Tribal Ritual, Leadership, and the Mortality Rate in Irigwe, Northern Nigeria

The tribal area of the agricultural Irigwe is denuded of forest cover except for several sacred groves which most people seldom choose to enter. There are 25 tribal "sections." The priest elders of the two smallest sections tend ritual in the sacred groves and in other places which are believed to be of supreme importance to the tribe's well-being. The two largest but ritually unimportant sections formerly supplied most of the tribe's secular leadership for warfare and nowadays provide leaders for the British instituted tribal administration. The Irigwe justify the high regard in which the ritually powerful sections are held, and also explain their small size by their belief that the forces controlled by these sections, while vital to the tribe, are very dangerous and often kill those families who handle them. A medical survey, however, now offers a scientific "explanation" which traditionalist Irigwe elements reject: the sacred groves are infested with tsetse flies which transmit the parasites causing sleeping sickness.