach/resistance/acceptance.White argues that these narratives are "mythical schemes
which . . . work to recreatesocial and emotional meanings as much as they function to 'pre-
serve' historical events" (p. i60), and shows, by comparingthem with contemporarymission

592 J. D. Y. PEEL
The second common type of plot is frequentlyused when the incident or

episode is not initiatedor controlledby the missionary,as when a missionary
initiativeis rebuffedor when a ritualof the traditionalreligion is described. So
Young startsanotherentry:
"Thepeoplehereworshipthedead."Oneof ChiefJomu'swiveshascalledto report
the deathof her motherin a farmvillage. The bodyhas been broughtto town for
burial.A detaileddescriptionfollowsof the preparation
of the bodyfor burial,the
makingof sacrifices,theprayersto thedead,thedivinationto findoutif the sacrifice
is accepted,the interment
of thecorpse,andfinallythemourners' lamentation. "Oh!
Maythe Lordhelpthatthe eyes of thesepeoplemaysoonbe opened."41
Because the missionaryhas stood outside the events described, the narrative
"sense of an ending"42is achieved less by the completion of the action
sequence describedthan by the way in which its telling is concluded. Here a
generalizationabout heathenism is followed by an exemplary narrativein-
stance of it, which is then counteredby a prayerfor the successful outcome of
the mission. Elsewherea scripturaltext is used to sum up an episode, or even
a Yorubaproverb, as when Thomas King concludes a reportabout a proph-
etess of the deity Yemojaby quoting, ccOtito de oja, o ku ta; owo 1' owo li a
nra eke" (When truthis offered in the marketit finds no buyer, but falsehood
is bought with ready money).43
In contrastto these individualday entrieswe find a second, muchlower, level
of narrativitywhen we consider each document as a whole (for example,
"JournalExtractsof Charles Young for the Second Quarterof 1875") or the
manyyears'accumulationof suchdocumentsthatmakesupeachman'sarchive.
This is chronicleratherthannarrative,since thereis no over-allemplotmentin
the collected texts themselves. The journalform sets very severe limits on the
realizationof over-allnarrative,thougha writeroften seems to strainfor it, as
when he focuses on a theme that runs throughseveral day entries. It is the
exceptionwhen a themeengages a writerover severalyearsof entries, as in the
case of the missionaries'struggle in Ondo from 1875 into the I89os against
humansacrificeor the effortsof SamuelPearseat Badagryover nearlyten years
records, how much the events of many decades before had been reworked. The Yoruba ap-
proach/response/repostestructureis not only contemporaryto the events reportedbut can be
taken as shaping them, as it is intelligible as a strategyas well as a report.
41 C. N. Young, Journal,April 20, I875. The crisp opening almost suggests that Young was
anticipatingthe well-known debate aboutancestorworshipthat took place in the pages of Africa
in the i96os, launchedby Igor Kopytoff's"Ancestorsand Eldersin Africa,"Africa, 41:2 (I97 I),
I29-42.
42 Frank Kermode's The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1967), which has been so influential in shaping the discussion of
emplotment, seems especially congenial to these missionarytexts since it is so much to do with
the literaryinfluence of Christianideas of completion such as pleroma, ta eschata. These ideas,
of course, were more than literary:They had practicalsocial consequences.
43 T. King, Journal, September 15, I855.

in the I86os to convert three diviners. More commonly, writersdeal with the
meaninglessness of pure chronicle or mere succession by referringback to
earlierepisodes or personalities, introducingrecap narrativesor their own or
converts' personalhistories, or (as alreadynoted) by looking forwardthrough
the expression of their own hopes and prayersto the divinely assuredfuture
success of the mission. Thus they show their yearning for the long-term
temporalconfigurationthat is the essence of narrative.
NARRATIVE AND EMPOWERMENT
Now narrative,as Carrremindsus, "cannotbutbe informedby a certainkindof

superiorknowledge."44The authorof a narrativehas the advantageover a
chroniclerin that he has knowledge of an outcome, which he uses to define
incidentsas relevantor irrelevant,being able to put them in or leave them out.
The historianis likely to preferhis raw materialin unplottedform, as discon-
nected observations made at differentpoints in time, than in the form of a
plottednarrativemade for him by someone else, who has alreadyexercisedthe
control over the evidence that he wants to exercise himself. Satisfactory
analysis of the process of religious conversion, for example, is much better
served by discontinuousobservationsof the kind that Samuel Pearse made of
his potential converts45without knowledge of the eventualoutcome, than by
post hoc narratives,which are the materialsusually available.46
Just as narrativeis an expressionof power, it also works to empowerthose
who can achieve it. Nowhere does this show up more sharply than in the
personal narrativesof several of the CMS's African agents, men who, being
former slaves, had experienced a particularlyacute form of powerlessness.
Sometimes these reminiscences come in brief flashes, triggered by some
passing experience, as when T. B. Wrightwent to help with a Sunday school
outing by boat to the Lagos beach:
The greatthingsthatstruckme in the proceedingof the daywerethe formingof the
childrenintheemptyboatperformed bymyselfandthenumbering of thembyMrLamb
[anEnglishmissionary] whilsttheywerebeingliftedupandlet in one aftertheother,
whichcalledto my mindthoseafflictingtimes,whenwe wereshippedin thesameway
intendingto be carriedto Brazilfromwhencewe hadnohopeto return,butunbounded
thanksto Godwho thusorderethall things.47
Thus the adultWrightsees himself re-enactingthe actionsof the slave traders,
44 Carr, Time, Narrative, and History, 59.

45 For a full accountof Pearse'sconversionof the threediviners, see J. D. Y.
Peel, "ThePastor
and the Babalawo: The Encounterof Religions in Nineteenth-CenturyYorubaland,"Africa 60:3
(1990), 338-69.
46 E.g., PatriciaCaldwell, ThePuritanConversionNarrative(Cambridge:
CambridgeUniver-
sity Press, 1983); P. G. Stromberg,Language and Self-Transformation:Study of the Christian
ConversionNarrative (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1993).
47 T. B. Wright, Journal,January6, 1869.

