Many—although not all—forms were associated with music and dance and embedded in wider
ceremonies.^76 Wrestling is also particularly important among the Yoruba in southern Nigeria:
In the Edo kingdom it is highly valued. The oba [traditional ruler] holds a ritual festival Igue during
which his body is spiritually fortified for the coming year. As his body also stands for the kingdom it
protects the kingdom for the coming year. There is a tradition of wrestlers coming from all over the
Edo kingdom to Benin City (the centre of the kingdom) to win fame and fortune by successfully
wrestling in front of the oba, defeating the oba’s champion and becoming the new champion.^77Most writing on African combat games dates from the twentieth century, when these activities started to be
considered as ‘traditional sports’. Yet what appears to be ‘traditional’, in contrast to modern sports, is
inevitably the result of a long history with substantial changes in forms, contexts and meanings: ‘[...] Even
though traditional wrestling seems to have its modern counterparts, we cannot assume that because of
similarities of product there are continuities of meaning and significance’.^78 African societies underwent so
much transformation over the last centuries that one has to assume that these ‘traditional’ combat games
have also substantially evolved in the same period. Islamization, for instance, inevitably resulted in the
devaluation and often the disappearance of combat traditions linked to ‘pagan’ rituals. Therefore any
twentieth-century form considered ‘traditional’ is not necessarily strong evidence for similar, earlier
practices. The unqualified intermingling of combat games’ descriptions from different centuries constitutes
a serious methodological flaw and can lead, as we are going to see, to inconsistent conclusions.
Unfortunately there are very few descriptions of early African combat games, in particular from the time
of the slave trade. One of the oldest references is from a sixteenth-century Portuguese author, who described
a contest with daggers among the Wolof in Guinea:
Among the Jalofos there is a custom that is not mentioned in any of the chapters, which is to practise a
form of duel called guibapida, in which the combatants stand still and use only one dagger, the first
one strikes the other, (then) gives him the dagger so that he may strike back with it. In this way they
may kill each other, but sometimes those who do this avoid death. The Barbacins have the same
practice.^79There seems to be no modern equivalent of this type of contest, even though a wide range of traditional combat
games are still practised in contemporary Guinea and Senegal. The Wolof are now known for a style that
mixes wrestling and fist-fighting.^80
In some instances combat games became central for the constitution of ethnic identities. Olaudah Equiano
(1745–97), for example, described his abduction from his Igbo home in present day Nigeria and his long
journey to the coast where he was sold to a European slave trader. Initially he is taken through villages
where people still ‘resembled our own in their manners, customs and language’. At some point nearer to the
cost, however, Equiano is struck by the fact that inhabitants now differed in almost everything from his
culture. They did not circumcise, they used European tools unknown to him, and they ‘fought with their
fists among themselves’.^81 Equiano saw fist fighting as a marker of ethnic difference because Igbo wrestling
(mgba) involved only grappling with the aim to throw the opponent to the ground.^82
In the past, African combat games have often been associated with warfare.^83 Combat games have an
obvious martial character, and soldiers, mercenaries or combatants practised them or war dances to show
their skills and acquire status. However, given the lack of detailed descriptions prior to the twentieth
century, the difference between combat games, war dances and martial training is often difficult to establish
46 THE CONTEXT OF THE BLACK ATLANTIC