The Fon people, also called Fon nu, Agadja or Dahomey, are a major African ethnic and linguistic group. They are the largest ethnic group in Benin found particularly in its south region; they are also found in southwest Nigeria and Togo. Their total population is estimated to be about 3,500,000 people, and they speak the Fon language, a member of the Gbe languages.
The history of the Fon people is linked to the Dahomey kingdom, a well-organized kingdom by the 17th century but one that shared more ancient roots with the Aja people. The Fon people traditionally were a culture of an oral tradition and had a well-developed polytheistic religious system. They were noted by early 19th-century European traders for their N'Nonmiton practice or Dahomey Amazons – which empowered their women to serve in the military, who decades later fought the French colonial forces in 1890.
Most Fon today live in villages and small towns in mud houses with corrugated iron gable roofs. Cities built by the Fon include Abomey, the historical capital city of Dahomey on what was historically referred to by Europeans as the Slave Coast. These cities became major commercial centres for the slave trade. A significant portion of the sugar plantations in the French West Indies, particularly Haiti, Dominican Republic and Trinidad, were populated with slaves that came from the Slave Coast, through the lands of Ewe and Fon people.
The Fon people refer to themselves as Fonnu, or sometimes as Danhomenu meaning a person of Dahomey, the precolonial Fon kingdom of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.
Oral history of the Fon and related ethnic groups traces their origins to the town of Tado, on the Mono River in present-day Togo. Herskovits (1967 vol. 1:167-169) records four origin stories, but the dominant one holds that Princess Aligbonon of Tado mated with a leopard and bore a son named Agasu, ancestor the Fon royal dynasty. In the sixteenth century, Agasu's descendants emigrated and founded a new kingdom in Allada, present-day Benin. Though there are questions about its veracity, the dominant myth holds that during the seventeenth century a dispute over the throne led to the emigration of two princes from Allada and the creation of two new kingdoms,one in Hogbonou (later Porto-Novo) and one in Kana (Bay 1998, Brunet and Giethlen 1900:54, David 1998:23, François 1906:30-31, Law 1997, Lombard 1967:72, Mattei 1895:176, Quenum 1999[1936]:14). Those settling in Kana became known as Fon, but remain closely related to the Gun people of Porto-Novo and the Ayizo of Allada. In Kana, the Fon encountered indigenous Yoruba-speaking peoples of the region before founding the kingdom of Dahomey. According to legend, a Fon leader killed the local Gedevi (Yoruba) ruler named Dan and planted a house post through his belly; the word Dahomey is derived from Dan-xo-mε (in the belly of Dan) (Bay 1998: 50, Le Herissé 1911:60, 278). In the seventeenth century, the Fon king Hwegbaja built a new palace near Kana and dug a deep protective trench around his home. This trench is called agbodo, and the town within became known as Agbo-mε. Abomey became the Fon capital and seat of the royal palace, a compound surrounded by five to ten meter high mud walls containing 7,000–8,000 residents, servants, and royal wives (Edgerton 2000:15). During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, European travelers' accounts of Abomey's royal court mention the lavish décor, wealth and status enjoyed by the King. The royalty went to great lengths to demonstrate its power and to impress visitors and citizens alike through bloody displays of terror, including human sacrifice (Burton 1864, Skertchly 1874, François 1906:86-87, Lombard 1967:85). In Europe, such gory accounts were read with curiosity and horror, fueling the justification for the eventual conquest of Dahomey. Visitors to Abomey also returned to Europe with fantastic tales of Abomey’s female soldiers whose ferocity and courage so impressed them that these warriors were likened to the mythical Greek "Amazons."'
In the eighteenth century, Dahomey expanded and took advantage of lucrative trade developing with European powers on the coast, especially after King Agaja defeated the southern kingdoms of Allada, Savi, and finally Ouidah by 1727 (David 1998: 31, Edgerton 2000: 38). Dahomey's most profitable trade was slavery, and there were frequent slave-raiding battles between Abomey and the Nago/Yoruba-speaking peoples to the East and North. These campaigns also brought Yoruba captives into the court of Dahomey, where they introduced Yoruba deities and other religious traditions to the Fon. Due to military casualties and slave exportation, between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries the population of Fon-related peoples fell from 511,000 to 280,000 (Manning 1982:32, see also Burton 1864:371, Edgerton 2000:39-40). Throughout the period of the Atlantic slave trade there were Portuguese, British and French trading posts in Ouidah (Quenum 1999[1936]:7), but by the mid-nineteenth century French interests gained the upper hand, establishing a permanent Catholic mission (Alladaye 2003, Clément 1996), developing the palm oil trade (Hargreaves 1966:17), and creating French protectorates near the coast. By 1890, tensions erupted into a series of skirmishes between French and Dahomean forces, leading to the French conquest of Dahomey in 1892. The French introduced schooling and public health, levied taxes, and used forced labor to build roads and railroads. By the middle of the twentieth century, forced labor was abandoned and the colony was granted elected representation in the French government, leading to its independence on August 1, 1960 (Agboton 1997, Pliya 1992, Ronen 1975). During this period, regionalism pitted northern Muslims against southern elites, while an enduring division also developed in the south between the Fon, Nago (Yoruba), and Gun peoples.
An African Village where Dead Children are Made into Voodoo Dolls
Raising twins is never easy but in Benin, an poor nation on the west coast of Africa, hardship means many die during childhood. These set of stunning new set of photos shows how the families deal with their grief – by creating doll effigies of the lost infants and raising them as if they were still alive. Taken by French photographer Eric Lafforgue, the photos document the life of the Fon tribe,…
Photos from the African Village where Dead Children are Made into Voodoo Dolls
Photos from the African Village where Dead Children are Made into Voodoo Dolls
Raising twins is never easy but in Benin, a poor nation on the west coast of Africa, hardship means many die during childhood. Now a stunning new set of photos shows how the families deal with their grief – by creating doll effigies of the lost infants and raising them as if they were still alive.
Taken by French photographer Eric Lafforgue, the photos document the life of the Fon tribe, who say…