594 J. D. Y. PEEL
while the childrenassumethe passiverole thathe hadonce occupied as a newly

taken slave. It is significantthat the characteristicplace for autobiographical
narrativeis when the writer is put in touch again with his origins. Samuel
Crowthergives us this kind of narrativein the journal where he records his
reunionwith his mother,from whom he had been separatednearlythirtyyears
before.48 Thomas King provides it when he recounts his journey back to
Yorubalandfrom SierraLeone and also links it closely to his reunionwith his
aged mother.49JamesBarberbringsit into his accountof a journeyfrom Lagos
to Ibadanin which he passed the ruins of his birthplaceand throughthe town
where he was first held as a slave.50
To appreciatehow these narrativestransformthe experiencesthatthey relate,
it is helpful to recall the contrast between the disconnected sequences of
chronicle and the configured sequences of narrative.Enslavementis about
disconnection-severance from where one belongs, and so of one's past from
one's present-as much as it is about disempowerment.Or, rather,each is a
conditionof the other. It is the natureof the case thatwe have little immediate
evidence about what newly taken slaves may have made of the unpredictable
succession of experiences to which they were passively subject.51Thomas
King went through three changes of owner in the fortnight between being
kidnappedand being loaded onto a ship bound for Havana,while his mother,
who stayed in Africa, served six or seven mastersbefore she was eventually
redeemed.The sheerrefractorinessof suchexperiencesto meaningfulnarration
musthavecontributedgreatlyto the despairandsuicidecommonat this stage in
a slave's career.King tells us thatit was as if he were alreadydead, for "itwas a
currentreportthat whoever is sold to a whitemanis in that respect become an
inhabitantof anotherworld."52He had entertainedthoughtsof escape but now
gave them up: Narrativeand action became impossibletogether.But memory
was still there, and latercircumstancesmightpermitthe tale to be told, plotted
into a story with a point of referencethatcould not earlierhave been imagined.
JamesBarber'sstorycontainsanextraordinary passageof reflexionon whatit is
to be powerless. He speaksof Iperu,the place where, in slavery,he first learnt
to ride a horse. As horses were something very special in the forest belt of
48 S. A. Crowther,Journal,August 2I, I846. 49 T. King, Journal,April 7,
1850.
50 J. Barber,Journal,January4, I855.
51 Furtheron slave narratives,see P. Curtin,Africa Remembered: Narrativesby WestAfricans
from the Era of the Slave Trade(Madison:Universityof Wisconsin Press, I967); C. T. Davis and
H. L. Gates, Jr., eds.; The Slave's Narrative (New York:Oxford University Press, I985).
52 See, too, James White (himself a former slave), Journal,October 22, I862: "Formerlyit
was your notion [he tells pagan interlocutorsat Ota] that when a black man is sold and taken to
white man's country,that the person is gone to the other world, believing him to be really dead."
For similar ideas about the identity of the enslaved and the dead among the BaKongo, see W.
McGaffey, Modern Kongo Prophets (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, I983), 126-40.
See, too, OrlandoPatterson'sidea of the slave as "a socially dead person,"in Slaveryand Social
Death: A ComparativeStudy (Cambridge:HarvardUniversity Press, I982), 38 ff.

Yorubaland, I surmise he had taken it as a sign that he might start to reassemble

his life, even as a slave:
I was thenconsideredwhen ridingon my master'shorseas moneyridingmoney,just as a

dollarmay be placedby the owneruponanotherdollar . . . for I was no morevaluedby
my masterandall his . . . thanthey did the horse;for I was valuedbecauseof the price I
cost them;and so was the horse;but the horse was of rathermore value thanI, because
when I was sold, the horse remainedthere.
This passage ends with a prayer, "Blessed be the Lord who has put it into the
hearts of men to set the slaves free. He then thanks the CMS for "bringing me
back freely to a place where I was once a slave in mine own land."53
THE BIBLE AS SOURCE OF PARADIGMATIC NARRATIVE

But the slave's liberation only opens the way to the recovery of narrative. A
decisive role in its consolidation was played by what I've called the great Ur
narrative of the Bible. It is hard to overestimate the importance of the Bible to
evangelical missionaries at this period: It was their supreme paradigmatic
history, through which they recognised new situations and even their own
actions. These missionaries, at the actual level of religious encounter, had
virtually no missiology, no theory as to how mission should be done other than
that provided by the Bible itself. Instructions from the CMS upheld Saint Paul
as "the true pattern of a missionary,"54 and passages like his speech to the
Athenians about their altars "to the Unknown God" were often quoted. African
agents of the mission were even more saturated with Biblical language and
imagery than the Europeans. When William Moore writes to the CMS about the
unsuccessful 1863 Dahomean invasion of Abeokuta in these terms, it is hard to
tell where precedent and prophecy stop and description in the language of the
King James Version begins:
Thereforesaiththe Lordconcerningthe king of Dahomeyhe shall not come into this city
nor shoot a musketshot therenor come before it with shields nor cast a bankagainstit.
By the way thathe came by the sameshallhe returnandshallnot come intothis city, saith
the Lord . . . stand ye still and see the salvation of the Lord55
The Bible was a great treasury of narratives for all purposes, to console as
well as to inspire. Nowhere was this more needed than in Badagry, the oldest
mission station of all and one of the hardest. An ethnically mixed town,
Badagry had a Popo (Egun) indigenous population and many Yoruba immi-
53 J. Barber,Journal,January4, I855.
54 Thus, the EnglishmanEdwardRoper to H. Venn, December 3, i86i.
55 W. Moore to the ReverendW. Jones, April 30, 1863. DahomeyactuallyattackedAbeokuta,
the Egba capital, on only threeoccasions, but fears of an invasionwere recurrentalmost every dry
season till the late I88os. These fears tended to enhance mutualfeelings of dependencebetween
the Christianbody and the town authorities.

