The interior of the Bight of Biafra has been somewhat of an enigma in the attempt to reconstruct the history of Africa during the era of transatlantic slavery. Its importance in the peopling of the Americas is clear. Perhaps one in six enslaved Africans came from the region. And while there is disagreement in estimating the relative proportions of people who can be identified as Igbo, Ibibio, and other ethnic categories and, indeed, in the meaning of these categories, it does seem certain that most people came from the relatively densely populated areas immediately inland from the coast behind the Niger Delta. Although Portuguese and other European traders did acquire some enslaved Africans from the Bight of Biafra in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the overwhelming majority of people from the region left in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and especially in the century after circa 1730. The enigma is that it has been difficult to document this migration, the causes of enslavement, and any relevant political and economic factors that might explain the phenomenon and its timing.

The reason for this difficulty relates to two factors. First, there is a paucity of documentary and oral sources that might be used in historical reconstruction for the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Second, there seems to be what might be called a “wall of silence” in the region about the past. Perhaps the lack of centralized institutions that can preserve details of the past explains this problem.