Usukakpa Tee · Plate XV · The Crossed-Paddles Clan · Pre-Order (Ships ASAP)

Usukakpa, also called Idua, is one of the original seven Efik clans. The plate shows crossed paddles.

Navy shirt carries ivory and gold ink; white shirt carries navy. Full-front print.

History

Usukakpa — Idua in the old genealogies — paddled in the first canoes of the Efik dispersal from Uruan and is counted among the original seven clans of the nation. Like its sister clans Enwang and Abayen, it was reduced in the turbulent centuries before colonial rule, its people folded into the greater Efik houses of the estuary towns. The crossed paddles of this plate carry its memory: a clan whose journey is recorded not in surviving towns but in the honored count of the seven, recited whenever the Efik tell where they came from.