596 J. D. Y. PEEL
grants.Foryearsthe only convertswere fromamongthese Yoruba,andwe find

the pastor,SamuelPearse, also Yoruba,turningto the words of Isaiah (I:8) to
express his sense of dismay: The house of God at Badagryis deserted "as a
cottage in a vineyard,as a lodge in a gardenof cucumbers."56Nine years later,
little has changed, and he concludes a ratherglum annual letter: "Like the
Galileanfishermen,we havetoiled all nightandcaughtnothing."57A few years
later, one of the first Popo converts dies shortly after her conversion, to the
consternationof the Christiansand the triumphantsatisfaction of the Popo
pagans. "Tellit not in Gath, neitherpublishit in the streetsof Ashkelon, lest the
daughtersof the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughtersof the uncircumcised
triumph"is how Pearseroundsoff his account,as if to console himself with the
reflexion that, if the idolatrous Popo were Philistines, at least the Yoruba
Christiansmust be Israelites.
So missionariesidentified not only themselves, but also the Other, in the
narrativesof the Bible. Despotic rulers, like Kurunmiof Ijaye or Oluyole of
Ibadan,might be comparedto King Herod, and a supportivewar chief to the
centurionCornelius.58Nicodemus, the leaderof the Jews who came privately
to Jesus, begins a long Yorubacareeras the symbol of the rich or influential
secret patron of the small strugglingreligious congregation.59(I first came
across him in the I96os when tryingto establishwhetherAladuraChristianity
was reallya "religionof the oppressed."Aladuraleadersdid not like to thinkso
andcited theirown Nicodemusesto proveit.)60 Africanpastorswere especially
drawn to discern parallels between Yoruba ritual and that of the ancient
Israelites,an identificationwhich bothvalorizedYorubatraditionandplaced it
in a temporalschemethatpointedto Christianityas its eventualdestiny.6'When
Daniel Olubi's motherdied-she being a devotedpriestessof the deity Igun-
he recalledhis own boyhoodrole as her assistant"calledearlyto the service of
the Temple, like Samuel."62
Biblical narrativeis here treated analogically, in order to clarify novel
situations in terms of familiar ones; but sometimes it is used to empower
56 S. Pearse to H. Venn, December 31, 1859. The source of the quotation is not acknowl-
edged.
57 S. Pearse, Annual Letterto H. Venn, January13, i868. The reference is to Luke 5:5.
58 C. Phillips, Senior, Journal,March22, I855; D. Hinderer,Journal,July 22, 1851, specifi-
cally comparingthe mannerof Oluyole's death to Herod's;J. Okuseinde, Journal,January20,
1878, on an influentialman in Ibadanwho said he'd like to be a Christianif his position would let
him.
59 There are many instances, including, among others, the king of Ota, a senior diviner at
Oyo, several chiefs at Ibadan, a war chief at Ijaye, and a chief at Isaga.
60 J. D. Y. Peel, Aladura:A ReligiousMovementamong the Yoruba(London:Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1968), 2I4.
61 For a fuller discussion of this line of thinkingby Yorubaclergy, see J. D. Y. Peel, "Between
Crowtherand Ajayi: The Religious Originsof the YorubaIntelligentsia,"in AfricanHistoriogra-
phy: Essays Presentedto J. F. AdeAjayi, ToyinFalola, ed. (Harlowand Lagos: Longman, 1993),
64-79.
62 D. Olubi, Journal,
February 6, 1867.

througha moreessential andintimatemode of operation.So it was at a cardinal

point in the life of the greatest YorubaChristianof the nineteenthcentury,
Samuel Ajayi Crowther,63whose 1846 reunionwith his motheris mentioned
above. In September1847 Crowtherwrote to the CMS secretary,HenryVenn,
sayingthat"thisis the convergingpointof my historyin the Lord'sdispensation
with me has for a long time muchengagedmy seriousthought,especially since
the meeting of my mother,brotherand sister."He recalls that, back in Sierra
Leone, the story of Joseph, who enjoyed God's special blessing, had been a
favouriteof his. The lettergoes on to speakof his hopes for Africa'sagricultural
and commercialdevelopment, with British help, and concludes by informing
Venn that his mother and sisters are candidatesfor baptism.64
Earlyin 1848 Crowther'smother,Afala, was baptizedas Hannah.65It could
not have been any other name, since in the Bible Hannahis the mother of
Samuel. Thus a name acquiredwith the utmostcontingencyin SierraLeone-
Samuel Crowther'seponym was the vicar of ChristChurch,Newgate, and a
prominentsupporterof the CMS at home-was now chargedby its bearerwith
a new significance. As Afala bore Ajayi in the flesh, now Samuel reaffiliated
himself to Hannahin the spirit. He was no longerjust any Samuel, a Samuel
named for an obscure London vicar or the bearerof a name without intrinsic
meaning, but Samuel, son of Hannah.He thus fashioned a new narrativefor
himself, which is the more powerful because it is also an old narrative.The
story is told in I Samuel 1:2, anda strikinglyYorubastoryit is, too. Elkanahthe
Ephraimitehas two wives: Hannah, who is barrenbut whom Elkanahloves,
and Peninnahwho has borne sons and daughters.There is ill feeling between
the two wives, and when Elkanahgoes to makehis annualsacrificeto the Lord
at Shiloh, Hannahin her anguishpledges thatif she is given a son, "I will give
him unto the Lord all the days of his life." Crowther'sreconnectionwith his
past, in the person of his mother, through the medium of a narrativethat
groundedhis own religious commitmentthus served to relaunchhim on his
life's career.
But this Biblical narrativehada broadersignificancethanthatfor Crowther's
personalcareer.As the letterto Vennshows, Crowtherwas also concernedwith
Africa's development. At the Egba capital, Abeokuta, which was the main
63 On Crowther's
early life, the main primarysource, apartfrom his journalsand lettersin the
papers of the Sierra Leone, Yoruba, and Niger missions of the CMS, is the autobiographical
"Letterof Mr Samuel Crowtherto the Rev. William Jowett, in 1837," printedas an appendixto
Journalsof the Rev.J. F. Schon and Mr S. Crowther(London:1842; rpt. FrankCass, 1970). Also
of some value is J. Page, The Black Bishop: Samuel Adjai Crowther (London: Hodder and
Stoughton, I908), which drew on Crowtherfamily traditions.Moder scholarshipis dominated
by the work of J. F. Ade Ajayi: Apart from Christian Missions in Nigeria, see his "Bishop
Crowther: An Assessment," Odu, 4 (1970), 3-17, and his introductions to the 1970 reprints of
Crowther'spublishedjournals of the Niger expeditions of I84I and I854.
64 S. A. Crowtherto H. Venn, September I8, 1847.
65 Idem, Journal, January 31, 1848.

598 J. D. Y. PEEL
CMS station, the mission derived crucial supportfrom a small group of war
chiefs. Pre-eminentamong these was Ogunbonaof Ikija, who looked to the
developmentof cash crops and a Britishallianceas the best means for Egba to
become independentand to prosper.Ogunbonafigures frequentlyin mission-
aryjournals,for he was theirstrongestsupporter,andhis interestin Christianity
seems to have gone beyond the pragmaticconcernswith which it started.The
missionariesoften speculatedon Ogunbona'sreal motives and on his religious
sincerity.In mid-1847 Ogunbonaexpresseda desireto have a place of worship
at his house, which led Crowtherto compare him to Micah in the Book of
Judges. Micah was the man of the mountainof Ephraimwho kept idols in his
house but also supporteda priestof God, a Levite:"Now know I thatthe Lord
will do me good, seeing I havea Leviteto my priest."66Now the transitionfrom
Judges (where Crowthersituates Ogunbona)to I Samuel (where Crowther
identifieshimself) is one of the majorturningpointsof the Bible. In theological
terms, thereare intimationsof Christ(in Hannah'ssong of thanksgivingfor the
birth of Samuel, which prefiguresthe Magnificat, and in the call of the boy
Samuel, which prefiguresChrist'srecognitionby Simeon in the Temple). In
literaryterms, as GabrielJosipovici persuadesus, the rhythmof the Biblical
narrativefalters at the Book of Judges but recoversits sense of directionas it
moves into the first Book of Samuel.67In sociological terms, the transitionis
from a stateless society to the Jerusalemitekingdom: from the disorder of
Judgesto the sequenceof kings thatleads fromSaul throughDavidto Solomon
andthe buildingof the Temple.68Thatrepeatedrefrainof the Book of Judges-
"Inthose days therewas no king in Israel:every mandid thatwhich was rightin
his own eyes"-aptly describesthe political stateof Abeokutaand Ibadanthat
Crowtherwas hoping to transformthroughChristianagency. The building of
the Church would be a means and the counterpartof social and political
renewal.
TEMPORAL ASPECTS OF CONVERSION

So we come to the new narrativethat the mission aimed to write in social
practice:the adoptionby the Yorubaof a complex of new ways of thought
66 S. A. Crowther, Journal, quarter ending June 25, 1847.

Judges I7:I3.
67 Gabriel
Josipovici, TheBook of God: A Responseto the Bible (New Haven:Yale University
Press, I988), ch. 6. Also of great value are the chapterson Joshuaand Judges and on I and II
Samuel by D. M. Gunn and J. Rosenberg, respectively, in The Literary Guide to the Bible,
R. Alter and F. Kermode,eds. (London:Collins, 1987).
68 One might even see this as an early showing of a topic which has continued high on the
intellectual agenda of Africa-state formation-and which provided a crucial terrainfor the
convergence of social anthropologyand African history since in the I96os. See D. Forde and
P. M. Kaberry,eds., WestAfricanKingdomsin the NineteenthCentury(London:OxfordUniver-
sity Press, 1967), and "Systemes6tatiquesafricains,"special issue, Cahiers d'etudes africaines,
22:87-88 (1982).

and action, summedup in a new identityattachedto a local religious associa-

tion. This objective was sweeping indeed, so much so that V. Y. Mudimbe
has characterizedthe missionaryas "thebest symbolof the colonial enterprise"
and as someone who, convincedthathe has the mandateof God's law, believes
that he has no need to "enterinto dialogue with pagans and savages but must
impose the law of God thathe incarnates."69But in nineteenth-and twentieth-
centuryWest Africa, the missionaryhas never disposed of the force majeure
that would have enabled him to do that:He has had to try to persuade. It was
an uphill struggle, "days of small things," for many decades, despite such
favourablecircumstancesas large-scale social upheaval, the accepted reality
among Yorubaof personal cultic choice, and Islam's prior introductionof
several elements of Judaic religion. The missionaries asked a lot of their
potentialconverts. They were requiredto renouncea majorsource of support
and protection, in their orisa, or idols, as well as the sustaining social
ties associated with their cult groups, in favour of exclusive regard for a
supremebeing who offeredan intimaterelationshipwith the individualbeliever
and large (if also uncertain) rewards in the future with membership in a
socioreligious community that might have powerful chiefly and European
patronsbut was itself composed mostly of nonlocal, low-status,and uprooted
people.
Mass movements to Christianity,here as elsewhere in Africa, came only
when the colonial orderbegan to make majorinroadsinto the organizationof
daily life. The most widely known general theory of this process, by Robin
Horton, is characteristicallyanthropologicalin that it relies on a strongly
spatialisingmodel.70The religious change is seen metaphoricallyas a vertical
movement, from cults directedat subordinatedeities to a cult directedat the
"high"God; and this is dependenton a social change plottedhorizontally,as a
movementfrommicrocosmto macrocosm.Fruitfulas this theoryis, it does not
adequatelyencompassthe extent to which the argumentbetween the mission-
aries and the Yorubadirectlyaddressedissues of time, andhow centraltempo-
ral reorganizationwas to Christianconversion.
If this was so on the side of the missionaries, the Yorubawere even more
likely to express theirobjectionsin temporaland narrativeterms. In 1859, six
yearsafterhe had foundedthe CMS mission at Ibadan,the Germanmissionary,
DavidHinderer,wearilysummedup whathe called the fourstandardobjections
to Christianteaching:
69 V. Y.
Mudimbe, TheInventionof Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy,and the Orderof Knowledge
(Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, I988), 47.
70 R.
Horton, "African Conversion," Africa, 41:2 (197 ), 85-108; and, more fully, "On the
Rationality of Conversion," Africa, 43:3 (1973), 219-35 and 43:4, 372-99. For a recent evalua-
tion of Horton'sthesis and somethingof the debate it triggered,see R. W. Hefner, ed., Conver-
sion to Christianity:Historical and AnthropologicalPerspectives on a Great Transformation
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 20-25.

600 J. D. Y. PEEL
I. "Ourfathersgaveus orisasto worshipandwe musthonourthem."

2."Weknownothingof theotherworldandtherefore we doperfectlyrightto confine
ourconcernto thisone."
3. "Wearetoo old to change,ourchildrenwill followthe new way."
4. "Wehaveno powerbutwhateverourmasterssay,thatwe mustfollow"(saidby
poor people and slaves).7'
The first objection assumes a normativeorder grounded in the past and in
continuityacrossthe generations,while the third,thoughit sees changewritten
in the times, leaves it to the next generation.The second rejects a common
missionaryargumentfor the cardinalimportanceof a futurestate, which is also
fundamentalto the broaderprojectto revise the Yoruba'snotion of time. The
fourth puts an observationabout power in a simple narrativeform.
While it is clear from manyjournalentriesthat explicitly theological argu-
ments along the lines implied by Horton's theory-for example, about the
relations between God and the orisa-often took place, they tended to be
subordinatedto or enclosed within narrativecontentions of the kind that
Hindererdescribes. In the terms that Michael Carritherstakes from Jerome
Bruner, a narrativemode of thought takes precedence over a paradigmatic
one.72 The religious encounterwas less a matterof the clash of world views,
consideredas timeless sets of moraland theological alternatives,than it was a
contest between rival narrativesor schemes for how individualsand commu-
nities should project themselves over time.
Temporalreorganization,then, was centralto the task of mission. Whatthe
missionaries most essentially had to preach was, in the words of the well-
known evangelical hymn, the "old, old story"of humansin and redemption.
The scripturalhistorythattold of the workingof the divine scheme of salvation
restedsquarelyon the notion thateach soul had only one existence, composed
of one configured sequence of events: birth, life, death, judgement, and
assignmentto a permanentdestiny. The prevailingYorubacosmology, how-
ever, held that individualswere the reincarnationsof particularancestors;and
its ritualcorrelate,the cult of ancestors,was flatly incompatiblewith any idea
of a post-mortemjudgement of the soul, leading to two morally distinct
categories of the dead.73
Just as the Christianhistoryof humanredemptionmirrorsthe uniquesingu-
larity of the life course of the individualsoul, the Yorubabelief in recurrent
existences of the soul expresses an outlook which is diffusely presentin their
thinkingabout history-that significantfeaturesof the present, and a fortiori
the future,areprefiguredin the past. The canonicalformof this outlookis to be
71 D. Hinderer,Half-YearlyReport, ending September1859.

72 Carrithers,WhyHumansHave Cultures,76, citing JeromeBruner,Actual Minds, Possible
Worlds(Cambridge:HarvardUniversity Press, 1986).
73 For a fuller expositionof the ideas in this and the following paragraph,see Peel, "Pastorand
Babalawo."

MISSIONARY NARRATIVES, HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 6o0
found in Ifa, the most prestigious Yorubasystem of divination. Here, the

diviner, aftercasting one of sixteen figures by the manipulationof palm nuts,
recites the verses thatfall underit. Eachverse is a specific narrativethatrelates
an archetypal situation in which a diviner has prescribed the appropriate
sacrifices for a client's problem. The client makes sense of his situation by
identifying which of these narrativesapplies to him. Thus, historydoubles as
prophecy.A strikinginstanceof this occurs in the journalof Samuel Johnson
nearlytwenty yearsbeforehe was to completehis greatHistoryof the Yorubas.
He is having an argumentwith two Muslims about whetherthe Bible or the
Koran is the true Word of God. One of the Muslims says that Mohammed
proved he was a prophetby giving an account of five generationsbefore his
birth. "I said to him," Johnsontriumphantlyconcludes, "forI can now tell you
the names and histories of the kings of Yoruba . . . generations before King
Abiodun, am I thereforea prophet?"74
ButJohnson'sforthrightrebuttalleadsus to thinkbackto Crowther'ssense of
divine dispensationas he recognized the signs of a sacred history in his own
life. WasCrowtherin fact using the Bible in the mannerthatYorubause Ifa, as a
treasurehouse of precedents,one of which, when properlyidentified, can be
treatedas predictiveof one's own rightcourse of action?Certainlyit was less
the case thatIfa was the YorubaBible (thoughmanyYorubapagansarguedjust
this), thanthatthe Bible could be used as a ChristianIfa.75But is this a sufficient
or appropriateway to describeCrowther'suse of it? At this point interpretation
threatensto reduce the plenitudeof the narrativeitself. To insist on the most
"Yoruba"reading of Crowtherthat seems possible76-which these days is a
stronganalyticaltemptation-would be to essentializeCrowther,whichis to deny
him the full extentof his historicityand also to ignorehow much the Bible has
servedas the "livelyoraclesof God."77to Christiansof manyages and nations.
YORUBA NARRATIVES AND CHRISTIAN NARRATIVES

The missions thus faced a majorculturaltask in attemptingto bringthe Yoruba
to a conviction of the uniquenessof the soul's trajectory,as Christianconver-
sion required.One way theytackledit was by seekingto implicatethe proposed
74 S. Johnson, Journal,November I6, I882.

75 For a suggestive explorationof how Ifa as oral literaturediffersfrom Scriptureand of what
occurs when attemptsare made to assimilateit to Christianforms, see KarinBarber,"Discursive
Strategiesin the Textsof Ifa and in the 'Holy Book of Odu' of the AfricanChurchof Orunmila,"
in P. F. de Moraes Farias and K. Barber, eds., Self-Assertionand Brokerage: Early Cultural
Nationalism in WestAfrica (Birmingham:Centreof West African Studies, I990), I96-224.
76 E.g., the recent speculative attemptby Andrew Apter to give pagan credentialsto Bishop
Crowther:Black Critics and Kings: The Hermeneutics of Power in YorubaSociety (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992), 194-204.
77 Wordsthat have been used in the Britishcoronationservice since 1689 at the point when a
copy of the Bible is presented-nowadays by the moderatorof the General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland-to the sovereign. W. K. Lowther-Clarke,Liturgy and Worship(London:
Society for the Propagationof ChristianKnowledge, I932), 699.

602 J. D. Y. PEEL
new personalnarrativein a persuasivenew collective narrative.In this way an

additionaluse was foundfor whatwas alreadythe CMS policy of "Christianity,
Civilization, and Commerce,"that is, thatthe spiritualregenerationof Africa
should be linked to, and supportedby, secular processes of development. It
became a common strategy of missionary argumentto invite their Yoruba
interlocutors,on the basis of theirown recentexperiencesof historicalchange,
to buy into a new version of how Yorubahistory might go, to invite them to
rescripttheir country'shistory in terms of a unidirectionalnarrativeof social
progress-basically a formof whatwe now call modernizationtheory-which
meshed nicely with the Christiannarrativeof the soul that the missions were
urging on the Yorubaas individuals.
The journalscontain many instancesof individualsreflecting on their own
experiences of the times. Nineteenth-centuryYorubalandwas the scene of
nearlycontinuoussocial upheavaland internecinewarfareamong a numberof
smallkingdoms.78This was broughtaboutby the collapseof the majorregional
power, the Old Oyo kingdom, in the i82os, and by subsequenteffects. These
conditions led to high levels of enslavement, thus contributingindirectly to
the presence of the Christianmissions. Now, in placing their own involve-
ment in a broaderhistoricalframework,the Yorubaused a schemavery similar
to those found widely in African perceptionsof the past. It comprised three
levels:
describingfoundingkingsandculture
i. A level of essentiallymythicalnarratives,
heroes,whichset forththe basiccategoriesof cultureandsociety.
2. A seriesof narratives rulers,whichtendedto a limited
attachingto particular
numberof stereotypes, a compromise betweena cumulative of
historyandtheoperation
certainbasicsocialprocesses.
3. Nearest the present, a retrospectivehistoireevenementielle,composed of memo-
or toldby participants.
ries of eventsandexperiencesas remembered
When one collects oral history in a Yorubacommunity,one finds that, with
respect to events occurringseventy or so years earlier,much specific detail is
suddenlylost as the memoriesof level 3 areprocessedinto the traditionof level
2. It is as if memoriesarecomposted, so thatlittle detail is preservedthatis not
thought to be characteristicof the social processes and human types of the
community in question.79
78 There is no
full-lengthmodem synthetichistoryof the Yorubawars. But see J. F. Ade Ajayi
and R. S. Smith, YorubaWarfarein the NineteenthCentury(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity
Press, I964); S. A. Akintoye, Revolutionand Power Politics in Yorubaland,I840-1893 (Lon-
don: Longman, I97I); Bolanle Awe, "Militarismand Economic Development in Nineteenth-
Century YorubaCountry,"Journal of African History, 14:1 (1973), 65-77; Toyin Falola, The
Political Economyof a Pre-Colonial WestAfricanState: Ibadan, I830-I900 (Ile-Ife: University
of Ife Press, I984).
79 See J. C. Miller, "Introduction,"in The AfricanPast Speaks, J. C. Miller, ed. (Folkestone
and Hamden, Conn.: Dawson and Archon, I980); for a Yorubastudy, J. D. Y. Peel, "Making
History: The Past in the Ijesha Present," Man, 19:I (I984), 111-32.

Missionaries engaged vigorously with the memories of level 3, memories

that in the 870s went back with elderly people as far as the early decades of the
century, sometimes to Old Oyo itself, before the great upheavals. I have already
quoted some African pastors' reminiscences of the first wave of general trauma
in the I82os. More telling, because less informed by a retrospective Christian
telos, are those of ordinary folk, such as the female Sango worshippers with
whom Samuel Pearse had a long conversation at Badagry in 1863, while they
were preparing the annual feast for their god. He tells of one elderly woman
who says she thinks the white man's way of worshipping God will one day
prevail.
Then she took a retrospectiveview of theiryouthfuldays, when they were in theirnative
country in the hands of parents and grandparents,when the worship of idols being
transmittedfrom one generationto anotherwas in its crisis. The horrorsof the wars that
ensued doomed many to an untimelydissolutionand sold them into slavery.In the state
of slavery how is it possible they could do such justice to the worship as did their
forefathers, and yet the evils came that were never seen nor heardof were the orisas
[deities] alive?80
Despite the jagged syntax, the thrust of the historical assessment being made
here comes over clearly. What gives Pearse's account especial value is how
honestly he conveys that this history was contested territory, by going on to tell
us how this speech, which he had elicited, was received by the other Sango
women. Some of them expressed their pain by laying their hands on their
mouths or occasionally heaving deep sighs; but two or three of them so disliked
the tenor of the talk that they went off to the back to help their friends with the
cooking, making a deliberateclatter as they went.
It should not be supposedthatthe missionariesencounteredonly representa-
tions of the past that were easily turnedto the telos of a Christianmoralorder.
An Ifa priest once attributedthe disorderof the times to God's release into the
world of Esu (the trickstergod) and Ogun (the god of war) but insisted that it
was "not the pleasure of the other orishas . . . that war should continue."
Going onto the moraloffensive, he insistedthat"exceptthe white people cease
from bringingguns and powder, and also cease from buying slaves, there will
be nothing better."81 This was in I855, when slaves had all but given way to
palm oil as the main item of the export trade. The African pastor, J. White,
recordeda very differentassessment of the times, one even less amenableto
being rescriptedinto any narrativeof social regenerationalong Christianlines,
made eleven years later by a chief at Ado Odo:
Aro attributes the scarcity that prevails generally in the country both of food and money
to theturningof theworldupsidedownby thewhitemanandthatunlesstheyquitthe
countryand returnto theirabode in the sea, thereis reasonto fear things will get worse
80 S. Pearse, Journal,November 12, I963.
81 J. Barber,Journal,January14, I855. We may doubt the claim which concludes this entry,
that Barbersucceeded in convincing the babalawo of the errorof his views.

604 J. D. Y. PEEL
and worse-that theirforefathersnever were in the habitof procuringroll tobacco with

palm oil or palm-nutoil but with slaves, and that as for his parthe would ratherstarve
than allow the palm oil to touch his body-that when darknessprevailed upon the
country, they were honoured and respected for they could sell away all offensive
persons-but now all is light, one cannot act as he pleases.
This bold and forthright conservatism led White to conclude that it was "not yet
time for Ado."82
Sometimes indigenous narratives took a more general or philosophical form
than these personal memories and reflexions. An old man once asked if he
could add a few words to the outdoor preaching of W. S. Allen at Ibadan in
1873. He told this parable:
A manhadthreesons called Poison, FireandCovetousness,andaskedthemwhatthey'd
do afterhis death. Poison says thatif he's put on an arrowpoint, any man or beast he's
shot at will die. The fathersaid, "Son, there is somethingmade by God to deaden the
power of the poison";the son said, "Ah!"Fire said he'd be very serviceableto men in
boiling their food but "very bitterto wood or grass, and wheneverI am vexed I shall
begin from one part of the town to anotherin burningup houses, furniture,sheeps,
goats." The fatherremindshim, "Thereis waterto stop you andbrakeyour pride";and
the son said, "Ah!"Then Covetousness spoke: "I shall be always in man's heart and
makethemlust afterthingswhichdoes notbelong to themandwill cause themto commit
every kind of sin." "Thereis nothingto oppose you," said the father,"andthis is the sin
which is reigning in this our country such as war, kidnapping,stealing etc."83
This kind of story, which I have termed a parable, is called owe in Yoruba. In
this sense, owe, which also means "proverb," is a subcategory of itan (narra-
tive, story, history) that leads up to a proverb.84 With owe the emphasis is on the
concluding moral, whereas with other itan the emphasis is, rather, on the
information contained in the narrative itself; but all itan are considered as
narratives that convey truth.85 Allen rounds off the old man's owe with a
favourite text of his own: "The times of this ignorance God winked at, but now
commandeth all men every where to repent" (Saint Paul to the Athenians, Acts
17:30). Thus Allen, in telling the story, exploits the possibilities of the owe form
through which the old man made his historical assessment, by concluding it
with a Bible quotation that operates like a Yoruba proverb. We can compare this
with the opposite strategy found in a narrative I have already mentioned-
82 J. White, Journal, January II, I866. It does seem unlikely that the Aro would have
spontaneouslyused the missionary metaphorof light/darknessthat White puts into his mouth
here.
83 W. S. Allen, Journal,
May 24, I873.
84 In the YorubaBible, owe is used to renderboth the Book of Proverbs(Iwe Owe) and the
parablesof the New Testament,e.g., "Andhe spake this parableunto them"(O si pa owe yifun
won) (Luke I5:3).
85 On Yorubanarrativegenres and their relationshipto other oral genres, see DeirdreLaPin,
"Story,Medium, and Masque:The Idea and Art of YorubaStorytelling"(Ph.D. disser., Univer-
sity of Wisconsin at Madison, 1977), ch. I. There is some regional variationin these terms, but
LaPin notes that the use of owe as story + proverb(= parable)is particularlyfound at Ibadan,
where W. S. Allen's instancecame from.

Thomas King's use of a Yoruba proverb instead of the usual Bible quotation to
conclude what is otherwise a straightforward narrative of the activities of the
Yemoja prophetess.86
In Allen's 1873 narrative, "poetry" takes strong precedence over "history,"87
but in another very similar episode, told five years later, specific historical
allusion enters the narrative more decisively, and the element of owe is less
evident. Allen had preached on the Ten Commandments, and again an old man
asked if he could make a remark:
He said thatGod hadmademanto be upright,andhadgiven him fourattendants,each of
whom had his partner.These four pairs were "friendsand enemies . . . respect and
disrespect . . . truth and falsehood . . . merrimentand dejection," and in each case
"theformeris gone, it remainsthe latter. . . . And it is impossibleto have these which
were gone reclaimed, for without it we cannot keep these command[ments]. Our
grandfathershave kept [them]andtherewas peace andhappinessin theirdays, but since
the reign of Afonja [a warrior who played a large part in the final collapse of
Oyo] . . . everythingbegan to upset, nowaday it is worse, and this is what brings the
Yorubacountry to such a state as it is."
To this fable of a kind of Fall, Allen replies with "the disobedience of our first
parents," the origin of sin and death, and Christ as mediator.88
The missionary strategy of argument, then, was to take up on these indige-
nous historical assessments and to rewrite them into a new narrative in which
Christianity would resolve the problems of the age. More specifically, they
aimed to graft the new Christian narrative into the most recent, linear, and
personally experienced level of historical awareness, in order to draw the
Yoruba away from the repeating patterns of their schema's earlier, more
sedimented levels.
In this, the missionaries were helped by one further feature of Yoruba
historical thought, a kind of essential "chronotope,"89 in which the concept aiye
is used to characterize the distinct features of each epoch. Aiye is equally spatial
and temporal in its reference, since it means both "world" and "age." It appears
that this linkage derives precisely from the notion of recurrent existences: As
the soul re-entered the world, it also came into a new age. When it means
"world," aiye has orun, "heaven," the abode of souls between existences, as its
antonym; when it means "age," aiye has no antonym, there being merely the
difference between one age and another. Yet even as "world," contrasted with
86 See text above (p. 592).
87 One thinksof Aristotle, Poetics 145Ib: "... poetry[= owe] is moreakin to philosophyand
a betterthing thanhistory [= itan]; poetrydeals with generaltruths,historywith specific events."
88 W. S. Allen, Journal,
January27, 1878. If any readerwonderswhy old men appearso often
as Allen's interlocutors,the reason is that throughoutthe I87os and I88os the bulk of Ibadan's
young and active male populationwas absent from the town for long periods on campaigns in
Ijesha and Ekiti.
89 I.e., "The intrinsicconnectednessof temporaland spatial relationshipsthat are artistically
expressed in literature,"(Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination:Four Essays, C. Emerson
and M. Holquist, trans. [Austin: University of Texas Press, 198I], 84ff).

606 J. D. Y. PEEL
"heaven,"aiye has connotationsof movement, as in the proverb,"Aiyel'ajo,

orun n'ile" (The world is a journey,heaven is home).90In fact, aiye mediates
betweencyclical andlinearconceptionsof history.The wordcomes up in one of
the very few cases in which missionaryreportsa spontaneousremarkaddressed
to him in Yoruba.David Hindereris travellingthroughthe forest nearIlesha in
1858 when a palm-winetappercalls to him from up a tree: "O ku tonse aiye"
(Greetingsto you as you workto restorethe world).91At thetime this referredto
local hopes thatmissionaryinterventionwould succeed in endingthe wars and
thus restorethe status quo ante. The concept of aiye lies behind a numberof
expressionsreportedof people commentingon the state of the times. We read
variously of a Sango priest saying, "The world is like a worn and cast-off
garment,"92andan Obatalapriestcomplainingthat"theworldwas spoiled and
turned upside down, like the seed of a fignut."93To all this sentiment the
missionariesmadea point of speaking(andwere clearly so understoodby their
hearers). The very ambiguity of aiye, embracingin its range ideas of both
recurrenceand uniqueness,of spatialityand temporality,enabledconceptions
of one-way change to come in, until, with colonialism-aiye Oyinbo(the age
of the European)-developmentalism really began to take hold of the Yoruba
imagination.Its religious concomitantwas thatharvestof souls for which the
missionaries had worked and prayed through all those decades of "small
things."
CONCLUSION
If this seems to make a roundedend to the present narrative,it cannot be
assumed that its configurationequally inheres in the real processes that it
represents.The issue of the relationbetweennarrative-as-toldandnarrative-as-
lived, between art and life, remainsproblematic,as it will always do. I have
argued that narratives-as-livedare the proper subject matterof an historical
anthropologyandthatany anthropologythattakes seriouslythe idea of human
agency will be concerned with how narratives-as-livedare shaped by
narratives-as-told.The case of the Yorubaand the CMS is a good deal more
complicatedthan, say, thatof the Ilongotexaminedby Rosaldo, whereindivid-
uals' narrativesand the lives of a few dozen interactingindividuals largely
composed the picture. Here, the narratives-as-toldare not only those that
individualstell of theirown andtheirrelatives'andacquaintances'recentpasts,
90 Quoted by J. A. T. Williams, Journal,February26, I880, at Palma, in a discussion about

the afterlife. My colleague Akin Oyetade tells me that the common contemporaryform of the
proverbis "Aiyel'oj" (The world is a market . . .). Still, the idea of aiye l'ajo (journey of life) is
very much still current:See M. Drewal, YorubaRitual (Bloomington:IndianaUniversity Press,
I992), ch. 3.
91 D. Hinderer,Journal,September17, 1858.
92 Ibid., May 2, I856.
93 J. A. Maser, Journal,May 3, 1858, at Lagos.

but the canonical (and so in a way collective) stories containedin Scripture94

and the consolidated oral traditionsof their communities. The narratives-as-
lived of individualsare subsumedin collective histories, whetherof churchor
community;andnowhereis the complexitymoreevidentthanin the interplayor
even partialmergingof the Christiannarrativebroughtby the missionariesand
the ongoing historiesof the Yorubacommunities.The site of theirarticulation
lies in the living andthe telling of individualagents. In emphasizingthese links
between living andtelling, it is still importantnot to confoundthem. While it is
true that human beings cannot be agents, or create the social forms through
which they live without continually representingtheir lives and actions to
themselves and others, it remainsthe case thatlife and society, unlike stories,
are not works of art. Whathumanbeings achieve in practiceis also determined
largely by things other than these representations,crucial though these are to
their agency. Perhapsthis shows up especially clearly in the case of Christian
missionaries, for they are in a betterposition thanmost to appreciatethattheir
projectwill ever be unrealized,thatthe greatStory will continueto need to be
told.
94 On the constitutiverole of canonicallanguagein the makingof stories (and hence also lives)
among moder American evangelical Christians, see Stromberg, Language and Self-
Transformation,I 1-13 et passim.


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grants.Foryearsthe only convertswere fromamongthese Yoruba,andwe find

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througha moreessential andintimatemode of operation.So it was at a cardinal

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TEMPORAL ASPECTS OF CONVERSION

66 S. A. Crowther, Journal, quarter ending June 25, 1847.

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and action, summedup in a new identityattachedto a local religious associa-

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I. "Ourfathersgaveus orisasto worshipandwe musthonourthem."

71 D. Hinderer,Half-YearlyReport, ending September1859.

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found in Ifa, the most prestigious Yorubasystem of divination. Here, the

YORUBA NARRATIVES AND CHRISTIAN NARRATIVES

74 S. Johnson, Journal,November I6, I882.

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new personalnarrativein a persuasivenew collective narrative.In this way an

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Missionaries engaged vigorously with the memories of level 3, memories

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and worse-that theirforefathersnever were in the habitof procuringroll tobacco with

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"heaven,"aiye has connotationsof movement, as in the proverb,"Aiyel'ajo,